Callidus and Comedy: a New Argument for an Old Etymology

A tétel rövid nézete
dc.creatorJerue, Benjamin Adam
dc.date2020-09-01
dc.descriptionIn the corpora of republican authors and the glosses of late antique grammarians, the lexemes callidus and calliditas are used to describe a certain variety of intelligence, which is often translated into English as “cleverness” or “cunning.” This paper looks more closely at these lexemes in order to explain how the root call- (“hard”) came to be associated with mental capacity and acuity. In short, I argue that the type of intelligence that callidus originally denoted ought to be linked to the brutal treatment of slaves and the coping mechanisms that they had to develop in light of their condition as chattel. Not only is this violent form of education depicted in Plautus’ comedies, but its implications and logic can also be found in later authors such as Cicero.
dc.identifierhttps://ojs.lib.unideb.hu/classica/article/view/9740
dc.identifier10.22315/ACD/2020/22
dc.publisherUniversity of Debrecen.
dc.rightsCopyright (c) 2021 Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis
dc.sourceActa Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis; Vol. 56 (2020); 341-349
dc.source2732-3390
dc.source0418-453X
dc.subjectcallidus
dc.subjectslavery
dc.subjectPlautus
dc.subjectRoman comedy
dc.subjectintelligence
dc.titleCallidus and Comedy: a New Argument for an Old Etymology
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article
dc.typeinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion
dc.typePeer-reviewed Article
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Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis