Project MUSE®: Phoenix - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Phoenix.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 63 (2009) through current issueLatest Articles: PhoenixTWOProject MUSE®Phoenix1929-48830031-8299Latest articles in Phoenix. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Mime, Approximately
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978857
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In the ancient Mediterranean world, the term "mime" came to be applied to a wide variety of entertainments.1 Confusion is easy. The shape of the genre was not fixed, and unlike other dramatic performance genres, mime was presented in a range of performance venues, which reduces any sense of continuity between ancient testimonia. Additionally, as with any type of performance, the genre evolved over time, ever responsive to the language, culture, and expectations of its many audiences. Mime was, in the truest sense, popular, and even though it had wide appeal and rich cultural engagement, it remains nebulous and elusive. It is consequently not possible to account for every use of the term, nor to provide a single
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallMime, Approximately2026-01-06text/htmlen-USMime, Approximately2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1823162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Toward a History of Greek Mime in the Classical and Early Hellenistic Periods
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978858
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The main difficulty in studying the earliest stages of mime is the lack of information from antiquity. What Aristotle says in his Poetics (5.1449a38–b1) of comedy—namely, that it was not taken seriously, with the result that its history was forgotten—is even more true of mime. Mime was a low-status theatrical spectacle, whose origin and later development were not connected with Athens. Understandably, our knowledge of mime is quite limited. As I will try to show, however, this problem has been made more complex by the misinterpretation of some data and, more importantly, by the considerable lack of understanding of mime as a theatrical phenomenon.Fundamental to our knowledge of the history of mime is Hermann
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallToward a History of Greek Mime in the Classical and Early Hellenistic Periods2026-01-06text/htmlen-USToward a History of Greek Mime in the Classical and Early Hellenistic Periods2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1839662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06The Sicilian Character of Sophron's Mimes
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978859
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Because ancient mime was a very flexible form of drama, was performed in a variety of contexts, which ranged from impromptu street theatre to literary readings at private gatherings, and was popular over the span of many centuries, it is not generally associated with a specific time or place. In contrast, for example, tragedy has been tightly tied to fifth-century Athens. Mimes may parody individual texts and literary/performance genres (e.g., the so-called Charition mime and its relationship to Euripides' Iphigeneia at Tauris), but because information on the original context for many of these texts and their performances has not survived, they are not often considered as products of specific places. What remains
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallThe Sicilian Character of Sophron's Mimes2026-01-06text/htmlen-USThe Sicilian Character of Sophron's Mimes2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®925322026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Mime and the Performance of Character: A study of mime in Herodas and Theocritus
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978860
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This article explores the Hellenistic reception of mime in literary performance. It takes the mime-inspired works of Theocritus and Herodas and examines common themes and approaches, as well as notable differences, between them. It views mime as a character-driven and popular art that contains humour, imitates the contemporary world of its time, and is rooted in a tradition of performance. The article explores these features and the creative tensions between them, inviting parallels with the work of contemporary stand-up comedy, which offer up new interpretative opportunities for working with ancient mime.Theocritus' Idylls (2, 3, 14, and 15 in particular) draw on mime and contain distinctive Hellenistic features:
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallMime and the Performance of Character: A study of mime in Herodas and Theocritus2026-01-06text/htmlen-USMime and the Performance of Character: A study of mime in Herodas and Theocritus2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1018712026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Herodas's Queer Pimp with Naked Girl: Abject Performance in the Ptolemaic World
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978861
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The great German philologist Wilamowitz famously said of the mimes of Herodas, "God forgive those who think that this was ever really performed."1 I am not only among those who stand in need of absolution, I would also go further and rethink both the position of the audience and that of the chief performer himself. Because of the mashup of (hypothetical) contemporary mime and old-time iambos, the fancy vocabulary, and the parodic or hybrid nature of Herodas's short sketches, audience members are often said to have been deriving their pleasure from the chance to exercise their erudition in order to understand the jokes, while the author and chief performer is said to have appropriated his art from popular mime, a
