The tragic drama of the Romans is far less known to us than the comic:  on the whole the same features, which have been noticed in the case of comedy, are presented by tragedy also.  The dramatic stock, in like manner, was mainly formed by translations of Greek pieces.  The preference was given to subjects derived from the siege of Troy and the legends immediately connected with it, evidently because this cycle of myths alone was familiar to the Roman public through instruction at school; by their side incidents of striking horror predominate, such as matricide or infanticide in the -Eumenides-, the -Alcmaeon-, the -Cresphontes-, the -Melanippe-, the -Medea-, and the immolation of virgins in the -Polyxena-, the -Erechthides-, the -Andromeda-, the -Iphigenia- —­we cannot avoid recalling the fact, that the public for which these tragedies were prepared was in the habit of witnessing gladiatorial games.  The female characters and ghosts appear to have made the deepest impression.  In addition to the rejection of masks, the most remarkable deviation of the Roman edition from the original related to the chorus.  The Roman theatre, fitted up doubtless in the first instance for comic plays without chorus, had not the special dancing-stage (-orchestra-) with the altar in the middle, on which the Greek chorus performed its part, or, to speak more correctly, the space thus appropriated among the Greeks served with the Romans as a sort of pit; accordingly the choral dance at least, with its artistic alternations and intermixture of music and declamation, must have been omitted in Rome, and, even if the chorus was retained, it had but little importance.  Of course there were various alterations of detail, changes in the metres, curtailments, and disfigurements; in the Latin edition of the -Iphigenia- of Euripides, for instance, the chorus of women was—­either after the model of another tragedy, or by the editor’s own device—­converted into a chorus of soldiers.  The Latin tragedies of the sixth century cannot be pronounced good translations in our sense of the word;(41) yet it is probable that a tragedy of Ennius gave a far less imperfect image of the original of Euripides than a comedy of Plautus gave of the original of Menander.

Moral Effect of Tragedy

The historical position and influence of Greek tragedy in Rome were entirely analogous to those of Greek comedy; and while, as the difference in the two kinds of composition necessarily implied, the Hellenistic tendency appeared in tragedy under a purer and more spiritual form, the tragic drama of this period and its principal representative Ennius displayed far more decidedly an anti-national and consciously propagandist aim.  Ennius, hardly the most important but certainly the most influential poet of the sixth century, was not a Latin by birth, but on the contrary by virtue of his origin half a Greek.  Of Messapian descent and Hellenic training, he settled in his thirty-fifth