Atellanæ Fabulæ (Atellan Fables), also known as “Oscan Games” (Ludi osci), were a collection of theatrical pieces of low or buffoonish comedy popular in Ancient Rome. Named after Atella, an Oscan town in Campania, where they were invented, they were originally written in Oscan and imported into Rome in 391 BC. In later Roman versions, only the ridiculous characters read their lines in Oscan, while the others used Latin.
Played by young men of good family, the stock characters included Macchus (a Pulcinella-type figure), Bucco (the fat man), Manducus (the glutton), Sannio (a Harlequin-type figure), and Pappus (an old man), which later formed the basis for characters of the Commedia Dell'Arte, as well as Punch and Judy. Largely improvised, the Atellan Fables were performed after tragedies and represented the habits and mores of the lower classes as the upper classes saw them.
In regards to authorship, it is believed that the dictator Sulla wrote some; Quintus Novius , who flourished 50 years after the abdication of Sulla, wrote some fifty Atellan Fables, including Macchus Exsul (“Exiled Macchus”), Gallinaria (“The Henhouse”), Surdus (“The Deaf One”), Vindemiatores ("The Harvesters"), and Parcus (“The Treasurer”).
Lucius Pomponius , of Bologna, is known to have composed a few, including Macchus Miles (“Macchus the Soldier”), Pytho Gorgonius, Pseudo-Agamemnon, Bucco Adoptatus, and Æditumus. Fabius Dorsennus and Memmius (Mummius) were also authors of these comedies; Ovid and Pliny the Younger found the work of Memmius to be indecent. Fragments of the Atellan Fables can be found in the Poetarum latinorum scen. fragmenta, Leipzig, 1834; M. Meyer, Sur les Atellanes; Manheim, 1826, in-8°; Schober, Sur les Atellanes, Leipzig, 1825, in-8°; M. Meyer, Etudes sur le théâtre latin, Paris, 1847, in-8°. The works of Pomponius and Novius can be found in Ribbeck's Comicorum Romanorum Reliquiae and Munk, De Fabulis Atellanis (1840).
Sources
Meyer, Maurice, “Études sur le théâtre latin”
Imago Mundi -Atellanes
See also
