Textual Notes on Herodas Mim. 8, Enhypnion or the Dream

Herodas' Eighth Mime, The Dream (Enhypnion) is a fascinating but unfortunately very poorly preserved account of a dream in which the ‘I’ of the piece encounters Dionysos himself in a revel involving askoliasmos, jumping on an inflated wine-skin. The narrator's success in the competition is equated at the close with a prediction about the future success of Herodas' limping iambics in the literary mêlée. The present piece results from a re-examination of the major papyrus source for this piece in the British Library, proposing new, or possible alternative readings, for lines 15, 44, 45, 70, 72, 76–79. Perhaps the most significant is new evidence for an epithet of Dionysos Lyaios, as the word λύη, commotion, seems preferable to previous editors' λείη, plunder, in line 45

Art · Dream · Epithet · Literature · Papyrus · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Psychology