Nota a Curculio IV 2. El tópico delmancipium: del dominus a las dramatis personae

Plautus is perhaps the supreme example, in the Roman literary world, of the tendency to use legal themes as metaphors and as a device of Romanization of Greek models. The Plautine corpus has twenty references to the legal theme of mancipium. This paper analyzes this theme in Curculio IV 2, in relation to two comic techniques, namely inversion and parody. Mancipium indicates the power of the dominus. Plautus, however, associates it with a leno, a figure deemed impious and faithless, and with a parasite, who engineers the trickery. Plautus thus neatly unites the elements of Romanization and satumalian inversion