1. Pliny HN 35.84-85: "vulgum diligentiorem iudicem quam se praeferens." According to Pliny, Apelles appraised the reliability of a viewer's response by occupation: when a shoemaker criticized painted sandals, Apelles repainted them, but Apelles disregarded that same shoemaker's remarks when he presumed to criticize more than just painted sandals. Another incident also shows Apelles' egalitarianism: when Alexander criticized Apelles' portrait, a horse was brought in, who neighed in response to the painted horse; Apelles thereupon declared the horse to have shown more artistic taste than Alexander (Ael. VH 2.3).

2. This red-figure krater is displayed in the New York Metropolitan Museum; a photograph is available in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 152a.

3. The painting is displayed in the Naples Museum; a photograph is available in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 187a. See too the Alexander mosaic, which shows a fallen Persian soldier whose frightened face is reflected in a shield (also in the Naples Museum, and in Robertson, History of Greek Art 2: plate 155). For Hellenistic descriptions of reflections, see, e.g., Ap. Rhod. Argon . 1.742-46 (Cytherea reflected in Ares' shield, as represented on Jason's purple cloak); Callim. Aet . 3, fr. 75.10-11 (the sacrificial knife reflected in the lustral water, as seen by the oxen).

4. Cf. W. H. Auden's poem "The Shield of Achilles," which highlights Thetis's subjective response as she gazes on the shield. The son never sees the shield; instead the mother views it in dismay. On Hellenistic representations of optical effects, see B. H. Fowler, Hellenistic Aesthetic , 17, 112-13.

5. See also Eva Keuls, "Plato on Painting," American Journal of Philology 95 (1974): 100-27.

6. E.g., Homer's description of Achilles' shield ( Il . 18.478-608). For an excellent introduction to the ecphrastic tradition, see esp. Paul Friedländer, "Einleitung: Über die Beschreibung von Kunstwerken in der antiken Literatur," in Johannes yon Gaza und Paulus Silentiarius: Kunstbeschreibungen Justinianischer Zeit (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1912), 1-103. On the linkage of visual art and poetry in the Hellenistic period, see Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art , 156-77; see also Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 39-112. For a recent and important introduction to Hellenistic ekphrasis , see Simon Goldhill, "The Naive and Knowing Eye: Ecphrasis and the Culture of Viewing in the Hellenistic World," in Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture , ed. Goldhill and Robin Osborne (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 197-223 (which includes a needed survey of ecphrastic Hellenistic epigrams, a brief and evocative discussion of ekphrasis in Theoc. Id . 15, a comparative glance at Herod. Mime 4, and much emphasis on "poetic self-reflexivity" and irony). On ekphrasis in the Renaissance, with attention to the reception of ancient ekphrases , see Svetlana Leontief Alpers, " Ekphrasis and Aesthetic Attitudes in Vasari's Lives,'' Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institute 23 (1960), 190-215. On the modem tradition of poetry on works of visual art, with emphasis on the importance of Auden's ''Musée des Beaux Arts," see Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to the Theory of Genres and Modes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 115-18; see also James A. W. Heffernan, Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 135-89.

7. Zanker, Realism in Alexandrian Poetry , 10.

8. Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 40. See also Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249: "the housewife's failure of imagination."

9. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 251. See also Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 41: "[the women] ignorant alike of art and of life"; Walker, Theocritus , 94: "the vulgarity of their artistic tastes." So too Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 202; Dover, Theocritus , 209.

10. Epigrams illustrate the ongoing interest in realism—e.g., thirty extant epigrams praise the realism of Myron's statue of a cow (Gow and Page, Greek Anthology 2:63-64). On the Hellenistic taste for realism, see, e.g., Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , esp. 141-47; Zanker, Realism and Alexandrian Poetry , esp. 42-46.

11. Useful articles on aesthetic issues raised in Mime 4 include Salomo Luria, "Herondas' Kampf für die Veristische Kunst," in Miscellanea di Studi Alessandrini, in memoria di Augusto Rostagni (Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1963), 394-415; Thomas Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie bei Herondas, Mimiambus 4," in Catalepton: Festschrift für Bernhard Wyss zum 80. Geburtstag , ed. Christoph Schäublin (Basel: Seminar für klassische Philologie der Universität Basel, 1985), 96-116.

