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Updated: May 12, 2025
And in both these kinds, the executive talents of Pilades and Bathillus corresponded to the boldness and beauty of the kind of compositions they had ventured to bring on the stage. Pilades especially, who was at the head of this project, was the most singular man that had till then appeared on the theatre.
The first invented the solemn, grave and pathetic dances. The compositions of Bathillus were in the lively, gay, and sprightly stile. Bathillus had been the slave of Mecenas, who had given him his freedom in favor of his talents.
It appears also clearly from history, that this art, in its origin, (so favored by an arbitrary prince, and who also made some use of it, towards establishing his despotism, nay even primordially introduced by Bathillus, a
The celebrated Empusa was a female dancer, whose agility was so prodigious that she appeared and vanished like a spirit. But it was at Rome that the Pantomime art received its highest improvement. Pilades born in Cilicia, and Bathillus of Alexandria, where the two most surprising geniuses, who, under the reigns of Augustus Cæsar, displayed their talents in their utmost lustre.
So much however is true, that those two dancers were extremely eminent in their art, and may be esteemed the founders of that theatrical dancing, or pantomime execution, for which it is not sufficient to be only a good dancer, but there is also required the being a good actor; in both which lights, these two artists were allowed to excel, Pilades in the serious or tragic dance, Bathillus in the comic.
Cahusac, an ingenious French author, in his historical treatise of this art, assigns to that emperor a deep political design in giving it so great an encouragement as he undoubtedly did; that of diverting the Romans from serious thoughts on the loss of their liberty; especially in fomenting a dissention among them, about so frivolous an object as the competition between those two celebrated dancers, Pilades and Bathillus.
Tears and sobs interrupted often the representation of the tragedy of Glaucus, in which the pantomime Plancus played the principal character. Bathillus, in painting the amours of Leda, never failed of exciting the utmost sensibility in the Roman ladies.
Esopus and Roscius had been, from their excellence in declamation, the delight and admiration of Rome. But on their leaving no successors to their degree of merit; the taste for dramatic poetry which was no longer supported by actors equal to them, began to decline; and the theatrical dances under such great masters as Pilades and Bathillus, either by their novelty, or by their merit, or by both, made the Romans the less feel their loss of those incomparable actors. The gestual language took place of that which was declaimed; and produced regular pieces acted in the three kinds of tragedy, comedy, and farce or grotesque. The spectators grew pleased with such an exercise of their understanding. Steps, motions, attitudes, figures, positions, now were substituted to speech; and there resulted from them an expression so natural, images so resembling, a
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