United States or Moldova ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


The origin of these farces, as indeed of all kinds of Latin comedy, and probably also of the literary satura, is to be found in the jokes and rude fun of the country festivals, and especially perhaps, as Horace tells us of the harvest amusements : Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit, Libertasque recurrentis accepta per annos Lusit amabiliter, etc.

Alternis cantemus, amant alterna Camenæ. Where did anyone ever see a porch or peristyle of that sort? What could be more opposed we will not say to the truth, for the scholastics hold it very cheap, but to probability?

"Agricolae prisci, fortes, parvoque beati, Condita post frumenta, levantes tempore festo Corpus, et ipsum animum spe finis dura ferentem, Cum sociis operum, et pueris, et conjuge fida, Tellurem porco, Silvanum lacte piabant; Floribus et vino Genium memorem brevis aevi. Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit."

After Johnson's death she published a volume of her reminiscences of him, which may be allowed to have been worthy neither of him nor of her, and which was ridiculed by Peter Pindar in "A Town Eclogue," in which the rivals Bozzy and Piozzi, on Virgil's principle Alternis dicetis, amant alterna Camaenae relate in turn anecdotes of Johnson's way of life, his witty sayings, &c., &c.