Theodor Mommsen - The History of Rome. Book III

and the charming verse from the Tarentilla :

30.III. XIV. Political Neutrality.

31.III. XIV. Political Neutrality.

32.This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author, properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a similar uncertainty as to his literary property. In this respect, as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.

33.III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls.

34.III. XIV. Roman Barbarism.

35. Togatus denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language, the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also to the Roman burgess. Thus especially formula togatorum (Corp. Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions. The designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as Gallia togata , which first occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the ordinary usus loquendi , describes this region presumably according to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights. Virgil appears likewise in the gens togata , which he mentions along with the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation. According to this view we shall have to recognize in the fabula togata the comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the fabula palliata had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of Rome. That in reality the togata could only have its plot laid in the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their scene - Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium, - demonstrably had Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war. By the extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which de jure took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off for the dramatists of the capital, and so the fabula togata seems in fact to have disappeared. But the de jure suppressed communities of Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii. 148), and so far the fabula Atellana was in some measure the continuation of the -togata-.

36.Respecting Titinius there is an utter want of literary information; except that, to judge from a fragment of Varro, he seems to have been older than Terence (558-595, Ritschl, Parerg. i. 194) for more indeed, cannot he inferred from that passage, and though, of the two groups there compared the second (Trabea, Atilius, Caecilius) is on the whole older than the first (Titinius, Terentius, Atta), it does not exactly follow that the oldest of the junior group is to be deemed younger than the youngest of the elder.

37.II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy.

38.Of the fifteen comedies of Titinius, with which we are acquainted, six are named after male characters ( baratus ? coecus , fullones , Hortensius , Quintus , varus and nine after female ( Gemina , iurisperita , prilia ? privigna , psaltria or Ferentinatis , Setina , tibicina , Veliterna , Ulubrana ?), two of which, the iurisperita and the tibicina , are evidently parodies of men's occupations. The feminine world preponderates also in the fragments.

39.III. XIV. Livius Andronicus.

40.III. XIV. Audience.

41.We subjoin, for comparison, the opening lines of the Medea in the original of Euripides and in the version of Ennius:

The variations of the translation from the original are instructive - not only its tautologies and periphrases, but also the omission or explanation of the less familiar mythological names, e. g. the Symplegades, the Iolcian land, the Argo. But the instances in which Ennius has really misunderstood the original are rare.

42.III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition.

43.Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,

In the line before the last we should probably read multarum leges divumque hominumque .

44.Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,

This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe against the casters of horoscopes:

45.III. XII. Irreligious Spirit.

46.In the Telephus we find him saying

47.III. XIII. Luxury.

48.The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the adaptation of the Phoenix of Euripides: