neglected and abandoned; but not long after they took them up again,
and then they joined them to their comedies, playing them at the end
of every drama, as the French continue at this day to act their
farces, in the nature of a separate entertainment from their
tragedies. But more particularly they were joined to the "Atellane"
fables, says Casaubon; which were plays invented by the Osci. Those
fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy, were tempered with the
Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy or obsceneness;
and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which
were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light
songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away oppressed
with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre. So that
the ancient satire of the Romans was in extempore reproaches; the
next was farce, which was brought from Tuscany; to that succeeded
the plays of Andronicus, from the old comedy of the Grecians; and
out of all these sprang two several branches of new Roman satire,
like different scions from the same root, which I shall prove with
as much brevity as the subject will allow.

A year after Andronicus had opened the Roman stage with his new
dramas, Ennius was born; who, when he was grown to man's estate,
having seriously considered the genius of the people, and how
eagerly they followed the first satires, thought it would be worth
his pains to refine upon the project, and to write satires, not to
be acted on the theatre, but read. He preserved the groundwork of
their pleasantry, their venom, and their raillery on particular
persons and general vices; and by this means, avoiding the danger of
any ill success in a public representation, he hoped to be as well
received in the cabinet as Andronicus had been upon the stage. The
event was answerable to his expectation. He made discourses in