ces of the
present occur in the pieces of Plautus. The only exceptions are,
congratulations on the course of the war(20) or on the peaceful times;
general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money,
against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the
too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting
forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for
payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once--in the
-Curculio- --a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman
market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and
but little likely to cause offence(21) But even in the midst of such
patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely
in order, the poet interrupts himself;

-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam
Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-

and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more
tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.(22) The oldest
Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable
exception. Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies,
the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to
circumstances and persons in Rome. Among other liberties he not only
ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against
the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need
not have been ashamed:

-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-

As he himself says,

-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-

he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put
dangerous questions, such as:

-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-

which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as:

-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-

But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage-
invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate
them at all. Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies,
and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and
recantation in other comedies. These quarrels, apparently, drove
him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his
example--one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no de