TRABEA.
The plays of Quintus Trabea, supposed to belong chiefly to the class called Togatæ, are frequently cited by the grammarians, and are mentioned with approbation by Cicero. He in particular commends the lines where this poet so agreeably describes the credulity and overweening satisfaction of a lover—
“Tantâ lætitiâ auctus sum ut mihi non constem:
Nunc demum mihi animus ardet.
Lena, delinita argento, nutum observabit meum—
Quid velim quid studeam: adveniens digito impellam januam:
Fores patebunt—de improviso Chrysis, ubi me aspexit,
Alacris obviam mihi veniet, complexum exoptans meum;
Mihi se dedet.—Fortunam ipsam anteibo fortunis meis[296].”
The name of Trabea was made use of in a well known deception practised on Joseph Scaliger by Muretus. Scaliger piqued himself on his faculty of distinguishing the characteristic styles of ancient writers. In order to entrap him, Muretus showed him some verses, pretending that he had received them from Germany, where they had been transcribed from an ancient MS. attributed to Q. Trabea—
“Here, si querelis, ejulatu, fletibus,
Medicina fieret miseriis mortalium,
Auro parandæ lachrymæ contra forent:
Nunc hæc ad minuenda mala non magis valent
Quam Nænia præficæ ad excitandos mortuos:
Res turbidæ consilium, non fletum, expetunt[297].”
Scaliger was so completely deceived, that he afterwards cited these verses, as lines from the play of Harpace, by Q. Trabea, in the first edition of his Commentary on Varro’s Dialogues De Re Rustica, in order to illustrate some obscure expression of his author—“Quis enim,” says he, “tam aversus a Musis, tamque humanitatis expers, qui horum publicatione offendatur.” Muretus, not content with this malicious trick, afterwards sent him some other verses, to which he affixed the name of Attius, expressing, but more diffusely, the same idea. Scaliger, in his next edition of Varro, published them, along with the former lines, as fragments from the Œnomaus, a tragedy by Attius, and a plagiarism from Trabea—observing, at the end of his note, “Fortasse de hoc nimis.” Muretus said nothing for two years; but, at the end of that period, he published a volume of his own Latin poems, and, along with them, under the title Afficta Trabeæ, both sets of verses which [pg 175]he had thus palmed on Scaliger for undoubted remnants of antiquity. The whole history of the imposture was fully disclosed in a note: Both poems, it was acknowledged, were versions of a fragment, attributed by some to Menander, and by others to Philemon, beginning,—Ει τα δακρυα ἡμιν, κ.τ.λ. They have been also translated into Latin by Naugerius[298].
The progress of time, the ravages of war, and the intervention of a period of barbarism, which have deprived us of so many dramatic works of the Romans, have fortunately spared six plays of