ULTRA VERITATEM MULIEBRIS VIS: WOMEN CLASSICISTS AT AND BEYOND WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN THE DAWNING OF POST-BELLUM AMERICA.

To contextualize the all-female American production of Plautus' Rudens at Washington University in St. Louis in 1884 by the university's Ladies' Literary Society, my discussion considers the topic of Plautus' comedy--freeborn Greeks threatened with enslavement--and the historical circumstances of its first staging in ca. 200 BCE; the historical circumstances surrounding the production, in a former slave state, less than two decades after the US Civil War; and, to illuminate the milieu in which the female students revised and performed Plautus' text, the lives and professional contributions of five prominent American women classicists educated between 1865 and 1917. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]