At the same time immense sums were expended on decorations and costume; now and then trains of six hundred mules in harness crossed the stage, and the Trojan theatrical army was employed to present to the public a tableau of the nations vanquished by Pompeius in Asia.

The music which accompanied the delivery of the inserted choruses likewise obtained a greater and more independent importance; as the wind sways the waves, says Varro, so the skilful flute-player sways the minds of the listeners with every modulation of melody.

It accustomed itself to the use of quicker time, and thereby compelled the player to more lively action.
Musical and dramatic connoisseurship was developed; the -habitue- recognized every tune by the first note, and knew the texts by heart; every fault in the music or recitation was severely censured by the audience.

The state of the Roman stage in the time of Cicero vividly reminds us of the modern French theatre.
As the Roman mime corresponds to the loose tableaux of the pieces of the day, nothing being too good and nothing too bad for either the one or the other, so we find in both the same traditionally classic tragedy and comedy, which the man of culture is in duty bound to admire or at least to applaud.

The multitude is satisfied, when it meets its own reflection in the farce, and admires the decorative pomp and receives the general impression of an ideal world in the drama; the man of higher culture concerns himself at the theatre not with the piece, but only with its artistic representation.
Moreover the Roman histrionic art oscillated in its different spheres, just like the French, between the cottage and the drawing-room.
It was nothing unusual for the Roman dancing-girls to throw off at the finale the upper robe and to give a dance in undress for the benefit of the public; but on the other hand in the eyes of the Roman Talma the supreme law of his art was, not the truth of nature, but symmetry.
Metrical Annals In recitative poetry metrical annals after the model of those of Ennius seem not to have been wanting; but they were perhaps sufficiently criticised by that graceful vow of his mistress of which Catullus sings--that the worst of the bad heroic poems should be presented as a sacrifice to holy Venus, if she would only bring back her lover from his vile political poetry to her arms.
Lucretius Indeed in the whole field of recitative poetry at this epoch the older national-Roman tendency is represented only by a single work of note, which, however, is altogether one of the most important poetical products of Roman literature.