Reception of Art

Works of art, whether viewed in religious sanctuaries or elsewhere, can elicit many different reactions: awe, laughter, sorrow, desire, boredom. Much depends on the occasion and context of viewing, and the viewer's psychic state and aesthetic orientation.^[22] In both Theocritus's Idyll 15 and Herodas's Mime 4, two women friends enter a ceremonial sanctuary and view a work of religious art before them and one of the friends gives a detailed ekphrasis of this work of art, which includes a three-line description of the figure of a young male and a silver object. Scholars typically conflate the viewing experiences of the women in these two poems.^[23] Yet differences in the handling of ekphrases between these two poems reflect their different approaches to the issue of aesthetic response.

The terms that the women of Idyll 15 and Mime 4 use to describe viewing works of art exemplify the difference between the poets' approaches to their fictive women's aesthetic responses. In Idyll 15, Theocritus has Gorgo and Praxinoa describe their responses to art through the verb (behold with wonder), which frequently appears in contexts of ceremonial viewing.^[24] Thus Gorgo uses this verb to urge Praxinoa to attend the Adonia: ("Let's go . . . to see the Adonis," 22-23). Standing in wonderment before the Adonis figure on display in the palace grounds fulfills this invitation. Praxinoa affirms the elevated mood of this occasion by using the corresponding verbal adjective (wondrous)^[25] to call attention to the figure of Adonis: ("And Adonis himself, how marvelous he is"; 84).

In Mime 4, on the other hand, Kynno describes the proper response to Apelles' painting by the verb (gaze with excitement):

        (76-78)

And whoever does not gaze on the artist or his works
in excited astonishment (as is just),
may he hang by the foot in a fuller's shop.

The reduplicated verb emphasizes the required intensity of aesthetic response. Further, Kynno prescribes a punishment for anyone who errs in responding to Apelles' art: to be treated with the violence used on dirty laundry. This hyperbolic description, with its imagery from everyday domestic concerns, underscores the inappropriateness of the violence to the offense, as well as to a visit to a shrine of Asclepius, the healer-god.

In Theocritus's Idyll 15, Praxinoa views a figured tapestry^[26] which in-dudes a representation of an Adonis figure reclining on a silver couch.^[27] Her description of the Adonis figure makes evident the congruity of what she sees with the ceremonial context of her viewing:

        (84-86)

And Adonis himself, how marvelous he is, reclining on a silver couch,
with the first youthful down spreading from his temples,
thrice-loved Adonis, loved even in Acheron.

First, she describes his representation as a unified whole, for she associates the wonder appropriate to the figure of Adonis with the silver of the couch. Her integrated vision of the work of art is shown in the interlaced word placement of the description of Adonis reclining on a silver couch (an ABA pattern): (84-85). The wonder appropriate to the ceremonial Adonis figure is associated (by immediate juxtaposition) with the substance silver,^[28] and this mutual enhancement of the figure of Adonis and his silver couch is phonetically mirrored by the repetition of kappas in the descriptions of where he re-dines and how he looks (; 83-84). Second, Praxinoa's description concentrates on those aspects of the work of art integral to the festival of Adonis: his incipient manhood, the love he inspires, and the transition between the realms of Aphrodite and of Persephone that the festival reenacts. Praxinoa "reads" the work of art in its context: the sensual pleasure of viewing Adonis's representation contributes to the religious experience that viewing him inspires. Her description reveals the ceremonial value of the pictorial ob-

ject, and the hymnic tone of the last line of the description contributes to the elevation of the ceremonial occasion of the viewing.

In Herodas's Mime 4, as Kokkale^[29] enters the inner sanctuary of Asclepius's temple, like Praxinoa she also views a representation of a young boy, but she is transfixed by his nakedness. Kokkale's description exemplifies her obliviousness to the ceremonial context of the painting, for she proposes to scratch the naked boy, a crude test of realism ill-suited to the temple of Asclepius, the god of healing not injury:

        (59-62)

Look at this naked boy, if I scratch him,
will he not bleed, Kynno? For the flesh lies on him
pulsing like a warm liquid in the picture.

