In the days of old, it happened that all Olympus was dull, and Zeus complained, yawning the while, that there was not a fool amongst the gods, with wit enough to keep the divine assembly alive, or to kill the members of it with laughter. “Father,” said Mercury, “the sport that is lacking here, may be found for us all, on earth. Look at that broad tract of land between the Peneus and Aliacmon. It is all alive with folks in their holiday gear, enjoying the sunshine, eating sweet melons, singing till they are hoarse, and dancing till they are weary.”
“What then?” asked Jupiter.
“It would be rare sport, oh king of gods and men, to scatter all these gaily-robed revellers, and by a shower, spoil their finery.”
“Thou hast lived to little purpose in witty companionship, complacent son of Maia,” observed the Olympian, “if that be thy idea of sport. But thy thought is susceptible of improvement. Let that serene priest, who is fast asleep by the deserted shrine below, announce that a shower is2 indeed about to descend, but that it shall wet none but fools.”
A slight sound of thunder was heard, and the aroused servant of the gods stood in front of the altar, and made the requisite announcement to the people. There was a philosopher close by, leaning against the door-post of his modest habitation. He no sooner heard that the impending storm was to wet only the fools, than he first hastily covered his head, and next hurriedly entered his dwelling-place and shut himself up in his study. Not another individual prepared to avoid the tempest. Each man waited to see the fools drenched, and every man there was, in two minutes, wet to the very skin.
When the sun re-appeared, the philosopher walked out into the market-place. The thoroughly-soaked idiots, observing his comfortable condition, hailed the good man with the epithet of “fool.” They pelted him with sticks and stones, tore his gown, plucked his beard, and loaded him with foul terms that would have twisted the jaw of Aristophanes.
Bruised, battered, deafened, staggering, the philosopher nevertheless contrived to keep his wits. “Oh, sagacious asses!” said he to the roaring crowd, who at once sank into silence at the compliment paid to their wisdom, “have patience but for a single minute, and I will prove to you that I am not such a fool as I look.” Bending back his head, and turning the palms of his hands upwards to the sky, “Oh wise father,” he exclaimed, “of the witty and the witless, vouchsafe to send down upon me a deluge for my peculiar and individual use. Wet me to the skin even as these fools are wet. Constitute me, thereby, as great a fool as my neighbours; and enable me, in consequence, a fool, to live at peace among fools.”
At these words, the two assemblies,—of idiots below, and of Olympians above, shook with laughter, at once loud and3 inextinguishable. Down came the shower prayed for, upon the person of the philosopher, but peculiar influences were sent down with it, and the dripping sage rose from his knees ten times wittier than he was before.
Jupiter’s beard was yet wagging with laughter, and merry tears fell from the eyelids of Juno, whose head lay in frolicsome helplessness upon the bosom of her hilarious lord,—when the latter exclaimed, “We have spoiled that good fellow’s robe, but we will also make his fortune.”
“That is already accomplished,” remarked Juno. “I have just breathed into the ear of the chief of the district, and he is now taking the philosopher home with him, to be at once his diverter and instructor.”
At night, as all Olympus looked down into the court of the prince, near whom, at the banquet, the wise fool lay, pouring out witty truths as fast as his lips could utter them, the gods both envied the fun and admired the wisdom. “That fellow,” cried Jupiter, “shall be the founder of a race. Henceforward each court shall have its fool; and fools shall be, for many a long day, the preachers and admonishers of kings. Children,” he added, to the gods and goddesses, “let us drink his health!”
The brilliant society thus addressed could neither drink nor speak, for laughing. “Dear master,” said Hebe, as she took her place behind the monarch of divinities, who looked at her inquiringly, “they laugh, because you did not say fools, such as he, should henceforward furnish kings with funny counsel and comic sermons.”
“Let their majesties look to it,” answered Jove, “here’s a health to the first of fools!”
In the legend of the original jester, we cannot well pass over, without some brief illustration, the old, yet ever-young and especial mirth-maker of the court of Olympus itself, where Momus reigned, the joker of the gods. Perhaps I should rather say there he was tolerated, than that there4 he reigned. For there was this difference between the sublime immortals and weaker mortals,—that the former could never take a joke from their court fool without wincing, while the latter laughed the louder as the wit was sharper; for they wisely chose to applaud in such jesting,
“the sportive wit,
Which healed the folly that it deigned to hit.”
Not so, the irritable gods, with regard to Momus, who was, significantly enough, the Son of Night. Momus however cared nothing for the irritability of his august masters and mistresses. His ready wit pierced them all in turn; and the shafts of his ridicule excited many an absurd roar of anguish. When Minerva had built the house of which she was so proud, the Olympian fool at once detected the error made by the Goddess of Wisdom, and remarked, “Had I turned house-builder, I would have had a movable mansion.”
“Why so, you intellectual ass?” asked the lady, who was somewhat rough-tongued, and loved antithesis.
“Because,” answered the son of Nox, “I could then get away from bad neighbourhoods, and the vicinity of foolish women who consort with owls!”
Venus, clad in her usual attire, and proud in the conviction of her faultlessness, passed by Sir Momus, and turning gracefully in his presence, like Mademoiselle Rosati before a box-full of her admirers, defied him to detect a flaw in her unequalled and dazzling form.
Momus clapped his hands to his eyes, half-blinded by the lustre, and said, “It is true enough, Ourania,—you are not to be looked at without blinking; but before you executed that charming pirouette, I heard your foot-fall on the clouds. Now, a heavy-heeled beauty is not a vessel without a flaw.”
Save Venus herself, there was not a goddess within hearing, who did not laugh more or less loudly, at the fool’s5 censure. Vulcan, to draw off attention from the queen of love, and to gain a compliment for himself, directed the notice of Momus to the clay figure of a man which he had just executed. The critic looked at it for a moment, and turned away with a curl on his lip. “My man,” said he, “should have had a window in his chest. Through such a lattice, I could have looked in, not only upon his ailments, but his thoughts.”
“My bull here,” said Neptune, touching Momus with his trident, which at will he could extend from his own watery plain to the topmost point of Olympus,—“My bull here, of which I am the artist, is more perfect than our limping brother’s man.”
“The beast would have been more perfect still,” cried Momus, from his cradle in the clouds, “if he had had eyes nearer his horns. He would strike more surely than he can now. Leave making bulls, oh son of Ops, to your children in Ierne,—though, even their bulls shall be as laughable as your own.”
In this way the Fool of the Olympian Court treated without reserve the illustrious company, whom he fearlessly mocked and censured. They never bore the censure well; and, ultimately, they rose and ejected him from Heaven. With a mask in one hand, and a small carved figure in the other, he lightly fell to Earth. “You see I come from the skies,” said the crafty fellow to the staring crowds that gathered round him, “and therefore am worthy of welcome and worship.”
How could the poor people know that he had been kicked out from Olympus? They raised an altar, hoisted the celestial exile above it, danced round it like fools, and went home shouting, “Vive la Folie!”
To pretend to show the moral of my story, would be to insult the good sense of my readers.
It is singular that the successor of Momus, as brewer of6 laughter to the gods, was Vulcan, and that he also was kicked out from Olympus. On the ninth day of his descent he came in sight of Lemnos, where the people, without stopping to think whether they were about to receive a precious gift or a rejected waif from Heaven, stretched out their arms to catch him. It is not everything that seems to come from above, that is divine.
And mark!—Since Momus fell, Folly has never left the Earth. But Vulcan taught men to labour; and the founder of industry, the great doer of a good work, was reconciled with Heaven. And Olympus did not continue without its fools, near or afar. The dances of Silenus, the lumbering grace of Polyphemus, and the coarse jokes of Pan, were provocatives of the empty laughter of the gods; and roystering dances, lumbering graces, and coarse jokes became the stock in trade of fools of later years and of more mortal mould.
