on which the whole audience turned their eyes to Cæsar, who was present in the theatre[548].
It was not merely to entertain the people, who would have been as well amused with the representation of any other actor; nor to wound the private feelings of Laberius, that Cæsar forced him on the stage. His sole object was to degrade the Roman knighthood, to subdue their spirit of independence and honour, and to strike the people with a sense of his unlimited sway. This policy formed part of the same system which afterwards led him to persuade a senator to combat among the ranks of gladiators. The practice introduced by Cæsar became frequent during the reigns of his successors; and in the time of Domitian, the Fabii and Mamerci acted as planipedes, the lowest class of buffoons, who, barefooted and smeared with soot, capered about the stage in the intervals of the play for the amusement of the rabble!
Though Laberius complied with the wishes of Cæsar, in exhibiting himself on the stage, and acquitted himself with ability as a mimetic actor, it would appear that the Dictator had been hurt and offended by the freedoms which he used in the course of the representation, and either on this or some subsequent occasion bestowed the dramatic crown on a Syrian slave, in preference to the Roman knight. Laberius submitted with good grace to this fresh humiliation; he pretended to regard it merely as the ordinary chance of theatric competition, as he expressed to the audience in the following lines:—
“Non possunt primi esse omnes omni in tempore.
Summum ad gradum cum claritatis veneris,
Consistes ægre: et citius quam ascendas, decides.
Cecidi ego—cadet qui sequitur[549].” ——
Laberius did not long survive this double mortification: he retired from Rome, and died at Puteoli about ten months after the assassination of Cæsar[550].
The titles and a few fragments of forty-three of the Mimes of Laberius are still extant; but, excepting the prologue, these remains are too inconsiderable and detached to enable us to judge of their subject or merits. It would appear that he occasionally dramatized the passing follies or absurd oc[pg 331]currences of the day: for Cicero, writing to the lawyer Trebonius, who expected to accompany Cæsar from Gaul to Britain, tells him he had best return to Rome quickly, as a longer pursuit to no purpose would be so ridiculous a circumstance, that it would hardly escape the drollery of that arch fellow Laberius; and what a burlesque character, he continues, would a British lawyer furnish out for the Roman stage[551]! The only passage of sufficient length in connection to give us any idea of his manner, is a whimsical application of a story concerning the manner in which Democritus put out his eyes—
“Democritus Abderites, physicus philosophus,