The Mimes may be traced beyond the age of Constantine, as we find the fathers of the church reprehending the immorality and licentiousness of such exhibitions(569). Tradition is never so faithful as in the preservation of popular pastimes; and accordingly, many of those which had amused the Romans survived their dominion. The annual celebration of Carnival prolonged the remembrance of them during the dark ages. Hence, the Mimes, and the Atellane fables formerly mentioned, became the origin of the Italian pantomimic parts introduced in the _Commedie dell’ arte_, in which a subject was assigned, and the scenes were enumerated; but in which the dialogue was left to the extemporary invention of the actors, who represented buffoon characters in masks, and spoke the dialect of different districts. “As to Italy,” says Warburton, in an account given by him of the Rise and Progress of the Modern Stage, “the first rudiments of its theatre, with regard to the matter, were profane subjects, and with regard to the form, a corruption of ancient Mimes and Atellanes.”—Zanni is one of the names of the Harlequin in the Italian comedies; and Sannio, as we learn from ancient writers, was a ridiculous personage, who performed in these Latin farces, with his head shaved(570), his face bedaubed with soot(571), and clothed in party-coloured garments—a dress universally worn by the ancient Italian peasantry during the existence of the Roman Republic(572). The lowest species of mimic actors were called _planipedes_, because they performed without sock or buskin, and generally barefooted, whence Harlequin’s flat unsho’d feet. A passage of Cicero, in which he speaks of the Sannio, seems almost intended to describe the perpetual and flexible motion of the limbs, the ludicrous gestures, and mimetic countenance of Harlequin. “Quid enim” says he, “potest tam ridiculum quam Sannio esse? qui ore, vultu, imitandis motibus, voce, denique corpore ridetur ipso(573).” Among the Italians, indeed, this character soon degenerated into a booby and glutton, who became the butt of his more sharp-sighted companions. In France, Harlequin was converted into a wit,—sometimes even a moralist; and with us he has been transformed into an expert magician, who astonishes by sudden changes of the scene: But none of these was his original, or native character, which, as we have seen, corresponded to the Sannio of the Mimes and Atellane fables. In the year 1727, a bronze figure of high antiquity, and of which Quadrio gives an engraving(574), was found at Rome; and it appears from it, that the modern Pollicinella of Naples is a lineal descendant of the _Mimus Albus_ of the Atellanes(575). Ficoroni, who, in his work _Larve Sceniche_, compares his immense collection of Roman masks with the modern Italian characters, was possessed of an onyx, which represented a Mime with a long nose and pointed cap, carrying a bag of money in one hand, and two brass