the name given to the rude and uncouth verses of early Italy, in which the inhabitants of rural districts used sportively to attack and ridicule each other. From the country they found their way into the towns, and Fescennine verses became a very favourite amusement at marriages and other occasions of social festivity. From having been at first only playfully harmless, however, the "Fescennina licentia" degenerated into a dangerous kind of satire, and ultimately required to be repressed by legal enactment. A short account of the "Fescennini" is given by Horace in the *Ars Poetica*. It has been supposed that this kind of composition originated among Etrurians at Fescennia, and took its name from that town; but it was practised so widely throughout Italy at a very early period that it seems somewhat arbitrary to assign its origin to any particular spot.