Augustan Elegy and Mime

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the influence of contemporary Roman mime on Augustan elegy. I shall present evidence and arguments for believing that the elegists exploited that genre directly and deliberately, to provide themes and situations in their poetry. Before, however, considering the influence of specific mime-subjects on specific elegies, I shall show that contemporary mime is precisely the sort of literary production which we should expect to find exploited in elegy. This apologia for mime is a necessary preliminary, because of the entrenched prejudice against the genre as a trivial sub-literary form of entertainment, far beneath the notice of such highly sophisticated poets as the elegists. This prejudice arises from a simple semantic flaw: the termmimus, μĩμος, has always been used to cover a multitude of different types of production. Under this general title, works of a high literary quality have been categorised without discrimination alongside strip-tease and even less intellectual displays. In consequence of this, the higher forms of mime have suffered unfairly from the attacks directed by moralists against the corrupting effects of the lower forms.

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