retained
and applied were welcome; but every piece of nonsense
was of itself privileged; in this preposterous world Bacchus
is applied to for water and the fountain-nymph for wine.
Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly
so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11)
As regards metrical form, these poets gave themselves, as they tell us,
"but moderate trouble with the versification"; the language abounded,
even in the pieces prepared for publication, with vulgar expressions
and low newly-coined words. The mime was, it is plain,
in substance nothing but the former farce; with this exception,
that the character-masks and the standing scenery of Atella
as well as the rustic impress are dropped, and in their room
the life of the capital in its boundless liberty and licence
is brought on the stage. Most pieces of this sort were doubtless
of a very fugitive nature and made no pretension to a place
in literature; but the mimes of Laberius, full of pungent
delineation of character and in point of language and metre
exhibiting the hand of a master, maintained their ground in it;
and even the historian must regret that we are no longer permitted
to compare the drama of the republican death-struggle in Rome
with its great Attic counterpart.

Dramatic Spectacles

With the worthlessness of dramatic literature the increase
of scenic spectacles and of scenic pomp went hand in hand.
Dramatic representations obtained their regular place in the public life
not only of the capital but also of the country towns; the former
also now at length acquired by means of Pompeius a permanent theatre
(699;(12)), and the Campanian custom of stretching canvas
over the theatre for the protection of the actors and spectators
during the performance, which in ancient times always took place
in the open air, now likewise found admission to Rome (676).
As at that time in Greece it was not the--more than pale-Pleiad
of the Alexandrian dramatists, but the classic drama, above all
the tragedies of Euripides, which amidst the amplest development
of scenic resources kept the stage, so in Rome at the time of Cicero
the tragedies of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, and the comedies
of Plautus were those chiefly produced. While the latter had been
in the previous period supplanted by the more tasteful but in point
of comic vigour far inferior Terence, Roscius and Varro,
or in other words the theatre and philology,