The Romans

After Aristotle and Alexander, an age of Greek influence termed the Hellenistic Age permeated the Mediterranean area for the next two hundred years. Theatres were built in cities long established by Greeks, and in places newly under Greek influence, continuing the legacy of Greek culture begun in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. This period also coincided with the growth of the Roman Republic (afterwards Empire), as Rome repelled the Carthaginian invasion of what is now Italy, and finally destroyed Carthage itself. Rome first conquered and colonized the western Mediterranean, and then the eastern Mediterranean area, occupying Greece in 146 B.C. Rome was ruled by Emperors from 27 B.C. to 476 A.D., and so dominated the known world - Western Europe, including Britain, and the Eastern Mediterranean, including Palestine - for about 700 years.

The Romans adopted much of Greek religion and culture as their own, including theatre. A slaveborn Greek, Livius Andronicus, translated Greek tragedies into Latin as early as 240 B. C. Later, the Romans favored the New Comedies of Menander, and raided them for material, mixing up plots and characters from different sources in a process called contaminatio.

The best known Roman comic playwrights are Plautus and Terence, who wrote in the period just before Rome occupied Greece in the first half of the second century B.C. (i.e. 200-150 B.C.) Along with the tragedies of Seneca and the dramatic criticism of Horace (both first century A.D.), these plays inspired the Western tradition of tragedy and comedy centuries later.