Comedy imported—Plautus, about 254 to 184 B. C.—Plots of Roman comedies—Extant plays of Plautus—Degree of originality in Plautus—Statius Cæcilius, birth unknown, death about 165 B. C.—Other comic writers—Terence, about 190 to 159 B. C.—Plays of Terence—Plautus and Terence compared—Turpilius, died 103 B. C.—Fabula togata—Titinius, about 150 B. C. (?)—Titus Quinctius Atta, died 77 B. C.—Lucius Afranius, born about 150 B. C.—Fescennine verses—Fabulæ Atellanæ—Pomponius and Novius, about 90 B. C.—Mimes—Decimus Laberius and Publilius Syrus, about 50 B. C. [Sidenote: Comedy an imported product.] Comedy, like tragedy, was an imported product, not an original growth, at Rome. There had, to be sure, been improvised dialogues of more or less dramatic nature even before Livius Andronicus, but these, about which a few words will be said later, have nothing to do with the origin of Roman comedy, which is an imitation of the new Attic comedy as it existed at Athens after the time of Alexander the Great, being at its best from about 320 to about 280 B. C. No plays of the new Attic comedy are preserved in the original Greek, but there are fragments which supplement the knowledge we derive from the Latin imitations. The poets of the new comedy, Menander, Philemon, Diphilus, and others, avoided historical and political subjects and drew their comedies from private life, finding in petty intrigues, interesting situations, and unexpected complications, some compensation for the general meagreness of the plot. This kind of play was called at Rome _fabula palliata_ because the actors wore the _pallium_, or Greek costume. Another kind of comedy, in which Roman characters and scenes were represented, though even in this kind of plays the plots were derived from Greek originals, was called _fabula togata_, because the actors wore the Roman toga. Of this latter kind of plays only a few fragments are preserved, and it seems never to have been so popular as the _fabula palliata_. Livius Andronicus, Ennius, and Pacuvius, all produced comedies at Rome, as did other writers of tragedies, but of these works only scanty fragments remain. Three writers, Plautus, Cæcilius, and Terence, devoted themselves exclusively to comedy, and it is from the extant plays of the eldest and the youngest of these, Plautus and Terence, that most of our knowledge of Roman comedy is derived.