12. E.g., Green, Alexander to Actium , 206, 246.

13. On Browning's "My Last Duchess," see, e.g., Robert Langbaum, The Poetry of Experience: The Dramatic Monologue in Modern Literary Tradition , 2d ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 79-86; see also Heffernan, Museum of Words , 139-45.

14. See Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye," for an important "first step" toward a "rewriting of the history of ecphrasis not merely as the history of a rhetorical topos but as the history of the formations of a viewing subject" (223).

See also Gutzwiller, Theocritus' Pastoral Analogies , 90-94, who proposes a distinction between "epic-narrative" and "mimetic-dramatic" ekphrases . See too Skinner, "Nossis,'' 25-29, on Nossis's ekphrastic epigrams, their preoccupation ''not so much with the painter's success in effecting a physical likeness as with his ability to capture distinctive traits of the sitter's personality' (26). For further studies on the subjective factor in ekphrasis , see, e.g., Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laocoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry , trans. Edward Allen McCormick (1766; New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962); Rudolf Arnheim, Art and Visual Perception (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1954); Ernst Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation , 2d ed., rev. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961); Hagstrum, Sister Arts ; Mary Ann Caws, The Eye in the Text: Essays on Perception, Mannerist to Modern (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981); and W. J. T. Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).

15. On the function of descriptive passages in literature of the Second Sophistic, see Shadi Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Roll of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), esp. 3-39.

16. See, e.g., Hutchinson, Hellenistic Poetry , 13.

17. Psychological characterization is just one aspect of this choral ode's dramatic function in Euripides' Electra . For an important and wide-ranging discussion, see George B. Walsh, "The First Stasimon of Euripides' Electra ," Yale Classical Studies 25 (1977), 277-89.

18. See, e.g., Simon Goldhill, Reading Greek Tragedy (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 164-65.

19. Other sixth- and fifth-century works on this theme exist only as titles, summaries, or fragments—e.g., Aeschylus's Theoroi e Isthmiastai ; Epicharmus's Theoroi (Epicharmus, frs. 79-80, in Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta , ed. Georgius Kaibel, vol. 1.1, Doriensium Comoedia Mimi Phlyaces , 2d ed. [Berlin: Weidmann, 1958]; see also Epicharmus ap . Ath. 3.107a, 8.362b, 9.408d); Sophron's Tai Thamenai ta Isthmia (title taken from Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia , 155).

20. On this parodos , see also G. Müller, "Beschreibung yon Kunstwerken im Ion des Euripides,' Hermes: Zeitschrift für klassische Philologie 103 (1975), 29-36; V. Rosivach, "Earthborns and Olympians: The Parodos of the Ion ," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 27 (1977), 284-94; Froma I. Zeitlin, "The Artful Eye: Vision, Ecphrasis, and Spectacle in Euripidean Theatre," in Goldhill and Osborne, Art and Text , esp. 147-54.

21. The narrator comments on the subjectivity of Aeneas's aesthetic experience and the neutrality of art: he feeds his soul on an empty picture (Verg. Aen . 1.464). A work of art is neutral here insofar as it does not tell the viewer how to "read." The context of viewing and the viewer's preoccupations influence the process of "reading," but Aeneas's "misreading" of pictures of Troy's fall on the walls of Juno's temple shows that it is not necessary for the viewer to integrate visual art into its setting: art can transcend ideology. The irony of Aeneas's response to these pictures has been much discussed: see, e.g., Keith Stanley, "Irony and Foreshadowing in Aeneid , 1, 462," American Journal of Philology 86 (1965), 273-77; W. R. Johnson, Darkness Visible: A Study of Vergil's Aeneid (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976), 103-5; Page duBois, History, Rhetorical Description, and the Epic: From Homer to Spenser (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Totowa, N.J.: Biblio, 1982), 32-35; R. O. A. M. Lyne, Further Voices in Vergil's Aeneid (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 209-10.

