Note 2 — Chapter VI

And among these poets the writers of comedy were both most numerous and apparently the most popular in their own time2. Besides the names of Naevius, Plautus, Caecilius, and Terence, we know the names of other comic poets of less fame3, and from allusions in the extant plays of Plautus4 and in the prologues of Terence we infer that there were other competitors for public favour whose names were unknown to a later generation. In the Ciceronian age the works of these forgotten playwrights were for the most part attributed to Plautus, probably with the view of gaining some temporary popularity for them. In the time of Gellius no fewer than 130 plays passed under his name; among these, twenty-one were regarded as undoubtedly his, nineteen more as probably genuine, and the rest as spurious. They were however all of the class of palliatae; and as the fabulae togatae seem, after the time of Terence, to have been composed in much greater number than those founded on Greek originals, most of them must have belonged to the first half of the second century b.c. Plays of a later date would have clearly shown by their diction that they were not the work of Plautus.