A presente dissertação divide-se em duas partes. Na primeira, analisamos O mercador, de Plauto, examinamos o que disse Aristóteles sobre o gênero cômico e estudamos as origens da comédia, com destaque para a Nea, com base no trabalho de George E. Duckworth. Partindo-se desse estudo, as características próprias da comédia, em geral, são apontadas, demonstrando-se a fórmula da comédia utilizada pelos autores antigos, apresentada neste trabalho, ao citarmos Northrop Frye. Após isso, focalizamos a estrutura da obra O mercador e, também, os tipos existentes na obra plautina, sobretudo os tipos femininos. A seguir, destacamos a relação amorosa entre o senex e a escrava-cortesã. Na segunda parte da dissertação, traduzimos a comédia, a partir do texto latino encontrado na edição de A. Ernout publicada pela Société d'Édition "Les Belles Lettres".

This dissertation is presented in two parts: in the first one, we made an analysis of Plautus'Mercator. To lay the foundation of such analysis, we considered what Aristoteles stated about comedy and we also retrace the sources of comedy, with particular emphasis on the Nea, by taking into consideration the study of George Duckworth. Still based on this work of Duckworth, we conducted a research on the identifying characteristics of comedy and, to do such, we also consulted Northrop Frye, whose work helped us to expose the strategies of comedy developed by the ancient authors. After this comprehensive study of comedy, we gave an analysis of the structure of the play and the characters, particularly the female ones, presented in Mercator. Eventually, the first part of our study is dedicated to examine the loving relationship between senex and his slave courtesan. In the second part of the dissertation, we present a translation into Portuguese of Plautus' comedy from the original text, in Latin, which was found in A. Ernout's book published by the Société d'Édition "Les Belles Lettres".