22. For a useful and dear introduction to cognitive factors in aesthetic response, see Michael J. Parsons, How We Understand Art: A Cognitive Developmental Account of Aesthetic Experience (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

23. E.g., Giangrande, "Interpretation of Herodas," 93; White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 202; Green, Alexander to Actium , 246.

24. In Theoc. Id . 2, the Thracian nurse uses this verb to invite Simaetha to view a festival of Artemis ( , "she entreated me / to see the ceremonial procession," 71-72). Callimachus uses the verb in Hymn 3 when Helios admires the nymphs dancing around Artemis ( , 181), and again in Hymn 6 when noninitiates are forbidden to look at the ceremonial basket of Demeter ( , 3). So too in Eur. Ion , Ion uses the verb of viewing works of art in Apollo's sanctuary at Delphi ( , 232). Also, in Men. Sam ., a young man describes himself viewing the Adonia as a ("spectator,"' 43). Further, the scholia to Theoc. Id . 15 use the verb in a title for one of Sophron's mimes to refer to viewers of the Isthmia ( ; for the scholia, see Wendel, Scholia , 305; for discussion, see Gow, Theocritus 2: 265, with citation of Greek text of scholia).

25. This verbal adjective is also traditionally associated with rituals, ceremonial objects, and gods—e.g., in Hes. Th . the adjective (wondrous) is used of the wand Hesiod received from the Muses (31), and in Callim. Hymn 3 the adjective is used of Artemis (141). Pindar too repeatedly uses the adjective (wondrous): of a young man ( , P . 10.58), of the body ( , N . 11.12), of a contest ( O . 3.36), of a girl's form ( , P . 9.108).

26. The motif of ekphrasis of woven materials was popular during the Hellenistic period (see, e.g., the ekphrasis of Jason's wondrous figured cloak at Ap. Rhod. Argon . 1.721-67). On the popularity of ekphrasis , see, e.g., Richard F. Thomas, "Callimachus, the Victoria Berenices , and Roman Poetry," Classical Quarterly , n.s., 33 (1983), 108-12 (109 n. 102 includes the Adonis figure on Theoc. Id . 15's figured tapestries). Also, on the popularity of finely woven and figured materials in the Hellenistic era, see Gow, Theocritus 2: 286-87 n. 78; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:138; Thomas, "Callimachus," esp. 111 n. 108.

27. White argues that the Adonis figure described by Praxinoa is the same as the three-dimensional figure described by the hymnist (White, "Theocritus' 'Adonis Song,'" 199-203; so too Schwinge, Künstlichkeit yon Kunst , 57 n. 27). For the purposes of this discussion, I follow Gow and Dover, who consider that the Adonis figure described by Praxinoa is represented on the tapestries (Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 198-99; idem, Theocritus 2: 265, 288 n. 84f.; Dover, Theocritus , 206). My argument is not materially affected by the number of Adonis figures in the display.

28. The word silver is emphasized by being the first substantive word after the verbal adjective (84) and by appearing in the line before its noun (85).

29. Cunningham calls this speaker Phile (see discussion in "Herodas 4," esp. 119-20). For the purposes of this discussion, I have used the more traditional identification of the woman as Kokkale (for arguments in favor of the name Kokkale, see Mastromarco, Public of Herondas , 39-45).

30. In presenting this picture in pieces, Herodas anticipates a practice that becomes particularly popular in the Second Sophistic; for example, Lucian describes pictures first as puzzles and only afterward introduces interpreters (e.g., Heracles ); for discussion, see Bartsch, Decoding the Ancient Novel , 15-30. By presenting a riddling ekphrasis through a fictive character, Herodas can involve and flatter readers (by allowing them to solve a puzzle that the fictive character does not), while also focusing on the psychology of aesthetic experience.

31. E.g., Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 200-1 n. 59-71; Webster, Hellenistic Poetry and Art , 159-60.

32. See passages given in Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: A Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies , 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1945), 1:303-15. Cf. Herod. Mime 4.14-16 and Polyb. Hist . 32.15.1-5, as cited in Edelstein and Edelstein, Asclepius , 306-7, no. 546.

