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Now, it is a far step from narrative to impersonation—marking an advance in the technique of acting; and it was some time before the Greek Drama had achieved this. But it was not so much the impressive and noble side of the Greek Drama that taught the actors, not merely to declaim situations but to act them; it must have been the popular, the comic side; and it was probably the Doric farce, and later the early Latin comedy derived therefrom, that really brought to perfection under the Roman Empire the art of Miming apart from the art of Dancing.

The comic is so much nearer to life as we see it every day than the tragic; and it was this ability to see the more familiar comic side of life, and the desire to travesty the serious—whether in Greece or Rome—that first gave flexibility and variety to the art of miming, or “acting,” as we call it nowadays.

It is because of this nearness to the life of the time, because of the travesty of contemporary types and public affairs, that the Latin actors made their wide appeal.