PUBLIUS SYRUS, a celebrated writer of mimes, that is, farces in the language of the common people, flourished at Rome about B. C. 42. He was of Syrian extraction, as his name implies, and was brought to Rome as a slave; but his talents having excited the admiration of his master, he received his freedom. His farces were much admired, and Julius Caesar is said to have considered them as superior even to those of Laberius. He interspersed them with moral sentences, many of which have been preserved by later writers. St. Jerome states that a collection of these moral
sentences was made, and that the Romans employed them as a school-book. They have been again collected from various sources, and published several times, along with Seneca or Phaedrus; and they have also been published separately. The best edition is that of J. C. Orelli, Leipzig, 1822, or that of C. Zell, Stuttgart, 1829.