33. On the Hellenistic taste for the grotesque, see Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , 134-35; B. H. Fowler, Hellenistic Aesthetic , 66-78.

34. On the artfulness of this representation, see, e.g., Amore, "Herodas," 123-28.

35. The statue of an old man is barely mentioned ( ; "and that old man, Kynno"; 30) when the attention shifts to a third statue (a boy strangling a goose, 30-31).

36. For discussion of the significance of the woman's name and stance, see Headlam and Knox, Herodas , 186-87; Cunningham, Herodas , 135.

37. On how Lucretius's vivid linkage of wounds and love in De Rerum Natura 4.1045-57, recalls the pervasive use of such imagery by Greek epigrammatists, see E. J. Kenney, "Doctus Lucretius," Mnemosyne , 4th ser., 23 (1970), 380-84.

38. An association of wounds and love can have shock value, particularly when placed in a woman's mouth—e.g., Clytemnestra horrifies the chorus of Argive alders when she describes how Agamemnon's and Cassandra's bloody deaths heighten her sexual pleasure (Aesch. Ag . 1388-92, 1444-47).

39. Gow, Theocritus 2:287 n. 79.

40. Garson, "Aspect of Theocritean Humor," 296.

41. See also Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 255; Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye,"' 217.

42. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 122, notes: "Within the precincts of the palace both women feel the need to assume a more dignified tone."

43. See, e.g., Callim. Ep . 27.3-4: ("hail, subtle / phrases"); and Callim. Aet . 1, fir. 1.11: ("on a small scale"). On the use of as a term representative of refined Hellenistic poetics, see Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 137-38. See also Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 7; Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry,'' 561. Of course Hellenistic literary terms had earlier roots, e.g., Ar. Ra . 1108: (''Venture to say something fine and clever'). On , see esp. Erich Reitzenstein, "Zur Stiltheorie des Kallimachos," in Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein (Leipzig: B. G. Teubner, 1931), 25-40 (but note Hutchinson's warning against overinterpretation; Hellenistic Poetry , 84 n. 116). See also Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie," 105 n. 23.

44. Callimachus too seems to use the term of woven materials at Epica et Elegiaca Minora , fr. 383.15: (see Pfeiffer, Callimachus 1:310 nn. 14, 15). Thomas notes that Callimachus's interest in weaving (here and elsewhere) "is doubtless connected with Callimachus' awareness of the metaphorical potential implied by this activity: elaborate weaving may stand for highly artistic poetic production" ("Callimahus," 107-8).

45. For a discussion of Hellenistic literary terms, see, e.g., Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 135-38; see also Gelzer, "Mimus und Kunsttheorie" (on Theocritus's Idyll 15 and Herodas's Mime 4). For a handy table of literary terms used by Horace, Catullus, and Callimachus, see N. B. Crowther, "Horace, Catullus, and Alexandrianism," Mnemosyne , 4th ser., 31 (1978), 40.

46. See also Goldhill, "Naive and Knowing Eye," 218.

47. On the problems involved in evaluating depth of aesthetic experience, see B. H. Smith, Contingencies of Value , esp. 83-84.

48. Skinner, "Nossis," 32. On how the poet H. D. later challenges the hierarchical tradition that relegates women to small lyrical poems, see, e.g., Alicia Ostriker, "The Thieves of Language: Women Poets and Revisionist Mythmaking," in The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory , ed. Elaine Showalter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 314-38.

49. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 35.

50. If the hangings were meant to be garments on the Adonis and Aphrodite figures, the statement would not be expressed hypothetically (Gow, Theocritus 2: 287 n. 78; Atallah, Adonis , 110).

51. On the rarity of these terms and for descriptions of the garments so described, see Gow, " Adoniazusae of Theocritus," 184-87; and idem, Theocritus 2: 273 n. 21. Gow suggests that the compound found in Hesychius's dictionary "if not a conflation of the two words in T., would seem to come from some other Doric writer" ( Theocritus 2:273 n. 21). So too Magnien, "Syracusain littéraire," 127: "Ces termes ne nous apparaissent pas, ou ne nous apparaissent que rarement dans le lexique grec, parce qu'ils appartiennent à une langue dont nous n'avons presque plus rien.''

52. On Hellenistic ruler cults, see, e.g., Arthur Darby Nock, "Notes on Ruler-Cult, I-IV," Journal of Hellenic Studies 48 (1928), 21-48; idem, " ," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 41 (1930), 1-62; Julien L. Tondriau, "Princesses ptolémaïques comparées ou identifiées à des déesses (IIIe-Ier siècles avant J. C.)," Bulletin de la Société royale d'archéologie d'Alexandrie 37 (1948), 12-33; L. Cerfaux and J. Tondriau Le culte des souverains dans la civilisation gréco-romaine (Tournai: Desclée and Co., 1957), esp. ch. 5, "L'Égypte ptolémaïque," 189-227; P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria 1:213-46; S. R. F. Price, "Hellenistic Cities and Their Rulers,'' ch. 2 in Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984; reprint, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 23-52.

53. Among the fourth-century philosophers, Plato and Aristotle examine moral issues involved in evaluating art. Later, Cicero, Quintilian, and Dio Chrysostum are among those who value works of art by their capacity to contribute to the religious and ethical life of the viewer. For example, Dio Chrysostom describes the benefits a spiritually troubled individual can obtain by beholding Phidias's statue of Zeus at Olympia: ("Whoever might be burdened with pain in his soul, having borne many misfortunes and pains in his life and never being able to attain sweet sleep, even that man, I believe, standing before this image, would forget all the terrible and harsh things which one must suffer in human life"; trans. Pollitt, Art of Ancient Greece , 62; Or. 12.51-52; Greek text taken from Dio Chrysostom, vol. 2 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977]).

54. Motto and Clark, "Idyllic Slumming," 41, and Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 249, respectively. So too, e.g., Fritzsche, Theokrits Gedichte , 187: " spricht ärgerlich der Mann, der im Königshofe neben den unermüdlich schwatzenden Weibern steht"; Monteil, Théocrite , 159: ''invective d'un voisin aux deux bavardes"; Schwinge, Künstlichkeit von Kunst , who throughout his discussion of Idyll 15 refers to the women as ''Klatschweiber," even when he applauds the liberty of their speech (57-59). The scholia, on the other hand, describe the bystander's irritation without endorsing it: ("Someone says this who is following alongside the women and feeling annoyed at their great volubility; wherefore he also censures them for examining the particularities of the images"; Greek text taken from Wendel, Scholia , 313).

55. Horstmann, Ironie und Humor , 36.

56. Although the poem may start for some readers with an apparent collusion between the poet and the reader against the women, the tone of the ekphrasis encourages the abandonment of an implied reader who holds conventional elitist views about women's incapacity for elevated aesthetic response and expects Theocritus's representations of fictive women responding to art to reflect such attitudes.

57. For a discussion of how Theocritus's poetry encourages this mode of self-recognition, see Simon Goldhill, The Poet's Voice: Essays on Poetics and Greek Literature (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 246-72.

58. On similarities between Idylls 1 and 15, see Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28.

59. For a discussion of how Id . 1's rustic cup evokes earlier Homeric themes and ekphrases (e.g., Achilles' shield, Il . 18.478-608), see Halperin, Before Pastoral , 161-89. Cf. the similar exploitation of Achilles' shield in A.P . 11.48, a request to Hephaestus to make a decorated silver cup rather than a suit of armor, with the specific instruction that the decorations consist of vines, dusters, and Bacchus, not stars, chariots, and Orion (such decorations would recall Achilles' shield).

60. See Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28, esp. 126-27.

61. E.g., Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals , 27-30; Charles Segal, "'Since Daphnis Dies': The Meaning of Theocritus' First Idyll," in Poetry and Myth , 29-33; Halperin, Before Pastoral , 161-89.

62. The goatherd animates the decorations within the cup as he describes them (cf. the description of Achilles' shield in Homer's Iliad , book 18).

