When Rome turned to Greece for comedy, there were three models from which to choose: the Old Athenian Comedy of Eupolis, Cratinus, and Aristophanes, full of criticism boldly aimed at public men and policies, breathing the most independent republican spirit; the Middle Comedy, which was still critical, directed, however, more at classes of men and schools of thought than at individuals; and New Comedy, the product of the political decadence of Greece, written during a period (340-260 B. C.) when the independence which had made the trenchant satire of the Old Comedy possible had gone out of Greece. These plays aimed at amusement and not at reform. Every vestige of politics was squeezed out of them, and they were merely society plays, supposed to reflect the amusing and entertaining incidents of the social life of Athens. The best known writers of New Comedy were Philemon, Apollodorus, and Menander, only fragments of whose works have come down to us. Which of these models did the Romans follow? There is some evidence in the fragments of the plays of Nævius, a younger contemporary of Andronicus, and who produced his first play in 235 B. C., that he wrote in the bold spirit of the Old Comedy, and criticized the party policies and leaders of his time. But he soon discovered that the stern Roman character was quite incapable of appreciating a joke, especially when its point was directed against that ineffably sacred thing, the Roman dignity. For presuming to voice his criticisms from the stage the poet was imprisoned and afterward banished from Rome. Perhaps warned by the experience of Nævius, Roman comic poets turned to the perfectly colorless and safe society plays of the New Comedy for translation and imitation. They not only kept within the limitations of these plays as to spirit and plot, but even confined the scene itself and characters to some foreign city, generally Athens, and for the most part were careful to exclude everything Roman or suggestive of Rome from their plays. Judging from the remaining fragments, there must have been many writers of comedy during this period of first impulse; but of all these, the works of only two are preserved to us. These are Titus Maccius Plautus, who died in 184 B. C., and Publius Terentius Afer, commonly known as Terence, who was born in 195 B. C., and died in 159 B. C. These two writers have much in common, but there are also many important points of difference. Plautus displays a rougher, more vigorous strength and a broader humor; and, within the necessary limitations of which we have spoken, he is more national in his spirit, more popular in his appeal. Terence, on the other hand, no doubt because he was privileged to associate with the select and literary circle of which Scipio and Lælius were the center, was more polished and correct in style and diction. But while he thus gains in elegance as compared with Plautus, he loses the breezy vigor of the older poet.