atify the coarser tastes of the public by local
allusions or gross seasonings. But that kind of comedy which shrinks
from the rude breath of popular applause usually has in the end to give
way to less squeamish rivals; and thus, after the species had been
cultivated for about a century (c. 250-150 B.C.), _palliatae_ ceased to
be composed except for the amusement of select circles, though the works
of the most successful authors, Plautus and Terence, kept the stage even
after the establishment of the empire. Among the earlier writers of
_palliatae_ were the tragic poets Andronicus, Naevius and Ennius, but
they were alike surpassed by T. Maccius Plautus (254-184), nearly all of
whose comedies esteemed genuine by Varro--not less than 20 in
number--have been preserved, though twelve of them were not known to the
modern world before 1429. He was exclusively a comic poet, and, though
he borrowed his plots from the Greeks--from Diphilus and Philemon
apparently in preference to the more refined Menander--there was in him
a genuinely national as well as a genuinely popular element. Of the
extent of his originality it is impossible to judge; probably it lies in
his elaboration of types of character and the comic turns of his
dialogue rather than in his plots. Modern comedy is indebted to him in
all these points; and, in consequence of this fact, as well as of the
attention his text has for linguistic reasons received from scholarship
both ancient and modern, his merits have met with quite their full share
of recognition. Caecilius Statius (an Insubrian brought to Rome as a
captive c. 200) stands midway between Plautus and Terence, but no plays
of his remain. P. Terentius Afer (c. 185-159) was, as his cognomen
implies, a native of Carthage, of whose conqueror he enjoyed the
patronage. His six extant comedies seem to be tolerably close renderings
of their Greek originals, nearly all of which were plays of Menander. It
was the good fortune of the works of Terence to be preserved in an
exceptionally large number of MSS. in the monastic libraries of the
middle ages, and thus (as will be seen) to become a main link between
the ancient and the Christian drama. As a dramatist he is distinguished
by correctness of style rather than by variety in his plots or vivacity
in his characters; his chief merit--and at the same time the quality
which has rendered him so suitable for modern imitation--is to be sought
in the polite ease of his dialogue