variety of rude dancing, buffoonery and horse-play[13]. Originally the mimes seem to have performed in monologues, and the action of their pieces continued to be generally dominated by a single personage, the _archimimus_, who was provided with certain _stupidi_ and _parasiti_ to act as foils and butts for his wit. A satirical intention was frequently present in both mimes and Atellanes, and their outspoken allusions are more than once recorded to have wrung the withers of persons of importance and to have brought serious retribution on the actors themselves. Caligula, for instance, with characteristic brutality, had a ribald playwright burnt alive in the amphitheatre[14]. The farce was the diversion of the proletariat and the _bourgeoisie_ of Rome. Petronius, with all the insolence of the literary man, makes Trimalchio buy a _troupe_ of comedians, and insist on their playing an Atellane[15]. The golden and cultured classes preferred the pantomimic dance. This arose out of the ruins of the literary drama. On the Roman stage grew up a custom, unknown in Greece, by which the lyric portions of the text (_cantica_) were entrusted to a singer who stood with the flute-player at the side of the stage, while the actor confined himself to dancing in silence with appropriate dumb show. The dialogue (_diverbia_) continued to be spoken by the actors. The next step was to drop the _diverbia_ altogether; and thus came the _pantomimus_ who undertook to indicate the whole development of a plot in a series of dramatic dances, during the course of which he often represented several distinct _rôles_. Instead of the single flute-player and singer a full choir now supplied the musical accompaniment, and great poets--Lucan and Statius among the number--did not disdain to provide texts for the _fabulae salticae_. Many of the _pantomimi_ attained to an extreme refinement in their degenerate and sensuous art. They were, as Lucian said, χειρόσοφοι, erudite of gesture[16]. Their subjects were, for the most part, mythological and erotic, not to say lascivious, in character[17]. Pylades the Cilician, who, with his great rival Bathyllus the Alexandrian, brought the dance to its first perfection under Augustus, favoured satyric themes; but this mode does not appear to have endured. Practically the dancers were the tragedians, and the mimes were the comedians, of the Empire. The old Etruscan name for an actor, _histrio_, came to be almost synonymous with _pantomimus_[18]. Rome, which could lash itself into a fury over the contests between the Whites and Reds or the Blues and Greens in the circus, was not slow to take sides upon the respective merits of its scenic entertainers. The _histrionalis favor_ led again and again to brawls which set the rulers of the city wondering whether after all the _pantomimi_ were worth while. Augustus had found it to his advantage that the spirit of partisanship should attach itself to a Pylades or