This book is concerned with the comedies written by Greek poets in the period between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c. and the end of the following century and with the Latin adaptations of Greek comedies which were presented at public festivals in Rome between 240 b.c. and 160 b.c. The chronological limits of the Greek period must be interpreted flexibly. Although the death of Alexander forms an obvious and convenient division in the history of the whole Greek world, changes in literary and dramatic taste usually occur gradually; of the five leading poets of the Greek New Comedy, as the genre with which we shall be concerned is designated, two, and perhaps three (Alexis, Philemon,?Diphilos), were writing plays before Alexander's death. The creative phase of the genre continued well into the second century b.c., but very little is known of these later years and all of the leading poets belong to the period before 250 b.c. The boundaries of the Roman period are rather easier to establish. 240 b.c. is the year to which ancient scholars assigned the first Latin adaptation of a Greek play to be presented at Rome, and 160 b.c. saw the production of the last surviving play of the comoedia palliata (‘comedy in Greek dress’), the Adelphoe of Terence. Roman poets continued to write comedies long after this date, but the truly creative period of the genre was over by the end of the second century.