People want to have fun and entertainment no matter what the circumstances. The Roman atellan farces live on in Hollywood as slapstick comedies, and there is even a movie based on the first Roman comedy writer, Plautus: Funny thing happened on the way to the Forum". Terence and Plautus were sources of Shakespeare's comedies and Moliere's biting wit. 

The devastating war with Hannibal did not interfere with annual elections, with other business of the state and certainly not with the theatre season. The Romans enjoyed their theatre, but strictly comedies. It seems that the Romans had enough tragedies in their lives – comparison of the census of citizens before and after the 2^nd Punic war could be an indication why – that they wanted comedies, mimes, gags and general funny mayhem on the stage.

On the other hand, the theatre seemed always very frivolous to the Romans. Therefore no permanent building for a theatre was built until the 1^st century BC. The theatre was a wooden affair, put up before games and taken down after. That resulted from time to time in a collapse of the theatre, but still no sturdy stone one was built. The public celebrations, games, races were usually part a some festival to honour the gods, and were in the province of the aediles, officers who had also supervision over markets, streets and general well being of the city. The supervision of the markets and streets was very strict, because the fines the aediles collected went into the expenses for games. The more money, the better games, and voters could remember who put up good games and who put up stingy ones.

Already on the books since the Laws of Twelve Tables from 445 BC was a law forbidding slander. Thus, when Titus Maccius Plautus wrote his comedies (254-184 BC), his characters spoke Latin, were recognizable Roman figures, like the anxious fathers of spendthrift sons, merry daughters or smart slaves, but they all had staunchly (and ridiculous) Greek names to escape libel charges.

Plautus was born in Umbria a worked as a stage hand, where he probably gained his love of theatre. Later he came into some money and lost it all in a naval investment. Deprived of money, he became a day labourer and started to write plays. We have today 20 of the 52 he wrote. It is not such a great prize, because all his plays we have are from a palimpsest. Palimpsest is a parchment manuscript, which has been scrubbed of the original text and reused for other writing. Well, the manuscript with Plautus’ plays has been thus treated by some monk, who wanted to record for posterity some comments of Augustine from 4^th century AD. Fortunately, this diligent guy was diligent mostly at the beginning of scrubbing the manuscript and we lack only some beginnings of the comedies, like Pot of Gold, which cannot be recovered even by using modern technology.

Another playwright from that era was Publius Terentius Afer (c. 195-152 BC). Senator Terentius brought a boy to Rome from Africa as a slave, had him educated and freed him. Afer died young in a shipwreck coming home to Rome from Greece. However, all 6 plays which he managed to write survived. He is the author of this interesting line: “I am a human being and nothing human is alien to me”. His first play was “The girl from Andros”, which proved so complicated that it needed a 'deus ex machina’, or rather a stranger to come and unravel all the confusing relationships occurring on the stage. 

Terentius’ plays were popular even in the Middle Ages and his plays started to be played again in the Renaissance in Florence. His Latin is straightforward and elegant and contemporary to his time. Plautus had the unfortunate inclination to use archaisms – probably surviving in that small town where he grew up. 

Both of these writers had to present their plays before they were staged to the aediles or the censors – just to be sure that they did not injure any “Romanness”. By the content of these plays, where ridiculous characters abound, it seems that this characteristic – Romanness (romanitas) – used a very broad brush. Or the censors and aediles were not stuffy and wanted people to have fun.