The Atellan Farce (Latin: Atellanae Fabulae or Fabulae Atellanae, "favola atellana"; Atellanicum exhodium, "Atella comedies"), also known as the Oscan Games (Latin: ludi Osci, "Oscan plays"), were masked improvised farces in Ancient Rome. The Oscan athletic games were very popular, and usually preceded by longer pantomime plays. The origin of the Atellan Farce is uncertain, but the farces are similar to other forms of ancient theatre such as the South Italian Phlyakes, the plays of Plautus and Terence, and Roman mime. Most historians believe the name is derived from Atella, an Oscan town in Campania. The farces were written in Oscan and imported to Rome in 391 BC. In later Roman versions, only the ridiculous characters speak their lines in Oscan, while the others speak in Latin. History and surviving evidence The Atellan Farce was a masked farce that originated in Italy by 300 B.C.and remained popular for more than 500 years. Originally, the farces were improvised and not recorded. Evidence of the original forms is scarce, primarily found in the depictions of scenes and characters on ancient vases. The extant literary evidence contains only fragments of the Atellan Farce with 400 lines and the titles of approximately 115 farces are recorded from the first century BC by the dramatists Lucius Pomponius and Quintus Novius. With the evidence that does remain, historians believe the plays were between 300 and 400 lines and lasted from 15 to 28 minutes. Surviving titles indicate that the Atellana or short sketches were meant to entertain the audience on holidays and market days. The names of some of these extant titles include The Farmer, The She-goat, The Woodpile and The Vine-Gatherers. While the actors in Atellan Farce were known to be Oscan, evidence of language-switching from Oscan to Latin is evident in a literary Atellana. We can also surmise that the plots of the sketches included ridiculous situations consisting of puns, horseplay and riddles of a vulgar and crude nature. Stock characters and origins Some of the hypothesized stock characters included: Maccus – Believed derived from either the Greek term makkoan, meaning "to be stupid" or the Greek prefix mac-, that denotes greed. The character Maccus makes the most appearances of all stock characters in the works of Pomponius and Novius and includes the play Maccus The Maid where confusion ensues from "twin subjects." Maccus was a most popular clown and the leading character in