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1. A celebrated pantomime actor in the reigns of Caligula and Claudius. The former emperor
prized Mnester's acting so highly, that he used to kiss him before the audience, and once
chastised with his own hands an eques who had made some disturbance during his performance. It
was accounted among the portents of Caligula's death that on the morning of his assassination
Mnester played a character which the tragedian Neoptolemus, centuries before, had acted on the
day of Philip of Macedon's murder by Pausanias, MESSALINA.] At first, through dread of the emperor, Mnester rejected
Messalina's advances. But she had the art to persuade her imbecile husband to command the
reluctant player to be compliant to her in all things; and, till supplanted by C. Silius, he
remained her favourite. That she might have his society without interruption, she compelled
him to abandon the stage, and thereby nearly occasioned a serious riot at Rome, for the people
resented the sacrifice of their pleasures to those of the empress. The tumult was in some
measure appeased by a foolish excuse which Claudius assigned for Mnester's absence: he told
the people that " Mnester belonged to his wife-he had no power to make him act." On the
triumph for the campaign in Britain, A. D. 44, the brass money issued in Caligula's reign was
called in and melted down, and part of the metal cast into statues of Mnester. He was involved
in Messalina's ruin, and was put to death pleading the emperor's own order of compliance to
her will. (Mort. Claud. ed. Bipont. p. 256;