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Lively and critically aware, T. H. M. Gellar-Goad’s A Commentary on Plautus’ Curculio is the new reference text on the play. Curculio follows the efforts of the title character to trick a sex-trafficker into handing over an enslaved woman to the young man infatuated with her instead of to the soldier who’s paid for her—and will turn out to be her long-lost brother. As Plautus’ shortest comedy, Curculio has proven to be a desirable text for university performances. The play exemplifies Plautus’ style, with a blend of erotic, deception, and recognition plotlines, plus a wide range of archetypal characters. Gellar-Goad’s commentary is the complete package, with introductions to themes, content, humor, meter, and syntax; notes on matters of performance, interpretation, and social history; and a text with aids to scansion and clarifying stage directions.

This up-to-date, authoritative commentary on the play will prove useful to directors and actors and will readily introduce students to the joys of Roman comedy.
 

Laughing Atoms, Laughing Matter: Lucretius' De Rerum Natura and Satire offers the first comprehensive examination of Roman epic poet Lucretius’ engagement with satire. Author T. H. M. Gellar-Goad argues that what has often been understood as an artfully persuasive exposition of Epicurean philosophy designed to convert the uninitiated is actually a mimesis of the narrator’s attempt to effect such a conversion on his internal narrative audience—a performance for the true audience of the poem, whose members take pleasure from uncovering the literary games and the intertextual engagement that the performance entails.
 
Gellar-Goad aims to track De Rerum Natura along two paths of satire: first, the broad boulevard of satiric literature from the beginnings of Greek poetry to the plays, essays, and broadcast media of the modern world; and second, the narrower lane of Roman verse satire, satura, beginning with early authors Ennius and Lucilius and closing with Flavian poet Juvenal. Lucilius is revealed as a major, yet overlooked, influence on Lucretius.
 
By examining how Lucretius’ poem employs the tools of satire, we gain a richer understanding of how it interacts with its purported philosophical program.