What Titinius did was to follow a suggestion made by Naevius and write original comedies (_togatae_) with native plots, scenes, and characters. When we recall how Plautus found it prudent to cling to Greek plots for social and moral reasons, we see that Titinius must have had a vein of daring. That he was lauded among the very foremost for characterization is the more remarkable since he did not adapt characters already well outlined. It was no easy task to present before the old Catonian society comedies revolving about Roman men and women, and to rival the plays of Plautus which could legitimately appropriate all the attractive plots of Hellenistic Athens. Donatus remarks naïvely that realistic Roman comedy of the old day, unlike the Greek comedy, could not picture slaves as more clever than their masters. This statement, of course, does not go to the heart of the matter, but it is one way of saying that the Romans, who insisted on social decorum in home life, were in no mood to see themselves pictured as the gulls of spoiled sons and saucy slaves. If the togata had to eliminate all such scenes, it must have altered the whole tone of comedy. But that was not all. We have noticed how Plautus was compelled to change and attenuate feminine rôles because the Romans had nothing to put in the place of the semi-respectable Greek hetaerae with whom the youth of Athens associated freely. What was there for Titinius to do in writing Roman plays? It was out of the question to insult the dignity of the noble household with stories of boisterous love affairs; and yet he apparently did not wish to sacrifice such plots either by avoiding the female characters or by using those that Roman society disdained. He did want the love story and he wanted it both wholesome enough to attract Rome and natural enough to give a free play of emotions in an active plot, and he found it in a way that Plautus had not. He abandoned the _jeunesse dorée_ of the standard Greek play and resorted to the natural and free society of the Italian village communities outside of the great capital, where, as in Italian villages of today, honest young men and women of humble circumstances worked together at daily tasks in shops, at counters, desks, and work benches. Titinius made a real discovery when he left the artificial society of aristocratic Rome because it gave no opportunity for treating of natural relations between the unmarried young of both sexes and went out into the near-by villages of Latium or the humbler streets of the city where more normal conditions obtained. He was perhaps the first writer of Roman comedy who could draw his material from life and still base his comedy on a love story. Only fifteen titles of his plays have survived, but nine of these take their name from the leading female characters in the plays: _The Maid of Setia_, _The Lady of the Dye Shop_, _The Girl of Velitrae_, _The Twin Sister_, _The Girl Who Knows Something about the Law_, _The Stepmother_,