They who will take the trouble to recall the incidents in the personal history of many of the philosophers of old, will not fail to perceive that, in many cases, they fulfilled the duties which were performed, much less efficiently, perhaps, by the official fools at modern courts. They appear to have exercised, generally with impunity, a marvellous license of speech, and to have communicated disagreeable truths to tyrants who would not have accepted an unpleasant inuendo from an ordinary courtier, without rewarding it with torture or death. This very rudeness of speech, on the part of many philosophers, to princes who were their patrons, was the distinguishing feature of the modern jester. In this respect they were sometimes imitated by the poets, who occasionally indulged in the criminal folly of making execrable puns; so early do we find an illustration of the remark of Ménage, that in all times the court poet was accounted as being also the court fool. Indeed, we shall see, under the head of French Jesters, a whole flock of7 royal poets vying with each other to receive the patent of King’s Fool, on the death of the official who had just departed full of honours and “doubles entendres.”
I believe that a volume might be very respectably filled with illustrations of the identity of philosopher, or poet, and fool,—in the sense of licensed court wit. My readers will probably be satisfied with a few rather than with a volume-full of proofs. Thus, it will be remembered that it was rather a perilous matter to joke with or to convey rough truths to the mind of the great Alexander. But his favourite philosopher, the light-hearted Anaxarchus, was able to do both, with impunity. What a necessary but disagreeable truth did he impress on his royal master, when the latter was bleeding from a recently received wound. “Ah!” exclaimed the philosopher, pointing to the place, “that shows that, after all, you are only a man, and not a god, as people call you, and as you would like to believe.”
Alexander only smiled at this very sufficient little sermon, and did not resent what perhaps he considered as amusing ignorance. It is remarkable, however, that as in less remote days we meet with potentates who could not tolerate the free-spoken court fool, so in those earlier times we find “tyranni,” who were utterly unable to digest a joke or a reproach. Now the speech of Anaxarchus was utterly disgusting to the mind and feelings of Nicocreon of Salamis, who happened to be present when it was uttered. What the philosopher’s especial patron chose to take without discerning offence in it, it was not for Nicocreon to resent; but he never forgot or forgave it. Alexander was hardly dead when Nicocreon contrived to get Anaxarchus into his power, and he ordered that the philosopher should be pounded to death in a mortar, “Pound away! pound away!” exclaimed the heroic fellow, as the iron hammers were reducing him to pulp, “it’s only my body! you cannot pound my soul!” Nicocreon told him that if he were not more silent and less8 saucy, his tongue should be cut out. To show how little Anaxarchus cared for the threat, he bit his tongue in two, and spat the mangled piece into the face of the tyrant.
There, indeed, his wit may be said to have failed him, and he acted with less presence of mind than the philosopher Zeno, when the latter was in a precisely similar situation. When the inventor of dialectics lay nearly bruised to death under the pestles of the executioners employed by Nearchus, he called the latter to him as if he had something of importance to communicate. Nearchus bent over the lip of the mortar to listen, and Zeno, availing himself of his opportunity and his excellent teeth, bit off the ear of the tyrant close to his head. Hence “a biting remark, like that of Zeno,” passed into a proverb.
In a later page, it will be seen how the famous jester, Gonella, had the boldness of speech, but lacked the boldness of soul, of Anaxarchus and Zeno. There was a saying of Gonella’s that very nearly resembles one of Hippias, a free-spoken philosopher of Elis, who pleasantly made virtue consist in the entire freedom of man from all and every sort of dependence upon his fellow-men. Again, in Anaximenes,—not that philosopher who maintained that the stars were the heads of bright nails driven into the solid concave of the sky, but the pupil of Diogenes,—we find a parallel with Chicot, the celebrated jester of the French Kings Henry III., the last Valois, and Henry IV., the first Bourbon. Both were occasionally engaged in affairs of political importance, and Anaximenes, on one of these occasions, did capital service to his employers. Lampsacus was being besieged by Alexander. It had nobly resisted; but, unable to hold out any longer, the authorities deputed the philosopher to make terms with the besieger. As soon as the latter beheld Anaximenes, guessing his errand, he exclaimed, in a burst of foolish rage, “I entirely refuse, beforehand, to grant what you are about to ask.” Chicot used to call9 Henry III. a “simpleton,” but Anaximenes only laughed pleasantly in the face of Alexander, as he said, “May it please your irresistible godship, the favour then which I have to ask is, that you will destroy the city of Lampsacus, enslave the citizens, and ruin their delegate who stands before you.” The conqueror laughed in his turn, and well rewarded the ready wit of a man who was for some years attached to his person.
The poets were not less free than the philosophers. When King Antigonus once caught his favourite Rhodian poet, Antagoras, cooking fish, he asked the bard whether Homer condescended to dress meals while he aspired to register the deeds of Agamemnon. “I cannot say,” answered the Rhodian, “but I very strongly believe this, that the king did not trouble himself as to whether any man in his army boiled fish or left it alone!”
The boldness of some of the old poets was quite on a par with their wit. Their absolute freedom of speech, like that of their official successors, the fools, was as useful and fearless as the modern freedom of the press. There were very few of the parasites and jesters of Dionysius who would venture to tell that disagreeable person beneficial truths. Antiphon, his poet, was an exception. The monarch once asked him, “What brass was the best?” and Antiphon answered, “That of which the statues of Aristogiton and Harmodius were made.” Considering that these were two patriots who rescued Athens from the tyranny of the Pisistratid?, the answer was as daring as it was witty. Dionysius disregarded the wit, and resented the audacity;—in a sneaking way, however, for he put Antiphon to death because he refused to praise the writings of the despot. In one respect, Dionysius was like Cardinal Richelieu, he looked with spiteful feelings on every man who ventured to doubt his ability for writing tragedies. But in another sense, the “tyrannus” was superior to the cardinal,10 for he at least wrote his own tragedies, whereas those of Richelieu were written for him by his buffoon, Boisrobert, who might well afford to praise them. For a better reason than that which induced Richelieu to patronize Boisrobert (who, buffoon as he was, founded the French Academy), Philadelphus patronized the comic poet Aristonymus, whom the king made Keeper of the Library at Alexandria, and who kept the king in good humour by his joyous conversation. Aristonymus did not forget that he held a double office; and as the Bards censured as well as commended the behaviour of the people, so he scattered eulogy or blame on the conduct of his patron, according to the latter’s deserts.
We shall find, in subsequent pages, instances of kings going into mourning on the death of their fools, and of the royal patrons raising tombs to them. In ancient times we also have instances of a whole people cherishing their poets quite as fondly as some monarchs did their jesters. I will only cite the case of Eupolis, that comic poet of Athens, whose unlicensed wit was so very little to the taste of Alcibiades, and who ultimately perished in a naval engagement between the Athenians and the Lacedemonians. His countrymen were so afflicted at losing a man whose wit and poetry were as new life to them, that they passed a decree whereby it was ordered that no poet should ever afterwards go to war. Artaxerxes did not mourn more truly for his witty but then deceased slave Tiridates, than the Athenians mourned for Eupolis. But Artaxerxes did not mourn half so long. He sat weeping, indeed, for three days, but he found consolation when Aspasia offered her ivory shoulder to support his aching head. So Henry II., of France, mourned for his dead jester Thony, even commissioning Ronsard to write his epitaph, but forgetting poet, fool, and epitaph in contemplating the mature beauty of Diana of Poictiers.
Less forgetful of a favourite dead wit was the patron of the comic poet, Timocreon of Rhodes; famous alike for his11 sharp appetite and verses, and for his power of pouring out wit and pouring in wine. It was a brother wit who would not venture to praise him, but who contrived to make the dead jester censure, by celebrating, himself in the apparently autograph lines,
“Multa bibens, et multa vorans, mala denique dicens
Multis, h?c jaceo Timocreon Rhodius.”
“Having drunk much, eaten much, and spoken much evil, here I lie, Timocreon of Rhodes.” This heathen jester lived nearly five centuries before the Christian era; I might perhaps, had I a right to act “Censor,” suggest that his epitaph would not be unsuitable over many a serious but defunct gentleman, born since that era commenced.
