The history of Roman comedy confronting the togata playwright Afranius (late second century BCE) included a century of traditionalism and experimentation in performances in Latin as well as a substantial ‘pre-history’ of Greek drama. In this talk I explore how Afranian comedy extended those traditions and experiments, focusing especially on the comic treatment of marriages and families. I seek to argue that Afranius drew extensively on and reworked that comic past to create innovative theater that also had a role to play in contemporary Rome.