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallHerodas's Queer Pimp with Naked Girl: Abject Performance in the Ptolemaic World2026-01-06text/htmlen-USHerodas's Queer Pimp with Naked Girl: Abject Performance in the Ptolemaic World2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1236852026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Mime, metre, music: Interpreting and performing the dochmiacs of the Fragmentum Grenfellianum
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978862
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The Fragmentum Grenfellianum (FG), a scrap of ancient dramatic verse preserved by chance among the household affairs of Dryton, a cavalry officer in Hellenistic Egypt, has, as Battezzato (2009, 403) comments, become "one of the most famous short texts in Greek literature". We cannot say what moved Dryton to copy some words out on the reverse of a receipt for the loan of wheat. That document, which was drawn up in 174 BCE, has captured the imaginations of successive generations of scholars, among whom Henri Weil (1896, 169) was first to suggest that the song it preserves may be a mime. As such, it provides rare documentary evidence of a form of entertainment which was widely popular in the Hellenistic world. The FG
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallMime, metre, music: Interpreting and performing the dochmiacs of the Fragmentum Grenfellianum2026-01-06text/htmlen-USMime, metre, music: Interpreting and performing the dochmiacs of the Fragmentum Grenfellianum2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®797912026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06What's in a Genre? The audience experience(s) of palliata comedy and Roman mime
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978863
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In a recent book, the essayist (and most successful game-show contestant in history) Ken Jennings (2018, 14) argues that comedy has "taken over our culture." As a result, "the world … now seems to have the goal of packing in as many laughs into every second of the day as possible." Modern life, remarks Jennings, "is full of possible trivial distractions, but we have increasingly decided to while away our hours with the funny ones."1 Whatever their validity, the remarks slot readily into a long complaint tradition about the proper role of comedy and humor in daily life.2 This stretches at least from Plato and Aristotle (perhaps even Homer) up to the current moment, and concerns not just the existential question of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallWhat's in a Genre? The audience experience(s) of palliata comedy and Roman mime2026-01-06text/htmlen-USWhat's in a Genre? The audience experience(s) of palliata comedy and Roman mime2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1145412026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Mime and Martial's Ideal Readers
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978864
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One of the most ambitious aspects of Martial's poetic project is his attempt to forge a new identity for his epigrams. This includes the creation of a new poetic canon, which focuses almost exclusively on the Roman literary tradition, and an apparent attempt to present epigram as a genre rooted in realism. The latter goal he achieved by advertising himself as a poet who showcased everyday life in Rome, primarily through scoptic and erotic epigrams. These epigrams often featured obscene language, which Martial transformed into an essential element of the entire genre. In his programmatic statements, Martial makes his poetry more present in the minds of his readers by creating analogies between his poetry and the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallMime and Martial's Ideal Readers2026-01-06text/htmlen-USMime and Martial's Ideal Readers2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1052612026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Publilius Syrus and the Maw of Luxury
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978865
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In an Italian harbor in the late 80s BCE, a Roman galley carrying enslaved people from Antioch unloaded its human cargo. Among them was a boy who may have been referred to only as Syrus, "the Syrian," his feet covered in white powder to mark his status as an imported person for sale.1 Syrus is an ethnonym—an indicator of provenance that Roman (and Greek) slavers assigned to human beings who were either actually or ostensibly captured in Syria.2 As such, the name provides a jarring example of enslaved people's commodification and de-individualization in the Roman Republic and Empire, their reduction to a region of origin and the qualities ascribed to it by the socially dominant, and their conceptualization as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallPublilius Syrus and the Maw of Luxury2026-01-06text/htmlen-USPublilius Syrus and the Maw of Luxury2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1371122026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Choral Aesthetics of the Greek mime
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978866
