Before drama ever appeared in Rome, comedy in Greece had passed to its final stage of evolution; and it was this form of comedy—New Comedy—which was to provide the stimulus for Roman Comedy. It is necessary, therefore, very briefly to describe the various stages of Greek Comedy, especially New Comedy, before passing on to Plautus. This will raise at least two important issues: (i) the reason for Plautus' choice of New Comedy for his models, and (ii) his treatment of the originals.

During the Corinthian War Agesilaos, after capturing the port of Lechaion in 391 B.c., returned to Corinth the following spring. He found the Corinthians and Argives, who had formed a defensive union, on the point of celebrating the Isthmian Games. When the Spartans approached, the celebrants decamped, whereupon Agesilaos bivouacked in the sacred enclosure, sacrificed to Poseidon on his own account, and waited until the pro-Spartan Corinthian exiles had done the same. On the king's departure the Corinthians and Argives returned and celebrated the games all over again.

When Xerxes' fleet encountered a violent storm and was shattered against the seaward flank of Mount Pelion, much of the treasure that had been lost in the wreckage was recovered by Scyllias of Scione, the best diver of his day. He and many of his fellow citizens had been impressed into service as the Persian armada came by the Chalcidic peninsula, but he later escaped to the Greeks waiting at Artemisium. By the time of Herodotus, a half-century or so later, it was being claimed that he had dived into the sea at Aphetae and not come up until he had reached Artemisium eight miles away. ‘Many other tales are told of this man, some lies, some true,’ said Herodotus (viii. 8), ‘but in my opinion, he came by boat.’

Through the ages it has been the tendency of critics to dwell upon Virgil's praise of Augustus and to emphasize the poet's role as a propagandist for the new regime. In his first encounter with the Aeneid, the student learns to consider this work, as well as the author's treatment of its central figure, a ‘glorification’ of the Princeps.

Saint Ambrose (c.A.d. 339–97), bishop of Milan, was one of the outstanding figures of the fourth century both from a political and from an ecclesiastical point of view.