The 'Plutus' differs widely from all other works of its Author, and, it
must be confessed, is the least interesting and diverting of them all.
"In its absence of personal interests and personal satire," and its lack
of strong comic incidents, "it approximates rather to a whimsical
allegory than a comedy properly so called."
The plot is of the simplest. Chremylus, a poor but just man, accompanied
by his body-servant Cario--the redeeming feature, by the by, of an
otherwise dull play, the original type of the comic valet of the stage of
all subsequent periods--consults the Delphic Oracle concerning his son,
whether he ought not to be instructed in injustice and knavery and the
other arts whereby worldly men acquire riches. By way of answer the god
only tells him that he is to follow whomsoever he first meets upon
leaving the temple, who proves to be a blind and ragged old man. But this
turns out to be no other than Plutus himself, the god of riches, whom
Zeus has robbed of his eyesight, so that he may be unable henceforth to
distinguish between the just and the unjust. However, succoured by
Chremylus and conducted by him to the Temple of Aesculapius, Plutus
regains the use of his eyes. Whereupon all just men, including the god's
benefactor, are made rich and prosperous, and the unjust reduced to
indigence.
The play was, it seems, twice put upon the stage--first in 408 B.C., and
again in a revised and reinforced edition, with allusions and innuendoes
brought up to date, in 388 B.C., a few years before the Author's death.
The text we possess--marred, however, by several considerable lacunae--is
now generally allowed to be that of the piece as played at the later
date, when it won the prize.
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