Pot of Gold

The play opens with the household god, the Lar Familiaris, speaking directly to the audience in a prologue. He explains the situation. The grandfather of a man named Euclio found a pot of gold and hid it in the hearth of the house. He was too miserly to tell anyone about it or use it. His son, Euclio's father, was the same. Now Euclio himself has inherited both the house and the secret of the gold, though he did not know about the gold until the Lar revealed it to him as a reward for the piety of Euclio's daughter Phaedria, who tends the household shrine faithfully. The Lar has revealed the gold so that Phaedria can be given a proper dowry and married respectably.

Euclio discovers the pot of gold and immediately becomes consumed by anxiety about it. He trusts no one, suspects everyone, and spends most of the play in a state of barely controlled panic about keeping his treasure secret and safe. He is so frightened of losing it that he cannot enjoy having it. He checks on it constantly, moves it from hiding place to hiding place, and interprets every ordinary action of the people around him as a potential plot to steal it.

Meanwhile the plot around him moves forward without his full awareness. His daughter Phaedria has been secretly seduced by a young man named Lyconides and is pregnant. Lyconides genuinely loves her and wants to marry her. At the same time an old and wealthy neighbor named Megadorus has asked Euclio for Phaedria's hand in marriage. Euclio, suspicious as always, wonders whether Megadorus knows about the gold and is trying to get at it through the marriage. He agrees reluctantly, not out of any warmth toward Megadorus but because he cannot figure out how to refuse without seeming suspicious.

Megadorus hires cooks to prepare for the wedding feast and the cooks arrive at Euclio's house, which throws Euclio into complete chaos. He is convinced the cooks are thieves in disguise. He follows them everywhere, checks every corner of the house, and eventually moves the pot of gold out of the house entirely to hide it in a grove sacred to the god Silvanus. He is observed doing this by a slave named Strobilus, who belongs to Lyconides. Strobilus steals the pot while Euclio is away.

Euclio returns to find the gold gone and his reaction is one of the great comic speeches in Latin literature. He is devastated, unhinged, beside himself with grief. He addresses the audience directly, begging them to help him find the thief, telling them he is a ruined man, that his life is over. The speech is funny and also strangely moving, because for all his ridiculousness Euclio's suffering is real. He has organised his entire emotional life around this pot of gold and without it he has nothing.

Lyconides comes to confess to Euclio that he has seduced Phaedria and wants to marry her. Euclio, still distraught about the gold, initially thinks Lyconides is confessing to stealing it and the scene becomes a magnificent comic misunderstanding, both men talking about entirely different things while believing they are having the same conversation. Eventually the confusion is resolved. Lyconides learns that his slave has the gold and retrieves it. The ending of the play as it survives in later summaries suggests that Lyconides returns the gold to Euclio, that Euclio gives it as a dowry for Phaedria, and that Phaedria and Lyconides are married. Euclio, freed from the burden of the gold, is in some sense freed from his miserliness as well.