Plautus (fl. c. 205-184 BCE), Roman Playwright. Latin text of his plays has been modernised in spelling.
Example: nominative plural viri, in Plautus’s day written virei.
Some features of Syntax are different:
Example: Prohibitions. In Plautus it is possible to say ‘Do not do!’ in the following ways: ne + perfect subjunctive: ne feceris (Epidicus 148); ne + present subjunctive: ne facias (Curculio 539); ne + a special verb form which dies out in later Latin: ne faxis (Mostellaria 1115).
In the works of Cicero (106-43 BCE), the most frequent common way to say ‘do not do’ is noli facere.
Now listen to the following audio conversation between James Clackson and Geoffrey Horrocks.
OpenLearn - Continuing classical Latin Except for third party materials and otherwise, this content is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 Licence, full copyright detail can be found in the acknowledgements section. Please see full copyright statement for details.