sire
whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius.
Thus the result was accomplished--not much less unique of its kind
than the conquest of Hannibal--that, during an epoch of the most
feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly
destitute of political tinge.

Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy
Persons and Situations

But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by
custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without
reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the
sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his
position in free Rome.(23) The degree of success in individual
instances was of course determined by the quality of the original
which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but
amidst all their individual variety the whole stock of translations
must have agreed in certain leading features, inasmuch as all the
comedies were adapted to similar conditions of exhibition and a
similar audience. The treatment of the whole as well as of the
details was uniformly in the highest degree free; and it was necessary
that it should be so. While the original pieces were performed in
presence of that society which they copied, and in this very fact
lay their principal charm, the Roman audience of this period was so
different from the Attic, that it was not even in a position rightly
to understand that foreign world. The Roman comprehended neither
the grace and kindliness, nor the sentimentalism and the whitened
emptiness of the domestic life of the Hellenes. The slave-world was
utterly different; the Roman slave was a piece of household furniture,
the Attic slave was a servant. Where marriages of slaves occur or a
master carries on a kindly conversation with his slave, the Roman
translators ask their audience not to take offence at such things
which are usual in Athens;(24) and, when at a later period comedies
began to be written in Roman costume, the part of the crafty servant
had to be rejected, because the Roman public did not tolerate slaves
of this sort overlooking and controlling their masters. The
professional figures and those illustrative of character, which were
sketched more broadly and farcically, bore the process of transference
better than the polished figures of every-day life; but even of those
delineations the Roman editor had to lay aside several--and these
proba