was a good deal of astonishment on the part of the vulgar crowd, but no pleasure whatever.  Nay, there was even a feeling of compassion aroused by them, and a notion that this animal has something in common with mankind."[512] This last interesting sentence is confirmed by a passage in Pliny’s Natural History, in which he asserts that the people were so much moved that they actually execrated Pompey.[513] The last age of the Republic is a transitional one, in this, as in other ways; the people are not yet thoroughly inured to bloodshed and cruelty to animals, as they afterwards became when deprived of political excitements, and left with nothing violent to amuse them but the displays of the amphitheatre.

Earlier in this same letter Cicero had told his friend Marius that on this occasion certain old actors had re-appeared on the stage, who, as he thought, had left it for good.  The only one he mentions is the great tragic actor Aesopus, who “was in such a state that no one could say a word against his retiring from the profession.”  At one important point his voice failed him.  This may conveniently remind us that Aesopus was the last of the great actors of tragedy, and that his best days were in the early half of this century—­another sign of the decay of the legitimate drama.  He was an intimate friend of Cicero, and from a few references to him in the Ciceronian writings we can form some idea of his genius.  In one passage Cicero writes of having seen him looking so wild and gesticulating so excitedly, that he seemed almost to have lost command of himself.[514] In the description, already quoted from the speech pro Sestio, of the scene in the theatre before his recall from exile, he speaks of this “summus artifex” as delivering his allusions to the exile with infinite force and passion.  Yet the later tradition of his acting was rather that he was serious and self-restrained; Horace calls him gravis, and Quintilian too speaks of his gravitas.[515] Probably, like Garrick, he was capable of a great variety of moods and parts.  How carefully he studied the varieties of gesticulation is indicated by a curious story preserved by Valerius Maximus, that he and Roscius the great comedian used to go and sit in the courts in order to observe the action of the orator Hortensius.[516]

Roscius too was an early intimate friend of Cicero, who, like Caesar, seems to have valued the friendship of all men of genius, without regard to their origin or profession.  Roscius seems to have been a freedman;[517] his great days were in Cicero’s early life, and he died in 61 B.C., to the deep grief of all his friends.[518] So wonderfully finished was his acting that it became a common practice to call any one a Roscius whose work was more than usually perfect.  He never could find a pupil of whom he could entirely approve; many had good points, but if there were a single blot, the master could not bear it.[519] In the de Oratore Cicero tells us several interesting things about him,—­how he laid the proper emphasis on the right words, reserving his gesticulation until he came to them; and how he was never so much admired when acting with a mask on, because the expression of his face was so full of meaning[520].