Herodas (Herodes)

Herodas, also written Herodes or Herondas, was a Greek poet of the third century BC who composed mimes in choliambics, the limping iambic verse of Hipponax. Little is known of his life; his scenes are set at Cos and in Ionian towns, and he probably worked at Cos or Alexandria. He was known only from a few quotations until a papyrus in the British Museum, discovered in 1891, restored the greater part of seven of his mimes.

The mimes are short dramatic sketches of everyday life: a procuress at work on a lonely wife, a pimp on trial, a schoolmaster flogging a truant, two women at the shrine of Asclepius, a cobbler's sale. This selection prints A. D. Knox's translation of the Mimes in the Loeb Classical Library volume of 1929, rendered in deliberately archaic English.