On June 20 and 21, 2025, the student theater group of the Classical Languages programme at Leiden University performed Plautus' Menaechmi four times.

In a far away Antiquity, in Sicilian Syracuse, a merchant and his wife beget a set of twins, who were so identical that their very own mother could not tell them apart. Daddy dearest was nevertheless able to pick his favorite out of the two, whom he took on a business trip to Tarente. There he unfortunately lost his sweetheart in the crowd, so that the son could secretely be taken to the Las Vegas of Antiquity, Epidamnus. Daddy died of sorrow and granddaddy renamed his remaing grandson in honour of his lost twin brother: Menaechmus.

In Menaechmi by Roman comedic playwright Titus Maccius Plautus, the audience is treated to the whimsical situations that arise when the Syracusian Menaechmus goes on a quest to find his long lost identical twin brother in Epidamnus. The latter has become a well-off man in the meantime. His position, however, is threatened when the twins are constantly confused for one another, without them noticing. Which of the two had stolen his wife's dress to give it to a prostitute again? Then who stole the bracelet? And are we sending the right one to the mad house?

Students of the programmes Greek and Latin languages and cultures and Classics and Ancient Civilizations play and sing under the guidance of Christoph Pieper the greatest comedy in Roman literature, that even inspired Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors.. Meet the other side of Classical Antiquity: the exalted, luxurious and dramatic tragedies often made way for the raw, blunt and jolly world of the everyday comedy. Eventhough Menaechmi was written many centuries ago, the slap-stick confusion of the twin brothers still brings a smile on the faces of modern-day audiences.