a droll, mimic, who diverts the public by his pleasantries and follies. Menage, after Salmonius, 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 set the people a laughing. Others, as Rhodiginus, makes the origin of buffoonery more venerable; deriving it from a feast instituted in Attica by K. Erictheus, called buphonia.

Buffoons are the same with what we otherwise find denominated scurras, gelasiani, mimologi, miniflili, galardi, joculatoris, &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 pantomimes 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.