their gods, allowed, was restrained by the ancient Romans._
The opinion of the ancient Romans on this matter is attested by
Cicero in his work _De Republica_, in which Scipio, one of the
interlocutors, says, "The lewdness of comedy could never have been
suffered by audiences, unless the customs of society had previously
sanctioned the same lewdness." And in the earlier days the Greeks
preserved a certain reasonableness in their licence, and made it a
law, that whatever comedy wished to say of any one, it must say it
of him by name. And so in the same work of Cicero's, Scipio says,
"Whom has it not aspersed? Nay, whom has it not worried? Whom has
it spared? Allow that it may assail demagogues and factions, men
injurious to the commonwealth--a Cleon, a Cleophon, a Hyperbolus.
That is tolerable, though it had been more seemly for the public
censor to brand such men, than for a poet to lampoon them; but to
blacken the fame of Pericles with scurrilous verse, after he had
with the utmost dignity presided over their state alike in war and
in peace, was as unworthy of a poet, as if our own Plautus or Nævius
were to bring Publius and Cneius Scipio on the comic stage, or as if
Cæcilius were to caricature Cato." And then a little after he goes
on: "Though our Twelve Tables attached the penalty of death only to
a very few offences, yet among these few this was one: if any man
should have sung a pasquinade, or have composed a satire calculated
to bring infamy or disgrace on another person. Wisely decreed. For it
is by the decisions of magistrates, and by a well-informed justice,
that our lives ought to be judged, and not by the flighty fancies of
poets; neither ought we to be exposed to hear calumnies, save where
we have the liberty of replying, and defending ourselves before an
adequate tribunal." This much I have judged it advisable to quote
from the fourth book of Cicero's _De Republica_; and I have made the
quotation word for word, with the exception of some words omitted,
and some slightly transposed, for the sake of giving the sense more
readily. And certainly the extract is pertinent to the matter I am
endeavouring to explain. Cicero makes some further remarks, and
concludes the passage by showing that the ancient Romans did not
permit any living man to be either praised or blamed on the stage.
But the Greeks, as I said, though not so moral, were more logical in
allowing this licence which the Romans forbade: for they saw that
their gods approved and enjoyed the scurrilous language of low comedy
when directed not only against men, but even against themselves; and
this, whether the infamous actions imputed to them were the fictions
of poets, or were their actual iniquities commemorated and acted in
the theatres. And would that the spectators had judged them worthy
only of laughter, and not of imitation! Manifestly it had been a
stretch of pride to spare the good name of the leading men and the
common citizens, when the very deities did not grudge that their own
reputation should be blemished.