Theocritus’ Idyll 15: Mime, Metapoetics and the Road

This paper argues that the first 43 lines of Theocritus’ Idyll 15 constitute a mime within a mime. It conforms to the formal features of other Hellenistic mimes and serves as foil for the rest of the poem, which departs from the conventions of the genre, engages in generic contamination and adopts typically Hellenistic metapoetic and aesthetic discourses. The evolution of the poem is reflected in its road-motif—as the women travel from the opening household setting to Ptolemy’s palace, the genre of the text evolves from a straightforward mime into a distinctly Hellenistic poem.