Geta (comedy)

Geta, a twelfth-century elegiac comedy by Vitalis of Blois, is a loose adaptation of Plautus’ play, Amphitryon. Both tell the story of how Jupiter, transforming himself to look like Amphitryon, sleeps with Amphitryon’s wife, Alcmena. But in Geta, Amphitryon is not a Greek military leader but a philosopher, and Hercules, the child who is born from the union of the god and Alcmena, is not even mentioned.[1][2] In both stories, Amphitryon’s servant, who is sent on ahead to his master’s estate to announce Amphitryon’s homecoming to Alcmena, is turned away by Mercury, who is disguised as that very servant, and who convinces him that he (Mercury) is the real servant; but in Geta, this trickery is aided by sophistical arguments, which serve to ridicule sophists in general who style themselves philosophers.

Notes
  1. Seven Medieval Latin Comedies, trans. Alison Goddard Elliott (New York: Garland, 1984).
  2. Plautus, Plautus, trans. Paul Nixon (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916).
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