The History of Rome, Book III

Livius Andronicus

In the very earliest Roman author the later development appears, as it were, in embryo. The Greek Andronikos (from before 482, till after 547), afterwards as a Roman burgess called Lucius[184 - The later rule, by which the freedman necessarily bore the -praenomen- of his patron, was not yet applied in republican Rome.] Livius Andronicus, came to Rome at an early age in 482 among the other captives taken at Tarentum[185 - II. VII. Capture of Tarentum] and passed into the possession of the conqueror of Sena[186 - III. VI. Battle of Sena] Marcus Livius Salinator (consul 535, 547). He was employed as a slave, partly in acting and copying texts, partly in giving instruction in the Latin and Greek languages, which he taught both to the children of his master and to other boys of wealthy parents in and out of the house. He distinguished himself so much in this way that his master gave him freedom, and even the authorities, who not unfrequently availed themselves of his services—commissioning him, for instance, to prepare a thanksgiving-chant after the fortunate turn taken by the Hannibalic war in 547—out of regard for him conceded to the guild of poets and actors a place for their common worship in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine. His authorship arose out of his double occupation. As schoolmaster he translated the Odyssey into Latin, in order that the Latin text might form the basis of his Latin, as the Greek text was the basis of his Greek, instruction; and this earliest of Roman school-books maintained its place in education for centuries. As an actor, he not only like every other wrote for himself the texts themselves, but he also published them as books, that is, he read them in public and diffused them by copies. What was still more important, he substituted the Greek drama for the old essentially lyrical stage poetry. It was in 514, a year after the close of the first Punic war, that the first play was exhibited on the Roman stage. This creation of an epos, a tragedy, and a comedy in the Roman language, and that by a man who was more Roman than Greek, was historically an event; but we cannot speak of his labours as having any artistic value. They make no sort of claim to originality; viewed as translations, they are characterized by a barbarism which is only the more perceptible, that this poetry does not naively display its own native simplicity, but strives, after a pedantic and stammering fashion, to imitate the high artistic culture of the neighbouring people. The wide deviations from the original have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the language harsh and quaint.[187 - One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line—-Quem ego nefrendem alui Iacteam immulgens opem.-The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):–oud ara Kirken ex Aideo elthontes elethomen, alla mal oka elth entunamene ama d amphipoloi pheron aute siton kai krea polla kai aithopa oinon eruthron.—are thus interpreted:-Topper citi ad aedis—venimus CircaeSimul duona coram(?)—portant ad navis,Milia dlia in isdem—inserinuntur.-The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe. Another still more ridiculous mistake is the translation of —aidoioisin edoka— (Odyss. xv. 373) by -lusi- (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller). Such traits are not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have been properly his mother-tongue.] We have no difficulty in believing the statement of the old critics of art, that, apart from the compulsory reading at school, none of the poems of Livius were taken up a second time. Yet these labours were in various respects norms for succeeding times. They began the Roman translated literature, and naturalized the Greek metres in Latium. The reason why these were adopted only in the dramas, while the Odyssey of Livius was written in the national Saturnian measure, evidently was that the iambuses and trochees of tragedy and comedy far more easily admitted of imitation in Latin than the epic dactyls.

But this preliminary stage of literary development was soon passed. The epics and dramas of Livius were regarded by posterity, and undoubtedly with perfect justice, as resembling the rigid statues of Daedalus destitute of emotion or expression—curiosities rather than works of art.

But in the following generation, now that the foundations were once laid, there arose a lyric, epic, and dramatic art; and it is of great importance, even in a historical point of view, to trace this poetical development.