Next, silver fire tongs engage Kokkale's interest. But Kokkale's three-line description of a young male and a silver object, unlike Praxinoa's description, does not reveal the function of the boy in the painting and does not present the silver object and the boy as part of a unified artistic conception. Instead Kokkale focuses on a hypothetical audience foolish enough to respond to painted silver fire tongs with the emotion of greed:

        (62-65)

And the silver fire tongs,
if Myellos or Pataikiskos, son of Lamprion,
sees them, won't their eyes fall out
when they think those tongs made of real silver?

Then, after seven Lines describing a naked boy and silver fire tongs (59-65), suddenly in two lines Kokkale fills the picture with inhabitants and activity:

        (66-67)

An ox and the man who leads him, and a woman attendant,
and this hook-nosed man, and a bristling-haired fellow.

But Kokkale is not interested in the world of the painting, and she never puts the pieces of her description together. The picture is presented as a riddle: the reader must participate, fill the interpretive gap, and create the picture from the parts.^[30] Scholars generally conjecture a sacrifice scene, with the naked boy holding the silver fire tongs and tending a sacrificial fire.^[31] But the nakedness of the young boy in the painting distracts Kokkale: she never connects him with the silver fire tongs, and she never indicates his possible function as sacrificial attendant. Kokkale's description of the fire tongs exemplifies her indifference to how such a painting might be integral to a god's sanctuary: she never describes the possible ceremonial function of fire tongs but only the greed their realistic representation might arouse.

Kokkale demonstrates her familiarity with the popular aesthetic of the day by admiring the lifelike illusion of the figures in the painting: ; ("Do they not all have the look of life?" 68). But she only experiences the realism of the representation of a naked boy as it mirrors her libido. Further, her description of the painting concludes by measuring the realism of the painted ox by the fear it inspires in her:

        (70-71)

I should have cried aloud for fear the ox would harm me;
he gives such a sidelong look, Kynno, with one eye.

Kokkale first responds to the painting through desires to violate it: she proposes to test its realism by scratching the boy (59-60); she certifies its realism by imagining other viewers coveting its painted silver (63-65). The culmination of Kokkale's appreciation of the paintings realism is to impute to a mean-looking ox an intent as violent as her own.

To grasp the unity of a work of art can be a difficult process requiring sympathetic and imaginative participation. This Kokkale does not do. Instead Kokkale draws so dose to the realism of the work, she admires the details so intently, that she does not see the representation as a whole, nor does she interpret it in the context of the temple of Asclepius. A painting of a sacrifice can be appropriate in a temple. A sacrificial ox pictured in the inner sanctuary of Asclepius's temple can substitute for

the rich offerings that poorer persons, such as Kokkale and her friend, cannot offer; Asclepius is covetous, according to Libanius, and particularly welcomes a sacrificial ox.^[32] But the experience of viewing this painting distances Kokkale from its ceremonial context. She shows no interest in the painting's possible religious functions—instead she projects hostility and potential violence against herself into the ox's sidelong glance. Thus, Herodas's Kokkale responds to the realism of a picture in a way that distances her from the ceremonial world of the representation and the context of Asclepius's temple.

In Theocritus's Idyll 15, on the other hand, Praxinoa's viewing experience draws her into the ceremonial occasion of the Adonia. She sees the work of art in the context of the Adonia and admires realism in a way that enables her to participate in the mythological world represented on the tapestries. Insofar as the Adonia celebrates Adonis's annual revival, Praxinoa's remark on the life in the woven figures is relevant to the religious function of the art: ("They have life within them and are not woven in," 83). By admiring the life in the tapestries, by imaginatively and sympathetically experiencing Adonis's coming to life in the tapestries, the viewer recreates for that brief moment the magic of the resurrection of Adonis.

