United States or Northern Mariana Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
When several actors took part in a piece, each was said mimum agere, though this phrase originally applied only to the single actor. Laberius appears to have been a more careful writer. Syrus was not a literary man, but an improvisator and moralist. Being little known, they are worth quoting as a popular denunciation of luxury
Though coarse and often obscene, they were considered as consistent with gentlemanly behaviour; thus Cicero, in a well-known passage in one of his letters, contrasts them with the Mimes, secundum Oenomaum Accii non, ut olim solebat, Atellanam, sed, ut nunc fit, mimum introduxisti; and Valerius Maximus implies that they did not carry their humour to extravagant lengths, but tempered it with Italian severity.
The mime at first differed from other kinds of comedy in having no proper plot; in not being presented primarily on the stage; in having but one actor. Eudicos imitated the gestures of boxing; Theodorus the creaking of a windlass; Parmeno did the grunting of a pig to perfection. Any one who raised a laugh by such kinds if imitation was properly said mimum agere.
Augustus died the twenty-third of August of the year 14 A.D., saying to Livia, as she embraced him: "Adieu, Livia, remember our long life." Suetonius adds that, before dying, he had asked the friends who had come to salute him, if he seemed to them "mimum vitæ commode transegisse" to have acted well his life's comedy.
Word Of The Day