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All the Plautine plays belong to the Palliatae, i.e. those of which the entire surroundings are Greek, the name being taken from the Pallium or Greek cloak worn by the actors. There was, however, in the Italian towns a species of comedy founded on Greek models but national in dress, manners, and tone, known as Comoedia Togata, of which Titinius was the greatest master.
He is the head of the 'gens togata; of the 'Senatus Populusque Romanus. In him Rome has risen again out of her grave, to awe the peoples once more by the Romani nominis umbra; and to found a new Empire; not as before, on physical force, and the awe of visible power; but on the deeper and more enduring ground of spiritual force, and the awe of the invisible world. An Empire, I say.
Quod tam grande Sophos clamat tibi turba togata; Non tu, Pomponi; caena diserta tua est. MART. Lib. vi. Ep. xlviii. Resounding plaudits though the crowd have rung Thy treat is eloquent, and not thy tongue. F. Lewis. THE world scarcely affords opportunities of making any observation more frequently, than on false claims to commendation.
By the extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which -de jure- took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off for the dramatists of the capital, and so the -fabula togata- seems in fact to have disappeared. II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy
"I give up," says he, "Gallia Togata; I demand Gallia Comata" he evidently wishes to be quite at his ease 'with six legions, and those made up to their full complement out of the army of Decimus Brutus, not only out of the troops whom he has enlisted himself; "and he is to keep possession of it as long as Marcus Brutus and Carus Cassius, as consuls, or as proconsuls, keep possession of their provinces."
The Senate, with its usual wisdom, multiplied the number of Roman colonies in the conquered territory, treated with moderation the tribes that submitted, and gave to Cisalpine Gaul the name of the Cisalpine or Hither Gallic Province, which was afterwards changed for that of Gallia Togata or Roman Gaul.
The designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as -Gallia togata-, which first occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the ordinary -usus loquendi-, describes this region presumably according to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights.
It was divided by the Romans into Gallia Cisalpina, Tonsa, or Togata, now Lombardy, between the Alps and the river Rubicon: and Gallograecia, a country of Asia Minor, the same as Galatia Garumna, the Garonne, one of the largest rivers of France, which, rising in the Pyrenees, flows through Guienne, forms the vast Bay of Garonne, and falls, by two mouths, into the British Seas.
That in reality the -togata- could only have its plot laid in the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their scene Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium, demonstrably had Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war.
This is the case with all the comedies of Plautus and Terence. But they had also a comoedia togata; so called from the Roman dress which was usually worn in it. Afranius is celebrated as the principal writer in this walk.
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