Mime 4's representation of how realism in art can heighten and mirror unpleasant aspects of life for viewers makes explicit an aesthetics of low life and the grotesque^[33] which seems to permeate Herodas's poetry (e.g., Mime 5's representation of a jealous mistress's proposal of sordid punishment for a slave boy suspected of sexual infidelity).^[34] In Mime 4, the choice to focus on certain aspects of the painting and items of statuary in the courtyard helps establish criteria of aesthetic valuation which could also favor Herodas's poetry. Thus when Kokkale and her friend view temple statuary in the courtyard outside Asclepius's temple, they pass over statues, such as that of an old man, to focus on statues that call up their exalted astonishment:^[35] a girl reaching desperately for an apple, a boy strangling a goose, and a woman whose name and stance seem to suggest questionable virtue.^[36]

Mime 4 represents female viewers exercising their right to "read" the painting in their own way and without regard to the context of the viewing. The violent impulse Kokkale feels to wound the naked boy may seem discordant in a sanctuary of Asclepius, the god of healing, but it is not inappropriate to an erotic experience: metaphors connecting wounds and love are frequent among the Greek epigrammatists,^[37] for example:

        (Asclepiades  Ep . 8.1-3 Gow and Page [=  A.P . 5.162.1-3])

Wanton Philainion has wounded me, and even if the wound
does not show, still the pain reaches my fingertips.
I am ruined, Loves, I am undone, life has ended for me.

In Mime 4 Herodas's Kokkale does not let the context of the picture donate her or obstruct the voyeurism of her gaze. Instead she responds to the painting by thinking of scratching the naked boy.^[38]

Now let us consider Gorgo's response when she views the ceremonial tapestries hanging before her: ("how light and graceful they are," Id . 15.79). As Gow notes, Theocritus has Homer's Odyssey 10.222-23 specifically in mind.^[39] In appendix 2, I discuss this allusion: how through Gorgo's use of this exclamation as she enters through doors to the palace grounds, Theocritus recalls Homer's representation of the moment Odysseus's men stood in Circe's gateway and saw Circe's woven materials hanging before them (which also includes a description of the weaving as , "light and graceful," Od . 10.223). Here our attention is focused on this allusion's possible role in characterizing Gorgo's subjectivity.

In the case of a specific allusion, the question necessarily arises: is the allusion meant to be perceived as intended by the character in the poem or only by the poet creating the character? Is Gorgo meant to be perceived as herself alluding to the Circe passage? The point of view such a Homeric allusion entails would be appropriate for poet Theocritus, but strangely omniscient for the fictional character Gorgo. Most contemporary scholars limit the effect of Gorges and Praxinoa's use of Homerisms to humorous incongruity and deny the fictive characters the capacity to use such allusions appropriately, for example: "Gorgo and Praxinoa may owe their timeless appeal to their being so very like the woman next door, but the careful reader will be periodically startled by Homeric or other erudite allusions of varying nature in their chatter. These are sufficiently far apart for the easy flow of the dialogue not to be impaired, but constant enough to warrant the assumption that Theocritus has consciously and deliberately chosen incongruity as an ingredient of his humor."^[40] Yet although Gorgo's admiration of the tapestries reaches a level of eloquence and allusive suggestiveness that coincides with Theocritus's own, it is also natural to her fictive character, for her

discussion and even allusions reflect interests Theocritus has already had her show in the domestic arena. Gorgo expresses an interest in clothing and cloth throughout the poem: she laments that her wastrel husband does not buy quality wool for her work (18-20), tells Praxinoa what to wear to the Adonia (21), admires Praxinoa's dress and asks its cost (34-35), admires Praxinoa's dress again (38), and even describes the men she encounters on the road to Praxinoa's by their boots and cloaks (6). Thus, when Gorgo sees tapestries, it is natural for her to describe them in terms of clothing.^[41] Her vision is elevated: she describes the tapestries as worthy to be gowns for gods (79).

Further, Gorgo's use of the phrase ("how light and graceful they are," 79) heightens her description of the tapestries by recalling descriptions of Homeric woven materials. The adjectives and occur together in only four Homeric passages, all surely well-known, and all using this adjective-pair to describe a woven fabric. At Od . 10.223 the phrase describes the fabric Circe is weaving on her loom when Odysseus's men discover her; at Il . 22.511 Andromache uses the phrase to describe garments she will burn on Hector's pyre; at Od . 5.231 the phrase describes the gown Calypso wears when she helps Odysseus prepare to depart; and at Od . 10.544 the phrase describes the gown Circe wears when she allows Odysseus and his men to depart for Hades. It is not unreasonable to think that such a standard Homeric phrase might naturally occur to Gorgo when she looks for a way to express her admiration of a ceremonial tapestry, particularly a phrase found in important Homeric passages which feature in every instance woven materials and women. Women who have themselves put on and admired their own woven garments, and who now view woven materials representing a further dimension to the art of creation that they have already admired in their own more humble example, might well be motivated to speak of such woven materials in terms which evoke the most traditional and elevated (hence epic) instances of such woven works.^[42]