Let me rather do justice to the wit and independence of the old poets, generally. While doing so, I cannot but add my conviction that the philosophers were, on the whole, more independent in their jests than the poets. When Apollonius repaired from Chalcis to Rome, to become the tutor of Marcus Antoninus, he refused to go to the palace at all, saying that it was fitter for the pupil to come to the house of the instructor than for the latter to go to the dwelling of the pupil. The imperial hint, good-humouredly conveyed, that he had himself commenced this latter process by repairing from Chalcis to Rome, could not move him.
It has been usual, and Fl?gelA has done it, among others, to rank the elder Aristippus among the ancient court wits. Inasmuch as that he was the chief flatterer of Dionysius of Sicily, and loved Epicurean voluptuousness, the founder of the Cyrenaic sect may be allowed to pass under that title, but he had little in common with the court jester of more modern times. He was as different from the latter in some respects, as he was from Crassus, the grandfather of Crassus the Rich, who according to Pliny was never known to laugh,—not even when his best friend broke his thigh.
12 It is certain that Dionysius treated his flatterers as later sovereigns did their official jesters,—allowing for the difference of manners, morals, and customs. The poor jester whose head was placed on the executioner’s block by the sportive order of the ducal sovereign of Ferrara, proved indeed to be even worse off than the parasite Damocles, when Dionysius seated him on his throne, beneath an unsheathed sword suspended from a horse-hair.
Again, the freedom which the court fool subsequently held by right of office, we find fearlessly exercised by the philosophic Demochares, the Athenian ambassador, who being asked, by King Philip of Macedonia, to whom he was sent, what the king could do to most gratify the Athenians, replied, “The most gratifying thing you could do would be to hang yourself.” The courtiers murmured with indignation, but Philip dismissed the envoy, with the remark, that he hoped the Athenians would perceive he had more wit than their representative, seeing that he could take with indifference such a joke as that flung at him by Demochares.
There are two philosophers whose names now occur to me, and of whom some erroneous notions appear to be entertained by their posterity;—Heraclitus and Democritus. We picture them as “Jean qui pleure” and “Jean qui rit,” looking on the first as made up of groans, and the latter of gaiety. The fact however is, that Heraclitus, though given, as any man might be, at any period, who thought of the matter, to weep over the wickedness of the world, made that world laugh heartily by his rough answers to the polite invitations of Darius, who would fain have had him at the Persian court. Heraclitus and Darius remind me of Brusquet and Charles V. Democritus, too, was a different man from what he is generally thought to have been. He laughed, indeed, but it was at the follies of mankind; and he did not disdain, like the weeping Ephesian, to figure at13 the court of Darius. There is one sample of his wit there, which is better than anything ever uttered by Bertholdo, the philosophic buffoon at the court of Alboin, King of the Lombards. Darius was inconsolable for the loss of his wife, declaring that he was the only man who had ever known real adversity. “And I will raise the queen from the dead in a few minutes,” said Democritus, “if I only——” “If you only, what?” impatiently exclaimed Darius, interrupting him. “If I only can find three individuals who have passed through life without adversity of some sort, and whose names I will engrave on the queen’s monument.” Darius knew the case was hopeless, and mournfully smiled. If he had given a small estate to the witty philosopher, the latter would have deserved it quite as well as the Joculatores of our first William and John, whose wit or wisdom was rewarded by raising them to the very pleasant condition of holders of land.
It is said of some of the German jesters that they occasionally lived on the people of the town, with the lord of which they resided in exercise of their office. A parallel to this may be met with in the annals of the philosophers, in the person of Demonax, who, leaving to his patrons to clothe and lodge him, boarded himself in a very facetious and economical way, by entering the first house, after he felt himself hungry, and there fully satisfying his appetite. But Demonax belonged to a lower class of the order of philosophers, as some later fools did to that of the general order of their profession. There was as much difference between Demonax and Socrates, as there was between Sibilot, as described by Huguenot authors, and our own light and noble-hearted Will Sommers. The happiest idea one can have of Socrates is that of seeing him in the studio of his father Sophroniscus, carving that group of the three Graces, the simplicity and elegance of which excited universal admiration. He was ever the same,—a rough labourer patiently and certainly14 creating beauty. In him we fail to discern anything of the mere unlicensed jester. The Platonic and the Xenophontic Socrates may be said equally, though in different ways and measures, to challenge admiration. Leaving the philosopher, to encounter him again presently, let us look over antiquity for traces of the fool in people as in individuals.
Among the ancients, perhaps the Tirynthians had the reputation of being the very merriest of fools. Theophrastus is cited by Athen?us in proof of this. Those people of Argolis were so continually merry that they at last got tired of it, and applied to the oracle at Delphos to save them from being any longer such joyous simpletons.
“You shall be cured,” said the oracular authority, “if after sacrificing an ox to Neptune, you can throw the carcase into the sea, without laughing.”
“That will be easy enough,” said the Tirynthians, laughing all the while, “if we can only keep children away from the sacred fire.”
Of course, however, an enfant terrible managed to be present at the show. He was no sooner discovered than the now solemn Tirynthians began to drive him away, lest he should laugh or raise laughter during the ceremony, by some childish remark or question.
“What are you afraid of?” asked the sprightly lad,—“that I should upset the dish” (and he pointed to the sea) “that is to hold your beef?”
Poor as the joke was, it so tickled the fancy of the Tirynthians, that they laughed till their sides ached; and so they remained merry fools for ever. No jester, at a royal table, was ever so highly esteemed as an uproariously gay buffoon from this old city of Hercules—roystering Tirynthia.
The Tirynthians were never excelled, except by the people of Ph?stum, who, by all other Cretans, were reckoned15 as the first jesters in the world. In the days of those merry fellows, it may be observed, that the cleverest of them had to exercise their vocation on melancholy occasions. When Petronius Arbiter was committing slow suicide by alternately opening and closing his veins, nothing excited him to more laughter than the sharply comic epigrams uttered by the jokers who stood around him.
Under the cloak of folly, good service has been rendered by wise men. By feigning want of wit, the elder Brutus saved himself to save his country; revenged a wrong, and converted regal Rome into a republic. We have another notable instance in the case of Solon, who, when the Athenian law forbade mention of the subject of Salamis, that island which gave Athens such an infinite world of trouble, assumed the bearing of one out of his wits, and, in better verse than a fool could have indited, told truths that led to great consequences, and exhibited the patriotic courage and humour of the celebrated sage. Assuredly Solon was no fool, for he refused to be a king, and he invented taxation. I will revert for a moment to Aristippus, the lover of La?s, and the flatterer of Dionysius,—the rosy philosopher who only cared for the present moment, but who had of the jester only his liberty of speech. When thrust into an inferior seat at table, and being asked, if he liked it as well as his higher place of the day before: “Ay, truly,” said he to Dionysius; “for the place I held yesterday, I despise today, since I hold it no longer. I honoured the seat, the seat did not honour me. So, today’s seat, which, yesterday, was without dignity, because I was not in it, is now dignified by holding me.” The court laughed; but the wit and the wisdom of the speech seem to be of the very mildest nature.
That the ancients carried their idea of “fooling” too far, may be seen in the fact that, as Sir Thomas Brown observes, “some drew provocatives of mirth from anatomies, and jugglers showed tricks with skeletons.” It was not any16 reverend gentleman or philosopher who improved the occasion of Egyptian feasts, by showing a model mummy, but a light-hearted slave who exhibited the ivory effigy to the garlanded guests with, “Behold what we must all come to!” Antiquity went further than this in its patronage of the fool. In the funeral train, followed the arch-mime lately retained by the deceased patrician; and it was this good fellow’s business to keep the mourners merry, by imitations of the speech, gesture, and manners of the deceased himself. Of this custom, the author last-named rightly says, that “it was too light for such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations and doleful rites of the grave.” The mourners must have been sadly in want of the extract of Cachunde or Liberans, which was once a famous and highly magnified composition, used in the East Indies, to drive away melancholy.
