erefore called
-personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:
the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically,
and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were
formerly termed "masked players" (-personati-).

An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of
Fescennium," which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of
the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of
Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them
with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan.
That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village,
cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree
probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from
the silence of inscriptions.

11. The close and original connection, which Livy in particular
represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura-
with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable. The
difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was
just about as great as is at present the difference between a
professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the
dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the
Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there
subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced. The
drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any
recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a
text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto
borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied
nearly the place of the Greek chorus. This course of development
nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce,
which was performed by amateurs.

12. In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by
professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549).
The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but
it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan
was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before
Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16). This view is not inconsistent with
the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan
players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other
actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take
part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that
the Atell