It is much more difficult to distinguish the Mimes from the _Fabulæ Atellanæ_, than from the Pantomimes or Greek _Mimi_; and indeed they have been frequently confounded(531). It appears, however, that the characters represented in the Atellane dramas were chiefly provincial, while those introduced in the Mimes were the lowest class of citizens at Rome. Antic gestures, too, were more employed in the Mimes than the Atellane fables, and they were more obscene and ludicrous: “Toti,” says Vossius, “erant ridiculi.” The Atellanes, though full of mirth, were always tempered with something of the ancient Italian severity, and consisted of a more liberal and polite kind of humour than the Mimes. In this respect Cicero places the Mimes and Atellane fables in contrast, in a letter to Papyrius Pætus, where he says, that the broad jests in which his correspondent had indulged, immediately after having quoted the tragedy of Œnomaus, reminds him of the modern method of introducing, at the end of such graver dramatic pieces, the buffoonery of the Mimes, instead of the more delicate humour of the old Atellane farces(532). These Mimes, (which, with the Atellane fables, and regular tragedy and comedy, form the four great branches of the Roman drama,) were represented by actors, who sometimes wore masks, but more frequently had their faces stained like our clowns or mountebanks. There was always one principal actor, on whom the jests and ridicule chiefly hinged. The second, or inferior parts, were entirely subservient to that of the first performer: They were merely introduced to set him off to advantage, to imitate his actions, and take up his words— “Sic iterat voces, et verba cadentia tollit; Ut puerum sævo credas dictata magistro Reddere, vel partes mimum tractare secundas.” Some writers have supposed, that a Mime was a sort of _monodrame_, and that the _partes secundæ_, here alluded to by Horace, meant the part of the actor who gesticulated(533), while the other declaimed, or that of the declaimer(534). It is quite evident, however, from the context of the lines, that Horace refers to the inferior characters of the Mime(535). I doubt not that the chief performer assumed more than one character in the course of the piece(536), in the manner in which the Admirable Crichton is recorded to have performed at the court of Mantua(537); but there were also subordinate parts in the Mime—a fool or a parasite, who assisted in carrying on the jests or tricks of his principal:—“C. Volumnius,” says Festus, “qui ad tibicinem saltârit, secundarum partium fuerit, qui, fere omnibus Mimis, parasitus inducatur(538);” and to the same purpose Petronius Arbiter,— “Grex agit in scenâ Mimum—Pater ille vocatur, Filius hic, nomen Divitis ille tenet(539).”