Eum adiutare adsidueque una scribere:
Quod illi maledictum vemens esse existumant.
Eam laudem his ducit maxumam, quom illis placet,
Qui vobis univorsis et populo placent,
Quorum opera in bello, in otio, in negotio
Suo quisque tempore usus't sine superbia.[271]
Traditions both of Scipio and Laelius show that the report was believed in later times; and as his plays lay no claim to original invention, it is quite possible that he may have been directly assisted by them or by other men of rank in the task of translating and adapting. In any case the style in which they are written seems to reflect the simplicity and urbanity, the friendliness and the freedom from intolerance, though not the more serious interests or the graver aspirations of young men who, in their maturer years, had to play the greatest parts in the Roman State. In other passages of his prologues he vindicates himself from the reproach of 'contaminatio,' i.e. the combination of scenes from different plays, and also from that of plagiarising from Naevius and Plautus[272]. He contrasts the sobriety of his own art with the sensationalism of his detractor[273]; and in another place[274], he charges his opponent with having, by his bad style and literal adherence to his original, turned good Greek plays into bad Latin ones—
Qui bene vortendo et easdem scribendo male
Ex Graecis bonis Latinas fecit non bonas.
In the prologue to the Andria he professes to imitate the carelessness of Naevius, Plautus, Ennius, rather than the 'obscura diligentia' of his detractors.