Product Description: How the Romans came to have a literature reflecting native and foreign impulses, and how it formed a legacy for subsequent generations have become central questions in the cultural history of the Republic. This book explores the development of Roman literary sensibility from early interest in epic and drama, through invention of satire and eventual enshrining of books in public collections important to Horace and Ovid...read more

Terence's Hecyra raises social, literary and theatrical issues of great interest to modern students of Roman comedy and, indeed, of Roman culture more broadly. The play pays strikingly close attention to the domestic problems of women and experiments boldly with traditional comic forms, not only in its creation of anticipatory suspense, but through its variations on traditional situations and roles and its metatheatrical qualities. In addition, Terence's response in his prologues to the play's two putative failures is important, if tendentious, evidence for the mechanics of theatrical performance in the second century, especially the conjunction of theatrical and gladiatorial shows. This edition opens the play's many interpretive challenges to wider scrutiny while remaining attentive to the linguistic needs of students at all levels.