It may seem mildly comical to read Latin while studying in Athens, and it is—in more ways than one. Roman comedy is directly descended from Greek “new” comedy and in fact most of the extant Latin comedies are loose translations or paraphrases of Greek originals. This course, appropriate for students with limited experience in reading Latin and for those wanting to get “back into” Latin, will translate two plays of the comic playwright T. Maccius Plautus (d. 184 BCE). Although his Latin is somewhat archaic (and all the more interesting for that reason), it is quite simple and fairly easy to translate. We will read Plautus’ Menaechmi, the story of twins separated at birth and the comic consequences of their encountering each other after 20 years (this play inspired Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors), and his Mostelleria (The Ghost) about what happens when a father goes off on an extended business trip and his young son and girlfriend take over the house (think “Risky Business” in togas). In addition to reading the Latin we will consider the origin of comedy in Athens, its transmission into Roman culture and how ancient comedy relates to its modern counterparts on TV and in the cinema.