all kind of freedom in speech was then allowed to slaves, even
against their masters; and we are not without some imitation of it
in our Christmas gambols. Soldiers also used those Fescennine
verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at the
triumph of their generals; of which we have an example in the
triumph of Julius Caesar over Gaul in these expressions: Caesar
Gallias subegit, Nicomedes Caesarem. Ecce Caesar nunc triumphat,
qui subegit Gallias; Nicomedes non triumphat, qui subegit Caesarem.
The vapours of wine made those first satirical poets amongst the
Romans, which, says Dacier, we cannot better represent than by
imagining a company of clowns on a holiday dancing lubberly and
upbraiding one another in extempore doggerel with their defects and
vices, and the stories that were told of them in bake-houses and
barbers' shops.

When they began to be somewhat better bred, and were entering, as I
may say, into the first rudiments of civil conversation, they left
these hedge-notes for another sort of poem, somewhat polished, which
was also full of pleasant raillery, but without any mixture of
obscenity. This sort of poetry appeared under the name of "satire"
because of its variety; and this satire was adorned with
compositions of music, and with dances; but lascivious postures were
banished from it. In the Tuscan language, says Livy, the word
hister signifies a player; and therefore those actors which were
first brought from Etruria to Rome on occasion of a pestilence, when
the Romans were admonished to avert the anger of the gods by plays
(in the year ab urbe condita CCCXC.)--those actors, I say, were
therefore called histriones: and that name has since remained, not
only to actors Roman born, but to all others of every nation. They
played, not the former extempore stuff of Fescennine verses or