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DRAMA
did visit such centres as Syracuse and Tarentum in the third century B.C., and it
is certain that their example lies behind the vigorous growth of the Roman
theatre after the middle of that century.
However, it is clear that the practice of the Artists and the presentation and
style of their Attic repertoire were not the only models on which the earliest
Latin drama was based. Unfortunately, even the scholars of the Gracchan
period (Aelius Stilo, Accius) and of Cicero's time (Varro) knew very little for
certain about the beginnings of Roman drama. They tried to provide a pedigree
to match the teleological histories of Greek drama prepared by scholars of the
Peripatetic school. Accius seems to have regarded Naevius as the first important
Roman dramatist, and gave a chronology for Andronicus which seems impossibly
late, in spite of modern attempts to vindicate it. : Varro claimed the authority
of'old records' to show that Andronicus was the 'first inventor' of Latin
drama, and that he produced a play in 240 B.C. at the end of the First Punic
War (Cic. Brut. 72f.). The remains of accounts of the early theatre which were
current in the first century B.C. are entirely worthless with respect to tragedy,
and virtually so for comedy. 2 The objective value of the surviving summaries
is only to illustrate the dubious methods of inference, synthesis, and invention
which scholars like Accius had learnt from the school of Pergamum rather than
Alexandria. As such, and since this is what passed for the truth, it is instructive.
A source used by Horace (Epist. 2.1.139—63) alleged that the extempore jokecapping
of harvest-home, the so-called Fescennine ritual which featured also in
the celebrations of Roman weddings and triumphs and which was intended to
avert malign spirits, led to an equivalent of the uproarious Old Comedy of
Athens; this was curbed by law because of its slanderous content. Another
account, summarized by Livy (7.2,) and Valerius Maximus (2.4.4), is more
speciously historical. According to this, Andronicus was indeed a 'first inventor'
in that he was the first to present an entertainment with a story-line; it is
very strange, however, that the author of this version did not think it interesting
or important that the story was taken from a Greek play. The source refers to
a dramatic satura, 'medley', before Andronicus; this had a written libretto,
a prominent part for the musician (tibicen), and was acted by professional
histriones, 'actors', a word borrowed from the Etruscan name for masked
dancers of apotropaic rites, who, in their magic capacity, had been known in
Rome since at least the early fourth century. The writer regarded these histriones
with dislike and disdain, and he contrasts them unfavourably with the
amateur performers (apparently young Romans of respectable birth) of an
extempore kind of farce, borrowed from Oscan Atellae, and hence known as
Atellane. He concludes by alluding in a muddled way to mime in an aetiological
1 Suerbaum (1968) 2 n. 2, 297—300; Waszink (1972) 873^
2 Duckworth (1952) 4—17-
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