Drama

Theatre

Both as respects extent of production and influence over the public, the drama stood at the head of the poetry thus developed in Rome. In antiquity there was no permanent theatre with fixed admission-money; in Greece as in Rome the drama made its appearance only as an element in the annually-recurring or extraordinary amusements of the citizens. Among the measures by which the government counteracted or imagined that they counteracted that extension of the popular festivals which they justly regarded with anxiety, they refused to permit the erection of a stone building for a theatre.[188 - Such a building was, no doubt, constructed for the Apollinarian games in the Flaminian circus in 575 (Liv. xl. 51; Becker, Top. p. 605); but it was probably soon afterwards pulled down again (Tertull. de Spect. 10).] Instead of this there was erected for each festival a scaffolding of boards with a stage for the actors (-proscaenium-, -pulpitum-) and a decorated background (-scaena-); and in a semicircle in front of it was staked off the space for the spectators (-cavea-), which was merely sloped without steps or seats, so that, if the spectators had not chairs brought along with them, they squatted, reclined, or stood.[189 - In 599 there were still no seats in the theatre (Ritschl, Parerg. i. p. xviii. xx. 214; comp. Ribbeck, Trag. p. 285); but, as not only the authors of the Plautine prologues, but Plautus himself on various occasions, make allusions to a sitting audience (Mil. Glor. 82, 83; Aulul. iv. 9, 6; Triicul. ap. fin.; Epid. ap. fin.), most of the spectators must have brought stools with them or have seated themselves on the ground.] The women were probably separated at an early period, and were restricted to the uppermost and worst places; otherwise there was no distinction of places in law till 560, after which, as already mentioned,[190 - III. XI. Separation of Orders in the Theatre] the lowest and best positions were reserved for the senators.

Audience

The audience was anything but genteel. The better classes, it is true, did not keep aloof from the general recreations of the people; the fathers of the city seem even to have been bound for decorum's sake to appear on these occasions. But the very nature of a burgess festival implied that, while slaves and probably foreigners also were excluded, admittance free of charge was given to every burgess with his wife and children;[191 - Women and children appear to have been at all times admitted to the Roman theatre (Val. Max. vi. 3, 12; Plutarch., Quaest. Rom. 14; Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 24; Vitruv. v. 3, i; Suetonius, Aug. 44,&c.); but slaves were -de jure- excluded (Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 26; Ritschl. Parerg. i. p. xix. 223), and the same must doubtless have been the case with foreigners, excepting of course the guests of the community, who took their places among or by the side of the senators (Varro, v. 155; Justin, xliii. 5. 10; Sueton. Aug. 44).] and accordingly the body of spectators cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at public fireworks and -gratis- exhibitions. Naturally, therefore, the proceedings were not too orderly; children cried, women talked and shrieked, now and then a wench prepared to push her way to the stage; the ushers had on these festivals anything but a holiday, and found frequent occasion to confiscate a mantle or to ply the rod.

The introduction of the Greek drama increased the demands on the dramatic staff, and there seems to have been no redundance in the supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs. But this produced no change in the position of the artist; the poet or, as he was at this time called, the "writer," the actor, and the composer not only belonged still, as formerly, to the class of workers for hire in itself little esteemed,[192 - III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy] but were still, as formerly, placed in the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and subjected to police maltreatment.[193 - II. IX. Censure of Art] Of course all reputable persons kept aloof from such an occupation. The manager of the company (-dominus gregis-, -factionis-, also -choragus-), who was ordinarily also the chief actor, was generally a freedman, and its members were ordinarily his slaves; the composers, whose names have reached us, were all of them non-free. The remuneration was not merely small—a -honorarium- of 8000 sesterces (80 pounds) given to a dramatist is described shortly after the close of this period as unusually high—but was, moreover, only paid by the magistrates providing the festival, if the piece was not a failure. With the payment the matter ended; poetical competitions and honorary prizes, such as took place in Attica, were not yet heard of in Rome—the Romans at this time appear to have simply applauded or hissed as we now do, and to have brought forward only a single piece for exhibition each day.[194 - It is not necessary to infer from the prologues of Plautus (Cas. 17; Amph. 65) that there was a distribution of prizes (Ritschl, Parerg. i. 229); even the passage Trin. 706, may very well belong to the Greek original, not to the translator; and the total silence of the -didascaliae- and prologues, as well as of all tradition, on the point of prize tribunals and prizes is decisive.] Under such circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead of receiving due honour was subjected to disgrace, the new national theatre of the Romans could not present any development either original or even at all artistic; and, while the noble rivalry of the noblest Athenians had called into life the Attic drama, the Roman drama taken as a whole could be nothing but a spoiled copy of its predecessor, in which the only wonder is that it has been able to display so much grace and wit in the details.

That only one piece was produced each day we infer from the fact, that the spectators come from home at the beginning of the piece (Poen. 10), and return home after its close (Epid. Pseud. Rud. Stich. Truc. ap. fin.). They went, as these passages show, to the theatre after the second breakfast, and were at home again for the midday meal; the performance thus lasted, according to our reckoning, from about noon till half-past two o'clock, and a piece of Plautus, with music in the intervals between the acts, might probably occupy nearly that length of time (comp. Horat. Ep. ii. i, 189). The passage, in which Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 20) makes the spectators spend "whole days" in the theatre, refers to the state of matters at a later period.

