The earliest Roman dramatist is supposed to have been one Lucius Andronicus, who had formerly been a slave, and who continued his slavish propensities by a servile adaptation of Greek plays, instead of boldly attempting an original production. Like many of the modern translators, he was himself an actor in his own pieces; and it is declared by Livy the historian, that he lost his voice by the frequency with which he was encored by the audience. This statement seems to show that puffs were not unknown when the Roman drama was in its very earliest stage; for the assertion in question could scarcely have been true, since Cicero[59] has told us that there was nothing worthy of being read or listened to twice, in the plays of Lucius Andronicus. The greatest comic writer of the period at which our history has arrived, was Marcus Accius Plautus, of whose origin little is known; for the Romans held their wits and humorists in such little respect, that as long as they could raise a laugh, it mattered little who they were, whence they sprung, or what became of them. It was not until after a writer's death that any interest was felt in his life, and such was the case with regard to Plautus, who has been the subject of more invention than is to be found in all his comedies. Conjecture--the author of half the history, and three-fourths of the biography, which the world possesses--describes Plautus as a low-born fellow, made of the very commonest clay, moulded by one of Nature's awkwardest journeymen into a misshapen lump, and whose angular deformities constituted his chief points of humour. Having made a little money as a dramatist, he is said to have embarked it in the baking business; some would say that he might make his own puffs; but his shop failed, and as the public would not, he of course could not, get his bread at it. He next entered the service of a miller and master baker, where he attempted, in grinding corn, to turn at once the handle of a mill and an honest penny. Even in the bakehouse he was unable to forget the flowery path of literature; and while watching the bread, he managed to inscribe on different rolls no less than three comedies. Of these he made sufficient to enable him to quit the oven, which was incapable of warming his imagination; and taking lodgings in Rome, he resumed the life of a dramatist. What Plautus may have wanted in originality, he made up for by industry, there being still extant twenty of his plays, and he was, according to some, the author of one hundred pieces.