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Comedies of Plautus and Terence are all that remains to us of the Roman Comic Drama. It is impossible to deal with the works of these writers, even in so slight a sketch as is contemplated in this volume, without some previous reference to the Greek originals from which they drew. For the Roman drama was, more than any other branch of Roman literature, an inheritance from Greece; one of those notes of intellectual sovereignty which that marvellous people impressed upon their conquerors. The plays which, during five hundred years, from the days of the Scipios to those of Diocletian, amused a Roman audience, had as little claim to be regarded as national productions as the last happy "adaptation" from the French which enjoys its brief run at an English theatre.

But when we speak of Greek Comedy in its relation to the Roman Drama, we must not form our idea of


 * A. C. vol. xvi.