| Curculio | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Titus Maccius Plautus |
| Characters | Palinurus, slave of Phaedromus Phaedromus, young man Leaena, old woman Planesium, slave girl of Cappadox Cappadox, pimp cook Curculio, parasite Lyco, banker producer Therapontigonus, soldier |
| Setting | a street in Epidaurus, before the houses of Phaedromus and Cappadox, and a temple of Aesculapius |
Curculio, also called The Weevil, is a Latin comedic play for the early Roman theatre by Titus Maccius Plautus. It is the shortest of Plautus's surviving plays.
The date of the play is not known, but de Melo suggests it may come from the middle period of Plautus's career (c. 205–184 BC), from the moderate amount of musical passages it contains. Other indications of date are a possible reference in lines 509–511 to a law of 197 BC on money-lending, and from the mention of gold philippics (440), a coin which may have become familiar in Rome after the war in Macedonia of 194 BC.[1]