Terence brought to the Roman stage a bright comic voice and a refined sense of style. His six comedies--first produced in the half dozen years before his premature death in 159 BCE--were imaginatively reformulated in Latin plays written by Greek playwrights, especially Menander. For this new Loeb Classical Library edition of Terence, John Barsby gives us a faithful and lively translation with full explanatory notes, facing a freshly edited Latin text.

Volume I contains a substantial introduction and three plays: "The Woman of Andros," a romantic comedy; "The Self-Tormentor," which looks at contrasting father-son relationships; and "The Eunuch," whose characters include the most sympathetically drawn courtesan in Roman comedy. The other three plays are in Volume II: "Phormio," a comedy of intrigue with an engaging trickster; "The Mother-in-Law," unique among Terence's plays in that the female characters are the admirable ones; and "The Brothers," which explores contrasting approaches to parental education of sons.

The Romans highly praised Terence--"whose speech can charm, whose every word delights," in Cicero's words. This new edition of his plays, which replaces the now outdated Loeb translation by John Sargeaunt (first published in 1912), succeeds in capturing his polished style and appeal.

Terence's Eunuchus (The Eunuch) was his most successful play in his lifetime but has been surprisingly neglected by modern commentators. In this first ever full-scale commentary in English, Professor Barsby provides a thorough examination of the play in terms of its literary and dramatic qualities, its staging, and its relationship to the two plays of Menander's on which it is based. The commentary includes scene-by-scene discussions which bring out the development of character and plot, and the notes offer a close study of Terence's language in comparison with that of his predecessor Plautus. A full introduction puts Terence in his historical and literary context, and there are two appendices, one on metre and the other giving text and translation of the remains of Menander's Eunouchos and Kolax.

This book, keyed to the Penguin translation, introduces three of Terence's most entertaining and widely read plays. The selection demonstrates his versatility as a playwright: the brilliant farce of "The Eunuch," the subtle comedy of "Phormio" and the more serious theme of the relationship between fathers and sons explored in "The Brothers." A detailed and well-researched introduction sets Terence in his context in the Roman theatre, while the commentaries, with their useful line-by-line analysis, provide the reader with valuable information about the social and ethical background, as well as offering views on interpretation. Latin words are identified where this seems helpful, and references are made to other comedies (including those of Menander and Plautus) to give the student a broader picture of Terence's work.

This edition of the first book of Ovid's "Amores" was first published in 1973 by OUP. It has been kept in print by BCP because it remains an outstandlingly useful volume. It was one of two editions (the other being Gordon Williams' "Horace 'Odes' III," 1969) in which OUP pioneered a new kind of continuous running commentary particularly suited to short poems, one 'likely to be more illuminating than a series of disconnected notes on isolated problems, which may contribute little to the total understanding of the poem as the poet conceived it'. This approach was intended to promote in sixth-formers and undergraduates not just an understanding of the Latin but a critical appreciation of literary quality. In this aim, the edition has been a continued success.