Page:The history of Rome. Translated with the author's sanction and additions.djvu/254

234 racters of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called; Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and the wise Dossennus (masks which have been cleverly and strikingly compared to the two servants, the pantalon and the dottore, in the Italian comedy of Punch) already belonged to the earliest Latin popular art. That they did so cannot of course be strictly proved; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first establishment, as moreover those Atellane masks were of decidedly Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting those rudiments themselves.

If our information respecting the earliest indigenous civilization and art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses imparted in this respect to the Romans from without. In a certain sense we may include under this head their becoming acquainted with foreign languages, particularly the Greek. To this latter language, of course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles (P. 187); but an acquaintance with it must have been not at all uncommon in the case of merchants. The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing, closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek (P. 221). The culture of the ancient world, however, was not based on the knowledge of foreign languages, nor on elementary technical accomplishments. An influence more important than any thus imparted was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the Hellenes. For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phœnicians or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised influence on the Italians. We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus given to the fine arts which can be traced to Carthage or Cære, and the Phœnicians and Etruscans may be in general regarded as presenting barren and unproductive types