Plautus (254?–184 B.C.), a Roman playwright. His full name was Titus Maccius Plautus. His Latin comedies are modeled on the Greek New Comedy of Menander. They usually deal with romantic love plagued by comic complications, and feature such stock characters as the cunning and dishonest servant and the boasting soldier. Nicholas Udall, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare, Molière, and other dramatists borrowed extensively from Plautus. He is credited with writing 20 complete plays and parts of another. Plautus was born in Sarsina, Italy. He presumably went to Rome as a young man. There he became the most popular playwright of his time.