[1] 2. The Romans being thus in friendship with all nations, had
an opportunity of turning to the arts of peace; they now began to have
a relish for poetry, the first liberal art which rises in every
civilized nation, and the first also that decays. 3. Hitherto they had
been entertained only with the rude drolleries of their lowest
buffoons, who entertained them with sports called Fescen'nine, in
which a few debauched actors invented their own parts, while raillery
and indecency supplied the place of humour. 4. To these a composition
of a higher kind succeeded, called satire; a sort of dramatic poem, in
which the characters of the great were particularly, pointed out, and
made an object of derision to the vulgar.
[Sidenote: U.C. 514.]
5. After these, came tragedy and comedy, which were borrowed from the
Greeks: indeed, the first dramatic poet of Rome, whose name was
Liv'ius Andronicus, was a native of one of the Greek colonies in
southern Italy. 6. The instant these finer kinds of composition
appeared, this great people rejected their former impurities with
disdain.
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