The face of the latter was covered by a radiant smile. He could only exclaim, “Perfect! charming! divine! The silent sage tells me that the divine supporter of all things is in himself All-mighty. Admirably done! a nation with such sages must be worthy of laws enacted by the leaders of civilization.”
Now if this story be, as Forcatulus will have it, historically true, I must add that it has been improved in the hands of the story-tellers. These, of course, have made it a Christian disputation, in which the hired fool has but one eye. The real metaphysician reads in the signs of the simpleton the whole Christian revelation, but the story is improved by the fool’s own description of the matter. “When I saw him raise one finger, I thought he mocked me, as having but one eye; and I held out two fingers, meaning that my single eye was as good as his two. But when he, therefore, held out three fingers, signifying that there were only three eyes between us, I doubled my fist, to knock him down for his insolence.”
Among the old class of jesters some writers rank the Aretalogi, who appear to have been improvisers of merry or wonderful stories for the amusement of a company, by whom they were invited, or hired. Juvenal says that when Ulysses, at the table of Alcinous, described the person and deeds of the cannibal Polyphemus, some of the guests turned pale, while the narrator, to others seemed only a jester:
“Risum fortasse quibusdam
Moverat mendax Aretalogus;”
or, as the Jesuit Tarteron translates this passage,—“Les autres pâmoient de rire, et regardoient Ulysse comme un diseur de contes faits à plaisir.” Some of the guests, in fact, laughed at Ulysses as they would have done at a regular romancer.
Again, Suetonius, in the 74th chapter of his Life of Augustus, after describing the pleasant social customs of the emperor, his agreeable company, and his courteous and affable manner with them, adds that, to encourage their mirth and their freedom, “aut acroamata et histriones, aut etiam triviales ex circo ludios interponebat, ac frequentius aretalogos.” To show the value of this last word, according to English writers, I turn to an old translation of Suetonius, published in 1692, and there I find that, “for mirth’s sake, Augustus would often have at his table either some to tell stories, or players, or common Merry Andrews out of the Circus, but more frequently boasting pedagogues and maintainers of paradoxes.”
It might easily be concluded that the Aretalogus was really of the number of professional jesters, were it not that I find Lampridius quoted by Flögel as including Ulpian in this class, because he sat at the table of Alexander Severus, “ut haberet fabulas literales.” But it is almost impossible to admit of this, for the wise Ulpian was the solemn president of the Imperial Council of State, a great lawyer, a great reformer, a moral and a religious man, according to the light possessed by him. He was, as it seems to me, rather the Mentor than the Jester of Severus, who was, for a time, the bright example of men,—of any and every rank. The imperial virtues were held to be the result of the teaching and practices of Ulpian. To his frugal table the Emperor invited men of learning and virtue, and Ulpian was invariably of the number. So far, however, was the profound jurisconsult from being a mere jester, that, as we are told, the pauses in the pleasing and instructive conversation of himself and fellow-guests “were occasionally enlivened by the recital of some pleasing composition, which,” says Gibbon, “supplied the place of the dancers, comedians, and even gladiators, so frequently summoned to the tables of the rich and luxurious Romans.” That there was little or nothing of the conceited Aretalogus in Ulpian, may be seen in the fact that his virtue was of too stern a quality, and that he was slain by the Prætorian guards because he was more wise than merry.
We next come to the Scurra, a jester, of whom we find an illustration in ancient comedy. When the witnesses called by Agorastocles (in the ‘Pœnulus’ of Plautus) pompously order Collybiscus to walk in their rear, that personage remarks,
“Faciunt scurræ quod consuerunt; pone sese homines locant.”
“They act exactly like buffoons, who put every man behind them;” in which we see something of the ordinarily insolent character of these individuals.