DECIMUS

LABERIUS (c. 105–43 B.C.)  , Roman knight and writer of mimes . He seems to have been a man of caustic wit, who wrote for his own pleasure . In 45 Julius Caesar ordered him to appear in one of his own mimes in a public contest with the actor Publilius Syrus . Laberius pronounced a dignified prologue on the degradation thus thrust on his sixty years, and directed several sharp allusions against the dictator . Caesar awarded the victory to Publilius, but restored Laberius to his equestrian rank, which he had forfeited by appearing as a mimus (Macrobius, Sat. ii . 7) . Laberius was the chief of those who introduced the mimus into Latin literature towards the close of the republican period . He seems to have been a man of learning and culture, but his pieces did not escape the coarseness inherent to the class of literature to which they belonged; and Aulus Gellius (xvi . 7, 1) accuses him of extravagance in the coining of new words . Horace (Sat. i . 1o) speaks of him in terms of qualified praise . In addition to the prologue (in Macrobius), the titles of forty-four of his mimi have been preserved; the fragments have been collected by O .

Ribbeck in his Comicorum Latinorum reliquiae (1873) .