JUGGLERS.
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get tip, lie sits down upon the ground, orders another tosit upon his shoulders, and so till seven of them had got oneach others shoulders ; the uppermost then stood up, asdid the remaining, till at length Dames himself stood up,who bore the weight of the whole, except what they mightease him by holding to the wall. By this time, he who wasuppermost made shift to reach the top; then they all said,“ O Apostle of God, help us, and deliver us." When he waswas got up, he found a watchman drunk and asleep ; hiu*he seized hand and loot, and threw down among theSaracens, &c. so they all ascended, till eventually by thismeans they took the city. 6
It is also said by Statius Juvenal, and others, that theancients had petaurista, who excited great astonishmentamong the populace by contortions, tumbling, &c. Cilanoexplains a well-known passage of Manilius , by observingthe performers darting through suspended hoops of iron,made red-hot; said to have been different from a wheelmentioned by Xenophon , on which a female dancer wroteand read whilst it turned round with great velocity.
Horsemanship was also as common among the ancientsas among- the moderns, of which there are several extraor-dinary instances recounted. Ihev could stand on theirhorses whilst at full gallop ; mount and dismount whilst infull speed; tumble on horseback, and perform many won-derful feats. Their chief performers on the horse, all camefrom Egypt, Syria, or Turkey . In latter ages, these orien-talists appear to have been the first who travelled throughEurope. Montaigne saw an Italian who had learnt this artin Turkey, and performed in Rome in 1581; and the fol-lowing year he saw the same person in Paris .
It does not appear whether the ancients taught birds,dogs, hares, and other animals, to perform tricks as atpresent done for money in Europe ; but there is a verysingular circumstance recorded of an elephant, that walkedbackwards and forwards upon a rope, in Rome , whichGalba first caused to be shown to the people : as recordedby Dio Cassius, Seneca, and Suetonius . It also appears, that,in the thirteenth century, there were those who venturedto ride a horse on a rope. The Sybarites are reported tohave taught their horses to dance to music, as a variety ofauthors confirm.
We must not omit to mention the skill of our countryman,
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