La pancia del lenone Cappadoce (Plauto, Curc. 216-250)

In vv. 216-250 of Plautus’ Curculio, the procurer Cappadox is the object of ruthless mocking by the slave Palinurus. In the passage, critics have underlined and brilliantly solved various complex interpretative issues in part, but some opacity remains in vv. 240-243, and more precisely in the culminating moment of the teasing, where scholars still betray a certain degree of exegetical uneasiness although they reject invasive interventions like the speculations that have been proposed in the past. After framing the development of the criticism regarding the passage, the article offers a new overall hypothesis on how to read it by contextualising it in relation to the constant features of the imagery underlying the slave’s joke in light of Latin gastronomic vocabulary (salsura) and upon comparison with pertinent loci paralleli.