The mediæval glosses interpret _manducus_ by _joculator_, "a jogelor," and add that the characteristic from which he took his name was the practice of making grimaces like a man gobbling up his food in a vulgar and gluttonous manner. [Illustration: _No. 18. Roman Tom Fool._] Ficoroni gives, from an engraved onyx, a figure of another burlesque performer, copied in our cut No. 18, and which he compares to the Catanian dancer of his time (his book was published in 1754), who was called a _giangurgolo_. This is considered to represent the Roman _mimus_, a class of performers who told with mimicry and action scenes taken from common life, and more especially scandalous and indecent anecdotes, like the jogelors and performers of farces in the middle ages. The Romans were very much attached to these performances, so much so, that they even had them at their funeral processions and at their funeral feasts. In our figure, the _mimus_ is represented naked, masked (with an exaggerated nose), and wearing what is perhaps intended as a caricature of the Phrygian bonnet. In his right hand he holds a bag, or purse, full of objects which rattle and make a noise when shaken, while the other holds the _crotalum_, or castanets, an instrument in common use among the ancients. One of the statues in the Barberini Palace represents a youth in a Phrygian cap playing on the _crotalum_. We learn, from an early authority, that it was an instrument especially used in the satirical and burlesque dances which were so popular among the Romans. As I have remarked before, the Romans had no taste for the regular drama, but they retained to the last their love for the performances of the popular _mimi_, or _comædi_ (as they were often called), the players of farces, and the dancers. These performed on the stage, in the public festivals, in the streets, and were usually introduced at private parties.[11] Suetonius tells us that on one occasion, the emperor Caligula ordered a poet who composed the Atellanes (_Attellanæ poetam_) to be burnt in the middle of the amphitheatre, for a pun. A more regular comedy, however, did flourish, to a certain degree, at the same time with these more popular compositions. Of the works of the earliest of the Roman comic writers, Livius Andronicus and Nævius, we know only one or two titles, and a few fragments quoted in the works of the later Roman writers. They were followed by Plautus, who died B.C. 184, and nineteen of whose comedies are preserved and well known; by several other writers, whose names are almost forgotten, and whose comedies are all lost; and by Terence, six of whose comedies are preserved. Terence died about the year 159 B.C. About the same time with Terence lived Lucius Afranius and Quinctius Atta, who appear to close the list of the Roman writers of comedy. [11] See, for allusions to the private employment of these performances, Pliny, Epist. i. 15, and ix. 36.