Ave, Jeeves!

Emily Wilson

• BuyPlautine Elements in Plautus by Eduard Fraenkel, translated by Tomas Drevikovsky and Frances Muecke
  Oxford, 459 pp, £79.00, November 2006, ISBN 0 19 924910 5
• BuyPlautus: ‘Asinaria – The One about the Asses’ translated by John Henderson
  Wisconsin, 252 pp, £13.50, December 2006, ISBN 0 299 21994 1
• BuyTerence: The Comedies translated by Peter Brown
  Oxford, 338 pp, £9.99, January 2008, ISBN 978 0 19 282399 1
• BuyTerence: Comedies translated by Frederick Clayton
  Exeter, 290 pp, £45.00, January 2006, ISBN 0 85989 757 5

When the Romans won wars, they brought home large numbers of enslaved foreign prisoners, to work the fields, mills and mines of the countryside, and to provide an enormous range of domestic services for wealthy city-dwellers. Slaves did the hard labour, but they were also essential for all the things that made a rich Roman’s life comfortable. Most of the work we would classify as part of the ‘service industry’ or the ‘entertainment industry’ was done by slaves. Bath attendants, cooks, baby-sitters, nurses, tutors, secretaries, prostitutes, weavers, dancers, hairdressers and waiters were all usually slaves; so, probably, were actors. It has been estimated that in the decades following the third and final Punic War, when Rome won its decisive victory over Carthage (146 BC), some 30 or 40 per cent of the population of Italy were slaves.