Roman Comedy [antikvár]

General Editor's Pref ace To get inside the Ancient World is no easy task. What is easy is to idealise the Greeks and Romans, or else to endow them uncon-sciously with our own conventional beliefs and prejudices. The aim of this series is to illuminate selected aspects of antiquity in such a way as to encourage the reader to form his own judgement, from the inside, on the ways of life, culture and attitudes that characterised the Greco-Roman world. Where suitable, the books draw widely on the writings (freshly translated) of ancient authors in order to convey information and to illustrate contemporary views. The topics in the series have been chosen both for their intrinsic interest and because of their central importance for the student who wishes to see the civilisations of Greece and Rome in perspective. The close interaction of literature, art, thought and institutions reveals the Ancient World in its totality. The opportunity should thus arise for making comparisons not only within that world, be-tween Athens and Sparta, or Athens and Rome, but also between the world of antiquity and our own. The title 'Classical Studies' (or 'Classical Civilisation') is featuring more and more frequently in school timetables and in the prospec-tuses of universities. In schools, the subject is now examined at Advanced Level as well as at sixteen plus (O level and CSE), and it is chiefly for such courses that this new series has been designed. It is also intended as a helpful ancillary to the study of Latin and Greek in the sixth form and below and many of the books will be found particularly useful by those candidates working towards the Cam-bridge Latin Course examination. It is hoped that this topic, and some others in the series, will interest students of English and drama at these levels as well as the non-specialist reader. The authors, who are teachers in schools or universities, have each taken an aspect of the Ancient World. They have tried not to give a romanticised picture but to portray, as vividly as possible, the Greeks and the Romans as they really were. The bulk of Mr McLeish's book on Roman Comedy is concerned with the plays of Plautus and Terence. Apart from being worth reading in their own right - and some of them are very funny - the plays are important for two reasons: they teil us a great deal about