Another writer and actor of mimes was Publius Syrus, originally a Syrian slave. Tradition has recorded a _bon mot_ of his which is as witty as it is severe. Seeing an ill-tempered man named Mucius in low spirits, he exclaimed: "Either some ill fortune has happened to Mucius, or some good fortune to one of his friends!"
The Roman pantomime differed somewhat from the mime. It was a ballet of action, performed by a single dancer, who not only exhibited the human figure in its most graceful attitudes, but represented every passion and emotion with such truth that the spectators could, without difficulty, understand the story. The pantomime was licentious in its character, and the actors were forbidden by Tiberius to hold any intercourse with Romans of equestrian or senatorial dignity.
These were the exhibitions which threw such discredit on the stage, which called forth the well-deserved attacks of the early Christian fathers, and caused them to declare that whoever attended them was unworthy of the name of Christian. Had the drama not been so abused, had it retained its original purity, and carried out the object attributed to it by Aristotle, they would have seen it, not a nursery of vice, but a school of virtue; not only an innocent amusement, but a powerful engine to form the taste, to improve the morals, and to purify the feelings of a people.
3. EPIC POETRY.--The epic poets of this period selected their subjects either from the heroic age and the mythology of Greece, or from their own national history. The Augustan age abounds in representatives of these two poetical schools, though possessing little merit. But the Romans, essentially practical and positive in their character, felt little interest in the descriptions of manners and events remote from their associations, and poetry, restrained within the limits of their history, could not rise to that height of imagination demanded by the epic muse. Virgil united the two forms by selecting his subject from the national history, and adorning the ancient traditions of Rome with the splendor of Greek imagination.
Virgil (70-19 B.C.) was born at Andes, near Mantua; he was educated at Cremona and at Naples, where he studied Greek literature and philosophy. After this he came to Rome, where, through Maecenas, he became known to Octavius, and basked in the sunshine of court favor. His favorite residence was Naples. On his return from Athens, in company with Augustus, he was seized with an illness of which he died. He was buried about a mile from Naples, on the road to Pozzuoli; and a tomb is still pointed out to the traveler which is said to be that of the poet. Virgil was deservedly popular both as a poet and as a man. The emperor esteemed him and people respected him; he was constitutionally pensive and melancholy, temperate, and pure-minded in a profligate age, and his popularity never spoiled his simplicity and modesty. In his last moments he was anxious to burn the whole manuscript of the Aeneid, and directed his executors either to improve it or commit it to the flames.