Page:Juvenal and Persius by G. G. Ramsay.djvu/43

 (2) An earlier form of Satire founded by Terentiua Varro, of which the characteristic feature was that it was non sola carminum varietate mixtum; and

(3) The kind distinguished from the Varronian kind by the preceding definition, and more particularly described by Diomedes as having been used by Pacuvius and Ennius, and defined as carmen quod e variis poematibus constabat.

But even so we have not reached the earliest form of Satura, which was of a dramatic kind. In recounting the history of the importation of dramatic games from Etruria into Rome in consequence of a pestilence in the year B.C. 364, Livy tells us (vii. 2) how the ludiones imported from Etruria danced Tuscan dances of a not ungraceful kind to the music of the pipe, but without words or gestures; how the native youth imitated these performances, adding to them the jocular bandying of verses amongst each other with appropriate gesticulations; till at last, improving upon these early efforts, non, sicid antea, Fescennino versu similem incompositum temere ac rudem alternis iaciebant; sed impletas modis saturas, descripto iam ad tibicinem cantu, motuque congruenti peragebant. Hence the introduction of the drama some years afterwards (B.C. 240) by Livius Andronicus qui ab saturis ausus est primus argumento fabulam serere, i.e. construct a play with a regular plot.

We thus see that the name of Satura was xxxix