the present;
indeed in a certain sense he reverted to the paths of the Aristophanic
comedy. He felt full well, and in his epitaph expressed, what he had
been to his nation:

-Immortales mortales si foret fas fiere,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam;
Itaque, postquam est Orci traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier lingua Latina.-

Such proud language on the part of the man and the poet well befitted
one who had witnessed and had personally taken part in the struggles
with Hamilcar and with Hannibal, and who had discovered for the
thoughts and feelings of that age--so deeply agitated and so
elevated by mighty joy--a poetical expression which, if not exactly
the highest, was sound, adroit, and national. We have already
mentioned(31) the troubles into which his licence brought him with
the authorities, and how, driven presumably by these troubles from
Rome, he ended his life at Utica. In his instance likewise the
individual life was sacrificed for the common weal, and the
beautiful for the useful.

Plautus

His younger contemporary, Titus Maccius Plautus (500?-570), appears to
have been far inferior to him both in outward position and in the
conception of his poetic calling. A native of the little town of
Sassina, which was originally Umbrian but was perhaps by this time
Latinized, he earned his livelihood in Rome at first as an actor, and
then--after he had lost in mercantile speculations what he had gained
by his acting--as a theatrical composer reproducing Greek comedies,
without occupying himself with any other department of literature and
probably without laying claim to authorship properly so called. There
seems to have been at that time a considerable number of persons who
made a trade of thus editing comedies in Rome; but their names,
especially as they did not perhaps in general publish their works,(32)
were virtually forgotten, and the pieces belonging to this stock of
plays, which were preserved, passed in after times under the name
of the most popular of them, Plautus. The -litteratores- of the
following century reckoned up as many as 130 such "Plautine pieces";
but of these a large portion at any rate were merely revised by
Plautus or had no connection with him at all; the best of them are
still extant. To form a proper judgment, however, regarding the
poetical character of the editor is very difficult, if not impossible,
since the originals have not been preserved. That the editors
rep