63. Gow, Theocritus 2: 110 n. 105.

64. On display in private homes in the fourth century, see Dem. 3.29; on floor mosaics in private homes from the fourth century, see Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age , 210-29. In the fifth century, to commission works of art for the home was considered extravagant: the notoriously extravagant Alcibiades reportedly imprisoned an artist in his home to decorate it with paintings (Plut. Alc . 16).

65. Headlam and Knox, Herodas , lii and 362 n. 105, suggest that in Mime 7 the cobbler may also be marketing dildoes; I. C. Cunningham, "Herodas 6 and 7,"' Classical Quarterly , n.s., 14 (1964), 33-35, elaborates this suggestion. For arguments against, see Gilbert Lawall, "Herodas 6 and 7 Reconsidered," Classical Philology 71 (1976), 165-69.

66. On Mime 6's spoof of Orphic rituals and myths, see Jacob Stem, "He-roads' Mimiamb 6," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 20 (1979), 247-54 (Metro as Mother, Koritto as Kore, Euboule possibly as the Orphic myths Eubouleus). One might also note the mention of an unchaste, sexually innovative "Artemeis" ( Mime 6.87-90) and the suggestion of the goddess Athena as a maker of dildoes (65-67).

67. Frederic Will, Herondas (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1973), 100, notes "the strange beauty" of the image "soft as sleep" in reference to dildoes.

68. Idyll 15 and Mime 6 share other elements of language and shaping. Both poems start with a hostess bidding a guest sit and ordering a maid to fetch a chair ( Id . 15.2-3: ; Mime 6.1-2: ). Both poems end with a similar declaration of the need to return home to feed the husband ( Id . 15.146-48: , 147; cf. 26; Mime 6.97-98: ). Both poems include similarly worded abuse against a slave girl ( Id . 15.30: ; Mime 6.10: ). Further, Mime 6's Koritto uses the word (holiday) in describing her slave as lazy: ("and the rest of you sheer idleness," 17); Idyll 15's Praxinoa precedes peremptory orders to her slave girl with a similar expression: ("It's always holiday for those that have nothing to do," 26). Compare too the statement Mime 6's Koritto includes in her description of Kerdon's dildoes ( ; ''you'll think [you see / the hands of Athena herself], not those of Kerdon''; 66-67) with the exclamation Id . 15's Gorgo makes on viewing the tapestries ( , "you'll say they are gowns worthy of the gods,"' 79). Finally, just as in Mime 6, Kokkale addresses an audience of women with the vocative ("women," 27), so too in Theoc. Id . 15, the hymnist addresses an audience of women in her final farewell to Adonis (143). Less extensive similarities link Herodas Mime 2 and Theocritus's Idyll 14: both poems feature violent sympotic behavior that involves the beating of a girl, and in both poems a speaker uses the phrase "a mouse caught in pitch" w describe himself ( Id . 14.51 and Mime 2.62). But any discussion of influence between Herodas and Theocritus is purely speculative, since we do not know the relative dates of Herodas's and Theocritus's poems.

69. For discussion of Sophron as a possible influence, see Ussher, "Mimiamboi of Herodas," 66-67. The scholia on Theoc. Id . 15 (Wendel, Scholia , 305) claim that Id . 15 was modeled after Sophron's mime on viewing the Isthmia. Thus some of the many linkages between Herodas's Mimes 4 and 6 and Theocritus's Idyll 15 may be due to common echoes of Sophron's mime on the Isthmia (and his mime on dildoes, fr. 24 Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia ). On Sophron as a source for Theoc. Id . 2, see the scholia (Wendel, Scholia , 269-70); Sophron, frs. 4-5 Kaibel, Doriensium Comoedia ; for discussion, see Gow, Theocritus 2:33-35.

70. For a comparison of the thematic movements of Idylls 1 and 15, see Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 124-28; see also Miles, "Characterization," 155-56.

71. For a recent discussion of Theocritus's use of frames, see Goldhill, Poet's Voice , 223-85. On framing techniques in narrative texts, see also, e.g., Mary Ann Caws, Reading Frames in Modern Fiction (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985).

