—­En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei,
Tounoma ta d’ alla panta ton eleutheron
Oudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.—­

25.  For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in the -Stichus- of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question—­whether it is better to marry a virgin or a widow—­is inserted, merely in order that it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women.  But that is a trifle compared with the following specimen.  In Menander’s -Plocium- a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:—­

—­Echo d’ epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soi
Tout’; eit’ ap’ ouchi; kurian tes oikias
Kai ton agron kai panton ant’ ekeines
Echoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotaton
Apasi d’ argalea ’stin, ouk emoi mono,
Tio polu mallon thugatri.—­pragm’ amachon legeis’
Eu oida—­

In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:—­

-Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est?—­Ua! rogas?—­
Qui tandem?—­Taedet rientionis, quae mihi
Ubi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo savium
Dat jejuna anima.—­Nil peccat de savio: 
Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.-

26.  Even when the Romans built stone theatres, these had not the sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).

27.  III.  XIII.  Increase of Amusements

28.  The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused.  Seeing that he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than 495.  Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell. xii. 21. 45).  That he had died as early as 550, as is usually stated, was doubted by Varro (ap.  Cic.  Brut. 15, 60), and certainly with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy.  The sarcastic verses on Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of Zama.  We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10), ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than Plautus.  His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph.  The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy of explanation.  At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in the army.

29.  Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from Naevius’ tragedy of -Lycurgus- :—­

-Vos, qui regalis cordons custodias Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos, Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita-;