John Chrysostom's Sex Aquarium: Aquatic Metaphors for Theater in Homily 7 on Matthew

Chrysostom speaks in highly rhetorical terms about the harmful potential of mime actresses to bring about the moral ruin of spectators. Taken literally, Homily 7 on Matthew has been understood as testimony of an unusual type of aquatic spectacle, termed tetimími, the production of which has proven difficult to reconstruct from archaeological evidence. Taken metaphorically, however, the aquatic imagery in this homily is easily understood in the context of mime, one of the most popular forms of entertainment on the stages of eastern cities in late antiquity. A metaphorical reading of hom. 7 in Mt. dispels the long-standing theory that theater orchestras were flooded for the production of tetimími