With Accius, Roman tragedy reaches its height. Contemporary with him were C. Titius and C. Julius Cæsar Strabo (died 87 B. C.), both of whom were orators as well as tragic poets. [Sidenote: Decay of tragedy.] Of their works only slight traces remain. After this time tragedies were written by literary men as a pastime, or for the entertainment of their friends, and some of their plays were actually performed. The Emperor Augustus began a play entitled _Ajax_, Ovid wrote a _Medea_, and Varius (about 74-14 B. C.) was famous for his _Thyestes_, but none of these works has left more than a mere trace of its existence. The tragedies of Seneca (about 1-65 A. D.) were rather literary exercises than productions for the stage. With the growth of prose literature, especially of oratory, on the one hand, and the increased splendor of the gladiatorial shows on the other, tragedy ceased to be a living branch of Roman literature. [Sidenote: The Roman theatre.] Before passing on to the treatment of comedy, it would be well to try to picture to ourselves the Roman theatre and the manner of producing a play. In the early days of Livius Andronicus there was no permanent theatre building, and the spectators stood up during the performance, but, as time went on, arrangements for seating the audience were made, and finally, in 55 B. C., a stone theatre was erected. Stone theatres had long been in use in Greece, and in course of time they came to be built in all the large cities of the Roman empire. The Roman theatre differed somewhat from the Greek theatre, though resembling it in its general appearance. [Sidenote: The stage.] The Roman stage was about three or four feet high, and long and wide enough to give room for several actors, usually not more than four or five at a time, one or two musicians, a chorus of indefinite number, and as many supernumeraries as might be needed. These last were sometimes very numerous, when kings appeared with their body-guards, or generals led their armies or their hosts of prisoners upon the stage. At the back of the stage was a building, usually three stories high, representing a palace. In the middle was a door leading into the royal apartments, and two other doors, one at each side, led to the rooms for guests. At each end of the stage was a door, the one at the right leading to the forum, the other to the country or the harbor. Changes of scene were imperfectly made by changing parts of the decoration. In comedies, the background represented not a palace, but a private house or a street of houses.