the child holding by his father’s right hand, and dragging after with “unequal steps,”—
dextræ se parvus Iulus
Implicuit sequiturque patrem non passibus æquis.
—Virg. Æn., lib. ii. 1. 723.
And thus Æneas bore away both father and son, and the penates, or household gods, of his family, which were to be transferred to another country, and become the future guardians of Rome—
Ascanium, Anchisemque patrem, Tencrosque penates.—Ib., 1. 747.
No. 12. The Flight of Æneas.
In this case we know that the design is intended to be a parody, or burlesque, upon a picture which appears to have been celebrated at the time, and of which at least two different copies are found upon ancient intaglios. It is the only case I know in which both the original and the parody have been preserved from this remote period, and this is so curious a circumstance, that I give in the cut on the preceding page a copy of one of the intaglios.[8] It represented literally Virgil’s account of the story, and the only difference between the design on the intaglios and the one given in our first cut is, that in the latter the personages are represented under the forms of monkeys. Æneas, personified by the strong and vigorous animal, carrying the old monkey, Anchises, on his left shoulder, hurries forward, and at the same time looks back on the burning city. With his right hand he drags along the boy Iulus, or Ascanius, who is evidently proceeding non passibus æquis, and with difficulty keeps up with his father’s pace. The boy wears a Phrygian bonnet, and holds in his right hand the instrument of play which we should now call a “bandy”—the pedun. Anchises has charge of the box, which contains the sacred penates. It is a curious circumstance that the monkeys in this picture are the same dog-headed animals, or cynocephali, which are found on the Egyptian monuments.
When this chapter was already given for press, I first became acquainted with an interesting paper, by Panofka, on the “Parodieen und Karikaturen auf Werken der Klassischen Kunst,” in the “Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,” for the year 1854, and I can only now refer my readers to it.
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME.—USES OF THE MASK AMONG THE ROMANS.—SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY.—THE SANNIO AND MIMUS.—THE ROMAN DRAMA.—THE ROMAN SATIRISTS.—CARICATURE.—ANIMALS INTRODUCED IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN.—THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER’S STUDIO; THE PROCESSION.—POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE GRAFFITI.
The Romans appear to have never had any real taste for the regular drama, which they merely copied from the Greeks, and from the earliest period of their history we find them borrowing all their arts of this description from their neighbours. In Italy, as in Greece, the first germs of comic literature may be traced in the religious festivals, which presented a mixture of religious worship and riotous festivity, where the feasters danced and sung, and, as they became excited with wine and enthusiasm, indulged in mutual reproaches and abuse. The oldest poetry of the Romans, which was composed in irregular measure, was represented by the versus saturnini, said to have been so called from their antiquity (for things of remote antiquity were believed to belong to the age of Saturn). Nævius, one of the oldest of Latin poets, is said to have written in this verse. Next in order of time came the Fescennine verses, which appear to have been distinguished chiefly by their license, and received their name because they were brought from Fescennia, in Etruria, where they were employed originally in the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. In the year 391 of Rome, or 361 B.C., the city was visited by a dreadful plague, and the citizens hit upon what will appear to us the rather strange expedient of sending for performers (ludiones) from Etruria, hoping, by employing them, to appease the anger of the gods. Any performer of this kind appears to have been so little known to the Romans before this, that there was not even a name for him in the language, and they were obliged to adopt the Tuscan word, and call him a histrio, because hister in that language meant a player or pantomimist. This word, we know, remained in the Latin language. These first Etrurian performers appear indeed to have been mere pantomimists, who accompanied the flute with all sorts of mountebank tricks, gestures, dances, gesticulations, and the like, mixed with satirical songs, and sometimes with the performance of coarse farces. The Romans had also a class of performances rather more dramatic in character, consisting of stories which were named Fabulæ Atellanæ, because these performers were brought from Atella, a city of the Osci.
A considerable advance was made in dramatic Art in Rome about the middle of the third century before Christ. It is ascribed to a freedman named Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, who is said to have brought out, in the year 240 B.C., the first regular comedy ever performed in Rome. Thus we trace not only the Roman comedy, but the very rudiments of dramatic art in Rome, either direct to the Greeks, or to the Grecian colonies in Italy. With the Romans, as well as with the Greeks, the theatre was a popular institution, open to the public, and the state or a wealthy individual paid for the performance; and therefore the building itself was necessarily of very great extent, and, in both countries open to the sky, except that the Romans provided for throwing an awning over it. As the Roman comedy was copied from the new comedy of the Greeks, and therefore did not admit of the introduction of caricature and burlesque on the stage, these were left especially to the province of the pantomime and farce, which the Romans, as just stated, had received from a still earlier period.
No. 13. A Scene from Terence.
No. 14. Geta and Demea.
Whether the Romans borrowed the mask from the Greeks, or not, is rather uncertain, but it was used as generally in the Roman theatres, whether in comedy or tragedy, as among the Greeks. The Greek actors performed upon stilts, in order to magnify their figures, as the area of the theatre was very large and uncovered, and without this help they were not so well seen at a distance; and one object of utility aimed at by the mask is said to have been to make the head appear proportionate in size to the artificial height of the body. It may be remarked that the mask seems generally to have been made to cover the whole head, representing the hair as well as the face, so that the character of age or complexion might be given complete. Among the Romans the stilts were certainly not in general use, but still the mask, besides its comic or tragic character, is supposed to have served useful purposes. The first improvement upon its original structure is said to have been the making it of brass, or some other sonorous metal, or at least lining the mouth with it, so as to reverberate, and give force to the voice, and also to the mouth of the mask something of the character of a speaking-trumpet.[9] All these accessories could not fail to detract much from the effect of the acting, which must in general have been very measured and formal, and have received most of its importance from the excellence of the poetry, and the declamatory talents of the actors. We have pictures in which scenes from the Roman stage are accurately represented. Several rather early manuscripts of Terence have been preserved, illustrated with drawings of the scenes as represented on the stage, and these, though belonging to a period long subsequent to the age in which the Roman stage existed in its original character, are, no doubt, copied from drawings of an earlier date. A German antiquary of the last century, Henry Berger, published in a quarto volume a series of such illustrations from a manuscript of Terence in the library of the Vatican at Rome, from which two examples are selected, as showing the usual style of Roman comic acting, and the use of the mask. The first (No. 13) is the opening scene in the Andria. On the right, two servants have brought provisions, and on the left appear Simo, the master of the household, and his freedman, Sosia, who seems to be entrusted with the charge of his domestic affairs. Simo tells his servants to go away with the provisions, while he beckons Sosia to confer with him in private:—