Plautus

1. Plautus (ca. 254-184 BCE) is the earliest writer in Latin surviving in quantity (20 complete comedies in all). His plots mostly derive from Greek "New Comedy," i.e., Greek comedies of the period around 300 BCE, whose best-known authors were Menander, Diphilus (mentioned in Mostellaria p. 83; Rudens, p. 91), and Philemon (Most., 93). Hence the setting of the plays is in the Greek world (usually urban, but exceptionally in the Rudens by the sea-coast near the Greek city of Cyrene in Libya), and the characters' names are usually Greek, often with a humorous meaning (e.g., Mis-argyrides, "Silver-hater" for a miser; Ampelisca, "clinging vine" for one of the women in the Rudens). The plots are usually focused on family relationships (cf., soap operas) with standard characters (recognisable by their masks and wigs) -- old men, fathers, sons (usually spendthrift lovers), daughters lost in infancy, meretrices (prostitutes) and their pimps (the leno is the arch-villain), old women (usually on bad terms with their husbands), and slaves (including a gallery of clever slaves round whose ingenious plans the plot revolves -- cf., P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves). Usually boy gets girl in the end and, as in the Rudens, the girl may turn out to be free-born (and so not a slave, the status of a meretrix), her identity proved by tokens. A chorus of fishermen, exceptionally, appears in the Rudens, p. 101.

2. Plautus took over the Greek plots (sometimes combining more than one): his origianl contributions lie in:

a. brilliant and colorful Latin (see the xerox book, 4-5), rich with terms of abuse and endearment, puns, poetical and rhetorical devices, and much more;

b. the combination of spoken monologues and dialogues (diverbium) and solo songs (cantica), e.g., Most., 29-32, the aria of Philolaches, and Rudens, 97-98 Palaestra's aria;

c. situational humor, e.g., slapstick, asides, eaves-dropping, violence (e.g., beatings or threats of beatings of a slave).

Terence

An African slave, born ca. 190 BCE and brought to Rome, where he died ca. 159. Six plays survive: they do not have the musical element of Plautus' comedies and have more dialogue, more coherent plots, greater realism in the dramatic situations, and more consistent faithfulness to the original Greek atmosphere.

1. Note the first treaty of Rome with the Latins (the Foedus Cassianum), mentioned by Livy, p. 142, under 494 B.C. Rome fought or allied herself with the Latin towns and non-Latin tribes over a period of nearly two centuries, unifying them by means of individual treaties (foedera, hence "federation") and the grants of varying levels of citizenship. The final such treaty was that of 338 BCE, with the Latin League.

2. The absorption of the Greek areas of Italy was complete in 272 BCE, after the failure of the Greek king Pyrrhus in a series of campaigns against the Romans in the 280s and the fall of Tarentum to the Romans. Thus Italy, from the northern edge of the Apennines to its boot, was unified under Roman leadership, which was assured by the foedera mentioned above, the granting of more or less limited citizen rights, and by the founding of coloniae as military outposts in formerly hostile territory (e.g., Cosa, 273 BCE).

3. The inevitable clash with Carthage was delayed until the mid-second century BCE: before that Rome and Carthage had a treaty (508 BCE, renewed in 348 and ca. 278) recognising spheres of influence. The conflict arose in Sicily (first Punic war, 264-241) and extended to Spain, Italy itself and Africa (second Punic war, 218-202), and eventually Carthage was utterly destroyed (third Punic war, 149-146). As a result of the first two wars Rome acquired overseas "provinces" in Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and Spain.

4. The Roman conquest of the Greek kingdoms founded by the successors of Alexander the Great (d., 323 BCE) took place mostly in the first half of the third century (200-146 BCE), ending with the destruction of the great fortress of Corinth in 146. From these wars Rome made provinces of the Greek mainland and, later, in Asia Minor (133 BCE, when the kingdom of Pergamum was bequeathed to Rome): most of the other Greek kingdoms were made into provinces in the 60s BCE by Pompey, who also incorporated Syria. Egypt (a Greek kingdom, reuled from Alexandria) was made into a province by Augustus after his victory over Cleopatra at Actium in 31 BCE.