In Plautus' A Pot of Gold, how is family portrayed? What is the nature of love?

Plautus' Pot of Gold (Latin: Aulularia) was first written around the 190s BCE. Plautus wrote his play in Latin for a Roman audience, but it was based on a Greek original. The names of the characters in the play are Greek and the play's setting is Athens.

Other than the household god who delivers the play's prologue, all of the other characters in the play are humans. Half are freeborn citizens and half are slaves. Most of the lines in the play are spoken by male characters. Of the ten human characters in the play who have a speaking part, seven are males.

These statistics hint at the male-dominated family relations in the play. Much of what happens in the play revolves around the marriage of Euclio's daughter Phaedria, but she never appears before the audience and only has one line in the play (an off-stage cry caused by her labor pains). As was common in ancient marriages in both Greece and Rome, the marriage of Euclio's daughter is an event whose details are worked out by men (Euclio, Megadorus, and Lyconides). Phaedria has no say in the matter. Lyconides' mother Eunomia, however, does apparently serve as her son's confidant (Lyconides, while drunk, had impregnated Phaedria nine months earlier) and also as an intermediary with his uncle Megadorus, who early in the play had arranged to marry Phaedria (much to Lyconides' dismay).

Thus, given the male-dominated and business-like nature of Phaedria's marriage, I would say that, at least from the perspective of the elder male citizens in the play (Euclio and Megadorus), the concept of love really does not enter into the equation. Indeed, Euclio is more worried about someone stealing his pot of gold than about his daughter who is about to give birth inside his house. Lyconides may truly love Phaedria (he tells Euclio that he does in a single line), but we are not given a clue as to her feelings about Lyconides or any other male in the play.

In the culture presented in this play, the two families are dominated by elder males and the families become linked through arrangements that must ultimately be "signed off on" by males.