Like the Greeks, the Romans used grotesque masks, large enough to represent face and hair, too, the duplicates of which we see decorating our theater proscenium arches and drop curtains to this day.
It would seem these masks were universally made use of in their dramatic performances, for all caricatures and grotesque drawings show them.
In the burlesque entertainments there was a Buffoon, corresponding to our clown, called a Sannio, from the Greek word meaning a fool.
Later, undoubtedly, the Court Fool and the King’s Jester were the natural successors of this character.
In all these masks the features were exaggerated and made monstrous of form and size. But one reason for the greatly enlarged mouth is that it was so shaped in order to form a sort of speaking trumpet, that the actors’ voices might be heard at greater distance.
In contrast to the grotesquerie of enlargement, there was also a branch of caricature which depicted the pigmies.
The legend of the pigmies and cranes is as ancient, at least, as Homer, and many examples are found in the buried cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii.
Comic Literature was not plentiful in the days of Early Rome. Up to the second century B.C. we can glean but the two names, Plautus and Terence.
These two, nearly contemporary, founded their plays on the comedies of Menander and a few other earlier dramatic writers.
Perhaps twenty plays are left us from the hands of these two Romans, and these, though pronounced amusing by scholars who can read the original text, are not what the modern layman deems very humorous.