Pylades before long found a rival star arise in the person of Hylas, whose greatest performance was said to be in Œdipus. If Pylades and Bathyllus had quarrelled, there was evidently no love lost between Pylades and Hylas.
Hylas on one occasion was giving a representation of Agamemnon and, at a particular line referring to that historic personage as “the great,” he rose up on tip-toe. “That,” said Pylades scornfully, “is being tall, not ‘great’”; a criticism not only just, but giving an excellent insight into the methods and ideas of the famous Latin pantomimist.
It is somewhat uncertain whether it was the Court intrigues of Bathyllus or of Hylas or of both which ultimately secured from the Emperor the sentence of banishment for Pylades, or whether it was the daring, not to say impudence of the actor in representing well-known people, or whether again it may not have been the increasing danger of the constant brawls which were taking place daily in the streets of Rome between the rival factions—the Pyladians and the Bathyllians.
But whatsoever the reason, the probability is that the perpetual strife between the parties supporting the adored actors (worse than ever was that between the Piccinists and Gluckists of the eighteenth century), with the constant blood-shed it involved, was made the excuse for the convenient removal of one of the principal factors in the disorder, and that the influence of Bathyllus, possibly backed up by that of Hylas, was able to secure the removal of the tragic actor.
Pylades, however, had his revenge, for such was the uproar in Rome on his banishment that the Emperor was practically forced to recall him, and he returned in triumph.
It is time, however, to leave the affairs of popular actors of the ancient world, since it is less the details of their personal history we need to consider than their importance as the virtual inventors of the second element of Ballet, the art of the mime, or, to use for a moment the more comprehensive word—pantomime. Thus we can see that it is largely due to the perfecting by the Italians of that art which seems to have been even more natural to them than to the Greeks—miming, that we have the Ballet of to-day.
From the dawn of the Christian era, comedy gave place to a perfect craze, first for the mime, and then for its offspring, pure pantomime. But, finally, the mimetic art as a standing entertainment of the Roman public, came to suffer neglect in favour of circuses; then, together with the circuses, it was opposed by the Churches. There were spasmodic revivals in the fourth and fifth centuries, but from the fifth century mime and pantomime practically ceased to exist in Constantinople, to which the seat of the Roman Empire had by that time been removed; and the arts both of the dancer and the mime fell upon a period of obscurity, though they went into retirement with all the reluctance of a modern “star.”