Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus)

Roman comic playwright (c. 254–184 BCE), author of some 20 surviving comedies including Asinaria, Amphitryon, Miles Gloriosus, Aulularia, Mostellaria, Menaechmi (model for Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors). On the wiki Plautus appears in his single most consequential role for political-philosophical history: he is the actual originator of homo homini lupus, the saying canonically misattributed to Hobbes. BS-I Sessions 2–3 recover the Plautine origin in Asinaria line 495 — a credit/lending scene where a merchant refuses to deliver money to someone he does not know. The line's grammar is structurally undecidable as to who or what is the wolf. Plautus also gives us ipsissimus (in spoken Latin, used to designate the master, the boss, the "absolutely himself") — a load-bearing word for Derrida's etymological argument that sovereignty is autoposition of the ipse (BS-I S3 pp. 66–67, via Benveniste).

Key Points

  • Asinaria line 495: the actual origin of homo homini lupus. "Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit" — "Man is a wolf to man — not a man — when one does not know him." Spoken by a merchant in a market scene where credit is refused to an unknown party. The wolf-figure here is what exceeds knowledge / faire savoir — the un-known stranger as wolf. BS-I S2 pp. 60–62.
  • The grammatical undecidability of the Plautine line. "Wolf is man for man" or "Man is wolf for man"; "to man" or "for man"; with or without the "not a man" parenthetical. Derrida emphasizes the un-determinable subject-object grammar: the wolf is homo who is non homo, the man-stranger as wolf. Substitution of what for who / wolf for man is part of the saying's force. BS-I S2 p. 61.
  • The Hobbes-misattribution corrected. The standard chain treats homo homini lupus as Hobbesian invention. Plautus (c. 200 BCE) is two millennia earlier; Erasmus's Adagia transmits the saying; Montaigne (Essais), Rabelais, Bacon all inherit it before Hobbes. Hobbes does not invent — he inherits. Agamben perpetuates the misattribution in Homo Sacer's "Ban and the Wolf"; criticized at BS-I S3 pp. 92–96.
  • Ipsissimus: the "absolutely himself" as Plautus's word for "master." Benveniste (in "Hospitalité," Vocabulaire des institutions européennes) cites Plautus's ipsissimus as the philological evidence that ipse (himself) shares a root with despotēs (master). The "absolutely himself" is the boss, the princeps, the prince — the sovereign. This is the philological cornerstone of BS-I's argument that sovereignty is structurally autoposition of the ipse (see sovereignty and ipseity subsection). BS-I S3 pp. 66–67.

Role on the Wiki

Plautus appears on the wiki only through BS-I, and entirely through Derrida's recovery of two key Latin terms: homo homini lupus (Asinaria l. 495) and ipsissimus (passim in Plautine comedies). Both terms are load-bearing for the seminar's deconstruction of sovereignty:

  • Homo homini lupus anchors the wolf-and-werewolf genealogy and the wolf-as-figure-of-the-unknown thesis (BS-I S2 pp. 58–62).
  • Ipsissimus anchors the sovereignty / ipseity argument via Benveniste (BS-I S3 pp. 66–67).

Plautus the comic playwright (with his stock characters, the slave-as-hero, the urban-Roman settings, the influence on later Western comedy from Shakespeare to Molière) is not engaged by the wiki beyond these two terms. The page is intentionally narrow.

Sources

Connections

  • is the actual originator of homo homini lupus (against the standard Hobbes-attribution; correcting Agamben's Homo Sacer)
  • anchors wolf-and-werewolf — the Plautine origin of the wolf-saying
  • anchors sovereignty — ipsissimus as evidence for the ipseity-mastery etymology (via Benveniste)
  • is inherited by thomas-hobbes — Hobbes inherits homo homini lupus / deus from a Latin tradition running through Erasmus, Montaigne, Rabelais
  • is forgotten by giorgio-agamben in Homo Sacer — criticized at BS-I S3 pp. 92–96
  • appears in derrida-2001-bete-souverain-i as the philological-comic-historical archive Derrida recovers

Open Questions

  • The Plautine Asinaria as comedy: the wolf-saying is spoken by a merchant in a credit-scene, in a comedic register. Does the comic context matter for Derrida's appropriation? BS-I does not develop this. Open.
  • The Plautine reception in later Latin tradition (Erasmus's Adagia, Montaigne, Rabelais, Bacon) is mentioned but not extensively engaged. Open for future ingests on early-modern political-philosophical sources.
  • Ipsissimus's appearance across Plautine comedies (not only as Benveniste cites): would warrant a closer philological pass.