Sometimes, indeed, they composed original pieces.
__Vestigia Graeca
Ausi deserere et celebrare domestica facta. Horat. Epistol. ad Pisones, 285,
and the learned though perplexed note of Dacier, who might have allowed the name of tragedies to the Brutus and the Decius of Pacuvius, or to the Cato of Maternus. The Octavia, ascribed to one of the Senecas, still remains a very unfavourable specimen of Roman tragedy.