He beats me hollow. Blockhead, donkey, dolt,
Fool, leaden-brains, and all those pretty names—
They might suit me; to him they don’t apply:
His monstrous folly wants a name to itself.”
The extant comedies of Terence are,
- The Andrian Maid (Andria).
- The Mother-in-law (Hecyra).
- The Self-Tormentor (Heautontimoroumenos).
- The Eunuch (Eunuchus).
- Phormio (taken wholly from a Greek comedy of Apollodorus).
- The Brothers (Adelphi).
Decline of the Drama.—While the comedies of Terence were drawing crowded houses, tragedy, which Ennius attempted to popularize, that the heroic examples of early times might be emulated by his countrymen, was successfully cultivated by his nephew Pacuvius “the Learned” (220-132 B.C.). The thirteen tragedies of Pacuvius (an accomplished painter as well as poet) were long favorites, particularly with the educated classes. The finest of them, “Orestes in Slavery,” contained the famous scene between the bosom friends Py’lades and Orestes, in which each offers his life for the other. At its representation, the audience leaped to their feet and shouted their applause.
But Rome was no genial home for the tragic drama, and both tragedy and comedy soon began to languish. With Terence, the glory of the Roman theatre expired. Rope-dancing, buffoonery, and the games of the circus, offered superior attractions; and as the Republic lapsed into the Empire, the degenerate taste of the people sought gratification in the sports of the arena, where gladiators fought together or with wild beasts hardly more of brutes than themselves. In this first period of the national literature, the history of the Roman drama is written. (Read Mommsen’s “History of Rome.”)
EPIC POETRY.
Nævius, meanwhile, ventured to appeal to the popular taste in a new department of poetry, with his epic, “the (First) Punic War”—in which contest, it will be remembered, the poet took an active part. It was written during his banishment at Utica, after he had signalized himself as a dramatist at Rome, and was a work which Cicero said “afforded him a pleasure as exquisite as the finest statue ever chiselled by Myron.”