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The artistic charm depended wholly, as in the Atellana, on the portraiture of the manners of common and low life; in which rural pictures are laid aside for those of the life and doings of the capital, and the sweet rabble of Rome just as in the similar Greek pieces the rabble of Alexandria is summoned to applaud its own likeness.
Two things marked off the Mimus from the Atellana or national farce; the players appeared without masks, and women were allowed to act. This opened the gates to licentiousness. We find from Cicero that Mimae bore a disreputable character, but from their personal charms and accomplishments often became the chosen companions of the profligate nobles of the day.
Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called: Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and the wise Dossennus masks which have been cleverly and strikingly compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in the Italian comedy of Pulcinello already belonged to the earliest Latin popular art.
The artistic charm depended wholly, as in the Atellana, on the portraiture of the manners of common and low life; in which rural pictures are laid aside for those of the life and doings of the capital, and the sweet rabble of Rome just as in the similar Greek pieces the rabble of Alexandria is summoned to applaud its own likeness.
Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called: Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and the wise Dossennus masks which have been cleverly and strikingly compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in the Italian comedy of Pulcinello already belonged to the earliest Latin popular art.
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