This man wrote one in Latin about his journey to his native town
of Gades, had it put on the stage there, and shed tears during its
performance.[504]
When we hear of plays being written without being acted, and of
tragedies being made the occasion of expressing political opinions,
we may be pretty sure that the drama is in its nonage. An interesting
proof of the same tendency is to be found in the first book of the
_Ars Amatoria_ of Ovid, though it belongs to the age of Augustus. In
this book Ovid describes the various resorts in the city where the
youth may look out for his girl; and when he comes to the theatre,
draws a pretty picture of the ladies of taste and fashion crowding
thither,--but
Spectatum veniunt: veniunt spectentur ut ipsae.
And then, without a word about the play, or the smallest hint that he
or the ladies really cared about such things, he goes off into the
familiar story of the rape of the Sabine women, supposed to have taken
place when Romulus was holding his ludi.
It is curious, in view of what thus seems to be a flagging interest
in the drama as such, to find that the most remarkable event in the
theatrical history of this time is the building of the first permanent
stone theatre.
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