as clever and amusing as the rest, with some delightful touches. Our interest is engaged here in a certain Kerdon, the maker of the dildo and who hides this trade by the front of being a cobbler. On acquiring the information she desired, Metro leaves to seek him out. Mime VII The same Kerdon and Metro whom we see in VI appear, Metro bringing some friends to Kerdon's shoe shop, (his name, which means "profiteer", had already become generic for the shoemaker as the typical representative of retail trade) he is a little bald man with a fluent tongue, complaining of hard times, who bluffs and wheedles by turns. The sexual undertones which we have come to expect from his involvement in VI are only realised at the end when Metro's friends have left the shop. Mime VIII Opens with the poet waking up his servants to listen to his dream; but we have only the beginning, and the other fragments are very short. Within the limits of 100 lines or less Herodas presents us with a highly entertaining scene and with characters definitely drawn. Discussion Some of these had been perfected no doubt upon the Attic stage, where the tendency in the 4th century had been gradually to evolve accepted types—not individuals, but generalizations from a class, an art in which Menander's was esteemed the master-hand. Their effect is achieved by true dramatic means, with touches never wasted and the more delightful often because they do not clamour for attention. The execution has the qualities of first-rate Alexandrian work in miniature, such as the epigrams of Asclepiades possess, the finish and firm outlines; and these little pictures bear the test of all artistic work – they do not lose their freshness with familiarity, and gain in interest as one learns to appreciate their subtle points. References Sources The papyrus manuscript, obtained from the Fayum, is in the possession of the British Museum, and was first printed by FG Kenyon in 1891. Editions by Otto Crusius (1905, text only, in Teubner series) and JA Nairn (1904), with introduction, notes and bibliography. There is an English verse translation of the mimes by H. Sharpley (1906) under the title A Realist of the Aegean and another by Guy Davenport (1981). A prose translation is included in the Walter George Headlam edition (1922). Cunningham, I.C. Herodas, Mimiambi (Oxford, 1971). Zanker, Graham (ed., trans.,