[Sidenote: T. Maccius Plautus.] Titus Maccius Plautus (Flatfoot) was born at Sarsina, a town of Umbria, about 254 B. C. He went to Rome while still a boy, and seems to have earned so much as a servant or assistant of actors, that he was able to leave the city and engage in trade at some other place. His business venture was a failure; he lost his money, and returned to Rome, where he hired himself out to a miller, in whose service he was when he wrote his first three plays. His first appearance with a play was probably about 224 B. C. Further details of his life are unknown. He died in 184 B. C., at the age of about seventy years. He was, therefore, a younger contemporary of Livius Andronicus and Nævius, but older than Ennius and Pacuvius. Of the plays of Plautus twenty are extant, besides extensive fragments of another. His total production is said to have been one hundred and thirty plays, though some of these were probably wrongly ascribed to him. The plots of his plays, as of those of Terence, are usually founded upon a love affair between a young man of good family and a girl of low position and doubtful character. [Sidenote: The plots and characters of Roman comedies.] The young man is aided by his servant or a parasite, but his father is opposed to his having anything to do with the girl. The girl’s mother or mistress usually aids the lovers, but often has to be won over by money, which the young man and his servant have to get from his father. Sometimes the characters mentioned are duplicated, and we have two pairs of lovers, two irate fathers, two cunning slaves, etc. Other typical characters are the procurer, the parasite, the boastful soldier, and a few more, who help to bring about amusing situations, and serve as the butt of many jokes. In the end, the lovers are usually united, and the girl turns out to be of good birth, often the long-lost daughter of one of the older men in the play. Sometimes other plots are chosen, as in the _Amphitruo_, which is founded on the story that Jupiter, when he visited Alcmene, used to take the form of her husband Amphitryon, and the fun of the play is caused by the confusion between the real husband and the disguised god. In a few plays the plot is less decidedly a love plot, but, as a general rule, the Roman comedies had love stories for their foundation. There is, however, room for considerable variety, as may be seen by a brief sketch of the contents of the extant plays of Plautus.