During the age of Plautus, and indeed long after it, the general character of Roman wit consisted rather in a rude and not very liberal satire, than a just and temperate ridicule, restrained within the bounds of decency and good manners. A favourite topic, for example, of ancient raillery, was corporal defects;—a decisive proof of coarseness of humour, especially as it was recommended by rule, and enforced by the authority of the greatest masters, as one of the most legitimate sources of ridicule.—“Est deformitatis et corporis vitiorum satis bella materies ad jocandum,” says Cicero, in his treatise _De Oratore_(282). The innumerable jests there recorded as having produced the happiest effects at the bar, are the most miserable puns and quibbles, coarse practical jokes, or personal reflections. The cause of this defect in elegance of wit and raillery, has been attributed by Hurd to the free and popular constitution of Rome. This, by placing all its citizens, at least during certain periods, on a level, and diffusing a general spirit of independence, took off those restraints of civility which are imposed by the dread of displeasing, and which can alone curb the licentiousness of ridicule. The only court to be paid was from the orators to the people, in the continual and immediate applications to them which were rendered necessary by the form of government. On such occasions, the popular assemblies had to be entertained with those gross banters, which were likely to prove most acceptable to them. Design growing into habit, the orators, and after them the nation, accustomed themselves to coarse ridicule at all times, till the humour passed from the rostrum, or forum, to the theatre, where the amusement and laughter of the people being the direct and immediate aim, it was heightened to still farther extravagance. This taste, says Hurd, was also fostered and promoted at Rome by the festal license which prevailed in the seasons of the Bacchanalia and Saturnalia(283). Quintilian thinks, that, with some regulation, those days of periodical license might have aided the cultivation of a correct spirit of raillery; but, as it was, they tended to vitiate and corrupt it. The Roman muse, too, had been nurtured amid satiric and rustic exhibitions, the remembrance of which was still cherished, and a recollection of them kept alive, by the popular _Exodia_ and _Fabulæ Atellanæ_.