The "Mother of the Gods," by her sex activity, brought about growth on earth and became goddess of lewdness and filth, just as the German Corn-mother became a harlot. So the goddess by whose activity the earth bears flowers was honored at a festival at which boys and girls nine or ten years old became senselessly drunk and perpetrated sex vice. This was at a _religious_ festival.[1992] Here then we find reversion to more primitive sex mores, and dramatic representation of a myth, conjoined in religion, on the very threshold of the higher civilization. The reversion to primitive sex mores to satisfy notions of duty to religion and ancestors comes to us as an incomprehensible violation of "primary instincts," which we have inferred from ideas that we can trace back beyond any known origin, which we suppose to be universally accepted, and which seem to us axiomatic as to social welfare. The only way to understand the case is to take the standpoint of the mores of that time.

The mores contained the answer to the questions: How far back shall we go? What shall be the degree of license at the festival? At the limit fixed by custom the mores extend their sanction over the function and make it "right." Another source of barbaric festivals may be noticed.

Men won victories over the elements and over beasts before they won victories over each other. This is true of remote antiquity and of primitive society. It is also true of the Middle Ages. The destruction of great beasts, demons, and other monsters led to dramatic and religious festivals. Magnin[1993] thinks that he could make a cycle of beasts, of which Reineke Fuchs would be the last link, anterior to the cycles of Arthur and Charlemagne.

+617. Limit of toleration for propriety in exhibitions.+ Therefore: What shall be the limit of toleration in theatrical and other exhibitions with respect to dress, language, gesture, etc., in order to define propriety, is altogether a matter of the mores. It is not conceivable that the _Lysistrata_ of Aristophanes could be presented on any public stage in Christendom. The whole play is beyond the toleration of modern mores. We meet with jugglers in Homer,[1994] also mountebanks and tumblers.[1995] The _kubisteteres_ spun around on the perpendicular axis of the body, and are compared to the wheel of the potter. Then they pitched down head-foremost, like plungers or tumblers turning somersaults. Some archaeologs have thought that the play of these persons had some analogy with that of the cubic stones which were so prominent in the cult of the Phrygian Cybele. If that analogy is accepted, then the pyramidal dance must be regarded as originally hieratic and consecrated to Cybele. That dance was at first aristocratic, but speedily became popular and descended to the mountebanks.[1996]

+618. Origin of Athenian drama.+ The theater originated in the Dionysiac mysteries of the Greeks, in which dramatic action and responsive choruses were employed. Sex symbols were used without reserve.

Intoxication and ecstasy belonged to due performance. In later mysteries dramatic action was employed to present myths and legends, or religious doctrines, in order to get the powerful effects in suggestion which dramatic action exerts. Many myths presented acts such as later mores could not tolerate. Allowance had to be made for the representations, as we now make allowances for Bible stories and Shakespeare. We know that the mysteries were often in bad repute for their indecency and realism, even in an age of low standards. Anybody who is not in the convention can scoff at it, however low his own code may be. The Greeks described the Phrygian mysteries as abominable and immoral, while they praised and admired the Eleusinian. "The former were introduced by slaves and foreigners, and participated in by the superstitious and ignorant. They were celebrated for money by strolling priests, and any one who paid a fee was initiated without preparation, except some ritual acts. There was no solemnity in the surroundings, and no dignity in the ceremonial, but all was vulgar and sordid."[1997] The Athenian drama, in the fifth century B.C., went through an amazing development and reached high perfection. The art of the theater was especially cultivated. As to the effect of the dramas on the character of the spectators, it is to be noticed that they were presented only once in the year, at the greater festival of Dionysus in the spring, and that then a large number of plays were represented. The spectators, at Athens, were a very mixed assemblage and included the populace, "who remained populace in spite of any beautiful verses which they might chance to hear." They cared only to be amused, "just like modern audiences."[1998]

+619. Dramatic taste and usage in worship. Customs derived from the mysteries.+ About the time of Christ, by syncretism all the religions took on a dramatic form in their ritual, with liturgies and responses, on account of the attractiveness of that form for worshipers. The Christian year was built up as a drama of the life of Christ. The ceremony of the mass was produced by an application of modes of worship which, so far as we can learn, were devised and used in the mysteries.

"There is unmistakable evidence that a marriage ceremony of a religious nature existed, and that this ceremony stood in close relation to a part of the ritual of the mysteries. In fact, the marriage was, as it were, a reproduction by the bride and bridegroom of a scene from the divine life, i.e. from the mystic drama. The formula, 'I escaped evil: I found better,' was repeated by the celebrant who was initiated in the Phrygian mysteries; and the same formula was pronounced as part of the Athenian marriage ceremony. Another formula, 'I have drunk from the _kymbalon_,' was pronounced by the initiated; and drinking from the same cup has been proved to have formed part of a ceremony performed in the temple by the betrothed pair." "It is an extremely important fact that the human marriage ceremony was thus celebrated by forms taken from the mysteries; and the conclusion must be that the human pair repeat the action in the way in which the god and goddess first performed and consecrated it, and that, in fact, they play the parts of the god and goddess in the sacred drama. This single example is, as we may be sure, typical of a whole series of actions."[1999]

+620. The word "god."+ "That man when he dies becomes a god was considered already in the fourth century B.C. to be part of the teaching conveyed in the mysteries."[2000] This meant no more than the earlier notion that when a man died he became a ghost. The word "god" was used in senses very strange to our ears,[2001] and to quote an expression of any writer of the beginning of the Christian era in which he uses the word "god," and to give to that word our sense of it, is to be led into great error. The age was one which put all its religion in dramatic form and acted it out. It was an age with a gift for manufacturing rites and liturgies.

