without becoming more dignified; rather the reverse. The names of some
authors of mimes have survived: Publius Syrus and Laberius, in the time
of Caesar. What is curious is that these mimes, licentious and even
obscene though they were, throughout gave occasional utterance to highly
moral observations which Latin grammarians have preserved for us. This
curious mixture may be explained or contrasted at pleasure; perhaps it
was only a conventional habit.

TRAGEDY.--As for what there was of tragedy, it was destined to be yet
shorter-lived than comedy, but it was evidently very brilliant and it is
regrettable that it has not been preserved. Livius Andronicus and Nasvius
wrote tragedies, but the three greatest tragedians were Ennius, his
nephew Pacuvius, and Attius. Ennius imitated Euripides, Pacuvius
Sophocles, and Attius Aeschylus. All three soared to the grand, the
majestic, and the sublime; all seem to have been very sententious and
replete with maxims; but it is needful to be cautious: these authors are
known to us only by the citations made by grammarians, and grammarians
who, having naturally cited phrases rather than fragments of dialogue,
make it possible that these authors appear to us sententious when they
were in reality not abnormally so.

PROSE LITERATURE.--Prose literature at Rome appeared almost at the same
time as the poetic. Cicero has given us the names of great orators,
contemporaries of Ennius, and there were historians and didacticians in
prose of the same period. The elder Cato, the great censor, was an
historian; he wrote a work, _The Origins_, which seems to have been
the history not only of Rome but of all Italy since the foundation of
Rome; he was didactic; he wrote a _De Re Rustica_ (On Rural Life)
which has come down to us and is infinitely valuable as showing the
simplicity, the hardness, and the avarice of the old Roman proprietors,