Although purposefully conceived, this book was born by accident. In 1987–89, I was blessed with a cornucopia of fellowships: a Fulbright Summer Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, a year at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington D.C., and six months as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at Technische Universitat in Berlin. I thank these institutions for the opportunities and resources they provided for intellectual growth. In Rome, seeds germinated as I wrote a scene by scene commentary on Terence's Andria; it is not too much of an exaggeration to say that almost every question I address in this book evolved out of that study. Upon returning to teaching duties at Brown in fall 1989, I resumed work on a manuscript, all but complete before my departure for Berlin, on identification scenarios in New Comedy and the orators. It needed an introduction and I knew exactly what topics I wanted to address. I had realized the significance of the pre-eminence of procedural over substantive law in the Athenian legal system and I felt that that order of priorities needed examination in New Comedy. I wrote by hand in the nooks and crannies of non-teaching time, shoved squibs into files and crammed them into a drawer. In the summer of 1990, I opened the drawer, typed the files, and was appalled to see that my ‘introduction’ extended to well over 400 pages. That ‘introduction’ eventually became this book – born by accident but purposefully conceived.