SOURCE: "Terence and the Death of Comedy," Comparative Drama, Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1982-83, pp. 312-24.

Goldberg is the author of several articles on Terence and a monograph, Understanding Terence (1986). In the following essay, he explores Terence's role in the demise of Roman comedy, arguing that "Terence had made it too alien to be taken seriously at Rome."

The creative age of Roman comedy died with a man named Turpilius in 103 B.C. That was actually half a century after the death of Terence, the last great writer of stage comedy at Rome, and nearly a whole century before Latin literature reached maturity in the time of Augustus. The golden age of Roman comedy is thus quite clearly divorced from the golden age of Roman literature itself, but something more than a minor literary genre died with Turpilius. The very interest in stage comedy that had survived the change...