A kingdom, as we have said, partakes much of the nature of an aristocracy, and is bestowed according to worth, as either virtue, family, beneficent actions, or these joined with power; for those who have been benefactors to cities and states, or have it in their powers to be so, have acquired this honour, and those who have prevented a people from falling into slavery by war, as
Codrus, or those who have freed them from it, as Cyrus, or the founders of cities, or settlers of colonies, as the kings of Sparta, Macedon, and Molossus.
Burmeister uses not only Plautus' (incomplete) text, but also later supplements, one by an anonymous author and the other by
Codrus Urceus.
As Aden and others have already observed, Successio anticipates the later satire in its portrayal of Settle as a modern
Codrus and shared vocabulary with the later work:
Bruto imola-lhe os filhos e
Codrus a sua vida e o seu trono.
Codrus, the laser of the Kings of Athens, sacrificed himself during the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus (ca.
heavens--while THUS hoarse
Codrus perseveres To force his Theseid on my tortured ears, Shall I not once attempt 'to quit the score,' ALWAYS an auditor, and nothing more!
(53) "I die, I am eaten by worms; but my children, my brothers will live as I have lived, and by the order of nature, I do for all men what
Codrus, Curtius, the Decii, the Philaeni, and a thousand others did voluntarily for a small number of men" [22]; also To Philopolis [12]; and the parallel passages in Lucretius, De rerum natura, 3:931-63, and 1024-35.
16th cent.); and Plautus, by Hermolaus Barbarus, Antonio Beccadelli, and Antonius
Codrus, all in the fifteenth century.