The Dramatic Satura and the Old Comedy at Rome 9781463221829

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T h e Dramatic Satura and the Old Comedy at Rome

A n a l e c t a Gorgiana

344 Series Editor George Anton Kiraz

Analecta Gorgiana is a collection of long essays and

short

monographs which are consistently cited by modern scholars but previously difficult to find because of their original appearance in obscure publications. Carefully selected by a team of scholars based on their relevance to modern scholarship, these essays can now be fully utili2ed by scholars and proudly owned by libraries.

The Dramatic Satura and the Old Comedy at Rome

George Hendrickson

gorgia* press 2009

Gorgias Press LLC, 180 Centennial Ave., Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA www.gorgiaspress.com Copyright © 2009 by Gorgias Press LLC Originally published in All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC. 2009

1

ISBN 978-1-60724-598-8

ISSN 1935-6854

Extract from The ^American Journal of Philology 15 (1894)

Printed in the LTnited States of America

AMERICAN

JOURNAL VOL. X V ,

OF

PHILOLOGY

I.

WHOLE

I.—THE DRAMATIC S A T U R A AND THE COMEDY A T ROME.

NO.

57.

OLD

It has long been observed that many of the events reported by Roman historians are so closely paralleled by fact and fable from Greek history and poetry as to preclude the possibility of belief in them as independent events, and to make the assumption of their derivation from Greek sources inevitable. Isolated observations of this fact were made by the ancients themselves; as, for example, when Gellius, after narrating (IV 5) the story of the perfidy of the Etruscan soothsayers in the matter of the statue of Horatius Codes, gives the verse which was said to have been composed upon this occasion (malum consilium consuliori pessimum est), and adds: videtur autem versus hie de Graeco illo Hesiodi versu expressus, RJficKaKrj /3ouAr) 7-1» ¡3ovXeiitravTi KaKio-TTJ,—or when Dionysius, in narrating the story of the capture of Gabii and the communication of plans between the elder Tarquin and his son Sextus by the episode of the staff and the poppyheads, concludes thus : i-avra Tvoirjaas aireXvae rov uyytXop, ovdev airoKpivafxtvos jroWaKis (Vf/MTcjj&TK^\