Abstract

The last play of the Varronian canon, Vidularia, is transmitted to us through two different channels. Some pages of it survive in the Codex Ambrosianus, containing the prologue and a couple of scenes from the beginning of the play. On the other hand grammarians quote fragments of a few lines out of context, as examples of idiosyncratic Latin syntax and morphology. From the combination of these two disparate sources classical scholars have reconstructed a Vidularia that is parallel to Rudens on all major points. The plot is not very different, and on the whole the consensus philologorum is correctly summed up by the Terentian sentence of Leo: qui utramve recte novit, ambas noverit