We have here in England, if not tripods, at least bipeds, who can
“instinct with spirit roll
From place to place.”
And this subject reminds me of Bacchus, generally. Now, my readers know that there were of old not less than ten cities known by the name of Nysa. At two of these, Nysa in India and Nysa in Ethiopia, Bacchus (Dio Nysus) was held in extreme reverence. In the last-named city, Ptolemy Philadelphus manifested his veneration for the god, by honouring the deity’s great festival after a pleasing fashion. The King had a figure of the joyous divinity made expressly for the occasion. It was eight cubits in length, and was drawn through the city, attired in a tunic of yellow and gold, with a Macedonian mantle hanging from the shoulders. The god was seated in a car, and as he passed through the gazing crowds, he ever and anon majestically arose, poured out, not wine, but milk, from a bowl, and then solemnly re-seated himself.
Among the Greeks, Dædalus is famous, in legend at least, as the founder of the art of figure-making. He is said to have flourished about a thousand years before Christ; and despite what is generally told of him, he was probably but a rude craftsman. He was the first who introduced quicksilver into figures, and by this process he lent a sort of Chinese-tumbling motion to a wooden image of Venus. Some of his figures were so given to activity as to require being made fast when not wanted to move, without which precaution they would, like the leg in the legend, have continued running about without intermission.
All the Greek puppets belong to the Dædalus school; they were generally of wood or baked clay, were set in motion by strings, and were invariably of the feminine gender. It was customary to place them in the coffins of young girls. M. Magnin quotes from Xenophon’s graphic description of the banquet in the house of Callias, to demonstrate that the noblest Athenians condescended to be amused with representations by puppets. There is however not a word touching puppets throughout the lively narrative of the learned and gallant Greek. The Syracusan showman therein introduced exhibits a living boy and girl, who go through some rather dangerous gymnastic exercises, which excite considerable disgust in the mind of Socrates. That sage is much better pleased when the graceful pair represent in his presence the ballet of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne.’ These children not only danced but sang; and if it be suggested that the feat of singing might easily be contrived for a puppet by a clever stage-manager, we may also suggest that the Syracusan speaks, on one occasion, in answer to Socrates, so plainly as to leave no doubt that “flesh, blood, and blue veins” entered into the composition of his elegant little slave.
Antiochus Cyzenicus, half-brother to Antiochus Grypus—the huge-nosed Antiochus—was celebrated as the inventor of puppets as well as of larger machines; and his counterfeit animals, whose limbs simulated motion, were as agreeable to his friends, as his engines, with unpronounceable names, were horridly distasteful to his enemies.
In Greece again, Archytas the mathematician constructed for his young acquaintances a hollow pigeon that could fly,—the original Montgolfier. In like manner, Dædalus, who made quicksilvered tumblers, also discovered the use of the wedge and the science of sailing; while Cnidus, the great astronomer, not only regulated the year and brought the celestial sphere from Egypt, but made all his little cousins glad by the excellence of the puppets he invented, and the fantasticness of their movements.
The public puppet-plays were fashionable in Greece after the theatres had been suppressed by the Puritan Macedonian faction. The method of representation was, in many respects, like that still followed by the itinerant managers of wooden companies in our own days. The like permanence of fashion has clung to our childish games. The old Muinda is the modern Blind-Man’s-Buff; Chytrinda is Hot Cockles; Trigodiphasis is Bob-Cherry; and Scriblerus, we remember, permitted his illustrious son to play at Puss-in-the-Corner, for the sufficient reason that it was the Apodidascinda of the ancients. There is one classical game that has gone out of fashion, and I am not altogether surprised at it, seeing that it consisted in one of the players standing on a round ball, with his neck in a noose hung from above; in one hand he held a knife. It was the part of his opponents to kick the ball from under his feet. If, when this was done, he succeeded in cutting the rope, he won the game; if not, he lost it, and got hanged.
To return to our figures, we may state that the Italian temples were celebrated for their moving gods. In the fane of the two Fortunes at Antium, the goddess moved both arms and head when that solemnity was required. So at Præneste, the figures of the youthful Jupiter and Juno, lying in the lap of Fortune, moved, and excited awe thereby. The marble Servius Tullius is said to have shaded his eyes with his cold hand whenever that remarkably strong-minded woman, his daughter and murderess, passed before him.