[9] _Stich._ 448, _licet haec Athenis nobis: Men._ 7-9. At the end of the _Bacchides_ Plautus becomes very apologetic for the immoral last scene. [10] Selenium in the _Cistellaria_ and Adelphasium in the _Poenulus_ are favorably portrayed so as not to disappoint the audience when they are later to be revealed as freeborn. [11] A. Gellius, II, 23, 6. [12] Leo, _Plaut. Cantica_: Fraenkel, _op. cit._, chap. X, who, however, draws upon Ennius more than the dates permit. The so-called epitaph of Plautus apparently credited him with special praise for his elaborate songs (_numeri innumeri_). [13] There were theaters at least in Syracuse, Tauromenium, Segesta (the seat of a Roman garrison throughout the period of the war), Agyrion, Tyndaris, Akrae, and Catania; see Bieber, _Denkmäler d. Theaterwesen_, 50. _Choragus_ is a Doric form that might readily have come from Segesta. [14] Cf. Fraenkel on the “Versus quadratus,” _Hermes_, 1927, 357. [15] Ter., _Eunuch._ 20 and _Hecyra_, 14. [16] Cf. C. M. Kurrelmeyer, _Economy of Actors in Plautus_. The well-known Horatian rule was a later reversion to a Greek rule. Choral singers were apparently imported from Greece in large numbers in the days of Accius; there was a _Societas cantorum Graecorum_ at Rome then: see _Raccolta in onore G. Lombroso_, 287. In England the early companies that played the interludes seldom numbered over four, and yet they had at times to take care of sixteen or more rôles. Doubling was less drastic in Shakespeare’s theater but it sufficed to allow the dramatist the privilege of producing diversified effects by using many rôles for only one scene or act. In _Hamlet_ alone there are some ten rôles of this type. Plautus and Terence do not hesitate to dismiss a character after the first scene or indeed to introduce one in the last. [17] Diomedes, in _G. L. K._, I, 489, _quod oculis perversis erat_. The late commentators seem to have had very little information on the subject. [18] On Roscius, see Von der Mühll _in_ Pauly-Wiss. _sub. voc._, 1123. There is no evidence whatever for the traditional conjecture that Roscius and Aesopus were freedmen. The sister of Roscius married into a well-known family. Aesopus was probably a Greek who, like Archias, had been given citizenship in some municipality as an honor. His position at Rome was such that it is impossible to suppose that he had ever been a slave.