How highly mirth was accounted of, even in grave sport, is proved by one fact,—that Lycurgus raised an image of Laughter, and caused it to be worshipped as a God. He loved, he said, to see people merry at feasts and assemblies.
Of the professional wit, we find a trace in a curious custom of Roman gentlemen. When these discovered that learning and wit began to be in more general estimation than arms or wealth, the clever fellows among them got on well enough, and setting their minds to discipline, became the favoured guests at the most brilliant parties. The dull millionaires were rather nettled at this, but they fell upon an exquisite plan to be on an equality with their sparkling rivals. They had neither wit nor learning themselves, but they purchased slaves, and especially Greek slaves, who possessed both. Had they to attend an assembly where philosophy was most in fashion, they took with them their more learned bondsmen; but was the evening expected to be mirthful, then the stolid owners ordered the slaves with comic dispositions and merry turns of thought and expression,17 to accompany them. These delightful fellows were ever welcome, and when their sallies produced explosions of laughter and applause, their masters stroked their beards complacently, and assumed a modest composure, as if they had said all the good things uttered by their serfs.
Like the fools of later ages, these jesters were the more acceptable, because they helped mortal man to kill Time. When society was without books, it learned what it could, and amused itself as it might, by the help of philosophers, minstrels, or jesters. Printing, indeed, killed neither mirth, music, nor philosophy; but the decline of the profession of the hired fool certainly began at the period of the discovery of printing.
I might find opportunity here of saying something touching the office of the parasite, as a jester; but I have treated that subject at such length, in my “Table Traits,” that I will rather refer my readers to that little volume than repeat what is said in it, here. I may notice, however, in addition, that the old classical, professional jesters, in Athens, had the privilege of entering any company, without invitation. Plautus, therefore, calls them “Flies.” The parasite was of this profession, and there was not much civility vouchsafed towards him, if he was of the class that did not wait to be invited. The host would rudely order him to play the fool for the amusement of the company; to whom he narrated all the jokes he could remember, and when his memory ran dry, he would ignobly descend to read them from manuscripts. Ma?tre Guillaume, a fool at the court of Henri IV., did much the same. The parasite was interested personally, as well as pecuniarily, in amusing his hearers, for if he failed to do so, they had no hesitation in rising, kicking his seat from under him, raining blows upon his body, breaking the dishes upon his head, and, fixing a rope, or collar, round his neck, flinging him headlong into the street.
Xenophon, in his account of the banquet at the marine18 villa of Callias, affords us an excellent idea of the person and merits of the professional buffoon. The name of the latter is Philip. This fool by vocation, when all the gentlemen are at supper, knocks at the door, and with a rollicking sort of impudence, says to the servant who opens it, “Here we are! the gentlemen need not deliberate about letting me in to supper. I am provided with everything necessary for doing so, for nothing. My bay horse is tired with carrying nothing in his stomach, and I am quite as weary with running about to see how I can best fill my own.” And then forcing his way in, he raises a laugh, by exclaiming—“Gentlemen, you all know me and my professional privilege. But I have come uninvited, chiefly because I have an aversion from ceremony, and a disinclination to put you to the trouble of a formal invitation.”
Callias remarks, “We must not refuse him his dish;” and the host then welcomes the jester, by bidding him take place; for serious conversation has made the guests dull, and they will be glad of an opportunity to indulge in laughter.
Philip cut a thousand jokes without being able to tickle his hearers into laughter; and it was only when he affected to be broken-hearted and about to die with shame at his ill-success or their dulness, that they promised to try and find something risible in his professional mirth. And this must have been a very sorry joke indeed.
The best, perhaps the only tolerable scintillation of wit struck out by the “laughter-maker,” is to be found, after the circus-girl who accompanies the Syracusan showman has leaped through the hoop in which knives are planted with every point towards the passing leaper. Philip has then a fling at an Athenian alderman who belonged to the Peace-party of his day:—“Ah!” he exclaims, “what pleasure should I enjoy to see Pisander, that grave counsellor, taking lessons from this girl; he that is ready to19 swoon away at the sight of a lance, and says it is a barbarous cruel custom to go to war and kill men!” This is not extremely lively, but it is at least as good a joke as when he says to Socrates, on the assertion of the philosopher that he intended to dance: “Well, I believe your thighs and shoulders are of the same weight; and that if you put the one into one scale, and the other into another, just as the constable weighs bread in the market-place, you will not be in danger of being forfeited, so justly poised will be the respective weights.” And, therewith, the buffoon expresses a desire to dance with Socrates, and begins awkwardly imitating the previous graceful dancing of the girl, raising peals of mirth from the little company of nobles and sages, and ending, heated and panting, with a sly look towards the slaves standing in grim repose before the board on which was placed the wine. With a sly remark, he wishes they were like coachmen, who are the more prized for being quick in their driving and dexterous in turning. This remark, of course, sets the wine-bearers rapidly moving towards Philip and among the company generally.
This professional fool, it is to be observed, is proud of his profession. “I suppose you value yourself,” says Lycon, “on your power to make men laugh?”
“Ay, truly,” answers Philip;—“and have I not better reason for being proud of this, than the finical Callipides of piquing himself at making men weep at his tragic verses in the theatre?—Proud of my trade!” he subsequently exclaims, “oh, oh, I should think so; for see you, when people are in the way of good fortune, they invite me to their houses; but when misfortune or misery falls upon them, they carefully avoid meeting me.” Nicerates is struck by the remark, for he is one of those men whose friends, ruined by their extravagance, expect him to extricate them from their difficulties. He sighs, when he compares his own condition with that of the fool, whose vocation at this renowned20 banquet terminates by a taste of his craft, when he approvingly winks to the Syracusan, and, after his fashion, says Amen to that lucky showman’s prayer, soliciting the gods to send plenty of everything, wherever he came, save of judgment and good sense.
This is his last joke, for Socrates grows weary of him and of his chattering. “But it is not proper,” says Philip, a little nettled, “that we should be silent at a feast.”
“Very true,” replies the philosophic son of a statuary and a midwife, “but it is also true that it is better to be silent than say what it were more profitable to leave unsaid.” And this very strong hint extinguishes the jester.
It is impossible to read the graphic sketch by Xenophon, taking it as a faithful account of an actual scene, without feeling wonder that an intellectual party, like the one depicted, should need, or should tolerate, such aids to enjoyment as those professed to be afforded by the buffoon and the mountebank with his pretty dancing-girl and ballet company. The wit and the wisdom are all on the side of the gentlemen, and of Socrates in particular, who, to do him justice, is quite as merry as he is wise. His wit sparkles throughout the banquet, and perhaps a hecatomb of witty fools would never have bethought themselves of giving a description so graceful, so touching, and so true, of the rich uses and the vast abuses of wine, as Socrates does at this very party. Nor is stately Xenophon himself without his joke,—as though moved by the fact of his dealing here with jesters. “When the little ballet of ‘Bacchus and Ariadne’ was played out,” says the author, “the company found it so natural in its pantomime, that they became convinced of what had not previously entered their minds, namely that the youth and girl who had represented the chief characters were actually in love with one another. This,” adds Xenophon, “caused the guests who were married, and some who were not, to mount their horses forthwith, and ride full21 speed to Athens, with the briskest resolutions imaginable.” But while the husbands went home to greet their spouses, and lovers to pay homage to their respective Lalages, some stayed behind—Socrates was of the number—and these “went a-walking with Lycon, Autolicus, and Callias.” But the fool went not with the philosopher, the nobles, and the young Autolicus, who had won a prize at the Olympic Games,—and, consequently, we must keep in the company with which we are bound to journey.
