Adesdum; paucis te volo. So. Dictum puta
Nempe ut curentur recte hæc. Si. Imo aliud.
Terent. Andr., Actus i., Scena 1.
When we compare these words with the picture, we cannot but feel that in the latter there is an unnecessary degree of energy put into the pose of the figures; which is perhaps less the case in the other (No. 14), an illustration of the sixth scene of the fifth act of the Adelphi of Terence. It represents the meeting of Geta, a rather talkative and conceited servant, and Demea, a countryfied and churlish old man, his acquaintance, and of course superior. To Geta’s salutation, Demea asks churlishly, as not at first knowing him, “Who are you?” but when he finds that it is Geta, he changes suddenly to an almost fawning tone:—
G. … Sed eccum Demeam. Salvus fies.
D. Oh, qui vocare? G. Geta. D. Geta, hominem maximi
Pretii esse te hodie judicavi animo mei.
No. 15. Comic Scene from Pompeii.
That these representations are truthful, the scenes in the wall-paintings of Pompeii leave us no room to doubt. One of these is produced in our cut No. 15, which is no doubt taken from a comedy now lost, and we are ignorant whom the characters are intended to represent. The pose given to the two comic figures, compared with the example given from Berger, would lead us to suppose that this over-energetic action was considered as part of the character of comic acting.
No. 16. Cupids at Play.
The subject of the Roman masks is the more interesting, because they were probably the origin of many of the grotesque faces so often met with in mediæval sculpture. The comic mask was, indeed, a very popular object among the Romans, and appears to have been taken as symbolical of everything that was droll and burlesque. From the comic scenes of the theatre, to which it was first appropriated, it passed to the popular festivals of a public character, such as the Lupercalia, with which, no doubt, it was carried into the carnival of the middle ages, and to our masquerades. Among the Romans, also, the use of the mask soon passed from the public festivals to private supper parties. Its use was so common that it became a plaything among children, and was sometimes used as a bugbear to frighten them. Our cut No. 16, taken from a painting at Resina, represents two cupids playing with a mask, and using it for this latter purpose, that is, to frighten one another; and it is curious that the mediæval gloss of Ugutio explains larva, a mask, as being an image, “which was put over the face to frighten children.”[10] The mask thus became a favourite ornament, especially on lamps, and on the antefixa and gargoyls of Roman buildings, to which were often given the form of grotesque masks, monstrous faces, with great mouths wide open, and other figures, like those of the gargoyls of the mediæval architects.
No. 17. The Roman Sannio, or Buffoon.
While the comic mask was used generally in the burlesque entertainments, it also became distinctive of particular characters. One of these was the sannio, or buffoon, whose name was derived from the Greek word σάννος, “a fool,” and who was employed in performing burlesque dances, making grimaces, and in other acts calculated to excite the mirth of the spectator. A representation of the sannio is given in our cut No. 17, copied from one of the engravings in the “Dissertatio de Larvis Scenicis,” by the Italian antiquary Ficoroni, who took it from an engraved gem. The sannio holds in his hand what is supposed to be a brass rod, and he has probably another in the other hand, so that he could strike them together. He wears the soccus, or low shoe peculiar to the comic actors. This buffoon was a favourite character among the Romans, who introduced him constantly into their feasts and supper parties. The manducus was another character of this description, represented with a grotesque mask, presenting a wide mouth and tongue lolling out, and said to have been peculiar to the Atellane plays. A character in Plautus (Rud., ii. 6, 51) talks of hiring himself as a manducus in the plays.
“Quid si aliquo ad ludos me pro manduco locem?”
The mediæval glosses interpret manducus by joculator, “a jogelor,” and add that the characteristic from which he took his name was the practice of making grimaces like a man gobbling up his food in a vulgar and gluttonous manner.
No. 18. Roman Tom Fool.
Ficoroni gives, from an engraved onyx, a figure of another burlesque performer, copied in our cut No. 18, and which he compares to the Catanian dancer of his time (his book was published in 1754), who was called a giangurgolo. This is considered to represent the Roman mimus, a class of performers who told with mimicry and action scenes taken from common life, and more especially scandalous and indecent anecdotes, like the jogelors and performers of farces in the middle ages. The Romans were very much attached to these performances, so much so, that they even had them at their funeral processions and at their funeral feasts. In our figure, the mimus is represented naked, masked (with an exaggerated nose), and wearing what is perhaps intended as a caricature of the Phrygian bonnet. In his right hand he holds a bag, or purse, full of objects which rattle and make a noise when shaken, while the other holds the crotalum, or castanets, an instrument in common use among the ancients. One of the statues in the Barberini Palace represents a youth in a Phrygian cap playing on the crotalum. We learn, from an early authority, that it was an instrument especially used in the satirical and burlesque dances which were so popular among the Romans.
As I have remarked before, the Romans had no taste for the regular drama, but they retained to the last their love for the performances of the popular mimi, or comædi (as they were often called), the players of farces, and the dancers. These performed on the stage, in the public festivals, in the streets, and were usually introduced at private parties.[11] Suetonius tells us that on one occasion, the emperor Caligula ordered a poet who composed the Atellanes (Attellanæ poetam) to be burnt in the middle of the amphitheatre, for a pun. A more regular comedy, however, did flourish, to a certain degree, at the same time with these more popular compositions. Of the works of the earliest of the Roman comic writers, Livius Andronicus and Nævius, we know only one or two titles, and a few fragments quoted in the works of the later Roman writers. They were followed by Plautus, who died B.C. 184, and nineteen of whose comedies are preserved and well known; by several other writers, whose names are almost forgotten, and whose comedies are all lost; and by Terence, six of whose comedies are preserved. Terence died about the year 159 B.C. About the same time with Terence lived Lucius Afranius and Quinctius Atta, who appear to close the list of the Roman writers of comedy.
But another branch of comic literature had sprung out of the satire of the religious festivities. A year after Livius Andronicus produced the first drama at Rome, in the year 239 B.C., the poet Ennius was born at Rudiæ, in Magna Græcia. The satirical verse, whether Saturnine or Fescennine, had been gradually improving in its form, although still very rude, but Ennius is said to have given at least a new polish, and perhaps a new metrical shape, to it. The verse was still irregular, but it appears to have been no longer intended for recitation, accompanied by the flute. The Romans looked upon Ennius not only as their earliest epic poet, but as the father of satire, a class of literary composition which appears to have originated with them, and which they claimed as their own.[12] Ennius had an imitator in M. Terentius Varro. The satires of these first writers are said to have been very irregular compositions, mixing prose with verse, and sometimes even Greek with Latin; and to have been rather general in their aim than personal. But soon after this period, and rather more than a century before Christ, came Caius Lucilius, who raised Roman satirical literature to its perfection. Lucilius, we are told, was the first who wrote satires in heroic verse, or hexameters, mixing with them now and then, though rarely, an iambic or