MALLERY.] HISTORY OF GESTURE LANGUAGE. 287 
ished, at last cried out aloud, ‘‘Man, Inot only see, but I hear what you 
do, for to me you appear to speak with your hands!” 
Lucian, who narrates this in his work De Saltatione, gives another 
tribute to the talent of, perhaps, the same performer. A barbarian 
prince of Pontus (the story is told elsewhere of Tyridates, King of 
Armenia), having come to Rome to do homage to the Emperor Nero, 
and been taken to see the pantomimes, was asked on his departure by the 
Emperor what present he would have as a mark of his favor. The bar- 
barian begged that he might have the principal pantomimist, and upon 
being asked why he made such an odd request, replied that he had 
many neighbors who spoke such various and discordant languages that 
he found it difficult to obtain any interpreter who could understand 
them or explain his commands; but if he had the dancer he could by 
his assistance easily make himself intelligible to all. 
While the general effect of these pantomimes is often mentioned, 
there remain but few detailed descriptions of them. Apuleius, however, 
inthe tenth book of his Metamorphosis or “Golden Ass,” gives sufficient 
details of the performance of the Judgment of Paris to show that it 
strongly resembled the best form of ballet opera known in modern times. 
These exhibitions were so greatly in favor that, according to Ammianus 
Marcellinus, there were in Rome in the year 190 six thousand persons de- 
voted to the art, and that when a famine raged they were all kept in the 
city, though besides all the strangers all the philosophers were forced 
to leave. Their popularity continued until the sixth century, and it is 
evident from a decree of Charlemagne that they were not lost, or at least, 
had been revived in his time. Those of us who have enjoyed the per- 
formance of the original Ravel troupe will admit that the art still sur- 
vives, though not with the magnificence or perfection, especially with 
reference to serious subjects, which it exhibited in the age of imperial 
tome. 
Karly and prominent among the post-classic works upen gesture is 
that of the venerable Bede (who flourished A. D. 672-735) De Loquela 
per Gestum Digitorum, sive de Indigitatione. So much discussion had 
indeed been carried on in reference to the use of signs for the desid- 
eratum of a universal mode of communication, which also was designed 
to be occult and mystic, that Rabelais, in the beginning of the sixteenth 
century, who, however satirical, never spent his force upon matters of 
little importance, devotes much attention to it. He makes his English 
philosopher, Thaumast “The Wonderful” declare, “I will dispute by 
signs only, without speaking, for the matters are so abstruse, hard, and 
arduous, that words proceeding from the mouth of man will never be 
sufficient for unfolding of them to my liking.” 
The earliest contributions of practical value connected with the sub- 
ject were made by George Dalgarno, of Aberdeen, in two works, one 
published in London, 1661, entitled Ars Signorwn, vulgo character 
universalis et lingua philosophica, and the other printed at Oxford, 