This species of company was not equally pleasant to all men. Athen?us tells us that the Scythian Anacharsis was once present at a banquet, at which a number of professional fools did their office so drolly, that every one laughed,—save the Scythian. Presently, a monkey was introduced, and at this animal’s singular tricks, Anacharsis laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. As some surprise was expressed at this, by the company, the Scythian justified himself by remarking,—“The monkey is comic and risible by nature, and without effort; but man is so only by art and affectation.” In a similar sense, Athen?us quotes a passage from Euripides, in which the poet says:—“There are numerous people who study the art of raising laughter by witty speeches and sparkling repartees. For my part, I hate these elaborate buffoons, whose unrestrained tongue spares not the wise, and whom, indeed, I do not reckon worthy of being accounted among ‘men.’”
In the days of King Philip, the Macedonian, whenever a man told an extremely witty story, he was pretty sure to be met with the remark, “Ah, that comes from the Sixty.” It was as much as doubting the originality of the wit. “The Sixty” was, in fact, a club of wits. They met in Athens, not at a tavern, but in the temple of Hercules. We should as soon expect to hear of a convivial body of wits assembling every Saturday night in “Rowland Hill’s Chapel.” They were fellows who had the very highest22 opinion of their own abilities, for they regularly entered in a book all the witticisms of the evening. This was, probably, the very first jest-book ever put together. To listen to it, when the Secretary took it with him to private parties, must have been an antepast of ‘Punch.’ The precious book has perished, but Athen?us has preserved the names of a few of the members, which, however, are not worth repeating, though it may be stated, that the owners had also nicknames; and one tall, clever, nimble fellow, Callimedes, was familiarly hailed by his fellow-clubbists as “the Grasshopper.” Philip heard of this merry, social, witty company, and longing to know more of them, their sayings and doings, he did not indeed invite them to his distant court, but he sent them a talent (nearly ￡200 sterling), and requested the loan of the last volume of the transactions of the “Sixty Club.” The book was duly despatched; and perhaps the loan of a volume was never paid for at so high a rate: the authors thus played the part of court fools by deputy. Their jokes were stereotyped, and had a long and merry life of it. It was useless for any man to fire one off as his own, for the source was instantly discovered, and the company would derisively call out, “An Old Sixty!” just as dull retailers of faded jests are suppressed, in our own day, by the cry of, “An Old Joe!”
Philip is said to have possessed his own court fool in Clisophus. Fl?gel says, that the latter excited shouts of laughter by his imitations of his royal master’s style, voice, manner, and even infirmities. But, according to Athen?us, Clisophus seems to have been a parasite, who imitated his patron out of flattery, and did not mimic him in order to excite risibility. At other courts there were mimics who played the fool before their sovereign lords, by caricatured imitations of fencers, singers, and even orators,—especially of their defects. The most celebrated, perhaps, was Herodotus,23 a burly namesake of the father of history, who kept the court of Antiochus ever merry by his mimicry, and who was named, par excellence, Logomimus.
The fools and the philosophers were not always identical, and they often came in contact, as was to be expected. We have an instance in the buffoon Satyrion, named by Lucian, and the grave Alcidamas, who wrote a treatise on death. The sage could not tolerate the fun and the Egyptian accent of the ugly and close-cropped fool; and when the latter called the man of wisdom a “lap-dog,” the philosopher challenged him to single combat. Some of the guests were ashamed, and some laughed, to see sciolist and sage heartily belabouring each other; but the laughter was universal when the philosopher, beaten to a mummy, confessed himself vanquished, and afterwards stood as mute as a courtesan in a Greek play.
Socrates (as I have previously remarked) is said, by more than one writer, ancient and modern, to have united in his own person the philosopher and the fool. His ugliness, deformity, and uncouthness,—his childish play, his extravagant dancing, his inclination to laugh at everything,—all these and more have been cited as foundations for reckoning him among the jesters. Zeno, according to Cicero, especially styled him the “Athenian buffoon,” which was probably meant for a compliment. The best description of him is that of Alcibiades, in Plato, who says that Socrates resembled the large images of Silenus, which were filled with little statuettes of the gods. Fl?gel rejects the picture of Socrates, represented by Aristophanes in the ‘Clouds,’ as “suspicious.” But Socrates has nothing of the fool in him in that play, except that he is represented as proprietor of the Thinking-Shop, and deriving powers of humbug and circumlocution, from the clouds. In this play, the recognized freedom of the fool, as regards liberty of speech at the expense of the audience, is exercised by the characters24 “Just Cause” and “Unjust Cause,” as the following sample will show:—
“Unj. Now, then, tell me: from what class do the lawyers come?
“Just. From the blackguards.
“Unj. Very good! And the public speakers?
“Just. Oh, from the blackguards, also.
“Unj. ——And now look; which class most abounds among the audience?
“Just. I am looking.
“Unj. But what do you see?
“Just. By all the gods, I see more blackguards than anything else. That fellow, I particularly know; and him yonder; and that blackguard with the long hair.”
The above was the true license of the fool, in the professional use of the term; and the Athenian blackguards only laughed to hear themselves thus distinguished.
The above is among the boldest of the personal assaults made by Aristophanes against the vices or failings of his countrymen. He claimed the privileges of Comedy, as the Fool did those of his cap and bells. This he does, especially in ‘The Acharnians,’ when Dic?opolis, looking straight at the audience, says, “Think nothing the worse of me, Athenian gentlemen, if, although I am a beggar, I hazard touching on your affairs of state, in comic verse; for even comedy knows what is proper, and, if you find me sharp, you shall also find me just.” Still nearer did the poet come to the license of the jester, when, in ‘The Knights,’ he himself turns actor as well as author, and so dressed, looked, and mimicked, without once employing the name of, the great demagogue whom he was satirizing, that every spectator recognized the well-known Cleon. The same author’s attack on the litigious spirit of the Athenians, in his ‘Wasps,’ is another instance of what I am attempting to illustrate. This is more particularly the case when he makes his characters25 address themselves immediately to the audience, as may be supposed to occur in the Parabasis of the last-named piece. Here the satirist bids the audience to provide themselves with clearer understandings, if they would enjoy the poets thoroughly. “Henceforth, good gentlemen,” are his words, “have more love and regard for such of your poets as treat you to something original. Preserve their sayings, and keep them in your chests with your apples. If you do this, there will be a scent of cleverness from your clothes, that shall last you through a whole year.” In his ‘Peace,’ the finest touch of satire is not in what is said, but in what is left unsaid; for the goddess whose name gives a title to the piece, never once opens her mouth. The licensed jester appears as broadly in the author’s dealings with the gods, whose place in Heaven is represented as occupied by the Demon of War, who is engaged in braying the Greek States in a stupendous mortar. The daring of the author, as exercised in pelting the gods themselves with jokes, is still more flagrant in ‘The Birds,’ where he burlesques the national mythology, in presence of a people whose jealous fury was just then aroused by suspicion of a conspiracy existing against the national religion. That the audience should have tolerated the audacity of their favourite jester, is a proof of the power he held over them. Nevertheless, they were probably more delighted with his personalities, and they recognized with shouts of laughter the brace of gallant military gentlemen thus described by one of the women in the ‘Lysistrata’:—“By Jove, I saw a man with long hair, a commander of cavalry, on horseback, who was pouring into his brazen helmet a lot of pease-soup, which he had just bought from an old woman. I saw also a Thracian, with shield and javelin, like Tereus. He went up to the woman who sold figs, and, frightening her away with his arms, took up her ripe figs and began swallowing them.” The national satirist is seen again in the recommendation put in the mouth of the male chorus in26 the same play, and which is to this effect:—“If the Athenians would only follow my advice, their ambassadors should never go upon their missions, except when drunk. Sobriety and Common Sense do not go together with us. If, for instance, we send sober legates to Sparta, they only watch for opportunity to create mischief. If the Spartans speak, we do not heed them; if they are silent, we wrongly suspect them. Let our envoys get drunk, and agree in what they hear, and in the reports they send home.” Nor does Aristophanes spare the women more than the men. How archly, no doubt, did Mnesilochus look at the audience, when he ungallantly remarked, in ‘The Thesmophoriazus?,’—“Among all the ladies of the present day, you would seek in vain to find a Penelope. They are Ph?dras, every one of them.” It is not to be supposed that the comic poet ever offended by his trenchant jests, although a passage delivered by the chorus, in ‘The Ecclesiazus?’ (that exquisite satire against the ideal republics of philosophers, with impracticable laws), would seem, perhaps, to imply something of the sort. Turning to the audience, the Chorus remarks, “I am going to make a little suggestion to you. I wish the clever among you to be on my side; for remember how clever I am myself. They who laugh merrily will prefer me, I know, because of my own mirthful jesting.” This suggestion sounds as if the dunces and dullards had been sneering at the satirist for his smartness and sprightliness. Even if so, he continued to laugh at gods and men. At both, as in ‘Plutus,’ where he ridicules the deities for their many names, by which they hoped to catch a gift under one appellation, which they lost under another; and where he illustrates the irreligiousness of men, by remarking that nowadays they never enter a temple, except for a purpose which, it will be recollected, was religiously avoided by the Essenes on the Sabbath. The last illustration is made in the very spirit and letter which marked the “Fools” of the27 fifteenth century. They pleaded for such jokes the immunities of their office, and Aristophanes does something very like this when he makes Xanthias exclaim, in ‘The Frogs,’ “Oh, they are always carrying baggage in comedy!”
