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A section on “The World(s) of Plautus and Terence” provides historical context with helpful connections to the contents of the plays, as for example the link that Christenson makes between the comic miles gloriosus and triumphant generals during a period of Roman expansion and conquest. The introduction touches on many of the important basics of the genre: the Greek-ness/Roman-ness of Roman comedy, the transition from Old Comedy to New, the extant plays of Menander, stock types and plots, native Italian comic traditions, the religious performance context, the economics and stagecraft of the Roman theater, metatheater, contaminatio, and the polemical prologues of Terence. The introduction and notes provide ample cultural background and satisfactory discussion of the major themes of each play on a level at once accessible to undergraduates (or even high school students) and useful for scholars teaching or working on the genre. Writing for “students and teachers in literature in translation courses, as well as the general reader,” (37), David Christenson has produced readable, entertaining prose translations that reliably reflect the content and style of these five important Roman comedies.
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This volume, the author’s second contribution to the Focus Classical Library (for the first, which treated four Plautine plays, see BMCR 2009.07.03), translates Plautus’ Menaechmi, Rudens, and Truculentus, as well as Terence’s Adelphoe and Eunuchus, with a general introduction and running commentary.