“Ita amicum habeas, posse ut fieri inimicum putes.”
This sentiment, which Publius had borrowed from the Greeks, and which is supposed to have been originally one of the sayings of Bias, has been censured by Cicero, in his beautiful treatise De Amicitia, as the bane of friendship. It would be endless to quote the lines of the different Latin poets, particularly Horace and Juvenal, which are nearly copied from the maxims of Publius Syrus. Seneca, too, has availed himself of many of his reflections, and, at the same time, does full justice to the author from whom he has borrowed. Publius, says he, is superior in genius both to tragic and comic writers: Whenever he gives up the follies of the Mimes, and that language which is directed to the crowd, he writes many things not only above that species of composition, but worthy of the tragic buskin[558].
Cneius Matius, also a celebrated writer of Mimes, was contemporary with Laberius and Publius Syrus. Some writers have confounded him with Caius Matius, who was a correspondent of Cicero, and an intimate friend of Julius Cæsar. Ziegler, though he distinguishes him from Cicero’s correspondent, says, that he was the same person as the friend of Cæsar[559].
Aulus Gellius calls Matius a very learned man, (homo eruditus et impense doctus,) and frequently quotes him for obsolete terms and forms of expression[560]. Like other writers of Mimes, he indulged himself a good deal in this sort of phraseology, but his diction was considered as agreeable and highly poetical[561].
The Mimes of Matius were called Mimiambi, because chiefly written in iambics; but not more than a dozen lines have descended to us. The following verses have been praised for elegance and a happy choice of expressions—
“Quapropter edulcare convenit vitam,
Curasque acerbas sensibus gubernare;
Sinuque amicam recipere frigidam caldo
Columbatimque labra conserens labris[562].”
The age of Laberius, P. Syrus, and Matius, was the most brilliant epoch in the history of the actors of Mimes. After that period, they relapsed into a race of impudent buffoons; and, in the reign of Augustus, were classed, by Horace, with mountebanks and mendicants[563]. Pantomimic actors, who did not employ their voice, but represented everything by gesticulation and dancing, became, under Augustus, the idols of the multitude, the minions of the great, and the favourites of the fair. The Mimi were then but little patronized on the stage, but were still admitted into convivial parties, and even the court of the Emperors, to entertain the guests[564], like the Histrions, Jongleurs, or privileged fools, of the middle ages; and they were also employed at funerals, to mimic the manners of the deceased. Thus, the Archimimus, who represented the character of the avaricious Vespasian, at the splendid celebration of his obsequies, inquired what would be the cost of all this posthumous parade; and on being told that it would amount to ten millions of sesterces, he replied, that if they would give him a hundred thousand, they might throw his body into the river[565]. The audacity, however, of the Mimes was carried still farther, as they satirized and insulted the most ferocious Emperors during their lives, and in their own presence. An actor, in one of these pieces which was performed during the reign of Nero, while repeating the words “Vale pater, vale mater,” signified by his gestures the two modes of drowning and poisoning, in which that sanguinary fiend had attempted to destroy both his parents[566]. The Mimi currently bestowed on Commodus the most opprobrious appellation[567]. One of their number, who performed before the enormous Maximin, reminded the audience, that he who was too strong for an individual, might be massacred by a multitude, and that thus the elephant, lion, and tiger, are slain. The tyrant perceived the sensation excited in the Theatre, but the suggestion was veiled in a language unknown to that barbarous and gigantic Thracian[568].