Comedy

In the dramatic world comedy greatly preponderated over tragedy; the spectators knit their brows, when instead of the expected comedy a tragedy began. Thus it happened that, while this period exhibits poets who devoted themselves specially to comedy, such as Plautus and Caecilius, it presents none who cultivated tragedy alone; and among the dramas of this epoch known to us by name there occur three comedies for one tragedy. Of course the Roman comic poets, or rather translators, laid hands in the first instance on the pieces which had possession of the Hellenic stage at the time; and thus they found themselves exclusively[195 - The scanty use made of what is called the middle Attic comedy does not require notice in a historical point of view, since it was nothing but the Menandrian comedy in a less developed form. There is no trace of any employment of the older comedy. The Roman tragi-comedy—after the type of the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—was no doubt styled by the Roman literary historians -fabula Rhinthonica-; but the newer Attic comedians also composed such parodies, and it is difficult to see why the Ionians should have resorted for their translations to Rhinthon and the older writers rather than to those who were nearer to their own times.] confined to the range of the newer Attic comedy, and chiefly to its best-known poets, Philemon of Soli in Cilicia (394?-492) and Menander of Athens (412-462). This comedy came to be of so great importance as regards the development not only of Roman literature, but even of the nation at large, that even history has reason to pause and consider it.

Character of the Newer Attic Comedy

The pieces are of tiresome monotony. Almost without exception the plot turns on helping a young man, at the expense either of his father or of some -leno-, to obtain possession of a sweetheart of undoubted charms and of very doubtful morals. The path to success in love regularly lies through some sort of pecuniary fraud; and the crafty servant, who provides the needful sum and performs the requisite swindling while the lover is mourning over his amatory and pecuniary distresses, is the real mainspring of the piece. There is no want of the due accompaniment of reflections on the joys and sorrows of love, of tearful parting scenes, of lovers who in the anguish of their hearts threaten to do themselves a mischief; love or rather amorous intrigue was, as the old critics of art say, the very life-breath of the Menandrian poetry. Marriage forms, at least with Menander, the inevitable finale; on which occasion, for the greater edification and satisfaction of the spectators, the virtue of the heroine usually comes forth almost if not wholly untarnished, and the heroine herself proves to be the lost daughter of some rich man and so in every respect an eligible match. Along with these love-pieces we find others of a pathetic kind. Among the comedies of Plautus, for instance, the -Rudens- turns on a shipwreck and the right of asylum; while the -Trinummus- and the -Captivi- contain no amatory intrigue, but depict the generous devotedness of the friend to his friend and of the slave to his master. Persons and situations recur down to the very details like patterns on a carpet; we never get rid of the asides of unseen listeners, of knocking at the house-doors, and of slaves scouring the streets on some errand or other. The standing masks, of which there was a certain fixed number—viz., eight masks for old men, and seven for servants—from which alone in ordinary cases at least the poet had to make his choice, further favoured a stock-model treatment. Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical element in the older comedy—the chorus—and confined itself from the first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical elevation. The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing occupation for the intellect, not only through their subject-matter —in which respect the newer comedy was distinguished from the old as much by the greater intrinsic emptiness as by the greater outward complication of the plot—but more especially through their execution in detail, in which the point and polish of the conversation more particularly formed the triumph of the poet and the delight of the audience. Complications and confusions of one person with another, which very readily allowed scope for extravagant, often licentious, practical jokes—as in the -Casina-, which winds up in genuine Falstaffian style with the retiring of the two bridegrooms and of the soldier dressed up as bride—jests, drolleries, and riddles, which in fact for want of real conversation furnished the staple materials of entertainment at the Attic table of the period, fill up a large portion of these comedies. The authors of them wrote not like Eupolis and Aristophanes for a great nation, but rather for a cultivated society which spent its time, like other clever circles whose cleverness finds little fit scope for action, in guessing riddles and playing at charades. They give us, therefore, no picture of their times; of the great historical and intellectual movements of the age no trace appears in these comedies, and we need to recall, in order to realize, the fact that Philemon and Menander were really contemporaries of Alexander and Aristotle. But they give us a picture, equally elegant and faithful, of