Casina. The Casket Comedy. Curculio. Epidicus. The Two Menaechmuses (Loeb Classical Library) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Some of the monologues here are great for classical monologue requirements. I used this for my audition with the New School for Drama Graduate program and it went over well...

Click Here to see more reviews about: Casina. The Casket Comedy. Curculio. Epidicus. The Two Menaechmuses (Loeb Classical Library)


Plautus (Titus Maccius), born about 254 BCE at Sarsina in Umbria, went to Rome, engaged in work connected with the stage, lost his money in commerce, then turned to writing comedies.

Twenty-one plays by Plautus have survived (one is incomplete). The basis of all is a free translation from comedies by such writers as Menander, Diphilus, and Philemon. So we have Greek manners of Athens about 300–250 BCE transferred to the Roman stage of about 225–185, with Greek places, people, and customs, for popular amusement in a Latin city whose own culture was not yet developed and whose manners were more severe. To make his plays live for his audience, Plautus included many Roman details, especially concerning slavery, military affairs, and law, with some invention of his own, notably in management of metres. The resulting mixture is lively, genial and humorous, with good dialogue and vivid style. There are plays of intrigue (Two Bacchises, The Haunted House, Pseudolus); of intrigue with a recognition theme (The Captives, The Carthaginian, Curculio); plays which develop character (The Pot of Gold, Miles Gloriosus); others which turn on mistaken identity (accidental as in the Menaechmi; caused on purpose as in Amphitryon); plays of domestic life (The Merchant, Casina, both unpleasant; Trinummus, Stichus, both pleasant).

The Loeb Classical Library edition of Plautus is in five volumes.

Buy cheap Casina. The Casket Comedy. Curculio. Epidicus. The Two Menaechmuses (Loeb Classical Library) now.

A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae (Oxford Classical Texts) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)A great book for collectors, if you are into latin classical books, this is must. An unusual book to have and great for those who like me enjoy building impressive libraries.

Click Here to see more reviews about: A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae (Oxford Classical Texts)

Two highly influential writers of satirical poetry in the early Roman Empire, Persius and Juvenal are universally admired and enjoyed for the mordant wit and biting irony with which they exposed contemporary life and abuses under the notorious emperors Nero and Domitian. This new and revised edition--the first since the original publication in 1959--conveniently brings together both poets in a single volume, and contains, along with a freshly amended version of the text, a concise apparatus criticus at the foot of each page and a full Preface, giving a comprehensive overview of the state of the text in light of recent scholarship.

Buy cheap A. Persi Flacci et D. Iuni Iuuenalis Saturae (Oxford Classical Texts) now.

Odes and Epodes (Loeb Classical Library) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Very readable translation of Horace, good reading for a winter evening. The famous phrase carpe diem (seize the day or pluck the day) is from one of Horace's odes, in this book.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Odes and Epodes (Loeb Classical Library)


The poetry of Horace (born 65 BCE) is richly varied, its focus moving between public and private concerns, urban and rural settings, Stoic and Epicurean thought. Here is a new Loeb Classical Library edition of the great Roman poet's Odes and Epodes, a fluid translation facing the Latin text.

Horace took pride in being the first Roman to write a body of lyric poetry. For models he turned to Greek lyric, especially to the poetry of Alcaeus, Sappho, and Pindar; but his poems are set in a Roman context. His four books of odes cover a wide range of moods and topics. Some are public poems, upholding the traditional values of courage, loyalty, and piety; and there are hymns to the gods. But most of the odes are on private themes: chiding or advising friends; speaking about love and amorous situations, often amusingly. Horace's seventeen epodes, which he called iambi, were also an innovation for Roman literature. Like the odes they were inspired by a Greek model: the seventh-century iambic poetry of Archilochus. Love and political concerns are frequent themes; here the tone is generally that of satirical lampoons. "In his language he is triumphantly adventurous," Quintilian said of Horace; this new translation reflects his different voices.

Get 19% OFF

Buy cheap Odes and Epodes (Loeb Classical Library) now.