From this time the old knight surrendered the stage to his younger and more polished rival. Syrus vas a native of Antioch, and remarkable from his childhood for the beauty of his person and his sparkling wit, to which he owed his freedom. His talent soon raised him to eminence as an improvisatore and dramatic declaimer. He trusted mostly to extempore inspiration when acting his Mimes, but wrote certain episodes where it was necessary to do so. His works abounded with moral apophthegms, tersely expressed. We possess 857 verses, arranged in alphabetical order, ascribed to him, of which perhaps half are genuine. This collection was made early in the Middle Ages, when it was much used for purposes of education. We append a few examples of these sayings: [11] "Beneficium dando accipit, qui digno dedit." "Furor fit laesa saepius patientia." "Comes facundus in via pro vehiculo est." "Nimium altercando veritas amittitur." "Iniuriarum remedium est oblivio." "Malum est consilium quod mutari non potest." "Nunquam periclum sine periclo vincitar." Horace mentions Laberius not uncomplimentarily, though he professes no interest in the sort of composition he represented. [12] Perhaps he judged him by his audience. Besides these two men, CN. MATIUS (about 44 B.C.) also wrote _Mimiambi_ about the same date. They are described as _Mimicae fabulae, versibus plerunque iambicis conscriptae_, [13] and appear to have differed in some way from the actual mimes, probably in not being represented on the stage. They reappear in the time of Pliny, whose friend VERGINIUS ROMANUS (he tells us in one of his letters) [14] wrote Mimiambi _tenuiter, argute, venuste, et in hoc genere eloquentissime_. This shows that for a long tune a certain refinement and elaboration was compatible with the style of Mime writing. [15] The _Pantomimi_ have been confused with the _Mimi_; but they differed in being dancers, not actors; they represent the inevitable development of the mimic art, which, as Ovid says in his _Tristia_, [16] even in its earlier manifestations, enlisted the eye as much as the ear. In Imperial times they almost engrossed the stage. PYLADES and BATHYLLUS are monuments of a depraved taste, which could raise these men to offices of state, and seek their society with such zeal that the emperors were compelled to issue stringent enactments to forbid it. TIGELLIUS seems to have been the first of these _effeminati_; he is satirised by Horace, [17] but his influence was inappreciable compared with that of his successors. The pantomimus aspired to render the emotions of terror or love more speakingly by gesture than it was possible to do by speech; and ancient critics, while deploring, seem to have admitted this claim. The moral effect of such exhibitions may be imagined. [18]