In Plautus’ play Captivi, a slave named Stalagmus steals the son of a free man, runs away and then sells the son into slavery. The free man is named Hegio and he amazed to discover that he has stumbled across both his son and the slave Stalagmus. In order to confirm that it was the same Stalagmus that Hegio used to own, a certain Ergasilus asks Hegio about Stalagmus’ ethnicity:
ERGASILUS: sed Stalagmus quoius erat tunc nationis, quom hinc abit?
HEGIO: Siculus. ERGASILUS: et nunc Siculus not est, Boius est, boiam terit:
liberorum quaerundorum cuassa ei, credo, uxor datst. (888-9)
ER: but then what was his nationality, when he left here?
HE: Sicilian. ER: now he is not Siclian, but Boeotian: he fears the collar [collar and Boeotian are puns in Latin].I believe his wife was, for him, the cause of some freedom.
This piece shows, at least in comedy, that ethnicity could be pretty flexible. Ergasilus is not dismayed that Hegio says that his old slave was Sicilian but that the Stalagmus he knows is Boeotian: marriage and a bad pun are enough to explain away this difference.
ERGASILUS: sed Stalagmus quoius erat tunc nationis, quom hinc abit?
HEGIO: Siculus. ERGASILUS: et nunc Siculus not est, Boius est, boiam terit:
liberorum quaerundorum cuassa ei, credo, uxor datst. (888-9)
ER: but then what was his nationality, when he left here?
HE: Sicilian. ER: now he is not Siclian, but Boeotian: he fears the collar [collar and Boeotian are puns in Latin].I believe his wife was, for him, the cause of some freedom.
This piece shows, at least in comedy, that ethnicity could be pretty flexible. Ergasilus is not dismayed that Hegio says that his old slave was Sicilian but that the Stalagmus he knows is Boeotian: marriage and a bad pun are enough to explain away this difference.