The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran
who kept the court of Antiochus ever merry by his mimicry, and who was named, par excellence, Logomimus.
The fools and the philosophers were not always identical, and they often came in contact, as was to be expected. We have an instance in the buffoon Satyrion, named by Lucian, and the grave Alcidamas, who wrote a treatise on death. The sage could not tolerate the fun and the Egyptian accent of the ugly and close-cropped fool; and when the latter called the man of wisdom a “lap-dog,” the philosopher challenged him to single combat. Some of the guests were ashamed, and some laughed, to see sciolist and sage heartily belabouring each other; but the laughter was universal when the philosopher, beaten to a mummy, confessed himself vanquished, and afterwards stood as mute as a courtesan in a Greek play.
Socrates (as I have previously remarked) is said, by more than one writer, ancient and modern, to have united in his own person the philosopher and the fool. His ugliness, deformity, and uncouthness—his childish play, his extravagant dancing, his inclination to laugh at everything—all these and more have been cited as foundations for reckoning him among the jesters. Zeno, according to Cicero, especially styled him the “Athenian buffoon,” which was probably meant for a compliment. The best description of him is that of Alcibiades, in Plato, who says that Socrates resembled the large images of Silenus, which were filled with little statuettes of the gods. Flögel rejects the picture of Socrates, represented by Aristophanes in the ‘Clouds,’ as “suspicious.” But Socrates has nothing of the fool in him in that play, except that he is represented as proprietor of the Thinking-Shop, and deriving powers of humbug and circumlocution, from the clouds. In this play, the recognized freedom of the fool, as regards liberty of speech at the expense of the audience, is exercised by the characters “Just Cause” and “Unjust Cause,” as the following sample will show:—
“Unj. Now, then, tell me: from what class do the lawyers come?
“Just. From the blackguards.
“Unj. Very good! And the public speakers?
“Just. Oh, from the blackguards, also.
“Unj.——And now look; which class most abounds among the audience?
“Just. I am looking.
“Unj. But what do you see?
“Just. By all the gods, I see more blackguards than anything else. That fellow, I particularly know; and him yonder; and that blackguard with the long hair.”
The above was the true license of the fool, in the professional use of the term; and the Athenian blackguards only laughed to hear themselves thus distinguished.
The above is among the boldest of the personal assaults made by Aristophanes against the vices or failings of his countrymen. He claimed the privileges of Comedy, as the Fool did those of his cap and bells. This he does, especially in ‘The Acharnians,’ when Dicæopolis, looking straight at the audience, says, “Think nothing the worse of me, Athenian gentlemen, if, although I am a beggar, I hazard touching on your affairs of state, in comic verse; for even comedy knows what is proper, and, if you find me sharp, you shall also find me just.” Still nearer did the poet come to the license of the jester, when, in ‘The Knights,’ he himself turns actor as well as author, and so dressed, looked, and mimicked, without once employing the name of, the great demagogue whom he was satirizing, that every spectator recognized the well-known Cleon. The same author’s attack on the litigious spirit of the Athenians, in his ‘Wasps,’ is another instance of what I am attempting to illustrate. This is more particularly the case when he makes his characters address themselves immediately to the audience, as may be supposed to occur in the Parabasis of the last-named piece. Here the satirist bids the audience to provide themselves with clearer understandings, if they would enjoy the poets thoroughly. “Henceforth, good gentlemen,” are his words, “have more love and regard for such of your poets as treat you to something original. Preserve their sayings, and keep them in your chests with your apples. If you do this, there will be a scent of cleverness from your clothes, that shall last you through a whole year.” In his ‘Peace,’ the finest touch of satire is not in what is said, but in what is left unsaid; for the goddess whose name gives a title to the piece, never once opens her mouth. The licensed jester appears as broadly in the author’s dealings with the gods, whose place in Heaven is represented as occupied by the Demon of War, who is engaged in braying the Greek States in a stupendous mortar. The daring of the author, as exercised in pelting the gods themselves with jokes, is still more flagrant in ‘The Birds,’ where he burlesques the national mythology, in presence of a people whose jealous fury was just then aroused by suspicion of a conspiracy existing against the national religion. That the audience should have tolerated the audacity of their favourite jester, is a proof of the power he held over them. Nevertheless, they were probably more delighted with his personalities, and they recognized with shouts of laughter the brace of gallant military gentlemen thus described by one of the women in the ‘Lysistrata’:—“By Jove, I saw a man with long hair, a commander of cavalry, on horseback, who was pouring into his brazen helmet a lot of pease-soup, which he had just bought from an old woman. I saw also a Thracian, with shield and javelin, like Tereus. He went up to the woman who sold figs, and, frightening her away with his arms, took up her ripe figs and began swallowing them.” The national satirist is seen again in the recommendation put in the mouth of the male chorus in the same play, and which is to this effect:—“If the Athenians would only follow my advice, their ambassadors should never go upon their missions, except when drunk. Sobriety and Common Sense do not go together with us. If, for instance, we send sober legates to Sparta, they only watch for opportunity to create mischief. If the Spartans speak, we do not heed them; if they are silent, we wrongly suspect them. Let our envoys get drunk, and agree in what they hear, and in the reports they send home.” Nor does Aristophanes spare the women more than the men. How archly, no doubt, did Mnesilochus look at the audience, when he ungallantly remarked, in ‘The Thesmophoriazusæ,’—“Among all the ladies of the present day, you would seek in vain to find a Penelope. They are Phædras, every one of them.” It is not to be supposed that the comic poet ever offended by his trenchant jests, although a passage delivered by the chorus, in ‘The Ecclesiazusæ’ (that exquisite satire against the ideal republics of philosophers, with impracticable laws), would seem, perhaps, to imply something of the sort. Turning to the audience, the Chorus remarks, “I am going to make a little suggestion to you. I wish the clever among you to be on my side; for remember how clever I am myself. They who laugh merrily will prefer me, I know, because of my own mirthful jesting.” This suggestion sounds as if the dunces and dullards had been sneering at the satirist for his smartness and sprightliness. Even if so, he continued to laugh at gods and men. At both, as in ‘Plutus,’ where he ridicules the deities for their many names, by which they hoped to catch a gift under one appellation, which they lost under another; and where he illustrates the irreligiousness of men, by remarking that nowadays they never enter a temple, except for a purpose which, it will be recollected, was religiously avoided by the Essenes on the Sabbath. The last illustration is made in the very spirit and letter which marked the “Fools” of the fifteenth century. They pleaded for such jokes the immunities of their office, and Aristophanes does something very like this when he makes Xanthias exclaim, in ‘The Frogs,’ “Oh, they are always carrying baggage in comedy!”
Flögel has been too anxious to increase his list of Fools, by including among them the planus, or impostor. He takes for a joker, the cheat denounced by Horace in the 17th of the First Book of his Epistles. That cheat is simply a street vagabond, who deceives the humane by pretending to have broken his leg, and who laughs at them when they have passed on, after giving him relief. Even this sorry joke he cannot often repeat. Then we have, from Athenæus, other comical fellows cited, whose funny things won the admiration of Greece and Rome, the people of which countries must have been easily pleased. Among these are the Alexandrian Matreas, who wrote chapters of a ‘Comic Natural History,’ wherein he discussed such questions as, “Why, when the sun sets at sea, does he not set off swimming?” “Why do the swans never get drunk with what they imbibe?” Then we hear of a Cephisodorus—neither the tragic poet nor the historian—whose stock joke consisted in his running breathless, either from or towards the city honoured by his residence,