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For Andrew FordChoruses of mime are our best witness for choruses in any Greek dramatic genre in the Roman period, despite the fact that mimes did not have to have choral songs included in the narrative.1 As will become clear from the overview below, not only do we have precious information on the costumes the choral dancers wore, but also surviving pieces of song, as well as aesthetic principles guiding their performance. Furthermore, there is no doubt that these choruses were put on stage, however provisional that stage might have been. Almost all our information comes from papyri that were meant for use by professional theater artists. The testimony of the mime is all the more precious because no postclassical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallChoral Aesthetics of the Greek mime2026-01-06text/htmlen-USChoral Aesthetics of the Greek mime2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1172172026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Malabar on the Greco-Egyptian Stage: Indian Ocean Connections and the Charition mime (P.Oxy. 413)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978867
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Charition, the longest surviving performance mime text from antiquity, occupies the recto and part of the verso of a papyrus found at Oxyrhynchus, and dates to the second century AD.1 The inclusion of all˙the ˙haracters' lines, along with musical notations, suggests that the papyrus was for director.2 The mime adapts Euripides' Iphigeneia among the Taurians, moving the setting to the Malabar coast of India.3 Reimagined in an Indian context, the mime is still recognizably Euripidean. Like Iphigeneia, the heroine Charition is a priestess held hostage by a foreign people and threatened with human sacrifice, who must be rescued by her brother. Because the find site of this papyrus is known, Charition offers us an
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallMalabar on the Greco-Egyptian Stage: Indian Ocean Connections and the Charition mime (P.Oxy. 413)2026-01-06text/htmlen-USMalabar on the Greco-Egyptian Stage: Indian Ocean Connections and the Charition mime (P.Oxy. 413)2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®1131802026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Casting the Charition Mime of P.Oxy. 413: Troupe Size and Gender
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978868
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A partial mime discovered on P.Oxy. 413 has been named the Charition mime after its primary female character. The fragmentary text suggests a riotous production with numerous characters, whose movements into and out of the performance space imply a frenetic routine. The text appears to be a parody of Euripides' Iphigenia among the Taurians, its subversive humour dependent upon a Roman audience's existing familiarity with the trope of an imprisoned woman of rank and her rescue. In Charition, the type of lowbrow and bawdy humour typical of mime is employed: for example, foes are not vanquished through valour, but rather through the timely deployment of weaponised farts. The fragment begins after the recognition scene
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallCasting the Charition Mime of P.Oxy. 413: Troupe Size and Gender2026-01-06text/htmlen-USCasting the Charition Mime of P.Oxy. 413: Troupe Size and Gender2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®589212026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06One Last Performance: (Self-)Representing Mime Actors in Greek and Roman Inscriptions
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978869
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Given that mime performers were often portrayed in ancient sources as infamously dissolute and debauched individuals, fit for the sort of lowlife situations that they portrayed on stage, it would seem surprising if one such actor had chosen to indicate their trade in an inscription, be it an offering to a divinity or, even more shockingly, their own funerary monument.1 While many did not have the means to have an inscription made, those who did might have felt it wiser to omit such particularity, given that mimes did not enjoy the same prestige and reputation as comic or tragic performers did, at least in the Greek world if not in Rome, where acting in the late Republican and Imperial era was generally disapproved
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallOne Last Performance: (Self-)Representing Mime Actors in Greek and Roman Inscriptions2026-01-06text/htmlen-USOne Last Performance: (Self-)Representing Mime Actors in Greek and Roman Inscriptions2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®828312026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06Preface
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/978870
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This special issue of Phoenix emerged from a need for a broad-based resource for the study of Greek and Roman mime. It is of necessity not a complete survey of the genre known as "mime" in antiquity: the history of ancient mime spans the Mediterranean world, covering over a thousand years, and the term itself was applied to a wide range of performance types. While a survey, using all the most recent evidence, would be welcome, we here offer a plurality of scholarly voices that demonstrate a range of approaches to this rich material, which we hope will offer a methodologically diverse foundation for future scholarship.The journey to assembling this issue has followed a winding path. Our interest in the range of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/807/image/coversmallPreface2026-01-06text/htmlen-USPreface2026-01-062026TWOProject MUSE®89702026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-01-06