The theater in its full form came into being in Classical Greece. At that time, the theater was part of a religious festival and so included a number of ritual elements, several of which have been modified for use in theater ever since. Roman theater developed from Greek traditions carried over in the Hellenic period and then transformed to fit the Roman social structure and Roman sensibilities. The two theaters have similarities and also differences. They often use the same myths as source material and give those myths different treatment. The Roman theater also developed new theatrical forms and genres which extended what the Greeks had performed.
The ancient comic dramatists developed structures which remain valuable today. Later critics discerned a certain difference between early comedy and later, and they differentiated between Old Comedy and New Comedy. The earliest distinctions between Old Comedy and New Comedy were based on chronology, with the New Comedy obviously coming after the Old. Later critics, however, made a distinction in terms of quality--Old Comedy was now considered a more primitive form, and New Comedy was seen as more sophisticated. In the Renaissance, theorists made a further distinction, with Old Comedy being seen as "hard" and new comedy as "sweet." Regular and irregular are terms that have been applied to Old and New Comedy, respectively (Perret 13).
Greek comedy was also distinctive in Athens and became an official part of the Dionysian festivals about 50 years after tragedy did. Comedy later found its most sympathetic home at the Dionysian festival at Lenaia, held in the winter. Since few outsiders were present then, the playwrights could ridicule events in Athens more freely. The Romans assimilated much from the countries they conquered, and they adapted Greek drama to their needs beginning in 240 B.C. The first were dramas by the Greek Livius Andronicus, imported for just this reas...