When this chapter was already given for press, I first became acquainted with an interesting paper, by Panofka, on the “Parodieen und Karikaturen auf Werken der Klassischen Kunst,” in the “Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin,” for the year 1854, and I can only now refer my readers to it.
CHAPTER II.
ORIGIN OF THE STAGE IN ROME.—USES OF THE MASK AMONG THE ROMANS.—SCENES FROM ROMAN COMEDY.—THE SANNIO AND MIMUS.—THE ROMAN DRAMA.—THE ROMAN SATIRISTS.—CARICATURE.—ANIMALS INTRODUCED IN THE CHARACTERS OF MEN.—THE PIGMIES, AND THEIR INTRODUCTION INTO CARICATURE; THE FARM-YARD; THE PAINTER’S STUDIO; THE PROCESSION.—POLITICAL CARICATURE IN POMPEII; THE GRAFFITI.
The Romans appear to have never had any real taste for the regular drama, which they merely copied from the Greeks, and from the earliest period of their history we find them borrowing all their arts of this description from their neighbours. In Italy, as in Greece, the first germs of comic literature may be traced in the religious festivals, which presented a mixture of religious worship and riotous festivity, where the feasters danced and sung, and, as they became excited with wine and enthusiasm, indulged in mutual reproaches and abuse. The oldest poetry of the Romans, which was composed in irregular measure, was represented by the versus saturnini, said to have been so called from their antiquity (for things of remote antiquity were believed to belong to the age of Saturn). Nævius, one of the oldest of Latin poets, is said to have written in this verse. Next in order of time came the Fescennine verses, which appear to have been distinguished chiefly by their license, and received their name because they were brought from Fescennia, in Etruria, where they were employed originally in the festivals of Ceres and Bacchus. In the year 391 of Rome, or 361 B.C., the city was visited by a dreadful plague, and the citizens hit upon what will appear to us the rather strange expedient of sending for performers (ludiones) from Etruria, hoping, by employing them, to appease the anger of the gods. Any performer of this kind appears to have been so little known to the Romans before this, that there was not even a name for him in the language, and they were obliged to adopt the Tuscan word, and call him a histrio, because hister in that language meant a player or pantomimist. This word, we know, remained in the Latin language. These first Etrurian performers appear indeed to have been mere pantomimists, who accompanied the flute with all sorts of mountebank tricks, gestures, dances, gesticulations, and the like, mixed with satirical songs, and sometimes with the performance of coarse farces. The Romans had also a class of performances rather more dramatic in character, consisting of stories which were named Fabulæ Atellanæ, because these performers were brought from Atella, a city of the Osci.
A considerable advance was made in dramatic Art in Rome about the middle of the third century before Christ. It is ascribed to a freedman named Livius Andronicus, a Greek by birth, who is said to have brought out, in the year 240 B.C., the first regular comedy ever performed in Rome. Thus we trace not only the Roman comedy, but the very rudiments of dramatic art in Rome, either direct to the Greeks, or to the Grecian colonies in Italy. With the Romans, as well as with the Greeks, the theatre was a popular institution, open to the public, and the state or a wealthy individual paid for the performance; and therefore the building itself was necessarily of very great extent, and, in both countries open to the sky, except that the Romans provided for throwing an awning over it. As the Roman comedy was copied from the new comedy of the Greeks, and therefore did not admit of the introduction of caricature and burlesque on the stage, these were left especially to the province of the pantomime and farce, which the Romans, as just stated, had received from a still earlier period.
No. 13. A Scene from Terence.
No. 14. Geta and Demea.