deprived of their civic rights and had their names struck off the tribal registration list by the censors.[19] These words are assigned to Scipio in a dialogue whose dramatic date is 129 B.C. but, as in several other instances, Cicero may be allowing himself an anachronism. Livy happens to say, without specifying a date, that actors could not serve as soldiers in the Roman legions. Now there are two possible explanations for this censorial stigma. It is possible that at one of the several puritanic assaults on the theater in the second century B.C.—and during one of these periods of reform the censor Nasica ordered a partly constructed theater to be torn down—a censorial brand may have been placed on the actors in order to discourage citizens from entering the profession. But it is quite as possible that in the early days when actors were difficult to secure for the public festivals some praetor in charge of the festival induced the censor to excuse actors from army service and that, following the Roman practice of using the military rôle for the voting list, he also struck the names of actors from the lists of the tribus. Later when the state was demoralized and slaves had filled the profession, the cancellation of the name, at first effected for practical purposes, may have been continued as morally appropriate. In Roscius’ day the stigma was associated not with appearance on the stage but with playing for remuneration, so that when Roscius ceased to accept a fee he could be raised to the knighthood by Sulla. This fact proves how unstable the theory of the actors’ disability really is and rather supports the view that removal from the tribal list was not at first intended so much as a stigma as an excuse from performing service away from Rome. At any rate the social brand did not apply to recognized actors in the standard drama. FOOTNOTES [1] Cic. _Tusc._ i. 106-7. [2] Leo, _Plautinische Forschungen_, 106; Fraenkel, _Plautinisches im Plautus_, 157; Kahle, _De Vocabulis Graecis Plauti aetate_: and Hoffmann, _in_ Stoltz-Schmalz, p. 813, have made some interesting observations regarding the use of Greek words in Plautus but have failed to note the pertinent historical facts. [3] The greeting _ave_ is a curious instance of borrowing from the Punic. The word was perhaps brought back by the soldiers from their camps in the Punic parts of Sicily. The Romans had besieged the Punic forts of Lilybaeum for eight years. [4] Plautus likes to address the soldiers of his audiences, cf. _Capt._ 68; _Cist._ 197; _Cas._ 87; etc.