The mimi had their original from comedy, of which, at its first appearance, they made a part; for their mimick actors always played and exhibited grotesque dances in the comedies.  The jealousy of rivalship afterwards broke them off from the comick actors, and made them a company by themselves.  But to secure their reception, they borrowed from comedy all its drollery, wildness, grossness, and licentiousness.  This amusement they added to their dances, and they produced what are now called farces, or burlettas.  These farces had not the regularity or delicacy of comedies; they were only a succession of single scenes, contrived to raise laughter, formed or unravelled without order, and without connexion.  They had no other end but to make the people laugh.  Now and then there might be good sentences, like the sentences of P. Syrus, that are yet left us, but the groundwork was low comedy, and any thing of greater dignity drops in by chance.  We must, however, imagine, that this odd species of the drama rose, at length, to somewhat a higher character, since we are told that Plato, the philosopher, laid the mimi of Sophron under his pillow, and they were found there after his death.  But in general we may say, with truth, that it always discovered the meanness of its original, like a false pretension to nobility, in which the cheat is always discovered, through the concealment of fictitious splendour.

These mimi were of two sorts, of which the length was different, but the purposes the same.  The mimi of one species were short; those of the other long, and not quite so grotesque.  These two kinds were subdivided into many species, distinguished by the dresses and characters, such as show drunkards, physicians, men, and women.

Thus far of the Greeks.  The Romans, having borrowed of them the more noble shows of tragedy and comedy, were not content till they had their rhapsodies.  They had their planipedes, who played with flat soles, that they might have the more agility; and their sannions, whose head was shaved, that they might box the better.  There is no need of naming here all who had a name for these diversions among the Greeks and Romans.  I have said enough, and, perhaps, too much of this abortion of comedy, which drew upon itself the contempt of good men, the censures of the magistrates, and the indignation of the fathers of the church[3].

Another set of players were called pantomimes:  these were, at least, so far preferable to the former, that they gave no offence to the ears.  They spoke only to the eyes; but with such art of expression, that, without the utterance of a single word, they represented, as we are told, a complete tragedy or comedy, in the same manner as dumb harlequin is exhibited on our theatres.  These pantomimes, among the Greeks, first mingled singing with their dances; afterwards, about the time of Livius Andronicus, the songs were performed by one part, and the dances by another.