The name of Atilius is made known to us by Cicero, who mentions him three times. In a letter to Atticus,[[231]] he calls him a most crabbed poet (poeta durissimus,) and quotes the following line from one of his comedies:—
Suam cuique sponsam, mihi meam; suum cuique amorem, mihi meum.
In the treatise “De Finibus,”[[232]] he speaks of him as the author of a bad translation of the Electra of Sophocles, and refers to the testimony of Licinius, who pronounces him as “hard as iron”——
Ferreum scriptorem; verum opinor; scriptorem tamen
Ut legendus sit;
and, lastly, in the “Tusculan Disputations,”[[233]] he gives the title of one of his plays—Μισογυνος (the Woman-hater.) Of his birth and private history nothing has been recorded.
P. Licinius Tegula is generally supposed to have been one of the oldest of the Latin comic writers, having flourished as early as the beginning of the second century B. C. The few fragments which remain of his works afford no opportunity of determining how far he deserved the place assigned to him in the epigram of Volcatius.
Lavinius Luscius is severely criticised by Terence in his prologues to the Eunuchus, Heautontimorumenos, and Phormio, although he is not mentioned by name. Terence, however, defends the severity of his strictures, on the ground that Luscius was the first aggressor. In the first of the above-mentioned prologues, we are informed that he translated well; but, by unskilful alterations and adaptations of the plots, made bad Latin comedies out of good Greek ones:—
—— bene vertendo et describendo male
Ex Græcis bonis Latinas fecit non bonas.