A Homeric phrase that includes the term , a term fashionable in Hellenistic discussions of literary merit,^[43] to describe works of weaving would have been memorable to Theocritus's contemporary audience and thus available for him to draw on with assurance of its recognition.^[44] But also, by showing a woman finding evidence in a tapestry of a quality prized also in Hellenistic poetry, the quality of , Theocritus can approach the issue of whether the academy's aesthetic standards

could transcend the cultural boundary between the academy and the Greek public. Qualities Gorgo and Praxinoa admire in the tapestries (and later the hymn) coincide with qualities prized by aestheticized Hellenistic poets, e.g., fineness and delicacy (, 79), variegation (, 78), craftsmanship (, 80; , 115), realism (, 81; , 82), and learnedness (, 83; , 145; , 97).^[45] Thus, Idyll 15 shows ordinary housewives using the terms of discourse of the academy. What can that mean? Scholars who assume a mocking tone in Theocritus might suppose that the poet is ironizing the learned discourse by using the wrong speakers for it.^[46] Another possibility is that Theocritus is raising the question of whether an experience of art can be enriched simply because the viewer has been sensitized to the academy's values.^[47] A third and perhaps more likely possibility is that Theocritus is showing how the academy's values happen to coincide with female values. This idea is supported by Skinner's recent discussion of Nossis, a female Hellenistic poet, in which she suggests that women writers naturally adopted the values that emerged as the advanced aesthetics of the Alexandrian academy: "[Women], became of the exigencies of their private lives, were less likely to attempt the mega biblion or 'weighty masterpiece' that Callimachus, a generation later, would magisterially condemn."^[48] In addition, by making the qualifies that Gorgo and Praxinoa praise in works of art coincide with those admired by the sophisticated Hellenistic reader, the poet discourages the audience of the poem from identifying with the eavesdropping bystander who crudely claims to be unable to understand the women's speech.

The final dame of Gorgo's tapestry description exemplifies the economy of Theocritus's art of characterization: ("You'll say they are gowns worthy of the gods," 79). Although Horstmann cites this dame only to reinforce his dismissal of the phrase (79), which "trägt aber im Grunde nicht vial zur Charakterisierung des Gesehenen bei, ebensowenig wie das anschliessende (79),"^[49] this slight dame contributes in two key ways to the characterizations in Idyll 15. First, as a corollary detail it helps make the specific allusion to Od . 10.223 more probable, as shown in appendix 2. Second, the vocabulary and structure used in this phrase associate the ceremonial tapestries with Praxinoa's garments. The word is rare, occurring only at Id . 15.79 to describe garments.^[50] But twice earlier in Idyll 15, Gorgo uses cognate words which are equally rare, and both times these rare and therefore memorable words refer to

Praxinoa's garment: ("wrap," 21), a Word found elsewhere only once (as a possibly restored adjective, A.P . 7.413), and ("garment," 34), a word not found elsewhere.^[51] That Gorgo's association of ceremonial tapestries and Praxinoa's clothing is meant to be perceived by the reader is made more probable by Gorgo's use of a hypothetical statement in the second person to express admiration of both Praxinoa's garments (; "it suits your style; this you can say"; 38) and the tapestries (, "you'll say they are gowns worthy of the gods," 79). Thus through a deft and economic use of Homeric allusion, Theocritus enriches his characterization of Gorgo. Further, by using rare cognate words to describe both gowns fit for gods (, 79) and Praxinoa's more humble clothing (, 21; , 34), Theocritus can associate lower and higher classes, cross social boundaries, and mix genres. By showing how language can provide a means for associating ceremonial and everyday woven materials, Theocritus explores poetry's capacity to transform perceptions of the ordinary world.

