National Comedy
Afranius

We have formerly shown(7) that in all probability already in the course of the sixth century a national Roman comedy (-togata-) was added to the Graeco-Roman (-palliata-), as a portraiture not of the distinctive life of the capital, but of the ways and doings of the Latin land.  Of course the Terentian school rapidly took possession of this species of comedy also; it was quite in accordance with its spirit to naturalise Greek comedy in Italy on the one hand by faithful translation, and on the other hand by pure Roman imitation.  The chief representative of this school was Lucius Afranius (who flourished about 66).  The fragments of his comedies remaining give no distinct impression, but they are not inconsistent with what the Roman critics of art remark regarding him.  His numerous national comedies were in their construction thoroughly formed on the model of the Greek intrigue-piece; only, as was natural in imitation, they were simpler and shorter.  In the details also he borrowed what pleased him partly from Menander, partly from the older national literature.  But of the Latin local tints, which are so distinctly marked in Titinius the creator of this species of art, we find not much in Afranius;(8) his subjects retain a very general character, and may well have been throughout imitations of particular Greek comedies with merely an alteration of costume.  A polished eclecticism and adroitness in composition—­ literary allusions not unfrequently occur—­are characteristic of him as of Terence:  the moral tendency too, in which his pieces approximated to the drama, their inoffensive tenor in a police point of view, their purity of language are common to him with the latter.  Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred spirit with Menander and Terence by the judgment of posterity that he wore the -toga- as Menander would have worn it had he been an Italian, and by his own expression that to his mind Terence surpassed all other poets.

Atellanae

The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman literature.  It was in itself very old:(9) long before Rome arose, the merry youths of Latium may have improvised on festal occasions in the masks once for all established for particular characters.  These pastimes obtained a fixed local background in the Latin “asylum of fools,” for which they selected the formerly Oscan town of Atella, which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and was thereby handed over to comic use; thenceforth the name of “Oscan plays” or “plays of Atella” was commonly used for these exhibitions.(10) But these pleasantries had nothing to do with the stage(11) and with literature; they were performed by amateurs where and when they pleased, and the text was not written or at any rate was not published.  It was not until the present period that the Atellan piece was handed over to actors properly so called,(12) and was employed, like the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece