Bellingham gives its mime to the family of de Bellingham, whose chief seat, however, is now in Ireland and no longer in the little north-country town.

About the year 50 B.C., as we have seen in the chapter on education, there came to Italy the Syrian Publilius, who began to write mimes in verse, thus for the first time giving them a literary turn.

And the police soon drove out of the city all mimes and dancers and singers of the Anartta country.

This may be due to the evidence of an enemy, but it is not improbable; and it is possible that both Sulla and Caesar, who also patronised the mimes, may have wished to avoid the personal allusions which, as we have seen, were so often made or imagined in the exhibition of tragedies, and have aimed at confining the plays to such as would give less opportunity for unwelcome criticism.