When in a work of literature a poet describes a work of art, the poet can use that ekphrasis to say something about his or her fictive characters and their relation to life by showing their relation to a representation of life. When the context of viewing art is religious, a poet can also use the ekphrasis to explore the psychology of religious experience, a topic of some delicacy at the time of Herodas and Theocritus, when Greek rulers were beginning to cohabit shrines and claim divinization.^[52] Herodas's and Theocritus's use of ekphrasis in exploring the nature of aesthetic reception in ceremonial contexts reflects the growing interest in the ethical and religious value of works of art, a topic that becomes increasingly important in later Greek and Roman thought.^[53]

The aesthetic orientations of the women in Herodas's Mime 4 and Theocritus's Idyll 15 complement the kinds of religious experience the poems are each exploring. Egoism and subjectivity characterize the worship of Asclepius: private pains, private offerings, and private cures. Help is available throughout the year as individually needed. Thus, in Herodas's Mime 4, Kokkale and Kynno visit a sanctuary of Asclepius to make private offerings in private thanks for a private boon; there they admire private offerings and individualized works of art. Kokkale asks for the specific names of the statuary's artist and dedicator (21-22), and Kynno reads the inscription on a statue's base: Praxiteles' sons are the artists, and Euthies, Prexon's son, is the dedicator (23-25). So too Kynno identifies the ox-sacrifice picture displayed in the inner sanctum

as the specific creation of Apelles, whom she characterizes as an individualistic artist, autonomous—free to indulge his own whim:

        (75-76)

whatever came to mind, he eagerly hastened
to give it a go.

In Theocritus's Idyll 15, on the other hand, Praxinoa and Gorgo attend a public celebration of the Adonia, a seasonal festival, where they view costly tapestries and listen to the public performance of a hymn. Unlike Mime 4, Idyll 15 emphasizes communal aspects of the religious experience: works of art are admired as collaborative creations by anonymous men and women. Thus Praxinoa begins her description of the tapestries by praising the men and women who worked together to create them:

        (80-81)

Lady Athena, what excellent women wove the tapestries,
what excellent artists, the men who outlined the drawings.

The hymnist, too, describes objects displayed in the Adonis tableau as anonymous and collaborative creations: the shaped cakes created by anonymous women (115) and the ceremonial coverlets which "Miletus" and a Samian shepherd helped make (126-27).

Both poems, then, show how the dominant mode of the religious event (public or private, universalizing or individualistic) can affect aesthetic experience. Further, insofar as Idyll 15 commemorates a public celebration of the Adonia, sponsored by Arsinoe, by emphasizing the anonymity of the artists involved in creating the ceremonial setting, the poem can reflect goals of Greek collectivity under the Ptolemies. In chapter 4, I return to these issues in discussing in more detail Arsinoe's patronage and the shaping of the hymnist's song in Idyll 15.

In both Herodas's Mime 4 and Theocritus's Idyll 15, the relation between audience and art is raised to a subject of thematic interest: the poems' readers have, within the fiction of the poems, people looking at art, and outside the fiction of the poems, themselves looking at art. Thus, in the experience of fictive viewers of art, readers can see their own interpretive problems mirrored. In Mime 4, Herodas's ironic portrait

of Kokkale and Kynno underscores how they willfully misunderstand works of art. Kokkale and Kynno do not see the universalizing dimension of art and they look for qualities in works of art other than the classic norm of beauty. The picture they view is presented as a riddle and never explicitly solved. The conjecture of the poems real audience must remain a conjecture, although the imaginative act of interpretation may encourage a feeling of ironic superiority to the fictive women.

In Idyll 15, on the other hand, Praxinoa's and Gorgo's descriptions of the pictorial tapestries draw the poem's real audience into the mood of celebrating the Adonia and away from the cynical stance some readers might adopt at the start of a poem focusing on ordinary housewives. Gorgo's and Praxinoa's remarks support the proposition that the women's praise of the tapestries is meant to be more privileged than the bystander's complaints about their speech, for Gorgo's and Praxinoa's evocative and allusive language is Theocritus's own: his signature appears in their talk. In focusing on Praxinoa's and Gorgo's aesthetic experiences in the context of a public Adonia, Theocritus seems to be refuting Callimachus's position that art and imagination should no longer seek a public audience and suggesting instead that the experience of art in the Hellenistic age can still have an enriching public role, for if Praxinoa and Gorgo transcend themselves in describing the tapestries, art has enabled them to do so.

