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Amphitryon (Plautus)

Plautus · c. 190 BCE · Play · Roman · Classical

Jupiter takes the shape of the Theban commander for a night with the commander's wife and stretches the night to twice its length, while Mercury takes the shape of the slave Sosia and holds the door; then the real pair land home from the war. Sosia, met on his own doorstep by himself, is argued out of his own name, and Alcmena is charged with a night she is certain she kept faithfully. The Greek model is lost, and the prologue's word for the thing is coined here — tragicomedy, because gods and slaves are not supposed to share a plot.

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