In the meantime I will return to Dacier.
The people, says he, ran in crowds to these new entertainments of
Andronicus, as to pieces which were more noble in their kind, and
more perfect than their former satires, which for some time they
neglected and abandoned; but not long after they took them up again,
and then they joined them to their comedies, playing them at the end
of every drama, as the French continue at this day to act their
farces, in the nature of a separate entertainment from their
tragedies. But more particularly they were joined to the "Atellane"
fables, says Casaubon; which were plays invented by the Osci. Those
fables, says Valerius Maximus, out of Livy, were tempered with the
Italian severity, and free from any note of infamy or obsceneness;
and, as an old commentator on Juvenal affirms, the Exodiarii, which
were singers and dancers, entered to entertain the people with light
songs and mimical gestures, that they might not go away oppressed
with melancholy from those serious pieces of the theatre.
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