And when the violence of the disease was alleviated neither by human measures nor by divine interference, their minds being broken down by superstition, among other means of appeasing the wrath of heaven, scenic plays also are said to have been instituted, a new thing to a warlike people (for hitherto there had been only the shows of the circus).

But the matter was trivial, (as all beginnings generally are,) and even that itself from a foreign source.

Without any poetry, or gesticulating in imitation of such poetry, actors were sent for from Etruria, dancing to the measures of a musician, and exhibited, according to the Tuscan fashion, movements by no means ungraceful.

The young men afterwards began to imitate these, throwing out at the same time among each other jocular expressions in uncouth verses; nor were their gestures irrelevant to their language.
Wherefore the matter was received with approbation, and by frequent use was much improved.

To the native performers the name of _histriones_ was given, because _hister_, in the Tuscan vocabulary, was the name of an actor, who did not, as formerly, throw out alternately artless and unpolished verses like the Fescennine at random, but represented medleys complete with metre, the music being regularly adjusted for the musician, and with appropriate gesticulation.