To see a great pantomimus, clad perhaps in fleshings of soft light red Canunian wool, setting off perfectly his graceful figure, dance through the story of how Achilles disguised as a maiden was discovered by Ulysses and summoned away to the Trojan War, is a joy to the most sophisticated and intellectual. The dancer can take many parts--the fair youth concealed in the palace of Lycomedes, the embassy of Ulysses and Diomedes, the young warrior betraying himself by his interest in the helmet and cuirass concealed in the mass of gifts intended for women;--the whole impersonation in short may be wonderful. Not all the dances, however, are so innocent. Many of the coarsest stories in Græco-Roman mythology are acted out on the stage, and the grosser they are often the louder the applause of the groundlings. Nevertheless, the leading pantomimi rightly have the entrée to lordly houses, enjoy great incomes, and are among the most admired personages in Rome. They are outdistanced, however, by two sets of more vulgar rivals--the charioteers and the gladiators. =324. Extreme Popularity of the Circus.=--When a series of superior contests is announced for the Circus all Rome seems to become racing mad. Words fail to describe the excitement, the tense discussion of the charioteers and their fours, the wave of betting from the inner Palatine to the most sordid insula, and then the exuberant joy or immoderate grief over the results. Superior folk try in vain to appear disdainful of these contests. Thus Pliny the Younger has recorded his deep disgust that “so many thousands of men should be eager, like a pack of children, to see horses running time after time with the charioteers bending over their cars.” “The multitude,” he asserted, “were not interested in the speed of the teams or the skill of the drivers, but solely in the ‘_racing colors_.’” “If in the middle of the race (he added) the colors were changed, the enthusiasm of the spectators would change with them, and they would suddenly desert the drivers and horses whom they now recognized afar and whose names they shouted aloud. Such is the influence and authority vested in one cheap tunic!”