Emily Wilsonwrites:

From the perspective of contemporary Latin studies, Fraenkel’s total lack of interest in social history or cultural studies may look like a defect. His approach contrasts sharply with, for example, the exuberant and stimulating – if frequently unreadable – recent study (with facing translation) of Plautus’ Asinaria by John Henderson. Henderson explores, or dances around, Plautus’ representation of power relationships between sons, fathers, women and slaves. For Henderson, Plautus is both hilariously funny (‘it’s all a gas’: ridicula res est) and a biting social satirist, who understands the whole Roman ‘economy of pleasure’, and undermines the notion that the Roman father of the family could be anything other than a donkey. He takes nothing seriously, including his own comic tropes. Henderson is more amused than I am by all the jokes about whipping and humiliation. But he is aware that jokes are never just jokes; there is always a social subtext.

(LRB21 February 2008 )

Wisconsin | paperback 252 pp. |ISBN: 9780299219949