and warrequíar, when they offered all kinds of grain. Virgil has mentioned thefe facrifices in his Georgiques. "Lancibus & pandis fumantia reddimus exta.”· And in another place, "Lancefque & liba feremus :” that is, we offer the fmoaking entrails in great platters, and we will offer the chargers and the cakes. This word fatura has been afterwards applied to many other forts of mixtures; as Feftus calls it a kind of olla, or hotchpotch, made of several forts of meats. Laws were allo called leges fatura, when they were of feveral heads and titles; like our tacked bills of parliament. And per faturam legem ferre, in the Roman fenate, was to carry a law without telling the fenators, or counting voices, when they were in haste. Salluft uses the word per faturam fententias exquirerez when the majority was visibly on one fide. From hence it might probably be conjectured, that the difcourfes or fatires of Ennius Lucilius, and Horace, as we now call them, took their name; because they are full of various matters, and are alfo written on various fubjects, as Porphyrius fays. But Dacier affirms, that it is not immediately from thence that these fatires are fo called for that, name had been used formerly for other things, which bore a nearer resemblance to those difcourfes of Horace. In explaining of which (continues Dacier) a method is to be pursued, of which Cafaubon himself has never thought, and which will put all things into fo clear a light, that no farther room will be left for the leaft difpute. : During the space of almost four hundred years, fince the building of their city, the Romans had never known any entertainments of the state: chance and jollity first found out thofe verfes which they called Saturnian, and Fefcennine: or rather human nature, which is inclined to Poetry, firft produced them, rude and barbarous, and unpolished, as all other operations of the foul are in their beginnings, before they are cultivated with art and study. However, in occafions of merriment they were firft practifed; and this rough caft unhewn poetry was instead of stage-plays, for the space one hundred and twenty years together. They were made extempore, and were, as the French call them, impromptus; for which the Tarfans of old were much renowned; and we fee the daily examples of them in the Italian farces of Harlequin and Scaramucha. Such was the poetry of that falvage people, before it was turned into numbers, and the harmony of verfe. Little of the Saturnian verfes is now remaining; we only know from authors, that they were nearer profe than poetry, without feet or measure. They were pupa, but not perfo: perhaps they might be ufed in the folemn part of their ceremonies; and the Fefcennine, which were invented after them, in their afternoon's debauchery, because they were fcoffing and obfcene. The Fefcennine and Saturnian were the fame; for as they were called Saturnian from their ancientnefs, when Saturn reigned in Italy; they were alfo called Fefcennine, from Fefcennina, a town in the fame country, where they were first practised. The actors, with a grofs L 3 a grofs and ruftic kind of raillery, reproached each other with their failing; and at the fame time were nothing fparing of it to their audience. Somewhat of this cuftom was afterwards retained in their Saturnalia, or feaftsof Saturn, celebrated in December; at least all kind of freedom in fpeech was then allowed to flaves, even against their masters; and we are not without some imitation of it in our Christmas gambols. Soldiers also used those Fefcennine verses, after measure and numbers had been added to them, at the triumph of their generals: of. >which we have an example, in the triumph of Julius Cæfar over Gaul, in thefe expreffions: "Cæfar Gallias "fubegit, Nicomedes Cæfarem : ecce Cæfar nunc tri umphat, qui fubegit Gallias; Nicomedes non trium66 phat, qui fubegit Cæfarem." The vapours of wine made the first satirical poets amongst the Romans; which, fays Dacier, we cannot better reprefent, than by imagining a company of clowns on a holiday, dancing lubberly, and upbraiding one another in extempore doggrel, with their defects and vices, and the ftories that were told of them in bake-houfes and barbers-fhops. When they began to be fomewhat better bred, and were entering, as I may fay, into the first rudiments of civil converfation, they left thefe hedge-notes, for another fort of poem, fomewhat polifhed, which was. alfo full of pleasant raillery, but without any mixture of obscenity. This fort of poetry appeared under the name of satire, because of its variety: and this fatire was adorned with compofitions of mufic, and with dances; dances; but lafcivious postures were banished from it. In the Tuscan language, fays Livy, the word bifter fignifies a player: and therefore thofe actors, which were first brought from Etruria to Rome, on occafion of a pestilence; when the Romans were admonished to avert the anger of the gods by plays, in the year ab Urbe Condita cccxc: thofe actors, I fay, were therefore called hiftriones: and that name has fince remained, not only to actors Roman born, but to all others of every nation. They played not the former extempore stuff of Fefcennine verfes, or clownish jests; but what they acted was a kind of civil cleanly farce, with mufic and dances, and motions that were proper to the fubject. In this condition Livius Andronicus found the stage, when he attempted first, instead of farces, to fupply it with a nobler entertainment of tragedies and comedies. This man was a Grecian born, and being made a flave by Livius Salinator, and brought to Rome, had the education of his patron's children committed to him. Which truft he discharged fo much to the fatisfaction of his mafter, that he gave him his liberty. Andronicus, thus become a freeman of Rome, added to his own name that of Livius his mafter; and, as I obferved, was the first author of a regular play in that commonwealth. Being already inftructed, in his native country, in the manners and decencies of the Athenian theatre, and converfant in the Archea commædia, or old comedy of Aristophanes, and the reft of the Grecian poets; he took from that model his L 4. own defigning of plays for the Roman ftage. The first of which was reprefented in the year CCCCCXIV fince the building of Rome, as Tully, from the commentaries of Atticus, has affured us: it was after the end of the first Punic war, the year before Ennius was born. Dacier has not carried the matter altogether thus far; he only fays, that one Livius Andronicus was the firft ftage-poet at Rome: but I will adventure on this hint, to advance another propofition, which I hope the learned will approve. And though we have not any thing of Andronicus remaining to juftify my conjecture, yet it is exceeding probable, that having read the works of thofe Grecian wits, his country-men, he imitated not only the ground-work, but alfo the manner of their writing. And how grave foever his tragedies might be, yet in his comedies he expreffed the way of Ariftophanes, Eupolis, and the reft, which was to call fome perfons by their own names, and to expofe their defects to the laughter of the people. The examples of which we have in the fore-mentioned Ariftophanes, who turned the wife Socrates into ridicule; and is also very free with the management of Cleon, Alcibiades, and other minifters of the Athenian government. Now if this be granted, we may eafily fuppofe, that the first hint of fatirical plays on the Roman stage, was given by the Greeks. Not from the Satyrica, for that has been reasonably exploded in the former part of this difcourfe: but from their old comedy, which was imitated firft by Livius Andronicus. And then Quintilian and Horace muft |