esting things about
him,--how he laid the proper emphasis on the right words, reserving
his gesticulation until he came to them; and how he was never so much
admired when acting with a mask on, because the expression of his face
was so full of meaning[520].

In Cicero's later years, when Roscius was dead and Aesopus retired, we
hear no more of great actors of this type. With these two remarkable
men the great days of the Roman drama come to an end, and henceforward
the favourite plays are merely farces, of which a word must here be
said in the last place.

The origin of these farces, as indeed of all kinds of Latin comedy,
and probably also of the literary satura, is to be found in the jokes
and rude fun of the country festivals, and especially perhaps, as
Horace tells us of the harvest amusements[521]:

Fescennina per hunc inventa licentia morem
Versibus alternis opprobria rustica fudit,
Libertasque recurrentis accepta per annos
Lusit amabiliter, etc.

_Epist_. ii. 1. 145 foll.

These amusements were always accompanied with the music and dancing
so dear to the Italian peoples, and it is easy to divine how they may
have gradually developed into plays of a rude but tolerably fixed
type, with improvised dialogue, acted in the streets, or later in the
intervals between acts at the theatre, and eventually as afterpieces,
more after our own fashion.

In Cicero's day two kinds of farces were in vogue. In his earlier life
the so-called Atellan plays (fabulae Atellanae) were the favourites:
these were of indigenous Latin origin, and probably took their name
from the ruined town Atella, which might provide a permanent scenery
as the background of the plays without offending the jealousy of any
of the other Latin cities.[522] They were doubtless very comic, but it
was possible to get tired of them, for the number of stock
characters was limited, and the masks were always the same for each
character--the old man Pappus, the glutton Bucco, Dossennus the
sharper, etc. About the time of Sulla the _mimes_ seem to have
displaced these old farces in popular favour, perhaps because their
fun was more varied; the mere fact that the actors did not wear masks
shows that the improvisation could be freer and less stereotyped. But
both kinds were alike coarse, and may be called the comedy of low life
in country towns and in the great city. Sulla's tastes seem to have
been low in the matter of plays, if we may trust Plutarch,