monkeys,[6] and
anticipated our circus performances by teaching their horses to dance on
their hind legs, an advance above practical joking and below pictorial
caricature. Moreover, intellectual entertainment was required at their
sumptuous feasts, and genius was tasked to find something light and
racy, maxims of deep significance interwoven with gay and fanciful
creations. There was not sufficient subtlety about these inventions to
entitle them to the name of humour in our modern sense of the word; much
complication was not then required, nor much laughter expected. The
"fables" of Sybaris seem to have been of a similarly philosophical cast
to those of AEsop. The following specimen is given in the Vespae, 1427.

"A man of Sybaris fell from a chariot, and, as it happened, had his head
broken--for he was not well acquainted with driving--and a friend who
stood by, said, 'Let every man practise the craft, which he
understands.'"

We observe that these fables are not carried on through the assistance
of our four-footed friends. At Sybaris, conversation between men and the
lower animals had begun to appear not only absurd, but to be improved
upon and made with the evident intention of being humorous. Hence,
inanimate things were sometimes made to speak, and in succeeding
fictions birds and beasts were given such special characteristics and
requirements of men as could least have belonged to them. As an example
of this, we may refer to the Batrachomyomachia--a production called
Homeric but proved by the very length of its name to belong to a later
date. It is ascribed by Plutarch to Pigres, the brother of the
Halicarnassian Queen, Artemisia, contemporary with the Persian War. This
poem, which is a parody on Homer, reminds us, in its microscopic
representation of human affairs, of the travels of Gulliver in Lilliput.
A frog offers to give a mouse a ride across the water on his back.
Unfortunately, a water-snake lifts up its head when they are in the
middle passage, and the frog diving to avoid the danger, the mouse is
drowned. From this trifling cause there arises a mighty war between the
frogs and the mice. The contest is carried on in true Homeric style; the
mice-warriors are armed with bean-pods for greaves, lamp-bosses for
shields, nutshells for helmets, and long needles for spears. The frogs
have leaves of willow on their legs, cabbage leaves for shields,
cockle-shells for helmets, and bulrushes for spears. Their names