+621. Kin yields to religion as social tie.+ This was due to a great ethnological change which was then coming to its culmination. The kin tie, which had been the primitive mode of association and coherence of groups, began to break down in the sixth century B.C. in Greece. It was superseded by the social tie of a common religious faith and ritual. The Pythagorean and Orphic sects developed this tie. They had a revelation of the other world, a system of mystic and cathartic rites, which cleared men of ritual uncleanness, purified them, and "saved" them. The cathartic rites were a means of warding off evil spirits and did the work of the old shamans.[2002] The sectarian brotherhood of the initiated, the "church," the faith, the contrast of ordinary life with the ecstatic emotions of the mysteries, the consequent antagonism of the "flesh" or the "world," and the "spirit," were easy deductions from the teaching and ritual of the sects.[2003] It was all concentrated in the godlikeness, divinity, or immortality of the human soul, with the mystic notions of union between the soul and God. "Mysticism, as doctrine and theory, grew up from the soil of a more ancient practice in worship."

"The worship of Dionysus must have furnished the first germ of the belief in the immortality of the soul."[2004] The idea of the Orphic mysteries was that humanity is suffering and sinful, and must be initiated in order to wash away its stains and be redeemed from its sins. Initiation puts a man in communication with the divinity. The soul is raised by ecstasy to feel its own divinity, which is the deepest element in all mystic religion. In all this compound of rites and notions the great antecedent philosophy was not the same as ours. It was demonism, superstitious anxiety about the world of demons, who floated around men and stretched their hands out of the surrounding darkness to seize them. It was from these that men wanted to be "saved." Atonement was to be made to the chthonic gods, for they were displeased at ritual uncleanness, and the chthonic cults had the other world in view.[2005]

The uncleanness was ritual, and hence it came from anything far out of the regular order, either by abomination or holiness. The rabbis held that the handling of the Scriptures defiled the hands and called for ceremonial washing (Num. xix. 8, 10).[2006]

+622. Combination of religion and drama. Syncretism.+ The interest of all this for our present purpose is the combination of religious ideas with dramatic representation. Processions of all kinds easily turn into such representations. Rites and ceremonies are but a form of drama.

Symbols and emblems have the same character. The old religions were subjected to criticism, which means that they had lost their authority.

They did not verify when the attempt was made to use them for societal needs. Slaves, merchants, soldiers, etc., afloat in the world, associated from choice and contributed traditions from the whole known world. Then syncretism began, and a body of sectarian notions was formed. There was a new totemism, a breaking down of national religion, a spirit of propaganda, and a setting forth of the whole in all dramatic forms.[2007] In the sects women were admitted, a fact of double significance. It was an emancipation for the women and a peril for the sect. The doubt with which the mysteries are now regarded is due to the uncertainty as to the relations of the sexes in them. The word "orgy"

originally meant worship, or rites, then secret rites, that is, mysteries. The sense in which the word has come down to us shows the notion about secret meetings which became commonly accepted.

The customs which had grown out of religious interest had reached the desire for entertainment and pleasure. They satisfied it and stimulated it, and the religious element might be forgotten.

+623. Beginnings of the theater at Rome.+ The Floralia were instituted at Rome in 240 B.C. They were celebrated by courtesans with processions, lascivious pantomimes, etc. They are said to have come from Greece.[2008] In the same year Livius Andronicus presented at Rome the first play translated from the Greek. In 154 the first permanent theater was established there against great opposition. In 146 the first theater outside the circus, with seats, was provided.[2009] All mimic actions were foreign to the austere mores of the early Romans, but in the second century B.C. the mores changed through the growth of wealth and contact with other nations. Young Romans learned from actors to sing and dance, acts which their ancestors thought unworthy of free persons. The earliest plays were called _saturae_, because they were mixed dialogues, music, and dances. The sense of the word was closely that of "farce" in the Middle Ages,[2010] i.e. an episode or intermezzo of a comic character interjected into a drama. The _saturae_ contained an Etruscan element, but atellans were entirely Etruscan. They were comic and grotesque, and got their name from Atella (i.e. Aversa or Santo Arpino) in Campania. They could be played by persons who did not on that account lose their places in their tribes or their right to serve in the legion. No personalities at all were allowed on the Roman stage.

Cynicism and obscenity characterized the Oscan style.[2011] In 55 B.C.

the younger Cato was present at the Floralia. The populace hesitated to call, in his presence, for the stripping of the _mimae_. He left in order not to hinder the celebration from taking its usual course.[2012]

Valerius Maximus[2013] says that the pantomime was brought to Rome from Etruria, the Etruscans having brought it from their old home in Lydia.

