mployed by him, introduced the dumb show, a dance
without marked dancing steps, and subordinated to motions of the
hands, arms, and body, which is dramatic pantomime. He was so great
an artist, says Athenaeus, that when he represented the _Seven before
Thebes_ he rendered every circumstance manifest by his gestures alone.
From Greece, or rather from Egypt, the art was brought to Rome, and
in the reign of Augustus was the great delight of that Emperor and his
friend Maecenas. Bathyllus, of Alexandria, was the first to introduce
it to the Roman public, but he had a dangerous rival in Pylades. The
latter was magnificent, pathetic, and affecting, while Bathyllus
was gay and sportive. All Rome was split into factions about their
respective merits. Athenaeus speaks of a distinguished performer of his
own time (he died A.D. 194) named Memphis, whom he calls the "dancing
philosopher," because he showed what the Pythagorean philosophy could
do by exhibiting in silence everything with stronger evidence than
they could who professed to teach the arts of language. In the
reign of Nero, a celebrated pantomimist who had heard that the cynic
philosopher Demetrius spoke of the art with contempt, prevailed upon
him to witness his performance, with the result that the cynic, more
and more astonished, at last cried out aloud, "Man, I not only see,
but I hear what you do, for to me you appear to speak with your
hands!"

[Illustration: Fig. 63.]

Lucian, who narrates this in his work _De Saltatione_, gives another
tribute to the talent of, perhaps, the same performer. A barbarian
prince of Pontus (the story is told elsewhere of Tyridates, King of
Armenia), having come to Rome to do homage to the Emperor Nero, and
been taken to see the pantomimes, was asked on his departure by
the Emperor what present he would have as a mark of his favor. The
barbarian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and
upon being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had
many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that he
found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand
them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by his
assistance easily make himself intelligible to all.

While the general effect of these pantomimes is often mentioned, there
remain but few detailed descriptions of them. Apuleius, however,
in the tenth book of his _Metamorphosis_ or "Golden Ass," gives
sufficie