Theatre Moderne_, public representations were very expensive, and for
that very reason very rare. Moreover, those who were not in a condition
of freedom were excluded from them; and, finally, all cities could not
have a large theater, and provide for the expenses that it carried with
it. It became necessary, then, for every day needs, for all conditions
and for all places, that there should be comedians of an inferior order,
charged with the duty of offering continuously and inexpensively the
emotions of the drama to all classes of inhabitants.

Formerly, as to-day, there were seen wandering from village to village
menageries, puppet shows, fortune tellers, jugglers, and performers of
tricks of all kinds. These prestidigitators even obtained at times such
celebrity that history has preserved their names for us--at least of two
of them, Euclides and Theodosius, to whom statues were erected by their
contemporaries. One of these was put up at Athens in the Theater of
Bacchus, alongside of that of the great writer of tragedy, AEschylus, and
the other at the Theater of the Istiaians, holding in the hand a small
ball. The grammarian Athenaeus, who reports these facts in his "Banquet
of the Sages," profits by the occasion to deplore the taste of the
Athenians, who preferred the inventions of mechanics to the culture of
mind and histrions to philosophers. He adds with vexation that Diophites
of Locris passed down to posterity simply because he came one day to
Thebes wearing around his body bladders filled with wine and milk,
and so arranged that he could spurt at will one of these liquids in
apparently drawing it from his mouth. What would Athenaeus say if he knew
that it was through him alone that the name of this histrion had come
down to us?

[Illustration: FIG. 1.--THE MARVELOUS STATUE OF CYBELE.]