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This genial humour Horace tried with success to reproduce, but he is conscious of inferiority to the master. In English literature Dryden is the writer who most recalls him, though rather in his higher than in his more sportive moods. The last class of dramatic poets whom we shall mention in the first period are the writers of Atellanae.
After satires, which had afforded the people subject of coarse mirth and laughter, were, by this regulation, reduced to form and acting, by degrees became an art, the Roman youth left it to players by profession, and began, as formerly, to act farces at the end of their regular pieces. These dramas were called Exodia, and were generally woven with the Atellanae Comedies.
The actors, it appears, sang as well as gesticulated, until the time of Livius, who set apart a singer for the interludes, while he himself only used his voice in the dialogue. In its dramatic form it disappears early from history, and assumes with Ennius a different character, which has clung to it ever since. Besides these we have to notice the Mime and the Atellanae.
If the Atellanae were the most indigenous form of literature in which the young nobles indulged, the different kinds of love-poem were certainly the least in accordance with the Roman traditions of art. Nevertheless, unattainable as was the spontaneous grace of the Greek erotic muse, there were some who aspired to cultivate her.
These were borrowed from the Osci, and were always acted by the Roman youth. Tacitus speaks of Atellanae Comedies written in the spirit and language of the Osci having been acted in his time. It is thought that the Etruscans possessed histories, poems, and dramas, and, if these, then certainly they knew the Pantomimic Art, out of which, in all probability, their dramatic entertainments grew.
After the libellous freedom of speech in which they at first indulged had been restrained by law, the Atellanae seem to have established themselves as a privileged form of pleasantry, in which the young nobles could, without incurring the disgrace of removal from their tribe or incapacity for military service, indulge their readiness of speech and impromptu dramatic talent.
The Oscans, whose language soon ceasing to be spoken, survived only in these farces, were at least so near akin to the Romans, that their dialect was immediately understood by a Roman audience: for how else could the Romans have derived any amusement from the Atellanae?
I. II. Religion We shall show in due time that the Atellanae and Fescenninae belonged not to Campanian and Etruscan, but to Latin art. Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the -calamistri Maecenatis-. I. III. Alba Of this character were the Servian walls.
Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred spirit with Menander and Terence by the judgment of posterity that he wore the -toga- as Menander would have worn it had he been an Italian, and by his own expression that to his mind Terence surpassed all other poets. Atellanae The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman literature.
We therefore defer noticing them until our account of that period. There still remain the fabulae Atellanae, so called from Atella, an Oscan town of Campania, and often mentioned as Osci Ludi. These were more honourable than the other kinds, inasmuch as they were performed by the young nobles, wearing masks, and giving the reins to their power of improvisation.
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