Barsby's edition of Bacchides (Warminster, 1986) includes a very successful verse translation and full
commentary based on it, and Frances Muecke has produced a Companion to the Penguin translation of
Menaechmi (Bristol, 1987). The plays of Terrence have been translated by Frank O. Copley, The
Library of Liberal Arts (Indianapolis, 1967) and by P. Bovie and others (New Brunswick, NJ, 1974).
For Roman Comedy, the best general introduction in English is R. L. Hunter, The New Comedy of
Greece and Rome (Cambridge, 1985). George E. Duckworth, The Nature of Roman Comedy (Princeton,
1952) provides a fuller account, though much of what he says about Greek New Comedy has been
rendered obsolete by the discovery of substantial portions of plays by Menander since 1958. Both books
are available in paperback.
The most important book on Plautus this century has been the book in German by Eduard Fraenkel,
Plautmisches im Plautus (Berlin, 1922), which was reissued in an Italian translation with additional
notes as Elementi Plautini in Plauto (Florence, i960). Fraenkel was concerned to identify and evaluate
the original features in Plautus' adaptations of Greek comedies. Erich Segal's book Roman Laughter:
The Comedy of Plautus, 2nd. edn. (Oxford, 1987) paperback, is an entertaining and enthusiastic account
of the 'festival' elements in Plautus' plays, the ways in which they invert everyday Roman values and
behaviour.
Gilbert Norwood, The Art of Terence (Oxford, 1923; repr. New York, 1965), though outdated in some
important respects, provides a very sympathetic appreciation of Terence, and is the best book on him in
English.
The fragments of Ennius' Annals have been edited by O. Skutsch, The Annals of Q. Ennius (Oxford,
1985).
- Cicero And Rome (By Miriam Griffin)
Principal Ancient Sources
The works of Cicero are readily available in translation. The Loeb Classical Library offers the complete
works translated by different hands with facing Latin text. The Penguin Classical Series includes
volumes of selected speeches in translation and, particularly worthy of note, a rendering of the letters by
D. R. Shackleton-Bailey. This is a byproduct of his great edition and commentary, published by the
Cambridge University Press, of which only the volumes of the Letters to Atticus contain a translation.
Other ancient works which contribute to our knowledge of the period can also be consulted in English.
Sallust's monograph on the Conspiracy of Catiline appears in the Loeb and in the Penguin Sallust. One
volume in each of these series is devoted to Caesar's accounts of his campaigns in Gaul and in the Civil
War. The Life of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos can be found in the Loeb volume containing Florus.