Marcie Persyn, University of Pittsburgh
In recent years, numerous studies have documented the indebtedness of early Roman comic genres to Greek antecedents, and more specifically connected Lucilius’ Satires to Greek comedy (see particularly Delignon 2004 and Pezzini 2018; cf. already Fiske 1920 and Fraenkel 1922). Others have emphasized Lucilius’ distinctly Roman attributes (Braund 2004, Freudenburg 2005).Yet the impact of Hellenistic poets in particular upon their later, Latin contemporaries is still very much an area requiring study. As further scholarship continues to indicate the deep literary debt of Lucilius’ works to the scholarly and poetic developments of Hellenistic authors ranging from Callimachus to Neoptolemus of Parium (Puelma-Piwonka 1978), it is also worthwhile to investigate the impact of one of the Hellenistic age’s lesser-known contributors: the maker of mime and controversial comedian, Herodas.
In three distinct satiric fragments from his surviving corpus, Lucilius recalls core elements of Herodian style and evokes scenes that, while reminiscent of New Comedy, may also have drawn inspiration from the Mimiambs. Lucilius’ first strikingly mime-like poem is the first poem reconstructed in Book 7 of the Satires, fragment 290-312M. This sexually explicit series of fragments describes the proclivities of a woman called (or nicknamed) Phryne, and the self-castrating revenge her lover takes upon her for her appetites. Such focus on the female sexual experience recalls the dildo negotiations of Mimiamb 6 and 7, though Lucilius’ fragments appear to position these female experiences within the idiom of a male narrator/viewer. The very frame of fragment 784-790M appears to parallel directly that of Mimiamb 2, as both comic scenarios see a court case bringing a lawsuit between a pimp and the amorous assailant on the brothel. This is a stock motif found in both New and Roman comedy, but it is undercut in Herodas when he positions the pimp as the sympathetic defendant, whose role in society as a sexual procurer is belied by his incredible capacity as an orator. Lucilius’ satire likewise lampoons the scenario: the poet inserts himself as the person being hauled in front of a magistrate. Finally, in fragment 1250-1251M—while describing the pastrix who kneads Syrian loaves—Lucilius centers female, nonelite characters within a potentially sexual context that recalls Hipponactian verse, street mime, and Herodian mimiamb even as the poet draws allusion to Herodas’ own model, Hipponax. This literary echo, particularly as it is shared between the kin genres of iambos and satire, enables Lucilius to activate not only Syrian, but also Greek culture and literature simultaneously, making both available to the Roman audience.
Together, these separate satires point to a clear resonance between the Satires and the Mimiambs, drawing the literary and comic traditions of the Middle Hellenistic and Middle Republic closer and illuminating the poetic range of one of the founding poets of Latin literature. Furthermore, by exploring the ways in which Herodas’ Mimiambs influenced Lucilius’ Satires, we gain a glimpse of an ancient Mediterranean as diverse and interconnected in its poetry as in its peoples and mimetic representations in satire and mime alike.