meet hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the unfortunate Capuans and Atellans (18) and, what is remarkable, various sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.(19) In general no references to the events or circumstances of the present occur in the pieces of Plautus.  The only exceptions are, congratulations on the course of the war(20) or on the peaceful times; general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money, against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once—­in the -Curculio- —­a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and but little likely to cause offence(21) But even in the midst of such patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely in order, the poet interrupts himself;

-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-

and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.(22) The oldest Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable exception.  Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies, the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to circumstances and persons in Rome.  Among other liberties he not only ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need not have been ashamed: 

-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose, Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat, Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-

As he himself says,

-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-

he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put dangerous questions, such as: 

-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-

which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as: 

-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-

But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage-invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate them at all.  Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies, and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and recantation in other comedies.  These quarrels, apparently, drove him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his example—­one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius.  Thus the result was accomplished—­not much less unique of its kind than the conquest of Hannibal—­that, during an epoch of the most feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly destitute of political tinge.