prisoner at Tarentum by Quintus Maximus in his fifth Consulship, about
thirty years after he is said by Atticus, and our ancient annals, to have
introduced the drama. He adds that he exhibited his first dramatic piece
about eleven years after, in the Consulship of C. Cornelius and Q.
Minucius, at the public games which Salinator had vowed to the Goddess of
Youth for his victory over the Senones. But in this, Attius was so far
mistaken, that Ennius, when the persons above-mentioned were Consuls, was
forty years old: so that if Livius was of the same age, as in this case he
would have been, the first dramatic author we had must have been younger
than Plautus and Naevius, who had exhibited a great number of plays before
the time he specifies. If these remarks, my Brutus, appear unsuitable to
the subject before us, you must throw the whole blame upon Atticus, who
has inspired me with a strange curiosity to enquire into the age of
illustrious men, and the respective times of their appearance."--"On the
contrary," said Brutus, "I am highly pleased that you have carried your
attention so far; and I think your remarks well adapted to the curious
task you have undertaken, the giving us a history of the different classes
of Orators in their proper order."--"You understand me right," said I;
"and I heartily wish those venerable Odes were still extant, which Cato
informs us in his Antiquities, used to be sung by every guest in his turn
at the homely feasts of our ancestors, many ages before, to commemorate
the feats of their heroes. But the _Punic war_ of that antiquated Poet,
whom Ennius so proudly ranks among the _Fauns and rustic Bards_, affords
me as exquisite a pleasure as the finest statue that was ever formed by
Myron. Ennius, I allow, was a more finished writer: but if he had really
undervalued the other, as he pretends to do, he would scarcely have
omitted such a bloody war as the first _Punic_, when he attempted
professedly to describe all the wars of the Republic. Nay he himself
assigns the reason.