The manner in which these instruments were played on the stage, and the distinction of right- and left-handed flutes, has never been ascertained with any degree of certainty: few subjects have more obstinately baffled the researches of the learned. The most perspicuous detail of all that the moderns are acquainted with respecting the ancient flutes, is written by the learned Madame Dacier, part of which is quoted in the Preface to this Translation. NOTE 54. _It is taken from the Greek._ All Terence’s comedies were of this class, which was called _Palliatæ_, viz., plays in which the scene was laid in Greece. The class, called _Togatæ_, were pieces entirely Roman. The palliatæ were generally _new_ comedies, of which Menander was the inventor; but Pacuvius wrote the _middle_, and Livius Andronicus the _old_ comedy. (_Vide Note 33._) In the age in which Terence wrote his comedies, the Romans were some degrees less advanced in the refinements of civilization, than the Greeks. But little more than a century before, Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, thought them worthy of no better epithet than that of “_barbarians_” in comparison with his own subjects, who were not themselves the most polished nation in the world. The Romans, therefore, omitted no opportunity of improving the manners and perfecting the education of their youth, by sending them to mix with the Greeks, and to unite themselves to the disciples of those Grecian sages, who, as far as the light of reason, unassisted by _divine revelation_, could penetrate, dispelled the clouds of ignorance, and taught their followers that happiness and wisdom can be attained only by the virtuous. It was, doubtless, on this account, that Terence chose Greece as the scene of his comedies, which he intended should portray to the Romans the manners, customs, and characters of those whom they often held up as a pattern of polished refinement, worthy the imitation of the rising generation. It is to this, doubtless, that we must attribute Terence’s choice of Athens in preference to Rome as the scene of his plays; as, particularly, in the comedy which the critics call the _comedy of intrigue_, the best judges agree that the scene is preferably laid in that country in which it is meant to be performed. But the comedies of Terence were more of that description which Dr. Blair denominates the _comedy of character_, and preferable to what he calls the _comedy of intrigue_, because “it exhibits the prevailing manners which mark the character of the age in which the scene is laid. _Incidents_ should afford a proper field for the exhibition of character: the action in comedy, though it demands the poet’s care in order to render it animated and natural, is a less significant and important part of the performance than the action in tragedy; as, in comedy, it is what men say, and how they behave, that draws our attention, rather than what they perform or what they suffer.”