Plautilla, a daughter of Plautianus the favourite minister of Severus. See: [Plautianus].——The mother of the emperor Nerva, descended of a noble family.
Plautius, a Roman, who became so disconsolate at the death of his wife, that he threw himself upon her burning pile. Valerius Maximus, bk. 4, ch. 6.——Caius, a consul sent against the Privernates, &c.——Aulus, a governor of Britain who obtained an ovation for the conquests he had gained there over the barbarians.——One of Otho’s friends. He dissuaded him from killing himself.——Lateranus, an adulterer of Messalina, who conspired against Nero, and was capitally condemned.——Aulus, a general who defeated the Umbrians and the Etrurians.——Caius, another general, defeated in Lusitania.——A man put to death by order of Caracalla.——Marcus Sylvanus, a tribune, who made a law to prevent seditions in the public assemblies.——Rubellius, a man accused before Nero, and sent to Asia, where he was assassinated.
Marcus Accius Plautus, a comic poet, born at Sarsina, in Umbria. Fortune proved unkind to him, and, from competence, he was reduced to the meanest poverty, by engaging in a commercial line. To maintain himself, he entered into the family of a baker as a common servant, and while he was employed in grinding corn, he sometimes dedicated a few moments to the comic muse. Some, however, confute this account as false, and support that Plautus was never obliged to the laborious employments of a bakehouse for his maintenance. He wrote 25 comedies, of which only 20 are extant. He died about 184 years before the christian era; and Varro, his learned countryman, wrote this stanza, which deserved to be engraved on his tomb:
Postquam morte captus est Plautus,
Comœdia luget, scena est deserta;
Deinde risus, ludus, jocusque, & numeri
Innumeri simul omnes collacrymârunt.
The plays of Plautus were [♦]universally esteemed at Rome, and the purity, the energy, and the elegance of his language were, by other writers, considered as objects of imitation; and Varro, whose judgment is great, and generally decisive, declares, that if the Muses were willing to speak Latin, they would speak in the language of Plautus. In the Augustan age, however, when the Roman language became more pure and refined, the comedies of Plautus did not appear free from inaccuracy. The poet, when compared to the more elegant expressions of a Terence, was censured for his negligence in versification, his low wit, execrable puns, and disgusting obscenities. Yet, however censured as to language or sentiments, Plautus continued to be a favourite on the stage. If his expressions were not choice or delicate, it was [♦]universally admitted that he was more happy than other comic writers in his pictures; the incidents of his plays were more varied, the acts more interesting, the characters more truly displayed, and the catastrophe more natural. In the reign of the emperor Diocletian, his comedies were still acted on the public theatres; and no greater compliment can be paid to his abilities as a comic writer, and no greater censure can be passed upon his successors in dramatic composition, than to observe, that for 500 years, with all the disadvantages of obsolete language and diction, in spite of the change of manners, and the revolutions of government, he commanded and received that applause which no other writer dared to dispute with him. The best editions of Plautus are that of Gronovius, 8vo, Leiden, 1664; that of Barbou, 12mo, in 3 vols., Paris, 1759; that of Ernesti, 2 vols., 8vo, Lipscomb, 1760; and that of Glasgow, 3 vols., 12mo, 1763. Varro on Quintilian, bk. 10, ch. 1.—Cicero, de Officiis, bk. 1, &c.; On Oratory, bk. 3, &c.—Horace, bk. 2, ltr. 1, lis. 58, 170; Art of Poetry, lis. 54 & 270.——Ælianus, a high priest, who consecrated the capitol in the reign of Vespasian. Tacitus, Histories, bk. 4, ch. 53.
[♦] ‘univerally’ replaced with ‘universally’
Plēiădes, or Vergĭliæ, a name given to seven of the daughters of Atlas by Pleione or Æthra, one of the Oceanides. They were placed in the heavens after death, where they formed a constellation called Pleiades, near the back of the bull in the Zodiac. Their names were Alcyone, Merope, Maia, Electra, Taygeta, Sterope, and Celeno. They all, except Merope, who married Sisyphus king of Corinth, had some of the immortal gods for their suitors. On that account, therefore, Merope’s star is dim and obscure among the rest of her sisters, because she married a mortal. The name of the Pleiades is derived from the Greek word πλεειν, to sail, because that constellation shows the time most favourable to navigators, which is in the spring. The name of Vergiliæ they derive from ver, the spring. They are sometimes called Atlantides, from their father, or Hesperides, from the gardens of that name, which belonged to Atlas. Hyginus, fable 192; Poetica Astronomica, bk. 2, ch. 21.—Ovid, Metamorphoses, bk. 13, li. 293; Fasti, bk. 5, lis. 106 & 170; Hesiod, Works and Days.—Homer, Odyssey, bk. 5.—Horace, bk. 4, ode 14.—Virgil, Georgics, bk. 1, li. 138; bk. 4, li. 233.——Seven poets, who, from their number, have received the name of Pleiades, near the age of Philadelphus Ptolemy king of Egypt. Their names were Lycophron, Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander, Apollonius, Philicus, and Homerus the younger.