Eum suus pater cum pallio ab amica abduxit uno.
[20] 'What I in the theatre here have made good by the applause given to me, to think that any of these great people should now dare to interfere with! How much better thing is the slavery here' (i.e. represented in this play), 'than the liberty we actually enjoy?'
[21] 'I have always held liberty to be of more value and a better thing than money.' The reading is that given by Munk.
[22] Mommsen remarks that, in the fragments of this poem, the action is generally represented in the present tense.
[23] Brutus, 19.
[24] 'I, for my part, as I listen to my mother-in-law, Laelia (for women more easily preserve the pure idiom of antiquity, because, from their limited intercourse with the world, they retain always their earlier impressions), in listening, I say to her, I fancy that I am listening to Plautus or Naevius. The very tones of her voice are so natural and simple, that she seems absolutely free from affectation or imitation; from this I gather that her father spoke, and her ancestors all spoke, in the very same way.'—Cicero, De Oratore iii. 12.
CHAPTER IV.
Ennius.
The impulse given to Latin literature by Naevius was mainly in two directions, that of comedy and of a rude epic poetry, drawing its subjects from Roman traditions and contemporary history. In comedy the work begun by him was carried on with great vigour and success by his younger contemporary Plautus; and, in a strictly chronological history of Roman literature, his plays would have to be examined next in order. But it will be more convenient to defer the consideration of Roman comedy, as a whole, till a later chapter, and for the present to direct attention to the results produced by the immediate successor of Naevius in epic poetry, Q. Ennius.