We see from the epigrams in the first book of Martial that at the Roman theater in the first century of the Christian era incidents of the Roman mythology were made into dramas and represented in pantomime.

+624. Gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The gladiatorial exhibitions are supposed to have been of Etruscan origin in the form of funeral games.

Games to rejoice the ghosts, sacrifices of prisoners, a chance given to a prisoner to fight for his life, are steps of a development of which we find many examples. The Romans showed the pitilessness and inhumanity of their mores in the development they gave to the gladiatorial exhibitions. "Campanian hosts used to entertain their guests at dinner with them in the days before the Second Punic War. It was in Campanian towns that in the first century was displayed most glaringly the not unusual combination of cruelty and voluptuousness."[2014] Some murmurs of dissent arose from the philosophers of the first and second centuries of the Christian era,--Plutarch, Seneca, Marcus Aurelius,[2015]--but at that time the popular sentiment had not faltered at all in its love and zeal for the gladiatorial shows and beast contests on account of any doubt whether the exhibitions were "right." Tertullian, at the end of the second century, wrote a tract, _Ad Nationes_, in which he criticised the theater, and also another, _De Spectaculis_, against the public entertainments. Although the latter is chiefly controversial against heathen and heathenism, it contains direct and noble arguments against the games of the arena on account of their inhumanity. He says that the games were at first connected with funerals, and that the theater was a temple of Venus, under cover of which the games won a footing. That would mean, then, that they were at first under a convention of time, place, occasion, and religion. Correctly understood, therefore, what happened at Rome was that the convention was broken over and the exceptional rite was made the everyday usage, the religious sentiment being disregarded and the sensual entertainment alone being valued. When we have reached this point we can understand the original place of the games within the intellectual horizon of the nation, and also the deep demoralization which they caused in later times. They were consonant with early Roman mores which were warlike. Cicero thought them an excellent school to teach contempt for pain and death. He cited gladiators as examples of bodily exercise, courage, and discipline. He seems to have known that some disapproved of the exhibitions, and he was disposed to agree with them if the gladiators were others than criminals condemned to death.[2016] A usage which is consonant with the tastes, mores, and world philosophy of a people need work no corruption on them, for it is under taboos and conventions; but if all the restraints are taken away it enters into their life for just what it is in its character,--sensual, cruel, bloody, obscene, etc. What had been savage and bloodthirsty when the Romans were warriors became base and cowardly when they never risked their own blood in any way. Condemned criminals were compelled to take roles in which they suffered torture and a frightful death, in order to entertain the Roman crowd. Such roles were Prometheus, Daedalus, Orpheus, Hercules, and Attys; Pasiphae and the bull, and Leda and the swan were also enacted. In Martial's _Epigrams_, Book I, the cases are mentioned where a woman fought with a lion; Laureolus, a robber, was crucified and torn, as he hung on the cross, by a bear; Daedalus, when his wing broke, was precipitated amongst bears who tore him to pieces; and Orpheus was torn by a bear. These exhibitions were recognized as indecencies.[2017] Later the exhibitions had no limit.[2018] "From father to son, for nearly seven centuries, the Roman character became more and more indurated under the influence of licensed cruelty. The spectacle was also surrounded by the emperors, even the greatest and best, for politic reasons, with ever growing splendor."[2019] "It is a grave deduction from the admiring judgment of the glory of the Antonine age, that its most splendid remains are the stately buildings within whose enclosure for centuries the populace were regaled with the sufferings and the blood of the noblest creatures of the wild animal world and of gallant men. The deserts and forests of Africa and the remotest East contributed their elephants and panthers and lions to these scenes."[2020]

+625. Spread of gladiatorial exhibitions.+ The Romans carried gladiatorial exhibitions wherever their conquests extended. "The Teutonic regions of the North and Greece were almost the only provinces in which the bloody games were not popular. The one Greek town where the taste for them was fully developed was the mongrel city of Corinth, which was a Roman colony. In the novel of Apuleius we meet a high Corinthian magistrate traveling through Thessaly to collect the most famous gladiators for his shows. Plutarch urges public men to banish or to restrain these exhibitions in their cities. When the Athenians, from an ambition to rival the splendor of Corinth, were meditating the establishment of a gladiatorial show, the gentle Demonax bade them first to overturn their altar of Pity. The apostles of Hellenism,--Dion, Plutarch, and Lucian,--were unanimous in condemning an institution which sacrificed the bravest men to the brutal passions of the mob."[2021] At Byzantium the lack of any standard of decency and propriety in the exhibitions was even more complete, and they lasted indefinitely.[2022]

Constantine in 325 A.D. absolutely forbade gladiatorial exhibitions, because bloody shows were unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators. His laws, however, failed of effect.[2023] At the end of the fourth century Symmachus, "who was regarded as one of the most estimable pagans of his age," collected some prisoners to fight in honor of his son. They committed suicide to escape the destiny for which he designed them. He lamented the misfortune which had befallen him from their "impious hands," but endeavored to calm his feelings by recalling the patience of Socrates and the precepts of philosophy. He will not, he says, use such people any more, but Libyan lions, more docile than men.[2024] He serves to point a moral on the mores of his age.

+626. The folk drama.+ The culture classes pass by the sports of the "vulgar" with contempt; but the student of the mores cannot do so. The tastes of the crowd are manifested in them. We read the great dramas which have become a part of the world literature, and we form from them our ideas of the current intellectual interest of the time of their origin and of the society in which they were produced. Such inferences need to be corrected. They are certainly erroneous. The Greeks were not all of them, nor any of them all the time, on a plane of classical severity and correctness. Far from it. They were realistic, egoistic, cold, cruel, and fond of sensual pleasure.[2025] The great dramas, epics, etc., were enjoyed only by the real upper strata of the society, just as is the case in regard to Shakespeare amongst us. The great populace of no society has ever found its amusement in purely intellectual suggestions. With us popular amusement is found in the circus, negro minstrels, the variety show, opera bouffe, the spectacle, and ballet, and it attaches to parody and burlesque, "knock-down business," buffoonery, and broad allusion. Stupidity is always funny.

Everything which breaks over the social taboo is funny. A violation of propriety, accidental disorder of the dress, grotesque postures, vulgar gestures of derision or defiance, blows, painful accidents and mishaps,--if not too serious,--deformations of the body (humpbacks), epithets and nicknames, slang and other abuses of language (like mispronunciation by foreigners), vituperation, caricature and burlesque of respectable types like the pedant, dandy, Puritan, imbecile, or the rich and great, always raise a laugh in the crowd and are relished by the crowd. They are constant elements of farce and fun. They have been so for three thousand years. Jugglery and feats of strength and skill excite wonder until they become familiar. They are proofs of individual capacity. They do not give amusement like the points which have just been mentioned and which have been repeated to generation after generation. The crowd always delights in any degradation of the things which the selected classes prefer and try to impose on all. They rejoice to see the restrictions trampled upon which they hear preached as the rules of life. In opera bouffe classical heroes, gods of the classical mythology, royalty, nobles of the mediaeval type, feudalism, dominies, are turned to ridicule. The crowd worships its heroes fanatically while they are in fashion, but it likes to turn about and roll them in the mud of satire, in order to teach them who made them and how easily it can unmake them. Aristophanes derided all which was serious in the Athenian social system. Long before Don Quixote was written chivalry was treated with derision. Satire is a reversal of respect and admiration.

+627. The popular taste. Realism. Conventionality. Satire.+ That which is realistic and graphic appeals to the popular and uneducated taste, not that which is conventional, regulated, and refined according to rule and standard. That which is realistic reproduces all the facts of life.

If the mirror is held up to nature it will show some nasty things. The social taboos began in superstitious fear, but they formed a series of conventional folkways under which some acts and facts of life were veiled from sight, knowledge, speech, and publicity. Other lesser conventions were grafted on these, and produced the great mass of usages within which our lives are passed. That which is artistic is the highest form of conventional refinement. Realism antagonizes and breaks through all these conventions and taboos, which are always a strain upon those who are not brought up in them from infancy. Therefore we hear demands for realism and naturalness from those who weary of the strain and do not want to submit to it. The conventionalities define respectability, and respectability has always been sneered at. In all comedy it is made ridiculous. The husband was possessed of conventional rights in which he was protected by society so that he had a secured and uneventful status.

In comedy his rights have been violated and his security has been broken. The crowd has always enjoyed this. It rejoiced to see the wife deceive the husband, and the adulterer fool him. The latter represented freedom and cleverness at war with philistinism. On the other hand, all the taboos and conventions which have penetrated the masses and become familiar to them from infancy are fiercely defended by them (e.g. female dress and the taboo on man's dress for females). The popular magazines and the "great moral shows" religiously respect the standards of the crowd. That which is broad is funny, but there is always a limit of toleration. What is prudish, puritanical, fastidious, affected, pharisaical, etc.? These adjectives are in use, and they apply to things which are beyond a line which is undefined and indefinable. It depends on the codes and standards of the group. Realism presents everyday experience, no humbug, the world as it is. It must, therefore, be cynical and ruthless to all conventions. It shows the meanness of greatness, the other side of virtue, the weakness of heroes. No doubt it is great fun to pour scorn and ridicule on all who assume to be better than we are, and to look down on us. The easiest way to do it is to show up their weaknesses, follies, and sins. Here is another task for the satirists. Satire in comedy may be a gratification of envy. The role of Pierrot is dangerous to him who exercises it. In fact no man is fit for it. Where does any one get a charter to be censor of all the rest? He will certainly become proud, arrogant, self-seeking, and tyrannical.

Each one satirizes follies which are not to his taste, or sins to which he is not tempted. Satire to be artistic and permanently effective must be marked by light and shade. It always exaggerates what it wants to impress on the attention, but to do this artistically it must subdue other elements. This is very difficult to accomplish when for popular effect it must use big brushes and glaring colors.

+628. Popular exhibitions.+ From the time of Homer we can trace popular exhibitions which accompanied the theatrical forms above described as an inferior class of the same species. The popular exhibitions were marked by the features which have been described (sec. 626), to which we may add bloodshed and cruel rites.

