| Persa | |
|---|---|
| Written by | Plautus |
| Characters | Toxilus, a slave Sagaristio, a slave Saturio, a parasite Sophoclidisca, a slave Lemniselenis, an enslaved prostitute Paegnium, a slave boy Unnamed daughter of Saturio Dordalus, a pimp |
| Setting | Athens |
Persa ("The Persian") is a comedic Latin play by the early Roman playwright Titus Maccius Plautus. Unusually in this play, the lover is not a wealthy young man helped by a cunning slave, but the cunning slave himself. In order to repay the money he has borrowed to buy his girlfriend from the pimp Dordalus who owns her, Toxilus persuades his friend Sagaristio to dress up as a Persian, in order to trick the pimp Dordalus into paying a large sum to buy a girl who is dressed as an Arabian captive, but who is in fact free. The girl's father Saturio then appears and reclaims his daughter.
The play is set in a street in Athens. Facing the audience are two houses, one belonging to Toxilus's absent master, and the other to the pimp Dordalus.
Persa is believed to be one of Plautus's later plays. Among other indications is a reference in lines 99–100 to the epulum Iovis "banquet of Jupiter", a custom instituted in 196 BC; another indication is the large number of polymetric cantica.[1] Unlike some other Plautus plays, it has been rarely if ever imitated in later literature, perhaps because of the somewhat coarse elements in its plot.[2]