After him Sophron of Syracuse gave the Sicilian mimes a place among the forms of Greek poetry.
As chief pontiff he inquired rigorously into the character of the vestal virgins, three of whom were buried alive; he enforced the laws against adultery, mutilation, and the grosser forms of immorality, and forbade the public acting of mimes.
Due to the noise the audience make mimes of the words being spoken have been developed.
Herodas (Mimes, 4) gives a description of one of his temples, and of the offerings made to him.
Hiller, ad loc. The mimes are three in number, viz., ii., xiv., xv.
In our own day, the French have returned to the original application of dialogue, and the inventions of "Gyp," of Henri Lavedan and of others, in which a mundane anecdote is wittily and maliciously told in conversation, would probably present a close analogy to the lost mimes of the early Sicilian poets, if we could meet with them.
In the mimes Theocritus appears to have made great use of Sophron.
It is extremely interesting to find a similar poem in the recently discovered mimes of Herondas, the fourth of which is termed " Women making offerings to Aesculapius" (Acranirly avar,OE2aat Kai Ovaci ovaac).
Mimes and clowns can also go the creepy route with small details such as painted-on stitches, dripping blood, and outlined eerie smiles.
Perhaps there is only one extant MS. of the text, as in the case of the Mimes of Herodas and the Annals and Histories of Tacitus.
The epics in general show a mixture of Homeric, Ionic and Doric forms. The Bucolics, Mimes, and the " Marriage-song of Helen" (xviii.) are in Doric, with occasional forms from other dialects.
The metre used by Theocritus in the Bucolics and Mimes, as well as in the Epics, is the dactylic hexameter.
The recently discovered mimes of Herodas (Herondas) give us some idea of their scope.
Though, for some unexplained reason, he abolished the mimes, so beloved of the populace, at the outset of his reign, he availed himself of the occasion of his first triumph to restore them again.