+629. Ancient popular festivals.+ The _thargelia_ were ancient sanguinary festivals celebrated in Greece in honor of Apollo and Diana.

Two men, or a man and a woman, were immolated in Attica, to expiate the sins of the people. "The circular dances of the Greeks around the victims, or later around the altar, can only be compared with the songs and furious dances of the Iroquois and Brazilians around their prisoners."[2026] At Athens also the _kronia_ were festivals of Saturn.

The notion that there was a period of original liberty and equality "at the beginning" was entertained at that time, and this festival was held to represent it. Also on Crete there were festivals of Mercury. In Thessaly the _peloria_ were a festival, the name of which was derived from Pelor, the man that brought news that an earthquake had drained the valley of Tempe. The _sacea_ were a festival at Babylon similar to the _saturnalia_. A slave in each house, including the palace of the king, ruled as a house sovereign for five days. The leading idea was to reverse or invert everything in ordinary life. The _kordax_ was an ancient dance of the old comedy, with indecent gestures, in which the human figure was caricatured according to all the deformations which it underwent by vice or sensuality. All the effects of gluttony and Bacchic excess were caricatured in the figure of Silenus. The old woman fond of wine lost all modesty under the influence of wine.[2027] The leaders of the choruses, in a later time at Athens, offered reminders of primitive barbarism and of the immolation of human beings, and a representation of savage nudity, but they presented no image which was ridiculous or base.

Tragedy had a long struggle to become separate from lyric forms, but aeschylus at last accomplished the separation. This was really the separation of the high literary drama from the popular _mimus_. After ten centuries of glory in Greece tragedy was lost again under the lyric form.[2028] The popular drama, however, lasted on until to-day, and it has never changed its characteristic elements.

+630. The _mimus_.+ The essence of the _mimus_ is in pantomime as the name denotes. It imitates facts of life and behavior and is, therefore, essentially realistic. It may well be derived from the mimetic dances of nature peoples, in which beasts, warriors, and lovers are imitated, with jest and satirical exaggeration of characteristic traits. In the folk drama in its simplest forms nothing has ever been written. The actor, assumed a role and improvised all which he had to say in trying to act it out. His responsibility for the role was far greater than that of an actor in a culture drama. The actor, by repeating a role, produced a representation of it which was personal to himself and which he perfected. The most interesting and marked characters became fixed. A large number of them are now established in literature and have become known all over the world. The latest instance of such a type is, perhaps, Lord Dundreary. The word _mimus_ appears in Greece in the fifth century B.C. The _mimus_ was a picture of life or, more exactly, an unwritten parody of life. It was divided into grades and the actors into castes. Women had previously appeared as jugglers and mountebanks. They now appeared amongst the actors of the popular drama. This made the exhibitions questionable according to Greek standards. The exhibitions were given by wandering companies. While actors of the culture drama always wore masks, those of the _mimus_ were the first to appear unmasked;[2029] later others imitated them. At the present day the theatrical exhibitions which may be seen on the outskirts of a fair in central Europe well represent the ancient _mimus_. The marionettes were an early offshoot of the _mimus_, and the modern Punch-and-Judy show is a descendant in part of both. For the mores the _mimus_ and the marionette theater are a thousandfold more important than the great tragedies, but the former have left no mark on history. They never were written down; the actors are dead; their reputation is forgotten. The mores contain the effect as a fact but no explanation of it. From the time of Alexander the Great that which is common, popular, realistic prevailed in politics and literature. The heroic and ideal-poetic declined and was made an object of satire in the _mimus_. "The trivial, prosaic, and libertine taste of the Macedonian princes of Egypt and Syria at last reigned alone in enslaved Greece." Then, under different forms and names, nothing remained but mimes, realistic representation of common life.[2030] The Olympian gods and Homeric heroes were burlesqued for fun. The _mimus_ won acceptance at courts and in higher circles. It was developed into the so-called "hypothesis" and won a place on the stage. The most distinguished maker of hypotheses was Philistion,[2031]

who lived at the beginning of the Christian era. They became popular throughout the Greco-Roman world in the first centuries of the Christian era.[2032] The emperor Tiberius caused actors to be expelled from Italy as disturbers of the peace, and because the old Oscan farce, once amusement for the common people, had become indecent.[2033] Out of the common origin of all dramatic exhibitions (sec. 616) the _mimus_ kept the corn demons, or growth demons, which always commanded the interest of husbandmen. The actors of this role wore masks in which the features of a low and sensual countenance were greatly exaggerated. An artificial phallus (sec. 473) was worn outside of the dress, and the entire region of the hips was enlarged so as to produce a conventional, extravagant, and stereotyped figure, like the modern clown, punch, or Mephisto, being, in fact, in some measure, their ancestor.[2034] Greek vases represent these figures. The same set of ideas and course of thought has been traced in Mexico in connection with crop interests and growth demons.[2035] There also the public rites at festivals passed by imperceptible steps into dramatic representations with dogmatic meaning or magical significance.