72. On the topic of metapoetic passages, see Caws, Metapoetics of the Passage . On poetic closure in general, see the seminal book by Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Poetic Closure: A Study of How Poems End (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); see also Dan P. Fowler, "First Thoughts on Closure: Problems and Prospects," Materiali e discussioni per l'analisi dei testi classici 22 (1989), 75-122.

73. For a theoretical introduction to this subject, see Thomas G. Pavel's Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). Bulloch, "Hellenistic Poetry," 573, privileges fantasy in Theocritus's poetic project: "In fact the Idylls are essentially fantasy, and Theocritus' central concern in almost all of his poetry is with the art of illusion and the exploration of mood." On polarities in Id . 1, see Segal, "Since Daphnis Dies.'' See also Lawall, Theocritus' Coan Pastorals , esp. 15-31.

74. Pace Miles, "Characterization," 155-56: "The effect of the goatherd's response to song [in Idyll 1] is not at all unlike that of Gorgo in Idyll 15 after she has heard a hymn. . .. The settings of the two Idylls may be quite different, but the mentality of the characters is the same."

75. The standard phraseology of hymnic endings includes the imperative farewell (farewell/rejoice) and a vocative. occurs 28 times in the Homeric hymns, 16 times starting the line, as at Id . 15.149. In Hellenistic poetry, see also, e.g., Theoc. Id . 17.1535 ( ; "farewell, lord Ptolemy") and the dose of Callim. H. Apollo .

76. Audience participation was traditionally integral to private celebrations of the Adonia. In Idyll 15, by including the audience's women in the next morning's ritual of grief and song, the hymnist maintains a mood of audience participation: ("At dawn we will gather with the dew and carry him [Adonis] outside / to the waves crashing on the shore, / and with hair unbound, robes in folds at our ankles, / breasts bare, we shall begin the funereal song'; 132-35).

77. Cf. the hymnic farewell of Hom. H . 26.12 (to Dionysus), where the participle is also used to represent the recurring joy of the celebrants at what appears to be an annual festival: ("Grant that we joyously reach this season again," trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis, The Homeric Hymns [Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976], 65).

78. Pace Gow, Theocritus 2:303 n. 145: "I do not know . else here so used, nor the adj. at all where there is so little perceptible emphasis on the sexy"

79. Translations and interpretations commonly disregard the difference in gender of the artisans—e.g., Anthony Holden, Greek Pastoral Poetry (Harmonds-worth: Penguin Books, 1974), 103: "What craftsmen they must have been / to make these, what artists to draw such lines." Cf. Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 254, who overlooks the men who helped make the tapestries: "They [Gorgo and Praxinoa] see in the Adonis festival an affirmation of female power and self-sufficiency. . .. It was women who made the tapestries." Yet the anaphora of exclamatory pronouns ( and ) and the alliteration of (every other word through ) highlight the artisans' difference in gender and their collaboration.

80. Miles, "Characterization,"' 156.

81. See, e.g., J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology , student ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 92-94 n. 28.

82. See discussion in Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship , 138.

83. A conventional excuse for women's departures is to return home and feed a husband (in life, as in poetry, e.g., Herodas's Mime 6.97-98). But unlike Mime 6, Idyll 15 places this motif in a ritual context. On the importance of food within the family and in spiritual contexts, see, e.g., Dubisch, "Culture," esp. 207-8.

84. The two lines describing the singer's artistry balance the two lines describing Diocleides' hunger, a contrast underscored by the emphatic placement of (referring to the woman singer) at the end of line 145 and of at the end of line 147.

85. But cf. Griffiths, Theocritus at Court , 118, for whom the definition of remains economic in nature at the end of the poem, as earlier: " is shown in Egyptian society at large to derive ultimately from the royal house— surely a comforting notion for monarchy who kept so much of that for themselves." (So too Griffiths, "Home before Lunch," 255.)

86. On the novelist's concern about "the divergence of comfortable story and the non-narrative contingencies of modem reality," see Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (1967; reprint. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1968), 127-52 (quote taken from 128).