Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/335

 ox THE EOMAN THEATRE. 309 author in this way. Of these Comedies we have nothing whatever remaining, and find so few notices on the subject, that we cannot even decide with certainty, whether the torjatce were original Comedies of home growth, or only Grecian Comedies recast with Roman manners. The last is more probable, as Afranius lived in the older epoch, when Roman genius had not even begun to stir its wings towards original invention; and yet on the other hand it is not easy to conceive how the Attic Comedies could have been adapted, without great violence, to a locality so entirely different. The tenour of Roman life was in general earnest and grave, though in personal intercourse they had no small turn for wit and joviality. The difference of ranks among the Romans had its political boundaries very strongly marked, the wealth of private persons was often almost regal; their women lived much more in society, and played a much more important part there than the Grecian women did ; by virtue of which independence they also took their full share in the profligacy which went hand- in-hand with exterior refinement. The differences being so essential, an original Roman Comedy would be a remarkable phenomenon, and one that would exhibit this sovereign nation in quite a new point of view. That this was not effected in the Comoedia togata, is proved by the indifference with which the ancients express them- selves on the subject. Quintilian does not scruple to say, that Latin literature limps worst in Comedy. This is his expression, word for word. To come to Tragedy ; we must remark in the first place, that in Rome, the acting of the bon-owed Greek Tragedy was considerably dislocated by the circumstance, that there was no place for the Chorus in the Orchestra, where the principal spectators, the Knights and Senators, had their seats : the Chorus therefore appeared on the stage. Here then was the very incongruity, which we alleged as an objection to the modern attempts to introduce the Chorus. Other deviations also, scarcely for the better, from the Greek style of acting, were favourably received. At the very first introduction of regular plays, Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth and Rome's first tragic poet and actor, in his monodies (viz. those lyric parts which were to be sung by a single person and not by the Chorus) separated the song from the mimetic dance, only the latter being left to the actor, while the singing part was performed by a boy stationed beside the flute-player. Among the Greeks in their better times, both the tragic song and the rhythmical gesticulation which accompanied it were certainly so simple, that a single individual might do ample justice to both. But the Romans, it seems, prefeiTed isolated excellence to harmonious union. Hence, at a later period, their avidity for the pantomimes, which attained to great perfection in the times of Augus- tus. To judge from the names of the most famous performers in this kind, e. rj. Pylades and Bathyllus, it was by Greeks that this dumb eloquence was exercised in Rome, and the lyric parts, which were expressed by their gesticulative dance, were delivered in Greek. Lastly, Roscius, and probably not he alone, frequently played without a mask : of which procedure there never was an instance, so far as we know, among the Greeks. It might further the display of his art ; and here again, the satisfaction which this gave the Romans proves, that they had more taste for the dispropoi'tion- ately conspicuous talent of a virtuoso, than for the harmonious impression of a work of art considered as a whole. In the Tragic Literature of the Romans, two epochs may be distinguished ; the older epoch of Livius Andronicus, Naevius, Ennius, also of Pacuvius and Attius, both which last flourished awhile later than Plautus and Terence; and the polished epoch of the Augustan age. The former produced none but translators and remodellers of Greek works, yet probably succeeded better and with more fidelity in the tragic than