Who am I if I am not me? When I look at my equal, I see my appearance, such and such, there is nothing more like me! Am I what I have always been? Where did I die? Where have I lost my self? Can my me be that I have left it? That I have forgotten myself? Who is more wretched than I am? No one recognizes me anymore and everyone sneers at me at will. I no longer know who I am! These are some of the questions that haunt both the protagonists of Amphitryon, written by Plautus more than 2,000 years ago, and many of us today. Doubles, the construction of a fictitious identity, the theft of the self, the loss of being guaranteed a social role, are the themes that Plautus delivers to us in a new form, which he calls tragicomedy, because the events concern gods, masters and slaves. In it, the supreme Jupiter, after transforming himself into the most varied animal, vegetable and natural forms, decides, for the first time, to disguise himself as a man. He takes on the guise of Amphitryon, away from home, in order to mate with his wife, the beautiful Alcmena, and beget with her the demigod Hercules. Jupiter-Anhitrion during the love night, as long as three nights, told Alcmena, as if he had personally experienced them, episodes from Amphitrion’s journey. During the telling, the god experienced, for the first time, a hilarity that he then took care to leave as a gift to men. “Having abandoned the realm of metamorphosis, one entered that of counterfeit” Incipit Comoedia (R. Calasso). “Open your eyes spectators, it is worth it: Jupiter and Mercury do the comedy here” (Plautus). From that moment on in the plays the comic and the tremendous would coexist and mirror our mortal and imperfect lives.
After Plautus so many rewrote Amphitryon and each did so trying to listen to the urges and anxieties of their own time. I have tried to do so myself.

Teresa Ludovico

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