THE GESTURE-LANGUAGE. - 43 



signs understood only by regular playgoers were also used. 

 " For all those things wMcli are valid among men, because it 

 pleases them to agree that they shall be so, are human insti- 

 tutions. ... So if the signs which mimes make in their per- 

 formances had their meaning from nature, and not from the 

 agreement and ordinance of men, the crier in old times would 

 not have given out to the Carthaginians at the play what 

 the actor meant to express, a thing still remembered by many 

 old men by whom we use to hear it said; which is readily 

 to be believed, seeing that even now, if any one who is not 

 learned in such follies goes into the theatre, unless some one 

 else tells him what the signs mean, he can make nothing of 

 them. All men, indeed, desire a certain likeness in sign-making, 

 that the signs should be as like as may be to that which is 

 signified; but seeing that things may be like one another in 

 many ways, such signs are not constant among men, unless 

 by common consent.''^ 



Knowing what we do of nlimic performances from other 

 sources, we can, I think, only understand by this that natural 

 gestures were very commonly conventionalized and abridged 

 to save time and trouble, and not that arbitrary signs were 

 used; and such abridgments, like the simplified sign for 

 trading or swopping among the Indians, as well as the whole 

 class of epithets and allusions which would grow up among 

 mimics addressing their regular set of playgoers, would not 

 be intelligible to a stranger. Christians, of course, did not 

 frequent such performances in St. Augustine's time, but looked 

 upon them as utterly abominable and devilish; nor can we 

 accuse them of want of charity for this, when we consider the 

 class of scenes that were commonly chosen for representation. 



There seem to have been written lists of signs used to learn 

 from, which are now lost.^ The mimic, it should be observed, 

 had not the same difficulties to contend with as an Indian in- 

 terpreter. In the first place, the stories represented wefe 

 generally mythological, very usually love-passages of the gods 

 and heroes, with which the whole audience was perfectly fami- 



' Aug. Doct. Chr. ii, 25. 



^ Grysar, in Ersch and Gruber, art. " Pantomimische Kunst der Alten.'' • 



