This book contains the full text of Plautus's Rudens, supplemented with an Introduction, extensive vocabulary and detailed textual notes.

Plautus' plays were written and produced around 200B.c so he is therefore the earliest Latin writer whose work survives in bulk; he belongs to the generation that fought Hannibal. His work consisted in adapting for performances in Rome Greek comedies written a hundred years earlier for performance in Athens. Since his plays and all the other Latin comedies that we have are derived from Greek plays, so this book examines Greek drama as well as Roman.