But before the age with which this book deals, the long succession of great dramatic writers had come to an end.  Accius, the nephew of Pacuvius, had died as a very old man when Cicero was a boy;[500] and in the national comedy no one had been found to follow Afranius.  The times were disturbed, the population was restless, and continually incorporating heterogeneous elements:  much amusement could be found in the life of the Forum, and in rioting and disorder; gladiatorial shows were organised on a large scale.  To sit still and watch a good play would become more tiresome as the plebs grew more restless, and probably even the taste of the better educated was degenerating as the natural result of luxury and idleness.  Politics and political personages were the really exciting features of the time, and there are signs that audiences took advantage of the plays to express their approval or dislike of a statesman.  In a letter to Atticus, written in the summer of 59,[501] the first year of the triumvirate, Cicero describes with enthusiasm how at the Ludi Apollinares the actor Diphilus made an allusion to Pompey in the words (from an unknown tragedy then being acted), “Nostra miseria tu es—­Magnus,” and was forced to repeat them many times.  When he delivered the line

  “Eandem virtutem istam veniet tempus cum graviter gemes,”

the whole theatre broke out into frantic applause.  So too in a well-known passage of the speech pro Sestio he tells from hearsay how the great tragic actor Aesopus, acting in the Eurysaces of Accius, was again and again interrupted by applause as he cleverly adapted the words to the expected recall from exile of the orator, his personal friend.[502] The famous words “Summum amicum, summo in bello, summo ingenio praeditum,” were among those which the modest Cicero tells us were taken up by the people with enthusiasm,—­greatly, without doubt, to the detriment of the play.  The whole passage is one of great graphic power, and only fails to rouse us too to enthusiasm when we reflect that Cicero was not himself present.

From this and other passages we have abundant evidence that tragedies were still acted; but Cicero nowhere in his correspondence, where we might naturally have expected to find it, nor in his philosophical works, gives us any idea of their educational or aesthetic influence either on himself or others.  He is constantly quoting the old plays, especially the tragedies, and knows them very well:  but he quotes them almost invariably as literature only.  Once or twice, as we shall see, he recalls the gesture or utterance of a great actor, but as a rule he is thinking of them as poetry rather than as plays.  It may be noted in this connexion that it was now becoming the fashion to write plays without any immediate intention of bringing them on the stage.  We read with astonishment in a letter of Cicero to his brother Quintus, then in Gaul, that the latter had taken to play-writing,