a droll, or mimic, who diverts the public by his pleasantry 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 set the people a laughing. Others, as Rhodigius, make the origin of buffoonery more venerable, deriving it from a feast instituted in Attica by King Erechtheus, called buphonia.

Buffoons are the same with what we otherwise find denominated surcarr, gelasiam, mimologi, ministelli, and joculatores, whose chief scene is laid at the tables of great men. Gallienus never sat down to meals 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.