Oscan character at all.  The appellation of “Atellan play” is to be explained in another way.  The Latin farce with its fixed characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery:  the fool-world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation.  Of course under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the -togatae- to these.  But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with Capua in 543 (iii.  Vi.  Capua Capitulates, iii.  Vi.  In Italy), continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose.  This conjecture is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue, which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye of the law-such as the -Campani- of Pomponius and perhaps also his -Adelphi- and his -Quinquatria- in Capua, and the -Milites Pometinenses-of Novius in Suessa Pometia—­while no existing community was subjected to similar maltreatment.  The real home of these pieces was therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection.  The statement that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper actors performed by “Atellan players” and was therefore called -personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:  the appellation “Atellan players” comes to stand here proleptically, and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were formerly termed “masked players” (-personati-).

An explanation quite similar may be given of the “lays of Fescennium,” which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan.  That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village, cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from the silence of inscriptions.

11.  The close and original connection, which Livy in particular represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura-with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable.  The difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was just about as great as is at present the difference between a professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the dramatic piece, which down to Terence’s time had no masks, and the Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced.  The drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied nearly the place of the Greek chorus.  This course of development nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce, which was performed by amateurs.