ABSTRACT
The theatrical standing and popular impact of early republican tragedy are reflected in its penetration of the main competitor for dramatic attention: comedy. Plautus is an important figure in the history of early republican tragedy, since his dramatic career coincides with the final years of Naevius and the early and middle years of Ennius, and attests not only to the predictable rivalries of the Roman theatre but also to the generic mixture evident in Roman play-writing from the start. In the latter part of the Second Punic War, Suetonius was serving in Sardinia as a ranking officer of one of the south Italian auxiliary units, when he seems to have come to the attention of the Roman aristocrat and questor, Marcus Porcius Cato, who may have stopped in Sardinia on his return home from Africa, and who brought Ennius to Rome with him in the following year.
