IV From Greece to Rome

Extract

The origins of Roman comedy are, in one sense, clear-cut: at the Ludi Romani or Roman Games of September 240, a Romanized Tarentine Greek known as Lucius Livius Andronicus, who at some point also translated the Odyssey into Latin, produced the first Latin translations of Greek plays on a Roman stage. This firm date, for which we have Cicero's friend Atticus to thank, marks the beginning of the establishment of a practice of translating classic Greek plays that would continue in both comedy and tragedy for at least a further century.