Roman literature was by nature intertextual from the beginning, taking on the genres it inherited from the Greeks and adapting them within the constraints and zeities of native Roman prosody, Latin language, and Roman cultural differences. No longer seen under the sign of ‘influence’ or as part of the struggle to look or behave like the father – even when it is a matter of translation – this reality is rather seen as part of the dynamism of a literature that is as contentious, rivalrous and as preoccupied with dominating as the culture and state of which it was a part. Nor is the rivalry simply with the Greeks. Ennius takes an emulative and corrective stance with Naevius, updating his metre and much else. The prologues of Terence show that internal contention is as much a part of the game as any struggle to come to grips with and rearrange the sources in the poets of New Comedy.