that refined Attic society beyond the circles of which comedy never travels. Even in the dim Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the original is not wholly obliterated; and more especially in the pieces which are imitated from Menander, the most talented of these poets, the life which the poet saw and shared is delicately reflected not so much in its aberrations and distortions as in its amiable every day course. The friendly domestic relations between father and daughter, husband and wife, master and servant, with their love-affairs and other little critical incidents, are portrayed with so broad a truthfulness, that even now they do not miss their effect: the servants' feast, for instance, with which the -Stichus- concludes is, in the limited range of its relations and the harmony of the two lovers and the one sweetheart, of unsurpassed gracefulness in its kind. The elegant grisettes, who make their appearance perfumed and adorned, with their hair fashionably dressed and in variegated, gold- embroidered, sweeping robes, or even perform their toilette on the stage, are very effective. In their train come the procuresses, sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the -Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and comrades ready with their help. There is great abundance and variety of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance. The servant- world—the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page—forms a transition to the very numerous professional parts. A standing figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances, to let the potsherds be flung at his head. This was at that time a formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes. Favourite parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest, mariner, fisherman, and the like. To these fall to be added, lastly, the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of Plautus. The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches to the really poetical. It is a significant circumstance that, in the parts illustrative of character to which we have just referred, the psychological truth is in great part represented by abstract development of the conception; the miser here collects the parings of his nails and laments the tears which he sheds as a waste of water. But the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character, and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this newer comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a whole. Everything distinctively Greek was expiring: fatherland, national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted; and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market, and the brothel. It is no matter of wonder and hardly a matter of blame, that poetry, which is destined to shed a glory over human existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the Menandrian comedy presents to us. It is at the same time very remarkable that the poetry of this period, wherever it was able to turn away in some degree from the corrupt Attic life without falling into scholastic imitation, immediately gathers strength and freshness from the ideal. In the only remnant of the mock-heroic comedy of this period—the -Amphitruo- of Plautus—there breathes throughout a purer and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the contemporary stage. The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony, the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this task of turning the myths into irony was innocent and poetical, as compared with that of the ordinary comedy depicting the Attic life of the period. No special accusation may be brought from a historico- moral point of view against the poets, nor ought it to be made matter of individual reproach to any particular poet that he occupies the level of his epoch: comedy was not the cause, but the effect of the corruption that prevailed in the national life. But it is necessary, more especially with a view to judge correctly the influence of these comedies on the life of the Roman people, to point out the abyss which yawned beneath all that polish and elegance. The coarsenesses and obscenities, which Menander indeed in some measure avoided, but of which there is no lack in the other poets, are the least part of the evil. Features far worse are, the dreadful desolation of life in which the only oases are lovemaking and intoxication; the fearfully prosaic atmosphere, in which anything resembling enthusiasm is to be found only among the sharpers whose heads have been turned by their own swindling, and who prosecute the trade of cheating with some sort of zeal; and above all that immoral morality, with which the pieces of Menander in particular are garnished. Vice is chastised, virtue is rewarded, and any peccadilloes are covered by conversion at or after marriage. There are pieces, such as the -Trinummus- of Plautus and several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue wherever possible, with lovers equally favoured and making love in company; moral commonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound. A finale of reconciliation such as that of the -Bacchides-, where the swindling sons and the swindled fathers by way of a good winding up all go to carouse together in the brothel, presents a corruption of morals thoroughly worthy of Kotzebue.

Roman Comedy

Its Hellenism a Necessary Result of the Law

Such were the foundations, and such the elements which shaped the growth, of Roman comedy. Originality was in its case excluded not merely by want of aesthetic freedom, but in the first instance, probably, by its subjection to police control. Among the considerable number of Latin comedies of this sort which are known to us, there is not one that did not announce itself as an imitation of a definite Greek model; the title was only complete when the names of the Greek piece and of its author were also given, and if, as occasionally happened, the "novelty" of a piece was disputed, the question was merely whether it had been previously translated. Comedy laid the scene of its plot abroad not only frequently, but regularly and under the pressure of necessity; and that species of art derived its special name (-fabula palliata-) from the fact, that the scene was laid away from Rome, usually in Athens, and thai the -dramatis personae- were Greeks or at any rate not Romans. The foreign costume is strictly carried out even in detail, especially in those things in which the uncultivated Roman was distinctly sensible of the contrast, Thus the names of Rome and the Romans are avoided, and, where they are referred to, they are called in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin. We form a strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic considerations. The transference of such social relations, as are uniformly delineated in the new Attic comedy, to the Rome of the Hannibalic period would have been a direct outrage on its civic order and morality. But, as the dramatic spectacles at this period were regularly given by the aediles and praetors who were entirely dependent on the senate, and even extraordinary festivals, funeral games for instance, could not take place without permission of the government; and as the Roman police, moreover, was not in the habit of standing on ceremony in any case, and least of all in dealing with the comedians; the reason is self-evident why this comedy, even after it was admitted as one of the Roman national amusements, might still bring no Roman upon the stage, and remained as it were banished to foreign lands.

Political Neutrality

The compilers were still more decidedly prohibited from naming any living person in terms either of praise or censure, as well as from any captious allusion to the circumstances of the times. In the whole repertory of the Plautine and post-Plautine comedy, there is not, so far as we know, matter for a single action of damages. In like manner—if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests—we meet hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the unfortunate Capuans and Atellans [196 - III. VI In Italy] and, what is remarkable, various sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.[197 - Bacch. 24; Trin. 609; True. iii. 2, 23. Naevius also, who in fact was generally less scrupulous, ridicules the Praenestines and Lanuvini (Com. 21, Ribb.). There are indications more than once of a certain variance between the Praenestines and Romans (Liv. xxiii. 20, xlii. i); and the executions in the time of Pyrrhus (ii. 18) as well as the catastrophe in that of Sulla, were certainly connected with this variance. —Innocent jokes, such as Capt. 160, 881, of course passed uncensured. —The compliment paid to Massilia in Cas. v. 4., i, deserves notice.] In general no references to the events or circumstances of the present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are, congratulations on the course of the war[198 - Thus the prologue of the -Cistellaria- concludes with the following words, which may have a place here as the only contemporary mention of the Hannibalic war in the literature that has come down to us:—-Haec res sic gesta est. Bene valete, et vinciteVirtute vera, quod fecistis antidhac;Servate vostros socios, veteres et novos;Augete auxilia vostris iustis legibus;Perdite perduelles: parite laudem et laureamUt vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.-The fourth line (-augete auxilia vostris iustis Iegibus-) has reference to the supplementary payments imposed on the negligent Latin colonies in 550 (Liv. xxix. 15; see ii. 350).] or on the peaceful times; general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money, against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once—in the -Curculio- —a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and but little likely to cause offence[199 - III. XIII. Increase of Amusements] But even in the midst of such patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely in order, the poet interrupts himself;

-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam
Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-

and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.[200 - For this reason we can hardly be too cautious in assuming allusions on the part of Plautus to the events of the times. Recent investigation has set aside many instances of mistaken acuteness of this sort; but might not even the reference to the Bacchanalia, which is found in Cas. v. 4, 11 (Ritschl, Parerg. 1. 192), have been expected to incur censure? We might even reverse the case and infer from the notices of the festival of Bacchus in the -Casina-, and some other pieces (Amph. 703; Aul. iii. i, 3; Bacch. 53, 371; Mil. Glor. 1016; and especially Men. 836), that these were written at a time when it was not yet dangerous to speak of the Bacchanalia.] The oldest Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable exception. Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies, the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to circumstances and persons in Rome. Among other liberties he not only ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need not have been ashamed:

-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-

As he himself says,

-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-

he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put dangerous questions, such as:

-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-

which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as:

-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-

But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage- invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate them at all. Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies, and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and recantation in other comedies. These quarrels, apparently, drove him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his example—one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius. Thus the result was accomplished—not much less unique of its kind than the conquest of Hannibal—that, during an epoch of the most feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly destitute of political tinge.

Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy

Persons and Situations

But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his position in free Rome.[201 - The remarkable passage in the -Tarentilla- can have no other meaning:—-Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,Ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere:Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus!-] The degree of success in individual instances was of course determined by the quality of the original which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but amidst all their individual variety the whole stock of translations must have agreed in certain leading features, inasmuch as all the comedies were adapted to similar conditions of exhibition and a similar audience. The treatment of the whole as well as of the details was uniformly in the highest degree free; and it was necessary that it should be so. While the original pieces were performed in presence of that society which they copied, and in this very fact lay their principal charm, the Roman audience of this period was so different from the Attic, that it was not even in a position rightly to understand that foreign world. The Roman comprehended neither the grace and kindliness, nor the sentimentalism and the whitened emptiness of the domestic life of the Hellenes. The slave-world was utterly different; the Roman slave was a piece of household furniture, the Attic slave was a servant. Where marriages of slaves occur or a master carries on a kindly conversation with his slave, the Roman translators ask their audience not to take offence at such things which are usual in Athens;[202 - The ideas of the modern Hellas on the point of slavery are illustrated by the passage in Euripides (Ion, 854; comp. Helena, 728):——En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei,Tounoma ta d' alla panta ton eleutheronOudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.—] and, when at a later period comedies began to be written in Roman costume, the part of the crafty servant had to be rejected, because the Roman public did not tolerate slaves of this sort overlooking and controlling their masters. The professional figures and those illustrative of character, which were sketched more broadly and farcically, bore the process of transference better than the polished figures of every-day life; but even of those delineations the Roman editor had to lay aside several—and these probably the very finest and most original, such as the Thais, the match-maker, the moon-conjuress, and the mendicant priest of Menander —and to keep chiefly to those foreign trades, with which the Greek luxury of the table, already very generally diffused in Rome, had made his audience familiar. If the professional cook and the jester in the comedy of Plautus are delineated with so striking vividness and so much relish, the explanation lies in the fact, that Greek cooks had even at that time daily offered their services in the Roman market, and that Cato found it necessary even to instruct his steward not to keep a jester. In like manner the translator could make no use of a very large portion of the elegant Attic conversation in his originals. The Roman citizen or farmer stood in much the same relation to the refined revelry and debauchery of Athens, as the German of a provincial town to the mysteries of the Palais Royal. A science of cookery, in the strict sense, never entered into his thoughts; the dinner-parties no doubt continued to be very numerous in the Roman imitation, but everywhere the plain Roman roast pork predominated over the variety of baked meats and the refined sauces and dishes of fish. Of the riddles and drinking songs, of the Greek rhetoric and philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet only a stray trace now and then in the Roman adaptation.

Construction of the Plot

The havoc, which the Roman editors were compelled in deference to their audience to make in the originals, drove them inevitably into methods of cancelling and amalgamating incompatible with any artistic construction. It was usual not only to throw out whole character- parts of the original, but also to insert others taken from other comedies of the same or of another poet; a treatment indeed which, owing to the outwardly methodical construction of the originals and the recurrence of standing figures and incidents, was not quite so bad as it might seem. Moreover the poets, at least in the earlier period, allowed themselves the most singular liberties in the construction of the plot. The plot of the -Stichus- (performed in 554) otherwise so excellent turns upon the circumstance, that two sisters, whom their father urges to abandon their absent husbands, play the part of Penelopes, till the husbands return home with rich mercantile gains and with a beautiful damsel as a present for their father-in-law. In the -Casina-, which was received with quite special favour by the public, the bride, from whom the piece is named and around whom the plot revolves, does not make her appearance at all, and the denouement is quite naively described by the epilogue as "to be enacted later within." Very often the plot as it thickens is suddenly broken off, the connecting thread is allowed to drop, and other similar signs of an unfinished art appear. The reason of this is to be sought probably far less in the unskilfulness of the Roman editors, than in the indifference of the Roman public to aesthetic laws. Taste, however, gradually formed itself. In the later pieces Plautus has evidently bestowed more care on their construction, and the -Captivi- for instance, the -Pseudolus-, and the -Bacchides- are executed in a masterly manner after their kind. His successor Caecilius, none of whose pieces are extant, is said to have especially distinguished himself by the more artistic treatment of the subject.

Roman Barbarism

In the treatment of details the endeavour of the poet to bring matters as far as possible home to his Roman hearers, and the rule of police which required that the pieces should retain a foreign character, produced the most singular contrasts. The Roman gods, the ritual, military, and juristic terms of the Romans, present a strange appearance amid the Greek world; Roman -aediles- and -tresviri- are grotesquely mingled with -agoranomi- and -demarchi-; pieces whose scene is laid in Aetolia or Epidamnus send the spectator without scruple to the Velabrum and the Capitol. Such a patchwork of Roman local tints distributed over the Greek ground is barbarism enough; but interpolations of this nature, which are often in their naive way very ludicrous, are far more tolerable than that thorough alteration of the pieces into a ruder shape, which the editors deemed necessary to suit the far from Attic culture of their audience. It is true that several even of the new Attic poets probably needed no accession to their coarseness; pieces like the -Asinaria- of Plautus cannot owe their unsurpassed dulness and vulgarity solely to the translator. Nevertheless coarse incidents so prevail in the Roman comedy, that the translators must either have interpolated them or at least have made a very one-sided selection. In the endless abundance of cudgelling and in the lash ever suspended over the back of the slaves we recognize very clearly the household-government inculcated by Cato, just as we recognize the Catonian opposition to women in the never-ending disparagement of wives. Among the jokes of their own invention, with which the Roman editors deemed it proper to season the elegant Attic dialogue, several are almost incredibly unmeaning and barbarous.[203 - For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in the -Stichus- of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question—whether it is better to marry a virgin or a widow—is inserted, merely in order that it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women. But that is a trifle compared with the following specimen. In Menander's -Plocium- a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:——Echo d' epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soiTout'; eit' ap' ouchi; kurian tes oikiasKai ton agron kai panton ant' ekeinesEchoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotatonApasi d' argalea 'stin, ouk emoi mono,Tio polu mallon thugatri.—pragm' amachon legeis'Eu oida—In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:—-Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est?—Ua! rogas?—Qui tandem?—Taedet rientionis, quae mihiUbi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo saviumDat jejuna anima.—Nil peccat de savio:Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.-]

Metrical Treatment

So far as concerns metrical treatment on the other hand, the flexible and sounding verse on the whole does all honour to the composers. The fact that the iambic trimeters, which predominated in the originals and were alone suitable to their moderate conversational tone, were very frequently replaced in the Latin edition by iambic or trochaic tetrameters, is to be attributed not so much to any want of skill on the part of the editors who knew well how to handle the trimeter, as to the uncultivated taste of the Roman public which was pleased with the sonorous magnificence of the long verse even where it was not appropriate.

Scenic Arrangements

Lastly, the arrangements for the production of the pieces on the stage bore the like stamp of indifference to aesthetic requirements on the part of the managers and the public. The stage of the Greeks—which on account of the extent of the theatre and from the performances taking place by day made no pretension to acting properly so called, employed men to represent female characters, and absolutely required an artificial strengthening of the voice of the actor—was entirely dependent, in a scenic as well as acoustic point of view, on the use of facial and resonant masks. These were well known also in Rome; in amateur performances the players appeared without exception masked. But the actors who were to perform the Greek comedies in Rome were not supplied with the masks—beyond doubt much more artificial—that were necessary for them; a circumstance which, apart from all else in connection with the defective acoustic arrangements of the stage,[204 - Even when the Romans built stone theatres, these had not the sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).] not only compelled the actor to exert his voice unduly, but drove Livius to the highly inartistic but inevitable expedient of having the portions which were to be sung performed by a singer not belonging to the staff of actors, and accompanied by the mere dumb show of the actor within whose part they fell. As little were the givers of the Roman festivals disposed to put themselves to material expense for decorations and machinery. The Attic stage regularly presented a street with houses in the background, and had no shifting decorations; but, besides various other apparatus, it possessed more especially a contrivance for pushing forward on the chief stage a smaller one representing the interior of a house. The Roman theatre, however, was not provided with this; and we can hardly therefore throw the blame on the poet, if everything, even childbirth, was represented on the street.

Aesthetic Result

Such was the nature of the Roman comedy of the sixth century. The mode in which the Greek dramas were transferred to Rome furnishes a picture, historically invaluable, of the diversity in the culture of the two nations; but in an aesthetic and a moral point of view the original did not stand high, and the imitation stood still lower. The world of beggarly rabble, to whatever extent the Roman editors might take possession of it under the benefit of the inventory, presented in Rome a forlorn and strange aspect, shorn as it were of its delicate characteristics: comedy no longer rested on the basis of reality, but persons and incidents seemed capriciously or carelessly mingled as in a game of cards; in the original a picture from life, it became in the reproduction a caricature. Under a management which could announce a Greek agon with flute-playing, choirs of dancers, tragedians, and athletes, and eventually convert it into a boxing-match;[205 - III. XIII. Increase of Amusements] and in presence of a public which, as later poets complain, ran away en masse from the play, if there were pugilists, or rope-dancers, or even gladiators to be seen; poets such as the Roman composers were—workers for hire and of inferior social position—were obliged even perhaps against their own better judgment and their own better taste to accommodate themselves more or less to the prevailing frivolity and rudeness. It was quite possible, nevertheless, that there might arise among them individuals of lively and vigorous talent, who were able at least to repress the foreign and factitious element in poetry, and, when they had found their fitting sphere, to produce pleasing and even important creations.

Naevius

At the head of these stood Gnaeus Naevius, the first Roman who deserves to be called a poet, and, so far as the accounts preserved regarding him and the few fragments of his works allow us to form an opinion, to all appearance as regards talent one of the most remarkable and most important names in the whole range of Roman literature. He was a younger contemporary of Andronicus—his poetical activity began considerably before, and probably did not end till after, the Hannibalic war—and felt in a general sense his influence; he was, as is usually the case in artificial literatures, a worker in all the forms of art produced by his predecessor, in epos, tragedy, and comedy, and closely adhered to him in the matter of metres. Nevertheless, an immense chasm separates the poets and their poems. Naevius was neither freedman, schoolmaster, nor actor, but a citizen of unstained character although not of rank, belonging probably to one of the Latin communities of Campania, and a soldier in the first Punic war.[206 - The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused. Seeing that he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than 495. Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell. xii. 21. 45). That he had died as early as 550, as is usually stated, was doubted by Varro (ap. Cic. Brut. 15, 60), and certainly with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy. The sarcastic verses on Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of Zama. We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10), ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than Plautus. His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph. The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of explanation. At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in the army.] In thorough contrast to the language of Livius, that of Naevius is easy and clear, free from all stiffness and affectation, and seems even in tragedy to avoid pathos as it were on purpose; his verses, in spite of the not unfrequent -hiatus- and various other licences afterwards disallowed, have a smooth and graceful flow.[207 - Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from Naevius' tragedy of -Lycurgus- :—-Vos, qui regalis cordons custodiasAgitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita-;Or the famous words, which in the -Hector Profisciscens- Hector addresses to Priam:-Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato viro;-and the charming verse from the -Tarentilla-; —-Alii adnutat, alii adnictat; alium amat, alium tenet.-] While the quasi-poetry of Livius proceeded, somewhat like that of Gottsched in Germany, from purely external impulses and moved wholly in the leading-strings of the Greeks, his successor emancipated Roman poetry, and with the true divining-rod of the poet struck those springs out of which alone in Italy a native poetry could well up —national history and comedy. Epic poetry no longer merely furnished the schoolmaster with a lesson-book, but addressed itself independently to the hearing and reading public. Composing for the stage had been hitherto, like the preparation of the stage costume, a subsidiary employment of the actor or a mechanical service performed for him; with Naevius the relation was inverted, and the actor now became the servant of the composer. His poetical activity is marked throughout by a national stamp. This stamp is most distinctly impressed on his grave national drama and on his national epos, of which we shall have to speak hereafter; but it also appears in his comedies, which of all his poetic performances seem to have been the best adapted to his talents and the most successful. It was probably, as we have already said,[208 - III. XIV. Political Neutrality] external considerations alone that induced the poet to adhere in comedy so much as he did to the Greek originals; and this did not prevent him from far outstripping his successors and probably even the insipid originals in the freshness of his mirth and in the fulness of his living interest in the present; indeed in a certain sense he reverted to the paths of the Aristophanic comedy. He felt full well, and in his epitaph expressed, what he had been to his nation:

-Immortales mortales si foret fas fiere,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam;
Itaque, postquam est Orci traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier lingua Latina.-

Such proud language on the part of the man and the poet well befitted one who had witnessed and had personally taken part in the struggles with Hamilcar and with Hannibal, and who had discovered for the thoughts and feelings of that age—so deeply agitated and so elevated by mighty joy—a poetical expression which, if not exactly the highest, was sound, adroit, and national. We have already mentioned[209 - III. XIV. Political Neutrality] the troubles into which his licence brought him with the authorities, and how, driven presumably by these troubles from Rome, he ended his life at Utica. In his instance likewise the individual life was sacrificed for the common weal, and the beautiful for the useful.