From the æra in which the dramatic productions of Livius appeared, theatrical representations formed the object of a peculiar art. The more regular drama, founded on that of Magna Græcia, or Sicily, being divided into tragedy and comedy, became, in a great measure, the province of professional players or authors, while the Roman youths of distinction continued to amuse themselves with the _Fabulæ Atellanæ_, and _Exodia_, a species of satirical medley, derived from the ancient Etruscans, or from the Osci, the nature and progress of which I shall hereafter have occasion more particularly to examine. CNEIUS NÆVIUS, A native of Campania, was the first imitator of the regular dramatic works which had been produced by Livius Andronicus. He served in the first Punic war, and his earliest plays were represented at Rome in the year 519(127). The names of his tragedies, from which as few fragments remain as from those of Livius, are still preserved:—_Alcestis_, (from which there is yet extant a description of old age in rugged and barbarous verse)—_Danae_, _Dulorestes_, _Hesiona_, _Hector_, _Iphigenia_, _Lycurgus_, _Phœnissæ_, _Protesilaus_, and _Telephus_. All these were translated, or closely imitated from the works of Euripides, Anaxandrides, and other Greek dramatists. Cicero commends a passage in the _Hector_, one of the above-mentioned tragedies(128), where the hero of the piece, delighted with the praises which he had received from his father Priam, exclaims— “—— Lætus sum Laudari me abs te, pater, laudato viro(129).” Nævius, however, was accounted a better comic than tragic poet. Cicero has given us some specimens of his jests, with which that celebrated wit and orator appears to have been greatly amused; but they consist rather in unexpected turns of expression, or a play of words, than in genuine humour. One of these, recorded in the second Book _De Oratore_, has found its way into our jest-books; and though one of the best in Cicero, it is one of the worst of Joe Miller. It is the saying of a knavish servant, “that nothing was shut up from him in his master’s house”.—“Solum esse, cui domi nihil sit nec obsignatum, nec occlusum: Quod idem,” adds Cicero, “in bono servo dici solet, sed hoc iisdem etiam verbis.”