Horace and the Reputation of Plautus in the Late First Century BC

Abstract Everyone knows that the m<mature Hornce took a poor view both of Plautus and of those contemporary teachers of literature who preferred the old comedies and their like to the ones written by his friend Fundanius. It was the view of a man who could claim some knowledge of the theatre scripts in question. The epistle to Augustus (2. T) laughs at the alleged incoherence of current professorial views of what constituted the best poetic writing in Latin, and in particular at the futility of the conventional criterion of age (lines 50–62) The same epistle later describes early Roman attempts to adapt the Greek genres of tragedy and comedy, patronizing the trngedians and denouncing the comedians (lines 156–76). At both points the comic scripts of Plautus are given a high prominence.