The History of Court Fools. Dr. Doran
or grateful to me in the hackneyed gestures of the wanton, the pleasantry of the jester, or the nonsense of the fool.” And the philosopher adds, with great fairness, “You see it is not so much my judgment as my taste that is against them;” and, he says further, “When I have reading, music, or the company of an actor at my own house, there are some guests who leave directly, or who, if they stay, look as ‘glumpy’ at the diversions I provide, as you did at those which lately marred your entertainment. The truth is,” thus concludes the philosopher, and it is advice as valuable now as ever, “we should accept, as well-meant, the diversions provided for us by others, that they, in their turn, may be indulgent towards those we provide for them.” One thing noteworthy here is, that the sensible people in Rome did not really care for the “fool.” If the conquest of Scipio Asiaticus over Antiochus brought in that sort of entertainment, the best philosophers (for some stooped to folly) protested against it by both precept and example.
The Scurra, as I have said, was not in every age a polished fool. The buffoon at the fair who obtained the applause of his audience for grunting like a pig, and, as the audience thought, more like a pig than the animal itself, is called by Phædrus a “Scurra.” He probably sank lower in his practice than any of his class, for he announced that the entertainment he was about to exhibit had never before been known on any stage. But even the best of the Scurræ seem to me to justify rather the censure of Genitor than the praise of Horace. The latter, it will be remembered, on the famous journey to Brundusium, was present at the cudgelling of brains between Sarmentus (who had run away from slavery to set up as a Scurra) and Cicerrus, who was a well-to-do parasite of his day. Horace asserts that the wit of these two induced them all to merrily prolong their supper; and yet all the fun perpetrated was of a dreary cast. The Scurra joked coarsely on the deformity and infirmity of the parasite, and the latter retorted by reproaching the Scurra with his condition of slave, and the puny insignificance of his body. If Sarmentus was the “delight” of Cæsar Augustus, that monarch was very easily pleased.
Perhaps there was no greater patron of the Scurræ, and all similar and many more degraded persons, than Sylla. He wasted his colossal fortune on fools of every description—some of them monsters of uncleanness. Flögel, when noticing the criminal liberality of Sylla towards the crowds of debauched followers who occupied his table and house, and accompanied him abroad, says that for their sakes and under their influences, he neglected public business. But the fact is, that Sylla did not lead this disreputable life until after he had abdicated the dictatorship, and had gone into his sensual and unhappy retirement at Puteoli.
Antony was not more choice than Sylla in his “jolly companions,” nor in his own conduct. He was often indeed his own fool, and few great men ever played that character so thoroughly, but all were not fools and jesters and jugglers, whom historians have placed round the table and at the hearth of Antony. Flögel especially errs in classing among the jugglers retained by the Triumvir the beautiful Cytheris, or Lycoris, that slave whom the gentle and gallant Gallus loved, but whose desertion of him for Antony gained for us the tender eclogue of Virgil.
Juvenal cites with Sarmentus, the name of Galba as a buffoon or parasite of Augustus, and he does this (Sat. v.) in order to shame a dissolute friend who saw no harm in allowing his “loins to grow fat by others’ meat.” “What!” exclaims the Satirist, “are you not yet ashamed of your course of life? Can you still believe that sovereign happiness consists in living at another man’s table—where you support more insults than were ever heaped on Sarmentus and Galba at the table of Cæsar?”
Galba was an aristocratic Demonax. He was, moreover, a short hump-backed fellow, and he seems rather to have been the cause of wit in others than witty himself. It was in allusion to his deformity that Augustus remarked, after Galba had maintained some absurd proposition, “I can tell you what is right, yet I can’t put you straight.” It is of Galba that is told the story of his feigning to go to sleep at his own table while Mæcenas was saying very polite things to the host’s wife; but when another of the guests attempted to filch something from the board, “Hold there!” cried Galba, “I am asleep for him, but not for you!”
Martial complains that he himself was less known to his contemporaries, all witty poet as he was, than Caballus, the buffoon of Tiberius. This individual is supposed to be the same with the Claudius Gallus of Suetonius. But Gallus seems to have been as much of a friend as a man could be, of an Emperor who was accustomed to behead such of his acquaintances as got the better of him in argument. That Gallus was hardly a professional fool may be gathered from the words of Suetonius, according to the quaint translation of the edition of 1692. “Claudius Gallus, a most notorious old Sir Jolly, who had been formerly branded for his debauches by Augustus, and severely reprimanded by himself (Tiberius) in the Senate, inviting him (Tiberius) to supper, he promised to come, on the terms that nothing were omitted of his usual way of entertainment,”—which, according to the context, seems to have been of a terribly licentious character.
Flögel refers, for an example of the impunity of Court Fools, in the bold wagging of their tongue at the Courts of the Roman Emperors, to the remark of a jester to Vespasian. The former had been saying sharp things to all around him, but, observed the Emperor, “you have addressed no observation to me.” Now Vespasian, whom we are accustomed to picture to ourselves as a towering personage of heroic carriage, was a poorly built fellow who went about in a half-sitting posture, like Mr. Wright in the part of the retired coachman, whose limbs have stiffened into the posture which he had preserved through a long course of years, on the box. The jester joked very indecently on this weakness of the monarch, but I do not think the sorry humourist was a wit by profession. “Quidam urbanorum,” is the way in which he is described, but this may mean “one of the men about town,” and the old translation from which I have already made an extract, renders it “one of the wits of the time.” Whichever it be, it seems to show that the jokers could take great liberties with some emperors. Other instances prove that some emperors took deadly vengeance on the jokers.
Commodus Antoninus may be reckoned among those princes who have been their own fools, and he played the part rarely; but it was more in the spirit of insane than witty folly. His fun, like the club of Hercules, which he for ever carried on his shoulder, was crushing rather than exhilarating. Gallienus, who resembled him in many respects, and was as cruel, licentious, depraved, and cold-hearted, kept a second table for his buffoons; which they occupied like regular gentlemen of the Imperial household. When this potentate played the fool for his own amusement, he could be, by caprice at least, less bloodthirsty in his frolicsomeness than Commodus; as, for instance, when he ordered a knave of a jeweller to be flung into the arena, and let loose upon him—not a roaring lion, but a poor capon. The joke, as poor as the bird, was, of course, received with universal applause.
We have some insight afforded us with regard to the position occupied by the retained jester, in the account of the strange supper given by Nasidienus to Mæcenas and others. The guest just named took with him his two “shadows” uninvited. They were expected to contribute to the hilarity of the feast, and they occupied the same couch with their patron, the latter reclining between them. Nasidienus was in the same way supported by his two parasites, one of whom excited the mirth of the company by swallowing whole cheesecakes at once, like a clown in a pantomime; and the other extolled the dishes generally. These two, however, drank little or nothing; they appear to have been trained to spare their master’s wine. The guests and their parasites observed no such temperance, but tippled freely, and one of the latter especially kept up the laughter of the visitors by mock compliments on the feast, and mock sentiment on things, generally.
The Morio, as I have previously observed, was usually a mis-shapen creature, a sort of monstrous imbecile, heavy and hideous in body, and childish in mind; a simpleton, whose naturally foolish remarks contrasted with his strength and rude shape of body. Ladies in the olden time kept them, as ladies of a later period kept monkeys, for their amusement in their own chambers. There was even a market for them, and at the Forum Morionum, a thoroughly frightful and foolish animal of this species would fetch about eighty pounds sterling.
Many Emperors, too, bought specimens of these monstrosities, a fashion which was only less hideous than the mania of a later time for china monsters, who exonerated their stomachs of the liquor required by their mistresses. Heliogabalus