till recently
comparative philology was prosecuted, before insight into
the organism of language put a stop to the occupation of the empirics.
40. V. XII. Grammatical Science
41. V. XI. Sciences of General Culture at This Period
42. V. XI. Reform of the Calendar
43. V. XII. Dramatic Spectacles
44. Such "Greek entertainments" were very frequent not merely in
the Greek cities of Italy, especially in Naples (Cic. pro Arch. 5,
10; Plut. Brut. 21), but even now also in Rome (iv. 192; Cic. Ad
Fam. vii. 1, 3; Ad Att. xvi. 5, 1; Sueton. Caes. 39; Plut. Brut.
21). When the well-known epitaph of Licinia Eucharis fourteen
years of age, which probably belongs to the end of this period,
makes this "girl well instructed and taught in all arts by
the Muses themselves" shine as a dancer in the private exhibitions of
noble houses and appear first in public on the Greek stage (-modo
nobilium ludos decoravi choro, et Graeca in scaena prima populo
apparui-), this doubtless can only mean that she was the first girl
that appeared on the public Greek stage in Rome; as generally
indeed it was not till this epoch that women began to come forward
publicly in Rome (p. 469).
These "Greek entertainments" in Rome seem not to have been properly
scenic, but rather to have belonged to the category of composite
exhibitions--primarily musical and declamatory--such as were not of
rare occurrence in subsequent times also in Greece (Welcker,
Griech. Trag., p. 1277). This view is supported by the prominence
of flute-playing in Polybius (xxx. 13) and of dancing in
the account of Suetonius regarding the armed dances from Asia Minor
performed at Caesar's games and in the epitaph of Eucharis;
the description also of the -citharoedus- (Ad Her. iv. 47, 60; comp.
Vitruv. v. 5, 7) must have been derived from such "Greek
entertainments." The combinations of these representations in Rome
with Greek athletic combats is significant (Polyb. l. c.; Liv.
xxxix. 22). Dramatic recitations were by no means excluded from
these mixed entertainments, since among the players whom Lucius
Anicius caused to appear in 587 in Rome, tragedians are expressly
mentioned; there was however no exhibition of plays in the strict
sense, but either whole dramas, or perhaps still more frequently
pieces taken from them, were declaimed or sung to the flute by
single artists. This must accordingly have been done also in Rome;
but to all appearance for the Roman public the ma
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