ore care generally was expended on
the exhibitions.(17) Now also there is frequent mention of the
bestowal of a prize of victory--which implies the competition of
several pieces--of the audience taking a lively part for or against
the leading actors, of cliques and -claqueurs-. The decorations
and machinery were improved; moveable scenery artfully painted
and audible theatrical thunder made their appearance under the
aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in 655;(18) and twenty years
later (675) under the aedileship of the brothers Lucius and Marcus
Lucullus came the changing of the decorations by shifting the
scenes. To the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman
actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (d. about 692 at a great age),
throughout several generations the ornament and pride of the Roman
stage,(19) the friend and welcome boon-companion of Sulla--to whom
we shall have to recur in the sequel.

Satura

In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is the
insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth century had
occupied decidedly the first place in the literature destined for
reading; it had numerous representatives in the seventh, but not a
single one who had even temporary success. From the present epoch
there is hardly anything to be reported save a number of rude
attempts to translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian
Annals, such as the "Istrian War" of Hostius and the "Annals
(perhaps) of the Gallic War" by Aulus Furius (about 650), which to
all appearance took up the narrative at the very point where Ennius
had broken off--the description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577.
In didactic and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears. The only
successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to show,
belong to the domain of what was called -Satura---a species of art,
which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed of any form and
admitted any sort of contents, and accordingly in default of all
proper generic characters derived its individual shape wholly from
the individuality of each poet, and occupied a position not merely
on the boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than half
beyond the bounds of literature proper. The humorous poetical
epistles, which one of the younger men of the Scipionic circle,
Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, sent home
from the camp of Corinth to his friends, were still read with
pleasure a century afterw