since the building of
Rome, as Tully, from the Commentaries of Atticus, has assured us; it
was after the end of the first Punic War, the year before Atticus
was born. Dacier has not carried the matter altogether thus far; he
only says that one Livius Andronicus was the first stage-poet at
Rome. But I will adventure on this hint to advance another
proposition, which I hope the learned will approve; and though we
have not anything of Andronicus remaining to justify my conjecture,
yet it is exceeding probable that, having read the works of those
Grecian wits, his countrymen, he imitated not only the groundwork,
but also the manner of their writing; and how grave soever his
tragedies might be, yet in his comedies he expressed the way of
Aristophanes, Eupolis, and the rest, which was to call some persons
by their own names, and to expose their defects to the laughter of
the people (the examples of which we have in the fore-mentioned
Aristophanes, who turned the wise Socrates into ridicule, and is
also very free with the management of Cleon, Alcibiades, and other
ministers of the Athenian government).
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