a sanction for personal conduct as they had proved in Athens. Pacuvius, in the same spirit as Ennius, finds the ruler of human life to be Temeritas or Chance; and if Accius, who lived late enough for Cicero to converse with him, displayed some tenderness for the old superstitions of Rome, this apparent relapse was probably due to the discovery that the nihilism of Greek thought could find intellectual weapons at least as readily for the communism of a Gracchus as for the literary taste of a Scipio.
Thus, in spite of its imitative character, the drama of Rome derives its true interest from Rome's social life, and reflects the evolution of that life in a manner not to be mistaken. No greater dramatic contrast can be well conceived than that between a play of Euripides or Pacuvius, full of personal destiny and veiled or open disbelief in the gods and common creed, and the Indian drama, which in its very form (as in the benediction with which it opens) bears witness to the overwhelming influence of religious and caste ideas. Yet the starting-points of the Athenian and Roman dramas, especially the former, are by no means far removed from those of the Indian. What makes the dramas of Athens and Rome, however, so much more interesting than any of the Eastern world is the social evolution which underlies their progress. In the comparatively stationary life of India or China, there was little scope for such evolution or its dramatic influences; but in the narrow range of the Aryan city commonwealth we have an opportunity for watching dramatic variations of form and spirit closely in accordance with the development of a social life not too wide to be confusing, and not so rapid in its changes as to obscure the relations of cause and effect.