Fl?gel has been too anxious to increase his list of Fools, by including among them the planus, or impostor. He takes for a joker, the cheat denounced by Horace in the 17th of the First Book of his Epistles. That cheat is simply a street vagabond, who deceives the humane by pretending to have broken his leg, and who laughs at them when they have passed on, after giving him relief. Even this sorry joke he cannot often repeat. Then we have, from Athen?us, other comical fellows cited, whose funny things won the admiration of Greece and Rome, the people of which countries must have been easily pleased. Among these are the Alexandrian Matreas, who wrote chapters of a ‘Comic Natural History,’ wherein he discussed such questions as, “Why, when the sun sets at sea, does he not set off swimming?” “Why do the swans never get drunk with what they imbibe?” Then we hear of a Cephisodorus,—neither the tragic poet nor the historian,—whose stock joke consisted in his running breathless, either from or towards the city honoured by his residence, and with an air of frantic terror, informing all whom he passed or encountered, of some awful calamity. It is hardly possible to imagine that people laughed more than once, if once, at a sorry fool like this. Not much more risible was that Pantaleon, who was wont to address strangers in the street in tirades of bombastic nonsense, utterly meaningless and incomprehensible. The joke was for the standers-by, who knew Pantaleon, and enjoyed the astounded look of those whom he addressed. According to Athen?us, the last comicality of Pantaleon was in imposing on his two sons, whom he called separately to his side, when dying, and confidentially told each where he would find a hidden treasure. When they had looked for28 this in vain, they probably understood why their respectable sire had died laughing. Many of this class of fools can only be considered as “hoaxers.” Such was another Cephisodorus, who disgraced his dignified name by very undignified tricks,—as when he hired a host of hardy day-labourers, and gave them rendezvous in such a narrow street that, when all were assembled, it was impossible to move either backward or forward. The “Berners Street Hoax,” by Theodore Hook, was entirely after the fashion of Cephisodorus, and was not the more excusable on that account.
Forcatulus, a learned writer on law, accepts as true a story, very like one to be found in Rabelais, and which Fl?gel quotes from another accomplished jurist, Accursius. It is a story in which ignorance is made to pass for wisdom, and is therefore, although common, yet not quite so excellent a joke as it would pretend to be; and is to this effect:—
The Romans sent an ambassador to Greece, in order to procure a copy of the Laws of the twelve Tables. The Greeks would make no such costly gift till they were satisfied that the petitioners had men amongst them who could comprehend the wisdom of the Laws. They despatched an envoy to look into the matter; and when the Romans heard of him and his purpose, they resolved to defeat him by means of a fool. They clothed the latter in purple, surrounded him with a guard of honour, and dismissed him to encounter the accomplished ambassador from Greece, with one single point of instruction,—he was on no account to open his mouth.
The Athenian commissioner, seeing the representative of Roman wisdom standing before him, grave and speechless, observed, with a smile, “I understand. The gentleman is a Pythagorean, and carries on an argument only by signs. With all my heart!” And, thereupon he raised a single finger, to imply that there was only one principle of nature in the universe.
29 The simpleton sent by Rome, not dreaming that this was the opening of a philosophical argument, but looking upon it rather as a menace, extended two fingers and a thumb towards the Greek, as if about to take him by the nose.
“Good! very good!” murmured the Athenian. “He shows me the Pythagorean Trias,—the triple God in one. I must intimate that I understand him;”—and the philosophical envoy approached the stolid Roman, with the flat of his hand extended towards him. He intended thereby to imply that the divine Trias was the upholder of all things. The Roman, however, thinking it an approximation to a box on the ear, drew back a step, lifted his doubled fist, and awaited the coming of the Greek.
The face of the latter was covered by a radiant smile. He could only exclaim, “Perfect! charming! divine! The silent sage tells me that the divine supporter of all things is in himself All-mighty. Admirably done! a nation with such sages must be worthy of laws enacted by the leaders of civilization.”
Now if this story be, as Forcatulus will have it, historically true, I must add that it has been improved in the hands of the story-tellers. These, of course, have made it a Christian disputation, in which the hired fool has but one eye. The real metaphysician reads in the signs of the simpleton the whole Christian revelation, but the story is improved by the fool’s own description of the matter. “When I saw him raise one finger, I thought he mocked me, as having but one eye; and I held out two fingers, meaning that my single eye was as good as his two. But when he, therefore, held out three fingers, signifying that there were only three eyes between us, I doubled my fist, to knock him down for his insolence.”
Among the old class of jesters some writers rank the Aretalogi, who appear to have been improvisers of merry or wonderful stories for the amusement of a company, by30 whom they were invited, or hired. Juvenal says that when Ulysses, at the table of Alcinous, described the person and deeds of the cannibal Polyphemus, some of the guests turned pale, while the narrator, to others seemed only a jester:
“Risum fortasse quibusdam
Moverat mendax Aretalogus;”
or, as the Jesuit Tarteron translates this passage,—“Les autres pamoient de rire, et regardoient Ulysse comme un diseur de contes faits à plaisir.” Some of the guests, in fact, laughed at Ulysses as they would have done at a regular romancer.
Again, Suetonius, in the 74th chapter of his Life of Augustus, after describing the pleasant social customs of the emperor, his agreeable company, and his courteous and affable manner with them, adds that, to encourage their mirth and their freedom, “aut acroamata et histriones, aut etiam triviales ex circo ludios interponebat, ac frequentius aretalogos.” To show the value of this last word, according to English writers, I turn to an old translation of Suetonius, published in 1692, and there I find that, “for mirth’s sake, Augustus would often have at his table either some to tell stories, or players, or common Merry Andrews out of the Circus, but more frequently boasting pedagogues and maintainers of paradoxes.”
It might easily be concluded that the Aretalogus was really of the number of professional jesters, were it not that I find Lampridius quoted by Fl?gel as including Ulpian in this class, because he sat at the table of Alexander Severus, “ut haberet fabulas literales.” But it is almost impossible to admit of this, for the wise Ulpian was the solemn president of the Imperial Council of State, a great lawyer, a great reformer, a moral and a religious man, according to the light possessed by him. He was, as it seems to me, rather the Mentor than the Jester of Severus, who was, for31 a time, the bright example of men,—of any and every rank. The imperial virtues were held to be the result of the teaching and practices of Ulpian. To his frugal table the Emperor invited men of learning and virtue, and Ulpian was invariably of the number. So far, however, was the profound jurisconsult from being a mere jester, that, as we are told, the pauses in the pleasing and instructive conversation of himself and fellow-guests “were occasionally enlivened by the recital of some pleasing composition, which,” says Gibbon, “supplied the place of the dancers, comedians, and even gladiators, so frequently summoned to the tables of the rich and luxurious Romans.” That there was little or nothing of the conceited Aretalogus in Ulpian, may be seen in the fact that his virtue was of too stern a quality, and that he was slain by the Pr?torian guards because he was more wise than merry.