But Idyll 15's seeming valorization of Gorgo and Praxinoa's discourse on the tapestries is immediately mediated by an ironic swerve on the part of Theocritus as he introduces a mocking bystander:

        (87-88)

You wretched women, stop that endless twittering —
like turtle doves they'll grate on you, with all their broad vowels.

By including a critical response to the women's remarks, the poet invites the reader to agree or disagree with the bystander's point of view on the women. Idyll 15's readers have traditionally endorsed the fictive eavesdropper's remarks: descriptions of Gorgo and Praxinoa often echo the bystander's (examples include "buzzing housewives" and "chattering viragoes"),^[54] and one scholar even attributes the bystander's remarks directly to the poet: "Wir gehen wohl nicht fehl in der Annahme, dass sich hinter dem Vorwurf des Fremden auch die Meinung des Dichters ver-

birgt."^[55] Yet the bystander's disregard for his ceremonial surroundings and his crude and commonplace response to the women undermines any presumed mocking collusion between poet and reader against the women.^[56] The Hellenistic age can be characterized by irony, and among the aestheticized Alexandrian poets and their audience, the ironic response is the expectable norm. But by undermining the irony in the case of the bystander, Idyll 15 discourages the complacency of an unreflecting mocking reader's stance. If some readers momentarily identify with the bystander, it is more consistent with Theocritus's thematic treatments of friendship and song that he should encourage the experience of wry self-recognition for these readers rather than complacent self-congratulation.^[57]

Other poems of Theocritus also reflect the contemporary interest in rhetorical descriptions of art objects. Idyll 1 includes Theocritus's most famous ekphrasis , a goatherd's elaborate description of a drinking cup. Parallels between Idylls 1 and 15 encourage comparisons of the two poems: they both include important examples of ekphrasis and they both include songs that concern Aphrodite's relations with a young male.^[58] Both poems also illustrate Theocritus's artful attention to balance and contrast. In Idyll 1, the goatherd's diminutively Homeric ekphrasis of a rustic cup^[59] balances the bucolic yet heroic story of the relations between Aphrodite and Daphnis (who sets himself against Diomedes in defying Aphrodite).^[60] In Idyll 15, the hymnist's description of the Adonia, a celebration of Aphrodite's reunion with Adonis (who, as the hymnist claims, surpasses heroes in that he can return repeatedly from Hades), balances the representation of the fictive women's experiences at home and on city streets. Idyll 1's ekphrasis of a cup has been much discussed elsewhere,^[61] but one scene represented on the cup is of particular interest to our study of Theocritus's urban mimes, since it is another example of Theocritus's thematic interest in powerful women and subordinated men. It is the first cup decoration the goatherd describes: a representation of a woman dominating two men through her indifferently shifting gaze:^[62]

        (32-38)

And within is wrought a woman, such a thing as the gods might fashion,
bedecked with cloak and circlet. And by her two men
with long fair locks contend from either side
in alternate speech. Yet these things touch not her heart,
but now she looks on one and smiles,
and now to the other she shifts her thought, while they,
long hollow-eyed from love, labour to no purpose.
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:7)

In Idyll 5, a goatherd pairs a bowl he describes as made by Praxiteles with a pail of cypress wood (105-6). By having the goatherd name Praxiteles (if this is the famous sculptor, then he is an unlikely craftsman of a goatherd's bowl), Theocritus can perhaps highlight the naive pretensions of his goatherd.^[63] Since the fourth century, art had been increasingly re-oriented toward private functions: thus, for example, paintings were being created for elite private homes.^[64] In Idyll 5, by having the goatherd keep both objects equally as gifts for his girlfriend, Theocritus might also be raising the issue of the value and function of art (both elite and folk art) for ordinary persons.

