The title has been translated as The Bacchises, and the plot revolves around the misunderstandings surrounding two sisters, each called Bacchis, who work in a brothel.
[3] Because of the variety of musical passages, the Bacchides is believed to have been written late in Plautus's career, either before or after the Pseudolus.
While the young man Mnesilochus is abroad in Ephesus, collecting a debt on behalf of his father, he falls in love with a courtesan called Bacchis.
But when by chance Mnesilochus hears that Pistoclerus has acquired a girlfriend called Bacchis, in his anger he gives all the money to his father, keeping none back.
Later, in yet another deception, Chrysalus persuades Nicobulus to pay another 200 gold pieces to prevent his son committing perjury.
This song has several changes of metre (trochaic, anapaestic, bacchiac, cretic) and includes a passage of 12 lines of the rarely found wilamowitzianus (626–631a).
He sees a structure such as the following (omitting the first two scenes): Clark points out various verbal echoes between the corresponding scenes: for example, in sections 1 and 7, Pistoclerus and his father both compare the girls' sweet talk to bird-lime (viscus), used to trap birds (50, 1158); in sections 2 and 6, Nicobulus talks of the necessity of sailing to Ephesus (342–3, 775–6); and both Lydus (372) and Cleomachus (869) use the word sorbeo of sucking blood.
[7] Similar symmetrical or chiastic structures can be found in other Plautus plays, such as Asinaria, Miles Gloriosus, Captivi, and Pseudolus.
Some 20 short fragments quoted by ancient writers are thought to belong in this gap: these are numbered lines 1–31 in the Oxford text.
The simple meeting between Sostratos and his friend Moschos in Menander is greatly expanded in Plautus (534–539) to an elaborate symmetrical monologue more typical of the Plautine style.
[13] In lines 526–72 Plautus has used recitative verse (trochaic septenarii) in place of Menander's spoken iambic trimeters.
In the scene between Mnesilochus and Pistoclerus also, Plautus has greatly expanded on the importance of keeping one's word (lines 540–542), whereas in the corresponding Menander passage Sostratos merely accused Bacchis of acting unjustly.