We next come to the Scurra, a jester, of whom we find an illustration in ancient comedy. When the witnesses called by Agorastocles (in the ‘P?nulus’ of Plautus) pompously order Collybiscus to walk in their rear, that personage remarks,
“Faciunt scurr? quod consuerunt; pone sese homines locant.”
“They act exactly like buffoons, who put every man behind them;” in which we see something of the ordinarily insolent character of these individuals.
Yet they are themselves said to have been originally the “followers” in the retinue of great men, and their name, Scurra, or Sequura, is derived by some lexicographers from ‘sequi,’ to follow. Their wit was sharp but polished, and to be scurrilous, in the olden time, was rather a credit than a disgrace; and if the enemies of Cicero called him the scurra consularis, it was not that they found his sarcasms coarse, but that they felt them penetrating and fatal.
The Scurr?, however, seem to have sunk to a level with32 the common buffoons, as we collect from the letter of Pliny to Genitor (l. ix. ep. 17). Pliny’s friend had written to him to express his disgust at a splendid entertainment where he had been a guest, being marred by the jokes, antics, and wiles of the professional scurr?, cin?di, and moriones. The difference between the first and the last who belonged to the profession of fools, consisted in this,—the Scurra professed the art of exciting his hearers to risibility by extravagant yet sparkling wit. The Morio worked more quietly, and as if he joked licentiously by natural disposition thereto. It is worthy of observation that Pliny rather chides his friend. He writes, substantially, in reply, “Pray smooth your brow. I do not hire such fellows myself, but I do not turn up my nose at those who follow a contrary fashion. There is nothing novel or grateful to me in the hackneyed gestures of the wanton, the pleasantry of the jester, or the nonsense of the fool.” And the philosopher adds, with great fairness, “You see it is not so much my judgment as my taste that is against them;” and, he says further, “When I have reading, music, or the company of an actor at my own house, there are some guests who leave directly, or who, if they stay, look as ‘glumpy’ at the diversions I provide, as you did at those which lately marred your entertainment. The truth is,” thus concludes the philosopher, and it is advice as valuable now as ever, “we should accept, as well-meant, the diversions provided for us by others, that they, in their turn, may be indulgent towards those we provide for them.” One thing noteworthy here is, that the sensible people in Rome did not really care for the “fool.” If the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus brought in that sort of entertainment, the best philosophers (for some stooped to folly) protested against it by both precept and example.
The Scurra, as I have said, was not in every age a polished fool. The buffoon at the fair who obtained the applause of33 his audience for grunting like a pig, and, as the audience thought, more like a pig than the animal itself, is called by Ph?drus a “Scurra.” He probably sank lower in his practice than any of his class, for he announced that the entertainment he was about to exhibit had never before been known on any stage. But even the best of the Scurr? seem to me to justify rather the censure of Genitor than the praise of Horace. The latter, it will be remembered, on the famous journey to Brundusium, was present at the cudgelling of brains between Sarmentus (who had run away from slavery to set up as a Scurra) and Cicerrus, who was a well-to-do parasite of his day. Horace asserts that the wit of these two induced them all to merrily prolong their supper; and yet all the fun perpetrated was of a dreary cast. The Scurra joked coarsely on the deformity and infirmity of the parasite, and the latter retorted by reproaching the Scurra with his condition of slave, and the puny insignificance of his body. If Sarmentus was the “delight” of C?sar Augustus, that monarch was very easily pleased.
Perhaps there was no greater patron of the Scurr?, and all similar and many more degraded persons, than Sylla. He wasted his colossal fortune on fools of every description,—some of them monsters of uncleanness. Fl?gel, when noticing the criminal liberality of Sylla towards the crowds of debauched followers who occupied his table and house, and accompanied him abroad, says that for their sakes and under their influences, he neglected public business. But the fact is, that Sylla did not lead this disreputable life until after he had abdicated the dictatorship, and had gone into his sensual and unhappy retirement at Puteoli.
Antony was not more choice than Sylla in his “jolly companions,” nor in his own conduct. He was often indeed his own fool, and few great men ever played that character so thoroughly, but all were not fools and jesters and jugglers, whom historians have placed round the table and at34 the hearth of Antony. Fl?gel especially errs in classing among the jugglers retained by the Triumvir the beautiful Cytheris, or Lycoris, that slave whom the gentle and gallant Gallus loved, but whose desertion of him for Antony gained for us the tender eclogue of Virgil.
Juvenal cites with Sarmentus, the name of Galba as a buffoon or parasite of Augustus, and he does this (Sat. v.) in order to shame a dissolute friend who saw no harm in allowing his “loins to grow fat by others’ meat.” “What!” exclaims the Satirist, “are you not yet ashamed of your course of life? Can you still believe that sovereign happiness consists in living at another man’s table,—where you support more insults than were ever heaped on Sarmentus and Galba at the table of C?sar?”
Galba was an aristocratic Demonax. He was, moreover, a short hump-backed fellow, and he seems rather to have been the cause of wit in others than witty himself. It was in allusion to his deformity that Augustus remarked, after Galba had maintained some absurd proposition, “I can tell you what is right, yet I can’t put you straight.” It is of Galba that is told the story of his feigning to go to sleep at his own table while M?cenas was saying very polite things to the host’s wife; but when another of the guests attempted to filch something from the board, “Hold there!” cried Galba, “I am asleep for him, but not for you!”
Martial complains that he himself was less known to his contemporaries, all witty poet as he was, than Caballus, the buffoon of Tiberius. This individual is supposed to be the same with the Claudius Gallus of Suetonius. But Gallus seems to have been as much of a friend as a man could be, of an Emperor who was accustomed to behead such of his acquaintances as got the better of him in argument. That Gallus was hardly a professional fool may be gathered from the words of Suetonius, according to the quaint translation of the edition of 1692. “Claudius Gallus, a most notorious35 old Sir Jolly, who had been formerly branded for his debauches by Augustus, and severely reprimanded by himself (Tiberius) in the Senate, inviting him (Tiberius) to supper, he promised to come, on the terms that nothing were omitted of his usual way of entertainment,”—which, according to the context, seems to have been of a terribly licentious character.
Fl?gel refers, for an example of the impunity of Court Fools, in the bold wagging of their tongue at the Courts of the Roman Emperors, to the remark of a jester to Vespasian. The former had been saying sharp things to all around him, but, observed the Emperor, “you have addressed no observation to me.” Now Vespasian, whom we are accustomed to picture to ourselves as a towering personage of heroic carriage, was a poorly built fellow who went about in a half-sitting posture, like Mr. Wright in the part of the retired coachman, whose limbs have stiffened into the posture which he had preserved through a long course of years, on the box. The jester joked very indecently on this weakness of the monarch, but I do not think the sorry humourist was a wit by profession. “Quidam urbanorum,” is the way in which he is described, but this may mean “one of the men about town,” and the old translation from which I have already made an extract, renders it “one of the wits of the time.” Whichever it be, it seems to show that the jokers could take great liberties with some emperors. Other instances prove that some emperors took deadly vengeance on the jokers.
Commodus Antoninus may be reckoned among those princes who have been their own fools, and he played the part rarely; but it was more in the spirit of insane than witty folly. His fun, like the club of Hercules, which he for ever carried on his shoulder, was crushing rather than exhilarating. Gallienus, who resembled him in many respects, and was as cruel, licentious, depraved, and cold-hearted,36 kept a second table for his buffoons; which they occupied like regular gentlemen of the Imperial household. When this potentate played the fool for his own amusement, he could be, by caprice at least, less bloodthirsty in his frolicsomeness than Commodus; as, for instance, when he ordered a knave of a jeweller to be flung into the arena, and let loose upon him—not a roaring lion, but a poor capon. The joke, as poor as the bird, was, of course, received with universal applause.