+631. Modern analogies.+ The end man of the negro minstrel troupe is a modern creation like the Greek _phlyax_, for he is a buffoon of the plantation-negro type, with every feature exaggerated to the utmost, so that he is unreal and a caricature; but the exaggerations direct attention to familiar facts and display characteristic features which are a cause of merriment. The rise, development, and decline of negro ministrelsy illustrate, within our observation, many features in the history of popular comedy. It originated in fun making by the imitation of a foreign group, whose peculiar ways appeared to be ridiculous antics. Then the negro was used to burlesque and satirize the weaknesses, follies, and affectations of whites. The negro plantation hand is a type which is disappearing and interest in him is declining.

He is no longer available for direct study or derived satire.

+632. Biologs and ethologs.+ The Greek _phlyax_ (the play) passed to southern Italy in the fourth century B.C., whence it was transmitted to Rome and confused with the atellan. It became very popular, and lasted until the fifth century A.D.[2036] Reich divides the mimes into two classes: (1) biologs, i.e. those who represent individual types, e.g. an unfaithful wife, an imbecile husband, a fatuous nobleman, a physician, etc.; (2) ethologs, i.e. those who impersonate some feature in the mores of the time and satirize it, e.g. faith in miracles, fondness for drink or gambling, sycophancy to the rich, or "getting on in the world." This is a very important distinction and one which illuminates the connection between the drama and the mores. Socrates was an etholog, although not an actor. He spent sarcasm, irony, and humor on the ways of the Athenians of his time.[2037] Aristophanes was another, Rabelais was another, Erasmus was an inferior one. In his _Colloquies_ and _Praise of Folly_ he is more of a preacher, but his aim is to influence by graphic satirical description. In our day the comic papers attempt the task of the etholog. They try to satirize manners and men. A comic paper owned or subsidized by a political party is the sorriest representative of Pierrot that the world has yet seen. The biolog personates an individual type, like an aberration of human nature, which may be found anywhere and at any time. The etholog personates a specimen of a class which helps to characterize a period. Dandies exist at all times, but vary in detail. The fatuity and vanity of all dandies are features for the etholog; the follies of the dandy of a period belong to the biolog. Beau Brummel would be a model for a biolog. The etholog is apt to overlook his best subjects. He cannot himself escape from his own times enough to recognize them. He never satirizes the reigning features. The American etholog never satirizes democracy, or the politician, or the newspaper.

The etholog wants a big party or a strong sentiment behind him. It is not until after skepticism about a ruling "way" has formed in the minds of a large section of the masses that the etholog makes himself the mouthpiece of it. We have no satire yet on militarism, or imperialism, or the Monroe doctrine. A protective tariff is a grand object for satire, but so long as the masses believe in it satire is powerless. The same is true of any folkway so long as it is not yet doubted. Satire is then blasphemy. While a way is prevalent there is pathos about it (sec.

178), as there is now amongst us about democracy, but there never can be satire, and pathos at the same time, in the same society, about the same thing. One might have believed that nothing need be sacred to the theaters of Paris, but a few years ago a play was written which set the French Revolution in a different light from the now consecrated commonplace in regard to it. It was found impossible to produce it. A marionette player and his wife made fun of Pere Duchesne on the boulevard during the Revolution. Both were guillotined.[2038] These facts limit very much the high moral function sometimes ascribed to satire. It never gets into action until the mischief is done. It never squelches a folly at its commencement. That function belongs to educated reason, but educated reason is not in the masses.

+633. Dickens as a biolog.+ Charles Dickens was a biolog. His novels contain very little evidence of the manners and customs of his time, and what they do contain is forced and untrue. He invented characters whose names have become common nouns and adjectives for individual types which are found in all societies at all times (Pecksniff, Micawber, Turveydrop, Uriah Heep, etc.), but which may, at a time, be especially common and produce fine specimens.

+634. Early Jewish plays.+ Ezekiel (an Alexandrian Jew, fl. c. 200 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the exodus from Egypt, with the same motive as the mystery plays,--the edification of the faithful. Herod Atticus ([Symbol: cross] c. 180 A.D.), having caused the death of his wife, Regilla, was not satisfied with the expiations in the usual funeral rites. He built, as a monument to her, a theater with a roof.[2039] Ezekiel's play on the exodus was presented in Herod's theater. Nicholas of Damascus (b. 74 B.C.) is said to have written a play on the story of Susanna.[2040]

+635. Roman _mimus_.+ The _mimus_, in the Greco-Roman empire, stereotyped its figures for a period, since of course they did not change suddenly or greatly. In the Roman _mimus_ the recurring features were the pursuit of legacies, the impotency of men, the stupidity of the clown, blows and other physical violence. The fixed types were: old women as drunkards, sorceresses, go-betweens, peddlers, and panders; men as _scholasticus_ (the pedant and learned imbecile), Ardalio (a character introduced by Philistion), the fatuous, fussy old man, and then the Christian, a type which was kept up for several centuries.[2041] These personages, remaining unchanged in character, were put in various assumed positions and conjunctures. The actors had to invent the dialogue and work out the situation. The characters have come down to us as Punch, Harlequin, Pantaloon, etc.[2042] Punch (=Pulcino, Pulcinella) is only a Neapolitan rendering of Maccus, a character in the atellans. "Maccus," in Etruscan, meant a little cock.[2043] Christian antiphonal singing, like the Greek mystery acts of Dionysus, helped to develop the drama.[2044] In the first centuries of the Christian era "obscenity dominated the theater." "It was no longer a school of patriotism, recalling the heroes of the early ages or criticising the misdoings of contemporaries. It was a scene of vice and corruption for actors and spectators. There was nothing represented but the adventures of deceived husbands, adulteries, intrigues of libertines, incidents in lupanars. The only characters represented were shameless women and effeminate men. The most shameful things were exhibited. Everything which ought to be respected was there degraded.

