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 is 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 and 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 there “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’s “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 of 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 of 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 less 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 call 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 PisistratidÆ, 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, 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 his “Multa bibens, et multa vorans, mala denique dicens Multis, hÎc 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 FlÖgelA 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. 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 at 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 certainly Among the ancients, perhaps the Tirynthians had the reputation of being the very merriest of fools. Theophrastus is cited by AthenÆus 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 PhÆstum, who, by all other Cretans, were reckoned 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 LaÏs, 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 any 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, 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. MaÎtre 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 marine 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 to 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 renowned 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 full This species of company was not equally pleasant to all men. AthenÆus 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, AthenÆus 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 highest Philip is said to have possessed his own court fool in Clisophus. FlÖgel 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 AthenÆus, 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, 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. FlÖgel 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 characters “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 DicÆopolis, 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 characters FlÖgel 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 AthenÆus, 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 AthenÆus, 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 for Forcatulus, a learned writer on law, accepts as true a story, very like one to be found in Rabelais, and which FlÖgel 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. “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, by or, as the Jesuit Tarteron translates this passage,—“Les autres pÂmoient 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 FlÖgel 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, for 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 ‘Poenulus’ of Plautus) pompously order Collybiscus to walk in their rear, that personage remarks,
“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 ScurrÆ, however, seem to have sunk to a level with The Scurra, as I have said, was not in every age a polished fool. The buffoon at the fair who obtained the applause of Perhaps there was no greater patron of the ScurrÆ, 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. FlÖgel, 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 at 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 CÆsar?” 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 MÆcenas 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 notorious FlÖgel 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, 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 MÆcenas 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. 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 him 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 waiting |