Idyll 28 focuses on a distaff, a common household item. Bur by invoking a distaff in hymnic fashion (with epithets), the poet-narrator elevates the domestic and everyday:

        (1-2)

Distaff, friend of them that spin, grey-eyed Athena's gift
to women who know the art of housewifery.
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:227)

The distaff also attains the status of aesthetic object: ("thee, my gift created of wrought ivory"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:227; 8-9). Several of Theocritus's poems highlight the presence of women among audiences of art— especially the women audience members (both internal and implied) in Idyll 15, but also the girlfriend recipient of Praxiteles' bowl in Idyll 5, and Theugenis and her women friends, potential admirers of the distaff in Idyll 28. Further, the focus on women's items and values in these poems (and elsewhere) seems to suggest correspondences between women's traditional focus on small and private objects and Callimachean aesthetics. Thus Idyll 28 ends with the poet-narrator forecasting how ordinary

persons viewing the distaff will set a value on smallness compatible with the most elite, "Callimachean" fashion for miniaturization:

        (24-25)

For seeing thee someone will say, "Truly great love
goes with a little gift, and all that comes from friends is precious."
        (trans. Cow,  Theocritus  1:227)

Other poems of Herodas too, besides Mime 4, feature the theme of viewing creative artifacts. For example, in the domestic context of Mime 6, women praise dildoes for their craftsmanship. Also, in the commercial context of Mime 7, a cobbler offers shoes to women for their admiration and purchase.^[65] Interestingly, language and thematic motif link Mime 6's low discussion of dildoes^[66] not only with Mime 7's low discussion of shoes, but also with Mime 4's ekphrases in the elevated context of Asclepius's sanctuary, as well as with Theocritus's Idyll 15's ekphrases in the elevated context of an Adonia. First, in all these poems, whether in the context of elevated viewing experiences or not, Athena is invoked to emphasize the fine craftsmanship of creative artifacts. In Theocritus's Idyll 15, in the elevated context of an Adonia, Praxinoa invokes Athena in praising the workmanship of the tapestry artists:

        (80-81)

Lady Athena, what excellent women wove the tapestries,
what excellent artists, the men who outlined the drawings.

Again, in Herodas's Mime 4, in the elevated context of Asclepius's temple, Kokkale praises the chiseled works she views:

        (57-58)

Look at these works — you'll say that Athena
chiseled them in their beauty.

In Herodas's Mime 6, in the ordinary context of Koritto's house, Koritto praises well-made dildoes by also associating them with Athena's craftsmanship:

        (65-67)

But his works, his works are truly Koan: you'll think
you see the hands of Athena herself, not those of Kerdon.

Again, in Herodas's Mime 7, in the humble context of a cobbler's shop, the cobbler Kerdon praises the shoe he puts on Metro's foot as worthy of Athena:

        (116-17)

Athena herself, you'll say, cut out the sole
of the shoe.

Mime 7's cobbler also certifies his honesty by claiming he world not lower the price even for Athena (80-82).

Second, both Herodas's Mimes 4 and 6 focus on the artist's identity. As discussed above, Mime 4's Kokkale asks the identities of the craftsman and the dedicator (21-22) when she views dedicatory statues in an elevated context; and Kynno responds that Praxiteles' sons made them and Euthies was dedicator (23-25, cf. 72). Mime 6's Metro, in an ordinary context, asks Koritto repeatedly who made the dildo and who gave it to Nossis (17-19, 22, 43, 47, 48), and Korrito responds that Kerdon (48) of Chios or Erythrae (58) made it and Eubule gave it to Nossis (25-26).

Third, both Mimes 4 and 6 feature similar descriptions of aesthetic responses. In Mime 4, in an elevated context, Kokkale posits the responses of two hypothetical viewers when they see a silver fire tongs in Apelles' painting: ("Won't their eyes fall out?" 64-65). In Mime 6, in an ordinary context, Koritto describes her first response to Kerdon's display of two dildoes to her: ("At first sight, my eyes burst out of my head," 68).