Virtue was mocked and the gods were derided. The actor caused the taste for evil things to penetrate the mind of the spectator; he stimulated ignoble and criminal passions, and, familiar as he was with vice, he blushed sometimes at the shameful role which he was forced to play before the crowd."[2045]

+636. "The Suffering Christ." "Pseudo-Querolus."+ In the fourth century the Christians tried to use the theater for their purposes. The drama _The Suffering Christ_ is attributed to Gregory of Nazianz. It represents the passion of Jesus as understood by the Nicene theologians.

It consists of twelve hundred and seventy-three verses taken more or less exactly from the tragedies of Euripides and patched together.

Lintilhac[2046] says it is now the accepted opinion that it cannot be of remoter origin than the eleventh century, so that the most noteworthy fact about it would be that it is a Greek liturgical play of even date with the earliest western plays of that class. In it the Virgin Mary is a pagan woman, who uses verses of Hecuba and Medea, and thinks of suicide.[2047] Another play of the fourth century, which is mentioned as important in the history of the drama, is the _Pseudo-Querolus_. It is an imitation of Plautus. Querolus is the forerunner of Moliere's Misanthrope and so a biolog,--a permanent type of person.[2048] Dramas representing martyrdom and other Christian incidents were presented with very great realism.[2049]

+637. The _mimus_ and Christianity.+ The _mimus_ opened war on Christianity. The religion was unpopular and hated. It set itself against the mores of the society at the time. It was scoffed at just as Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, and Christian Scientists have been scoffed at since and for the same reasons. It shared the unpopularity of the Jews, who came before the heathen world claiming the isolation of superiority, exclusive favor of God, ascendancy by rights over all the world. To the pagans the Christians seemed to make a great fuss about nothing. The _mimus_ seized the popular sentiment and gave it expression. The Christian became the clown and simpleton. Christian rites were parodied and ridiculed. Martyrdoms were represented on the stage, the martyr being the buffoon. The heathen gods were taken under the protection of the _mimus_, instead of being burlesqued as they had been for several centuries. This mockery ran through the Roman empire until the end of the fourth century, when the church got the protection of the state against public insult, but Christianity fell under the dominion of heathen mores. The great ecclesiastics of the fifth century preached fiercely against the theater, not because of the insults of the theater against the church, for they were silenced, but on account of the action of the theater upon Christian mores. Chrysostom denounced the theater on account of the manners of actresses in the _mimus_, on account of false hair, paint, exposed bodies, uncovered heads, melodies, gross language, gestures, strife, representations of adultery and other sex vice, and because it was the school of intrigue and seduction. This became the attitude of the church towards the theater.[2050]

+638. Popular phantasms.+ Although the crowd likes to see realistic representations of life, and also likes to see in the drama that ridicule of the cultured classes which seems like a victory over them, yet it also loves fantastic scenes, and acts in which the limitations of reality are left behind and imaginary luck and joy are represented,--such as magical transformations, fairy tales, and realms of bliss. Extremes of realism and phantasm meet in the folk drama. After the fifth century the sense of societal decline and loss was strong in the popular mind.

It was felt that the world was failing. There was a contempt for life.[2051] Pagan society was ennuye. "It wanted to laugh. It wanted games and dances to make gay the last hours which separated it from its fall."[2052] Salvianus says that the Roman world died laughing.[2053]

+639. Effects of vicious amusements.+ Vicious amusements provoke all kinds of vicious passions. Excitement, sensuality, frivolity, and meanness go together. Lecky[2054] points out the contrast between the conduct of the Romans of the time of Marius, who refused to plunder the houses of the opposing faction when Marius threw them open, and that of the Romans of the time of Vespasian, who enjoyed the fun and plunder of his war with Vitellius in the streets of Rome. "The moral condition of the empire is, indeed, in some respects one of the most appalling pictures on record."

+640. Gladiatorial games.+ The mores of the Romans of the third century B.C. (sec. 624) seized upon the gladiatorial contests as something suited to the genius of the Roman people, and, as the Romans gained wealth and power by conquest and plunder, with numerous war captives, they developed the sport of the arena to a very high point. Then the sport reacted on the mores and made them more cruel, licentious, and cowardly. It required more and more extravagant inventions to produce the former degree of pleasure. The Romans were fond of all torture and showed great invention in connection with it, both for beasts and men.

