Editing Plautus (section)

===''Contaminatio''===
One idea that is important to recognize is that of ''contaminatio'', which refers to the mixing of elements of two or more source plays. Plautus, it seems, is quite open to this method of adaptation, and quite a few of his plots seem stitched together from different stories. One excellent example is his ''Bacchides'' and its supposed Greek predecessor, Menander's ''Dis Exapaton.''  The original Greek title translates as "The Man Deceiving Twice", yet the Plautine version has three tricks.<ref>Owens, W. M., "The Third Deception in Bacchides: Fides and Plautus' Originality," ''The American Journal of Philology'' 115 (1994), pp. 381-382.</ref>  V. Castellani commented that:

<blockquote>
Plautus' attack on the genre whose material he pirated was, as already stated, fourfold. He deconstructed many of the Greek plays' finely constructed plots; he reduced some, exaggerated others of the nicely drawn characters of Menander and of Menander's contemporaries and followers into caricatures; he substituted for or superimposed upon the elegant humor of his models his own more vigorous, more simply ridiculous foolery in action, in statement, even in language.<ref>V. Castellani. "Plautus versus Komoidia: popular farce at Rome," in Farce, ed. 5 J. Redmond (Cambridge and New York, 1988), pp. 53-82.</ref> </blockquote>

By exploring ideas about Roman loyalty, Greek deceit, and differences in ethnicity, "Plautus in a sense surpassed his model."<ref>Owens 1994, p. 404.</ref>  He was not content to rest solely on a loyal adaptation that, while amusing, was not new or engaging for Rome. Plautus took what he found but again made sure to expand, subtract, and modify. He seems to have followed the same path that Horace did, though Horace is much later, in that he is putting Roman ideas in Greek forms. He not only imitated the Greeks, but in fact distorted, cut up, and transformed the plays into something entirely Roman. In essence it is Greek theater colonized by Rome and its playwrights.