Roman comedy and satire may seem tame to us; one wonders what it looked like in the eyes of Greek aristocrats.

In Greek and Roman comedies, women were often portrayed as drunkards and more likely to indulge in vices while under wine's influence.

Key plot elements are taken from two Roman comedies of Plautus.

I quite enjoyed studying Roman comedy by Plautus - suprisingly funny.

Many devices from Roman comedy and the pastoral genre also appear, such as sleeping potions and letters delivered to the wrong person.

Stock characters in Roman comedy include:

The productions are extraordinary too, for different reasons, featuring hammy turns in Greek and Roman comedy and the odd 18th-century drama, but they're always great fun.

Pliny says dinner parties at his home were often enlivened by scenes from Roman comedy.

Their writing later influenced Roman comedy, which in turn helped to produce the modern Comedy of Manners.

But the representation of a Roman comedy, that, however, was a new and piquant pleasure, a surprise for the young queen.