Children amused themselves by torturing beasts and insects, making them draw loads, and making fowls and birds fight. They loved the sight of pain and bloodshed and found their greatest pleasure in it.[2055] Under Nero women fought in the arena. This was forbidden under Severus. A law, probably of the time of Nero, forbade masters to give their slaves to fight beasts. Hadrian forbade the sale of slaves to be gladiators.

Marcus Aurelius forbade the condemnation of criminals to be gladiators, and he tried to limit the gladiatorial exhibitions. They were far too popular.[2056] It is thus that amusements and mores react on each other to produce social degeneration. The whole social standard of "right"

moves down with the moral degeneracy, and at no stage is there a sense of shame or wrongdoing in the public mind in connection with what is customary and traditional at the time. There is no contrast between facts and standards. The great Christian ecclesiastics of the fourth and fifth centuries denounced the public amusements and tried to keep the Christians away from them. They tried to convert actors. They pointed out the subtle corruption of character produced by feigning vice.

Gladiators were not admitted to baptism unless they repented and renounced their profession.[2057] In 325 Constantine forbade gladiatorial combats as unfit for a time of peace. He forbade the use of condemned criminals in the arena. These laws were powerless.[2058]

+641. Compromise between church and customs.+ The _maiuma_ (mock sea fight on the Tiber in May) was forbidden, probably under Constance, a prohibition which was repeated by Theodosius. Arcadius tried to allow it again, under conditions that propriety be observed, but it was impossible, and he forbade all immodest exhibitions. Theodosius forbade magistrates to be present at exhibitions after midday, when the most obscene and bloody were presented, except on the anniversaries of his own birth and accession. He also forbade actresses to use fine clothes and jewels, and forbade Christians to be actors. Leo I ([symbol: cross]

461) forbade that any Christian woman, free or slave, should be compelled to be an actress or meretrix.[2059] Salvianus describes,[2060]

in very emphatic but general terms, the public exhibitions in Gaul and Africa in the second half of the fifth century. There was, he says, scarcely a crime or outrage which was not represented on the stage, and the spectators enjoyed seeing a man killed or cruelly lacerated. All the earth was ransacked for beasts. All the senses were outraged by indecencies. Nevertheless, on any day on which performances occurred the churches were empty. The Christians, as we see, lived in the mores of their age, and all these things had centuries of tradition behind them.

Salvianus and other ecclesiastics were not heeded because they derived their standards from Christian dogmas, and those standards were far removed from the current mores. The church was forced to compromise. It allowed feasts, fairs, and games near the churches. It converted heathen festivals, with processions, lights, and garlands, into Christian festivals and usages. It borrowed the attractions of the worship of Isis, Mithra, and Cybele, and adopted all the means of suggestion employed in their rites. The great ecclesiastics were divided as to this policy. Augustine put an end, so far as his jurisdiction went, to the feasts in the churches in honor of martyrs, with singing, dancing, and drinking, although they were very popular.[2061] He complained earnestly of the indecency of the exhibitions of his time.[2062] "Especially at the festivals in honor of the heathen gods, and in civil celebrations, the ancient religious practices were renewed, not infrequently degenerating into shameless immorality, yet protecting civil usages. The patriot, the philosopher, the skeptic, and the pious man had to make a capitulation with those ancient religious practices, for they were not, in truth, emancipated from them at heart, and they did not know of anything better to replace what those practices did for society."[2063]

So the philosopher, patriot, skeptic, and pious man always have to compromise with the ancient and existing mores. Salvianus[2064] says that poverty caused the great exhibitions to cease. It was advancing poverty and misery which put an end to all the old forms of amusement.

It was not the church or Christianity. The Christian rites and festivals alone remained. Modern Spanish bullfights appear to be a survival of the old sports of the arena. Bullfights were introduced into Italy in the fourteenth century. They were general in the fifteenth century. The Aragonese brought them to Naples and the Borgias to Rome.[2065] We hear of a kind of gladiatorial exhibition at some festivals in India early in the nineteenth century.[2066] There were gladiators also in Japan[2067] and in Mexico.[2068]

+642. The _cantica_.+ Roman drama ran down to pantomime with explanatory recitation, that is, _cantica_. From the seventh to the tenth century few dramas were produced with dialogue. Some biblical narratives, legends of saints, and profane compositions from that time exist, which are probably _cantica_, to be accompanied by pantomime at fairs or in church porches.

+643. Passion for the games.+ It certainly was not on account of any decline in the taste for amusement that the games declined. In the fifth century, when the Vandals were besieging Carthage, "the church of Carthage was crazy for the games," and the cries of those dying in battle were confused with those of the applauding spectators at the games. The leading men of Treves were gratifying their love of feasting when the barbarians entered their city.[2069] The people of Antioch were in the theater when the Persians surprised them, about 265 A.D.[2070]

+644. German sports.+ Amongst the Germanic nations, from a very early period, popular amusements consisted in pantomimes, mummery with animal masks, horseplay by clowns, etc. The feast of Holda, or Berchta, during the first twelve days of January, was an especial period for those sports. From the sixth century there was also a pantomime of the strife of winter and spring.[2071]

+645. The _mimus_ from the third to the eighth century.+ As the culture drama fell into neglect the _mimus_ was left in possession of the field.