The early Roman entertainments only consisted of the military and sacred dances, and the scenes in the circus.  With the advent of the arts of Greece the austerity hitherto practised by the Romans, which had arisen, says Duray, “Much more from poverty than conviction,” for “Two or three generations had sufficed to change a city which had only known meagre festivities and rustic delights into the home of revelry and pleasure.”

With the Romans, in their Pantomimic entertainments, the whole gamut of the emotions were gone through.

When the Greek drama was brought into Rome by Livius Andronicus, the Fabulae Atellanae, or Laudi Osci—­derived from the town of Atella, in Campania, between Capua and Naples—­was still employed to furnish the Interludes, and just in a similar way as the Satyra Extemporal Interludes supplied the Grecian stage.  None of these Atellan Farces have been committed to us, but Cicero, in a letter to his friend Papyrius Paetus, speaks of them as the “More delicate burlesque of the old Atellan Farces.”  From them also, we derive the Extemporal Comedy, or Comedia del’ Arte of Italy (afterwards to be noted), with its characters, Harlequin, Clown, Pierrot, and the like, associated with English and Italian Pantomime, and the progenitor also of all those light forms of entertainment known as the Masque, the Opera, and the Vaudeville.  On English dramatic literature the Italian Extemporal Comedies and their Pantomimical characters have also had a considerable amount of influence.

Livy mentions that actors were sent for (circa 364 B.C.) from Etruria, who, without verses or any action expressive of verses, danced not ungracefully, after the Tuscan manner to the flute.  In process of time the Roman youth began to imitate these dancers intermixing raillery with unpolished verses, their gestures corresponding with the sense of the words.  Thus were these plays received at Rome, and being improved and refined by frequent performance the Roman actors acquired the name of Histriones, from the Etruscan Hister, meaning a dancer or a stage player. (From this we obtain our words histrion and histrionic).  But their dialogue did not consist of unpremeditated and coarse jests in such rude verses as were used by the Fescennini, but of satires, accompanied with music set to the flute, recited with suitable gestures.  After satires, which had afforded the people subject of coarse mirth and laughter, were, by this regulation, reduced to form and acting, by degrees became an art, the Roman youth left it to players by profession, and began, as formerly, to act farces at the end of their regular pieces.  These dramas were called Exodia, and were generally woven with the Atellanae Comedies.  These were borrowed from the Osci, and were always acted by the Roman youth.  Tacitus speaks of Atellanae Comedies written in the spirit and language of the Osci having been acted in his time.