Ye [who are desirous to excel,] turn over the Grecian models by night, turn them by day. But our ancestors commended both the numbers of Plautus, and his strokes of pleasantry; too tamely, I will not say foolishly, admiring each of them; if you and I but know how to distinguish a coarse joke from a smart repartee, and understand the proper cadence, by [using] our fingers and ears.
Thespis Thespis. A native of Icarius, a village in Attica, to whom the invention of the drama has been ascribed. Before his time there were no performers except the chorus. He led the way to the formation of a dramatic plot and language, by directing a pause in the performance of the chorus, during which he came forward and recited with gesticulation a mythological story. Comp. note Epist. ii. 1. 163. The date is thus given by the Par. Chron. Boeckh.: Ἀφ' οὖ Θέσπισ ὁ ποιητὴσ ἐφάνη, πρῶτοσ ὃσ ἑδίδαξε δρᾶμα ἐν ἄστει καὶ ἐτέθη ὁ τράγοσ ἆθλον ἔτη ΗΗΠΔΔ, ἄρχοντοσ Ἀθήνησιε Quod ad annum attinet, consistendum sane in Olymp. 61, eiusque tribus prioribus annis. Boeckh. in Chr. is said to have invented a new kind of tragedy, and to have carried his pieces about in carts, which [certain strollers], who had their faces besmeared with lees of wine, sang and acted. After him Aeschylus, the inventor of the vizard mask and decent robe, laid the stage over with boards of a tolerable size, and taught to speak in lofty tone, and strut in the buskin. To these succeeded the old comedy, not without considerable praise: but its personal freedom degenerated into excess and violence, worthy to be regulated by law; a law was made accordingly, and the chorus, the right of abusing being taken away, disgracefully became silent.