We have some insight afforded us with regard to the position occupied by the retained jester, in the account of the strange supper given by Nasidienus to M?cenas and others. The guest just named took with him his two “shadows” uninvited. They were expected to contribute to the hilarity of the feast, and they occupied the same couch with their patron, the latter reclining between them. Nasidienus was in the same way supported by his two parasites, one of whom excited the mirth of the company by swallowing whole cheesecakes at once, like a clown in a pantomime; and the other extolled the dishes generally. These two, however, drank little or nothing; they appear to have been trained to spare their master’s wine. The guests and their parasites observed no such temperance, but tippled freely, and one of the latter especially kept up the laughter of the visitors by mock compliments on the feast, and mock sentiment on things, generally.
The Morio, as I have previously observed, was usually a mis-shapen creature, a sort of monstrous imbecile, heavy and hideous in body, and childish in mind; a simpleton, whose naturally foolish remarks contrasted with his strength and rude shape of body. Ladies in the olden time kept them, as ladies of a later period kept monkeys, for their amusement in their own chambers. There was even a market for them, and at the Forum Morionum, a thoroughly frightful and foolish animal of this species would fetch about eighty pounds sterling.
37 Many Emperors, too, bought specimens of these monstrosities, a fashion which was only less hideous than the mania of a later time for china monsters, who exonerated their stomachs of the liquor required by their mistresses. Heliogabalus was a prodigal amateur of the former kind of property; and it has been suggested that an imbecile Morio was kept by a dull owner, that his own stupidity might seem wit by comparison.
That a noble Roman maintained slaves whose wit should entertain himself and his friends, we know from several instances. The same slaves were also employed to lighten the last hours, and to render death easy to their masters,—if they could. Nay, it must be confessed that it seems they sometimes succeeded. Witness the case of Petronius Arbiter, that magnificent Consul, who almost renders vice attractive, like Boccaccio, by writing of it in choice and elegant (yet mournful) phraseology. When that very superb gentleman was stretched on his death-couch, he might have remarked, with the Irish squire, that he died in perfect ease of mind, for he had never denied himself anything. But Petronius could not die easily without a little stimulant. He felt himself ennuyé, and he sent for his wittiest friends and his choicest slaves. Of the latter he freed some and whipped others, and he found a mild pleasure in both. But the dearest solace of this dying Roman noble was in the amusing stories and ridiculous epigrams recited to him. With these he amused his fancy till his jaws suddenly fixed in a fit of laughter, and the jesters around look down upon a corpse. Thus died an accomplished Roman gentleman A.D. 66.
But we are departing from the official fool, of whom it is said, that, with his place and privileges properly marked in a household, he was not known in Europe till the period of the Lower Empire. It is certain that the stern Attila brought professional jesters, as well as irresistible warriors, with him38 across the Roman frontiers. When the ambassadors of Theodosius the Younger were entertained at a banquet by the Hun, the pomp, gravity, and tremendous drinking were accompanied by an immoderate amount of foolery. “A Moorish and a Scythian buffoon,” says Gibbon, “successively excited the mirth of the rude spectators, by their deformed figure, ridiculous dress, antic gestures, absurd speeches, and the strange unintelligible confusion of the Latin, the Gothic, and the Hunnic languages; and the hall resounded with loud and licentious peals of laughter. In the midst of this intemperate riot, Attila alone, without a change of countenance, maintained his stern and inflexible gravity.” We hear, too, of the presence of a Harlequin at the state ceremonies of the great barbarian and dignified chief. It is, however, indisputable that the professional, though perhaps not exactly the court fool, was known in Rome nearly two hundred years before the period of Attila. To do honour to the accession of Gallienus (when Valerian was alive, but a captive in Persia), numbers of Persian prisoners were paraded at the festival in Rome. At this festival, certain buffoons, we are told, committed an act of audacity for which the common crowd of spectators had not courage. They crossed over among the prisoners, and curiously and deliberately scanned the features of every man there. “Gallienus,” as I have noticed in ‘Monarchs Retired from Business,’ “expected some mirth, but seeing nothing come of it, and that the buffoons were retiring with a disconsolate look, he asked the meaning of the episode. ‘Well,’ said they, with a little hesitation, ‘we went over to these Persians to see if we might discover among them the great Valerian, your gracious divinity’s father.’ Gallienus thought this a very sorry joke indeed. He ordered the buffoons to be bound together, and to be burnt alive in one batch. It was a very serious matter to joke with, and it was a mortal matter to joke against, this Emperor of Rome.”
39 We come to a later illustration in the Baron de Reiffenburg’s book (‘Le Lundi,’ p. 251), where it is stated that Theophilus, Emperor of Constantinople, found pleasure in witnessing the follies of a jester, Danderi, whose spirit of curiosity led him to the discovery that the Empress Theodora had little images in her oratory to which she prayed. The fool was not cunning in betraying the secret to the Iconoclast husband of Theodora. The Empress, more crafty, persuaded Theophilus that the images were only dolls, for the amusement of their children. So, at least, says the legend, which does discredit to the most accomplished of Eastern Emperors, though he had a hatred for trade, and a love for gaudy toys and jewellery.
Before leaving this part of my subject, let me notice another Court appendage from which ancient monarchs drew incentives to mirth,—namely, the Dwarfs. These sometimes rank among the Moriones, and as they formed a portion of the Court household, parents often made dwarfs of their children, by stunting their growth, in order to obtain profit by them. The most clever exhibited their little prowess, in full armour, in mimic fights which sometimes terminated seriously to the combatants, in wounds of certain gravity. Augustus did not disdain either to converse, or gossip rather, and play at various games with them;—or to listen to them chattering and see them playing with each other. By some writers, this taste of Augustus is denied, but it may be believed, since of one dwarf, Lucius, he had a statue sculptured, the eyes of which were of precious stones. That these little personages sometimes exercised great influence may be seen in a passage of the sixty-first chapter of the Tiberius (in Suetonius’s “Lives”), wherein it is said:—“A person of Consular dignity, in his Annals, has this passage, that at a great feast, where he himself was also present, the question was put suddenly and loudly to Tiberius by a dwarf, who was standing in waiting40 near the table among the dirty buffoons (‘inter copreas’), ‘Why Paconius, who had been condemned for treason, was still living?’” Suetonius adds indeed that the dwarf was sent to prison for being impertinent, but also that Tiberius, thus reminded of the existence of an enemy, sent orders to the Senate, that speedy care might be taken for his execution. Domitian was the Emperor who especially delighted in putting arms into the hands of his dwarfs, and setting them to pink out each other’s little lives. From the Court the fashion reached wealthy people generally, and Dio, in his ‘History of Rome,’ tells us of these small personages being kept by Roman ladies, in whose rooms they ran about all day long, and perfectly naked. The fashion did not cease till after the accession of Alexander Severus, who drove from his Court the whole tribe of dwarfs, male and female, and indeed other equally unseemly appendages to the household of a grave and dignified prince. They became matters of attraction to the mob, and being vulgar, are no more heard of in the palaces of kings and the mansions of nobles, till a later period and in highly civilized Christian courts. Let us do with them as Alexander Severus did, and consider now the condition of the more modern Court Fool, though in doing so we may have to look occasionally to a more remote antiquity than that at which I close this Chapter. It will perhaps be found that kings and their fools must, for a time, have had a rather pleasant time of it. “He,” so ran an old proverb quoted by Seneca, “he who thinks to achieve every object that enters his head, must either be a born king or a born fool.” Herein, it is supposed, is intimated the proximity in degrees of happiness of the respective individuals, who could neither be called to account for things done nor for words uttered.