BUFFOON, a droll, or mimic, who diverts the public by his pleasantries and follies. Menage, after Salmasius, derives the word from buffo; a name given to those who appeared on the Roman theatre with their cheeks blown up; that, receiving blows thereon, they might make the greater noise, and let the people a laughing. Others, as Rhodiginus, make the origin of buffoonery more venerable; deriving it from a feast instituted in Attica by King Erechtheus, called buffonia.
Buffoons are the same with what we otherwise find denominated scurræ, gelasiani, mimologi, ministelli, go-
liardi, joculariores, &c. whose chief scene is laid at the tables of great men. Gallienus never sat down to meat without a second table of buffoons by him; Tillemont also renders panomimes by buffoons. In which sense he observes, the shows of the buffoons were taken away by Domitian, restored by Nerva, and finally abolished by Trajan.