Between the third and second centuries BC, Rome experienced a complex historical phase. Clashes with Carthage, expansion towards the north and east, and the conquest of southern Italy, an area colonized by the Greeks, brought about numerous changes, from the adoption of the Greek theatrical tradition to being the head of a territorial empire fraught with complications.
The socio-political context of Plautus' plays
After conquering a large part of the Italian peninsula through the reduction of Sicily to a province (241 BC), and after defeating the ancient eastern powers of Macedonia and its allies (200-197 BC), the Aetolians (189 BC), and Syria (192-189 BC), the Roman state extended its dominion as far as Asia Minor, thus succeeding in subjugating, in various forms, the major antagonistic powers of the eastern Mediterranean.
Already, in the archaic period, the Romans had had contact with the Greeks through trade with the cities of Magna Graecia and through the people of Etruria with whom the Greeks had a long trade relationship. In Etruria, as in Latium and Rome, Greek ceramics dating back to the seventh to sixth centuries BC have been found in large quantities. However, Roman culture adopted a great deal from the Greeks after the victory over Pyrrhus at Beneventum (275 BC) and the Carthaginians in Sicily.
Theatre as a political occasion
Theatre in Rome, in its literary forms as we know it, was indebted to Greek theatre. However, it
