This office therefore, being coeval with tragedy itself, preserves it from the charge of an immoral origin.
Nor was comedy, which took its rise afterwards, the result of corrupt motives.

In the most ancient comedies, we find it to have been the great object of the writers to attack vice.

If a chief citizen had acted inconsistently with his character, he was ridiculed upon the stage.

His very name was not concealed on the occasion.

In the course of time however, the writers of dramatic pieces were forbidden to use the names of the persons, whom they proposed to censure.