Play: Bacchides

Overview
Plautus’ Bacchides (“The Two Bacchises”), first performed in the late 3rd–early 2nd century BCE and drawing on Menander’s lost Dis Exapaton (“The Twice-Deceiver”), is a high-spirited Roman comedy of twin courtesans, lovestruck youths, a fuming tutor, and a virtuoso trickster-slave who turns deception into an art. Set in Athens, it explores appetite and self-control, parental authority and youthful desire, all while gleefully foregrounding theatricality: Plautus amplifies Menander’s “twice-deception” into a triple swindle and has his slave brag about strategy like a general rehearsing a battle plan.

Plot
Two celebrated courtesans, sisters both named Bacchis, have arrived in town. One Bacchis is beloved by the young Mnesilochus; the other soon entangles his friend Pistoclerus. Mnesilochus, however, has exhausted his funds, and a swaggering soldier, Cleomachus, threatens to carry off Bacchis unless she is redeemed. Enter Chrysalus, Mnesilochus’ slave, who vows to outfox his master’s tightfisted father, Nicobulus.

The play opens with Pistoclerus’ tutor, Lydus, hauling his pupil away from the courtesans’ door with a tirade against modern morals. Pistoclerus protests that he is only visiting to rescue his friend from love. The moment he crosses the threshold, he is seduced by the charm of the other Bacchis and swept into a revel, while Lydus sputters in impotent indignation outside. This comic tug-of-war between pleasure and pedagogy frames the action and mirrors the older generation’s futile attempt to police desire.

Meanwhile, Chrysalus launches a sequence of cons. First he spins a merchant’s tale to Nicobulus: Mnesilochus allegedly needs ready cash to secure a lucrative deal abroad, and delay will ruin him. The anxious father hands over money. Next comes a forged “message” authenticated by a token ring, plausibly presented as Mnesilochus’ own request that more funds be passed through Chrysalus to ransom Bacchis from Cleomachus. Nicobulus, trapped by paternal concern and the persuasive props of recognition, pays again. Finally, when suspicion begins to stir, the slave escalates: he feigns the imminent wrath of the soldier and the danger to the family’s reputation unless the debt is settled at once. With bluster and battlefield metaphors, he storms the last defenses and extracts a third payment.

Across these episodes Plautus lets Chrysalus strut and soliloquize, comparing his tactics to sieges, ambushes, and cavalry charges. The soldier Cleomachus remains mostly an offstage menace; the real contest is between the slave’s ingenuity and the fathers’ purse strings. Pistoclerus, for his part, abandons Lydus’ lectures for feasting with his Bacchis, offering a comic counterplot of conversion, from would-be rescuer to happy captive.

Characters and devices
Chrysalus is the engine of the comedy, a self-aware trickster who treats deception as craft. Nicobulus exemplifies the anxious, gullible senex, forever a step behind the story being told to him. Mnesilochus is a conventional lover, largely acted for rather than acting; Pistoclerus supplies parallel amorous energy and a foil to his tutor Lydus, whose moralizing becomes a running joke. The two Bacchises are witty, loyal within the rules of their trade, and fully complicit in the festive world the play champions.

Themes and tone
Money and desire drive the plot, but the play’s heart is metatheatrical: tokens, forged messages, and role-play underscore how easily “truth” is staged. Youth and pleasure triumph not by brute force but by narrative control. The repeated duping of the fathers satirizes social authority while allowing an ultimately genial reconciliation; the losses are financial, the gains emotional and comic. Plautus also toys with Greek original and Roman adaptation, having the slave boast that he will deceive not twice but thrice, a wink at Menander’s title and an assertion of Roman exuberance.

Ending
When the ruses are exposed, Nicobulus fumes yet can only concede defeat. Chrysalus claims his laurel, Mnesilochus secures time with his Bacchis, and Pistoclerus remains blissfully attached to the other. The fathers grumble but accept what the comedy has made inevitable: wit, pleasure, and theatrical invention have conquered thrift and discipline, at least for a day.