Fourth, Mime 6's dildoes and Mime 7's cobbler's wares share evaluative terms with Mime 4's paintings and Idyll 15's ceremonial tapestries and coverlets. In Idyll 15, the hymnist describes the coverlets on Adonis's couch as ("softer than sleep," 125); similarly, in Mime 6, Koritto describes two dildoes as ("as soft as sleep," 71).^[67] In Mime 7, the cobbler forecasts Metro's pleasure in

viewing his wares: . . . . . .. ("Oh Metro, how fortunate you are! What works you will view!" trans. Knox, in Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 319, rev.; 17-18); similarly in Mime 4, Kokkale calls Kynno's attention to the works of art in the inner sanctuary: ("Only look, dear Kynno, what works are those there!" trans. Knox, in Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 171; 56-57). Again in Mime 7 an anonymous woman describes the cobbler's works as beautiful (, 84); so too in Mime 4, Kokkale adds the epithet (58). Further, in Mime 4, Kynno suggests truth as a criterion of good painting (72-73); in Idyll 15, truth is part of Praxinoa's criteria for evaluating ceremonial tapestries (81-82); and in Mime 7, truth is emphasized in the valuation of cobbler's goods (31-35, 70, 120-21).

Thus, language and thematic motif link these three mimes by Herodas and Theocritus's Idyll 15.^[68] Since we do not know the relative dates of the poems of Herodas, the direction of influence is uncertain, as is the connection of these poems with Theocritus's Idyll 15. The similarities may in part reflect common sources in Sophron's poetry, which includes a poem on dildoes and one on women attending an Isthmian festival.^[69] By linking the terms women use to praise dildoes in the home (Mime 6) and wares in a cobbler's shop (Mime 7) with terms women use to admire statues and paintings in ceremonial sanctuaries (Mime 4), Herodas comically suggests a continuity between sacred and commercial realms of value and perhaps also in the process wryly destabilizes the academy's elevation of certain cultural goods over others. The similarities also suggest that Herodas in Mime 6 is deliberately presenting women's admiration of well-crafted dildoes in terms also suitable for more elevated viewing experiences.

Theocritus's Idyll 16 laments the economic greed of his day which is resulting in a failure to value and support the cultural life:

        (15-18, 21)

[Men] are enslaved by gain;
and each, his hand within his purse-fold, looks to see whence

he may win money, and will not rub the very rust therefrom to give another,
but straight answering rather, . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"He is the best of poets who shall get naught of me."
        (trans. Gow,  Theocritus  1:123, rev.)

Idyll 16 also explicitly raises the issue of the market-value of modem poetry by positing the popular view: ("Who would listen to another? Homer is enough for all"; trans. Gow, Theocritus 1:123; 20). Further, in many of Theocritus's poems, the motif of fictive judges of art may raise the issue of the difficulty of determining the value of cultural goods.

Herodas's poetry also reflects the increasingly commercial values of the Hellenistic age, for several of his mimes focus directly on the marketplace and on mediators of market value—e.g., Mime 1's old bawd, who tries to match consumers with goods; Mime 2's pander, who compares his goods (girls) with those of a merchant of wheat (e.g., 19-20); Mime 6's Kerdon, whose dildoes (and marketing skills) women praise in the poem; and Mime 7's Kerdon, a cobbler who displays his wares to women consumers. Mime 7 underscores the issue of market value, when the cobbler invites his customer to determine price:

        (67-68)

You yourself assess it, if you please, and
determine a worthy payment.

The world of art in the Hellenistic age included past masterpieces as well as contemporary creations. The geographically diverse Hellenistic world offered a multiplicity of commercial and aesthetic possibilities, as Herodas's Mime 7 dramatically illustrates through a cobbler's list of geographically and stylistically diverse wares:

        (56-62)

You will see; here are all kinds,
Sicyonian, Ambraciot, Nossis-shoes, plain,
parrots, hempen, saffron shoes, common shoes,
Ionian button-boots, "night-hoppers,"
"ankle-tops," red shoes, Argive sandals,
scarlet, "youths," "steps"; just say each of you
what your heart desires.
        (trans. Knox, in Headlam and Knox,  Herodas , 323, rev.)

Much of Hellenistic poetry reflects a loss of faith in hierarchical traditions and old-fashioned establishment values; instead, novelty is crucial. But the audience willing to support advanced Hellenistic art also seems to be limited. Theocritus's Idylls 15 and 16, as well as Herodas's Mimes 4, 6, and 7, raise the issue of contingencies of value in a mobile and multitudinous world.