“Nor let gentler games lack the delights we bring: let the clown be there to move the people’s laughter with his happy wit, the mime whose language is in his nod and in the movements of his hands, the musician whose breath rouses the flute and whose finger stirs the lyre, the slippered comedian to whose voice the theatre re-echoes, the tragedian towering on his loftier buskin; him too whose light touch can elicit loud music from those pipes of bronze that sound a thousand diverse notes beneath his wandering fingers and who by means of a lever stirs to song the labouring water.[182] Let us see acrobats who hurl themselves through the air like birds and build
[181] Helice = the Great Bear; so does the phrase “Lycaon’s stars,” for Lycaon was the father of Callisto who was transformed by the jealous Juno into a bear and as such translated by Jupiter to the sky. Claudian means that he wants the Great Bear to observe this assemblage of earthly bears.
[182] The hydraulus or water organ was known in Cicero’s day (Tusc. iii. 18.43). It is illustrated by a piece of sculpture in the Museum at Arles (see Grove, Dict. of Music, under “Organ” ).
corporaque aedificent celeri crescentia nexu,
quorum compositam puer amentatus in arcem
emicet et vinctu plantae vel cruribus hacrens
pendula librato figat vestigia saltu.
mobile ponderibus descendat pegma reductis 325
inque chori speciem spargentes ardua flammas