Comedy and the Rise of Rome [Paperback]

This volume is an original study of the plays of the two great Roman comic playwrights Plautus and Terence in the context of political and economic change in Rome in the third and second centuries BC. In contrast to the dominant trend of viewing the plays by reference to their largely lost Greek originals, the book adopts a historicist approach that concentrates on their effect on a contemporary audience.

1. Introduction
2. Plautus and Hannibal
3. TheCaptiviand the Paradoxes ofPostliminium
4. City, Land, and Sea: New Comedy and the Discourse of Economies
5. Fatherhood and the Habit of Command: L. Aemilius Plautus and theAdelphoe
6.

Leigh's research is painstaking and thorough.... Leigh has written a stimulating study and has amply demonstrated his main thesis. --New England Classical Journal

Students and scholars of Roman comedy will consult this book with great profit. It sheds refreshing light on the texts of Plautus and Terence ... All the Latin and Greek passages are cited in full and translated accurately. --Journal of Classics Teaching

Matthew Leighis Fellow and Tutor in Classical Languages and Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford