THE ROMAN DRAMATISTS.

UNLIKE the early mental productions of any people whose literature is of native growth, the literary career of Rome begins with the drama. This is readily accounted for by the fact that it began with direct use of the Greek plays, without even an effort to disguise or hide the literary theft.

Liv'ius Androni'cus, the first to introduce the drama to the citizens of Rome, was a native of Magna Græcia, that settlement on the Italian shores which retained so much of the old Attic flavor and talent. He is said to have been taken prisoner and brought as a slave to Rome, where he repaid his enslavers by establishing the theatre after the Greek manner, and introducing plays directly adapted from Greek authors. His earliest play was produced about a year after the close of the first Punic war, being ascribed to 240 B.C.

Like other dramatists in the primitive days of theatrical performances, Andronicus was an actor, and for a considerable time the sole performer, of his own pieces. Afterward he employed a boy to declaim the parts which required much animation, while he himself made the proper gesticulations. The peculiar custom thus originated became usual in the Roman theatre, the final method being for the comedian to gesticulate to the declamation of others in all the monologues, and pronounce nothing himself but the verses of the dialogue; a custom seemingly calculated to take all naturalness out of their performances. Yet, with

their masks, and their distance from the spectators, it may have been difficult to tell who was speaking.

Andronicus produced both tragedies and comedies, but only the titles of them remain, and these indicate that they were all derived, perhaps directly translated, from Greek originals. The longest remnant extant of his works consists of but four lines. Cicero says that his plays were hardly worth a second reading. Another service which he rendered to his new countrymen was the translation of the Odyssey into Latin verse.

The next dramatist whose name appears was Cne'ius Na'vius, his earliest play being produced in the year 235 B.C. His works are lost, but they appear to have been all translated or adapted from Euripides and other Greek authors. He seems to have been a better comic than tragic artist. Cicero gives some specimens of his jokes, and appears to have highly enjoyed them, but they have a very poor flavor to our modern taste.

The principal effort of Nævius was to introduce comedies in the vein of Aristophanes on the Roman stage, and in this he met with a signal failure. He lampooned the elder Scipio, who, however, took no notice of him. But others did not bear his biting satire so quietly, and he was thrown into prison. Here he wrote some plays intended as peace offerings, and was released. The spirit of the old Athenian comedy was too strong in him, however, to be resisted, and he soon found new subjects for ridicule. He was finally driven from the city by the enemies he had thus made. With him ended the only effort to reproduce the personalities of the old comedy. It was not adapted to the Roman temper.

Nævius also produced a work called the Cyprian Iliad, which, however, was a direct translation from the Greek. He wrote, besides, a metrical chronicle of the first Punic war, which commences with the flight of Ene' as from Car

thage, and is full of mythological machinery. It is praised by Cicero, but only a few lines remain.

The next author of note was En'nius, a native of Cala'bria, born 239 B.C. He was called, in later times, the father of Roman song; and to judge from the existing fragments of his works, he greatly surpassed his predecessors in poetical genius, and in the art of versification.

He professed to have imitated Homer, and even declared that the soul and genius of the great Greek artist had revived in him through the medium of a peacock, under the Pythagorean idea of transmigration of souls. His works, however, are chiefly imitations of the Greek dramatists; and from their titles, and remaining fragments, seem rather direct translations from Sophocles and Euripides than originals.

Roman audiences liked their comedy, and probably their tragedy also, to be full of the action and bustle of a compli cated fable; and their writers appear to have gratified them in this by employing the most active of Greek plays, or even by condensing two Greek dramas into one Roman adaptation.

Ennius seems to have had little originality as a tragic artist. The satires, too, which he produced, were probably copied from Tuscan or Oscan writers. His greatest work is his poetic Annals, or Metrical Chronicle, of which a considerable portion remains. It celebrates Roman history from the earliest times down, in a sort of versified newspaper style, and is written with much occasional beauty, but displays no invention or imagination, and gives us a picture of the Roman Consuls fighting over again the old Homeric battles.

The remaining names of importance among the Roman comedians are those of Plautus, Cæcil'ius Statius, and TerOf these, however, only the first and last have any plays existing; Cæcilius, whom Cicero praises as the best of

ence.

Roman comedians, being represented by a long list of fragments, but no works of any extent. After these writers some half dozen other names, indicated to us by a few lines only, close the list of comic authors.

With these Roman comedians were contemporary two tragedians, of considerable original power, and of great popularity with their countrymen. These were Pacu'vius. and At'tius, the latter somewhat later in time, being born. about 170 B.C. These authors, like the preceding tragedians, copied largely from the Greek, though making many changes in the plots and language of the Greek plays. The fragments of their works which remain are full of original expressions.

We have nothing left of their writings except some short passages, and the titles of a portion of them. With Attius the Roman drama may be said to close. Tragedies were written after his time, but none that achieved success on the stage.

In fact the social condition of Rome after that period, and the love of its citizens for the bloody tragedy of the amphitheatre, must have exercised a most depressing influence on the further development of the drama, though the works of the old comedians long continued popular.

PLAU'TUS.

BORN ABOUT 254 B.C.

T. Maccius Plautus, the greatest comic poet of Rome, was a native of Sarʼsina, a village of Umbria. His name signifies splay-foot, a common characteristic of the Umbrians. We are in ignorance of his early life, and can only surmise that he came to Rome while young, acquiring there a complete knowledge of the Latin language, and becoming familiar with Greek literature. He probably was never made a full citizen of Rome.

His earliest employment was at the theatres. What this employment was we are not aware, but it was sufficiently lucrative to enable him to leave Rome and start some business on his own account. All we know about this business is that he failed in it, lost all his money, and returned to Rome, where he was obliged to earn a living by turning a hand mill, the ordinary punishment of worthless slaves.

While thus employed he composed three plays, which he sold to the managers of the public games. The proceeds from these released him from his uncongenial labor. This period, about 224 B.C., may be fixed as the commencement of his literary career, and from this time forward he continued to produce plays with great fertility, until 184 B.C., when he died, in his seventieth year.

There were in all one hundred and thirty plays attributed to him, but Roman critics considered the most of these as spurious, limiting the number of genuine plays extant in the last years of the Republic to twenty-one, of which undoubted plays we are fortunate enough to possess twenty. The text of these, however, is in such a defective and corrupt state that it is impossible to read them with full appreciation and comfort.

Plautus availed himself very freely of the works of Greek authors. And as Nævius had found it dangerous to imitate the old comedy of Athens, Plautus turned his attention to the new, making Menander his model, and adapting freely his plots, as also those of Diphilus, Philemon and others. Yet while using no effort to conceal this literary piracy, and, in fact, closely preserving the tone of the Greek drama, he always made his characters distinctively Roman, and won the popular sympathies by his keen appreciation of life and manners in his adopted city.

It was not for the educated and aristocratic circles that he wrote, but for the people at large, and he met their