Horses and oxen were among the animals commonly taught to do tricks. I find no mention of monkeys as performing in the arena, though Apuleius says that in the spring fêtes of Isis, the forerunners of the Roman carnival, he saw a monkey with a straw hat and a Phrygian tunic—we can hardly keep ourselves from asking: _what had it done with the grind-organ?_ But in spite of this startlingly modern apparition, monkeys do not seem to have been popular in Rome; I imagine even, that there was some fixed prejudice against them. The cleverest of all the animal performers were, of course, the dogs, and one showman had the ingenious idea of making a dog act a part in a comedy. The effects of a drug were tried on him, the plot turning on the suspicion that the drug was poisonous, while, in fact, it was only a narcotic. The dog took the piece of bread dipped in the liquid, swallowed it, and began to reel and stagger till he finally fell flat on the ground. He gave himself a last stretch and then seemed to expire, making no sign of life when his apparently dead body was dragged about the stage. At the right moment, he began to move very slightly as if waking out of a deep sleep; then he raised his head, looked round, jumped up and ran joyously to the proper person. The piece was played at the theatre of Marcellus in the reign of old Vespasian, and Cæsar himself was delighted. I wonder that no manager of our days has turned the incident to account; I never yet saw an audience serious enough not to become young again at the sight of four-footed comedians. Even the high art-loving public at the Prince Regent’s theatre at Munich cannot resist a murmur of discreet merriment when the pack of beautiful stag-hounds led upon the stage in the hunting scene in “Tannhäuser” gravely wag their tails in time with the music! The pet lions were only one example of the aberrations of pet-lovers in ancient Rome. Maltese lap-dogs became a scourge: Lucian tells the lamentable tale of a needy philosopher whom a fashionable lady cajoles into acting as personal attendant to her incomparable Mirrhina. The Maltese dog was an old fad; Theophrastus, in the portrait of an insufferable _élégant_, mentions that, when his pet dog dies, he inscribes “pure Maltese” on its tombstone.