of its own thumb, and moderately extending the rest of the fingers, is graceful in approving.”  Fig. 62 is taken from De Jorio’s plates and descriptions of the gestures among modern Neapolitans, with the same idea of approbation—­“good.”  Both of these may be compared with Fig. 63, a common sign among the North American Indians to express affirmation and approbation.  With the knowledge of these details it is possible to believe the story of Macrobius that Cicero used to vie with Roscius, the celebrated actor, as to which of them could express a sentiment in the greater variety of ways, the one by gesture and the other by speech, with the apparent result of victory to the actor who was so satisfied with the superiority of his art that he wrote a book on the subject.

[Illustration:  Fig. 62.]

Gestures were treated of with still more distinction as connected with pantomimic dances and representations.  Aeschylus appears to have brought theatrical gesture to a high degree of perfection, but Telestes, a dancer employed by him, introduced the dumb show, a dance without marked dancing steps, and subordinated to motions of the hands, arms, and body, which is dramatic pantomime.  He was so great an artist, says Athenaeus, that when he represented the Seven before Thebes he rendered every circumstance manifest by his gestures alone.  From Greece, or rather from Egypt, the art was brought to Rome, and in the reign of Augustus was the great delight of that Emperor and his friend Maecenas.  Bathyllus, of Alexandria, was the first to introduce it to the Roman public, but he had a dangerous rival in Pylades.  The latter was magnificent, pathetic, and affecting, while Bathyllus was gay and sportive.  All Rome was split into factions about their respective merits.  Athenaeus speaks of a distinguished performer of his own time (he died A.D. 194) named Memphis, whom he calls the “dancing philosopher,” because he showed what the Pythagorean philosophy could do by exhibiting in silence everything with stronger evidence than they could who professed to teach the arts of language.  In the reign of Nero, a celebrated pantomimist who had heard that the cynic philosopher Demetrius spoke of the art with contempt, prevailed upon him to witness his performance, with the result that the cynic, more and more astonished, at last cried out aloud, “Man, I not only see, but I hear what you do, for to me you appear to speak with your hands!”

[Illustration:  Fig. 63.]

Lucian, who narrates this in his work De Saltatione, gives another tribute to the talent of, perhaps, the same performer.  A barbarian prince of Pontus (the story is told elsewhere of Tyridates, King of Armenia), having come to Rome to do homage to the Emperor Nero, and been taken to see the pantomimes, was asked on his departure by the Emperor what present he would have as a mark of his favor.  The barbarian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and upon being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that he found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by his assistance easily make himself intelligible to all.