MILLION. [31 exs on artox.] MIME (from the Greek mimus (wren), an imitator), a dramatic per formance of irregular form among the Greeks, in which occurrences of real life were clothed in a poetical dress. It usually consisted of a single SCCM, mostly comic, sometimes with such dialogue added as the excitement of the moment prompted. Mimes appear to have been common entertainments at feasts. Sometimes they were acted on the stage. Sophron of Syracitse (born about B.C. 420), who wrote in the vulgar dialect of the Doric Greek of Sicily, is considered the inventor of this 'species of composition. IliA mimes were in rhythmical prose, and were highly esteemed by Plato, who is said to have carried to Athens the taste for this species of composition. With the exception of n few fragments, and the names of some of his mind, the works of Sophron are lost. The fragments of Sophron are collected in the 'Museum Critieum,' No. VII. His son Xenarchus, who lived under Dionysius during the Rhegian war, B.C. 393, also wrote mimes. We have speci mens of a mime in the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus. Philistion of Nicwa, another writer of mimes, was contemporary with the latter years of Socrates. Suidas calls his mimes biologic, or
"pictures of life." Among the Romans, mimes seem to have been nothing but irregular harlequinades, probably the lineal ancestors of our " Punch." In the time of Augustus, Bathyllus and Pylades divided the taste of the Roman capital as actors of mini. Among the mimographers of Rome we find Mattius, Laberius, and Publius the Syrian, the second of whom died B.C. 43, when the ihird was in the height of his popularity. Laberius acted as well as composed mimes. The Roman mimes were written in verse, but were often delivered extempore, and the manners represented had much local truth. The actors in such pieces had also the names of mimes, distinguishing them from the pantomimists, who confined their representations entirely to action. In the reigns of the earlier emperors we meet with other mimogra.phers of celebrity, but none came up to the reputation of Laberius and Publius.
(Ziegler, De Mimic Romanorum, Gottingen, 1789, quoted in 'Con versations Lexikon Schlegel, Dramatische Verlesungen, lecture viii.)