It is true that among the Romans one actor recited and another made gestures. It was not by chance that the abbé Dubos imagined this pleasant method of declaiming. Titus Livius, who never fails to instruct us in the manners and customs of the Romans, and who, in that respect is more useful than the ingenious and satirical Tacitus, informs us, I say, that Andronicus, being hoarse while singing in the interludes, got another to sing for him while he executed the dance; and thence came the custom of dividing interludes between dancers and singers: "Dicitur cantum egisse magis vigente motu quum nihil vocis usis impediebat." The song is expressed by the dance. "Cantum egisse magis vigente motu." With more vigorous movements.
But they divided not the story of the piece between an actor who only gesticulates and another who only sings. The thing would have been as ridiculous as impracticable.
The art of pantomimes, which are played without speaking, is quite different, and we have seen very striking examples of it; but this art can please only when a marked action is represented, a theatrical event which is easily presented to the imagination of the spectator. It can represent Orosmanes killing Zaïre and killing himself; Semiramis wounded, dragging herself on the frontiers to the tomb of Ninus, and holding her son in her arms. There is no occasion for verses to express these situations by gestures to the sound of a mournful and terrible symphony. But how would two pantomimes paint the dessertation of Maximus and Cinna on monarchical and popular governments?
Apropos of the theatrical execution of the Romans, the abbé Dubos says that the dancers in the interludes were always in gowns. Dancing requires a closer dress. In the Pays de Vaud, a suite of baths built by the Romans, is carefully preserved, the pavement of which is mosaic. This mosaic, which is not decayed, represents dancers dressed like opera dancers. We make not these observations to detect errors in Dubos; there is no merit in having seen this antique monument which he had not seen; and besides, a very solid and just mind might be deceived by a passage of Titus Livius.
SLAVES.
SECTION I.
Why do we denominate slaves those whom the Romans called "servi," and the Greeks "duloi"? Etymology is here exceedingly at fault; and Bochart has not been able to derive this word from the Hebrew.
The most ancient record that we possess in which the word "slave" is found is the will of one Ermangaut, archbishop of Narbonne, who bequeathed to Bishop Fredelon his slave Anaph—"Anaphinus Slavonium." This Anaph was very fortunate in belonging to two bishops successively.
It is not unlikely that the Slavonians came from the distant North with other indigent and conquering hordes, to pillage from the Roman Empire what that empire had pilliged from other nations, and especially in Dalmatia and Illyria. The Italians called the misfortune of falling into their hands "shiavitu," and "schiavi" the captives themselves.