The mime was of a very similar character, but freer in point of form. It renounced the use of masks and reached, it would seem, an even greater pitch of indecency than the Atellan. The subjects of a few mimes are known to us. Among the most popular were the _Phasma_ or _Ghost_[87] and the _Laureolus_[888] of Catullus, a writer of the reign of Caligula. In the latter play was represented the death by crucifixion of the famous brigand 'Laureolus'; so degraded was popular taste that on one occasion it is recorded that a criminal was made to take the part of Laureolus and was crucified in grim earnest upon the stage.[89] In another mime of the principate of Vespasian the chief attraction was a performing dog,[90] which, on being given a pretended opiate, went to sleep and later feigned a gradual revival in such a realistic manner as to rouse the wildest applause on the part of the audience. Both Atellan and mime abounded in topical allusions and spared not even the emperors. Allusion was made to the unnatural vices attributed to Tiberius,[91] to the deaths of Claudius and Agrippina,[92] to the avarice of Galba,[93] to the divorce of Domitian,[94] and on more than one occasion heavy punishment was meted out to authors and actors alike.[95] Legitimate comedy led a struggling existence. An inscription at Aeclanum[96] records the memory of a certain Pomponius Bassulus, who not only translated certain comedies of Menander but himself wrote original comedies; while in the letters of Pliny[97] we meet with Vergilius Romanus, a writer of comedies of 'the old style' and of _mimiambi_. He possessed, so Pliny writes, 'vigour, pungency, and wit. He gave honour to virtue and attacked vice.' It is to be feared that such a form of comedy can hardly have been intended for the public stage, and that Vergilius, like so many poets of his age, wrote for private performance or recitation. These two writers are the only authors of legitimate comedies known to us during the Silver Age. But both _fabulae palliatae_ and _togatae_, that is to say, comedies representing Greek and Roman life respectively, continued to be acted on the public stage. The _Incendium_[98] of Afranius, a _fabula togata_, was performed in the reign of Nero, and the evidence of Quintilian[99] and Juvenal[100] shows that _palliatae_ also continued to be performed. But true comedy had been relegated to a back place and the Silver Age did nothing to modify the dictum of Quintilian,[101] _in comoedia maxime claudicamus_.