This document discusses Byzantine mimes, or comedic performances, and analyzes whether they can be considered a form of popular culture. It provides historical context on mimes in Byzantium and examines how they were received over time. Mimes were initially performed in the Hippodrome for large audiences and incorporated provocative jokes and themes. However, as Christian ideology grew dominant from the 4th-5th centuries onward, the Church began censoring and criticizing mimes, viewing the acts and actors as immoral. Over time, the terminology used to describe mimes also took on more negative connotations, reflecting their declining social acceptance. The document thus explores the changing cultural landscape and shifting boundaries of what was considered

1. (Un)Popular Comedy?
Byzantine Mimes
Dr. Anna Foka
UCGS UGPS
Umeå University, Sweden

2. Summary:
1. Cultural theory: popular
culture
2. Performance Space and
the cultural landscape of
Byzantium
3. Byzantine mimes: social
context and typology of jokes
4. Christian Polemic
330 CE: Rome
West and East

3. Popular culture- Current Cultural
theory
1. Widely favoured by many people
(Bennett, 1980: 20-1)
2. Distinction from ’high culture’ (Bourdieu:
1984)
3. Ideological machine that reproduces the
dominant ideology (Fiske: 1989 structuralism
VS post-structuralism)
4. Of the ’people’ (Maltby: 1989).
5. A force of incorporation between dominant
and subordinate societal groups (Gramsci
2006: 85)

4. Popular culture: Anachronism?
• Popular culture = equilibrium of hegemony
(Bennett: 2006- political)
• Popular culture: explores and explains
dominant vs subordinate conflicts involving
politics, ethnicity, gender, generation,
sexuality, disability, religion etc…

5. Byzantine Mimes: Unpopular
Genre?
• Multilingual,
Multicultural audience
• Improvisational&
Physical
• Provocative
• Treated schematically
• Middle Byzantine -no
remaining organised
forms of theatre
(Puchner: 1997)

6. Cognitive space? The Hippodrome
Great Palace,
Mosaic
Museum-
Istanbul:
The
Hippodrome
Constantine I (325-337
AD) =Hippodrome of
Constantinople,
30,000 to 35,000 people
Political: Financed by
the emperor
Involved Demes and
factions
Social: Gathering place
for the
marginalised
Byzantine
popular culture

7. Mimes: Interludes to chariot racing
Emperor Anastasios’
Diptych, detail with
hippodrome and
performance scenes
517CE: State Hermitage
Museum, St. Petersburg

8. Byzantine Mimes: Neglected or
Unpopular?
• Themes:
Mythological
Christological
Biological
Religion
Sexuality

9. TYPOLOGY: Byzantine Sex Comedy/
Parody Reconstruction:PAPYRI
Fragmentary P. Oxy. 413 (2 broad plots)
OTHER EVIDENCE
Macro: Theodora, Pelagia
Micro: Inscription of Bassila
TOPICS/ATTRACTIONS
Female Actors, Adultery, Sex
Female Nudity
Lascivious Dancing
Slapstick
Ridicule of religious beliefs
Memorial stele of
Vassilla fig. 344
Scrinari: 1973

10. Church and Censorship: 4th-
5th Century (Shift)
• Actors/Actress= synonymous
to sexually ambivalent,
deviant, and pagan
• Christian morality
• Changing fashions
Mimes: 4th
century
reconstruction:
Dubech:1

11. Censorship
5th CE: singing and acting unnatural love = has a
harmful effect on the audiences’ imagination
(Chrysostom, PG 62.428)
Male =image of the female performer = threatening
marriage (Chrysostom, PG 56. 266-7)
Gospel redefinition of adultery comes to consist of
pure desire (pros to epithymesai), rather than the
sexual act itself. (Mathew 5.28)

12. 4th- 5th century legislation
Vicious edict: 381 CE
Justin: 520 CE
Code of Justinian: 6th
century(Cod. Just. Nov.
123,44)
Actors= no dignity
Christian dominant ideology
Mimes=negative

13. Choricius: Apologia Mimorum
(5th Century Gaza)
• Educational value of popular humour
• Communicating contemporary social
realities

14. Shift in Terminology?
Komodieo = perform a comedy, have
fun, curse, tell lies, reprimand,
disapprove, condemn or describe,
being sexual, queer or heretic!
Mimoi: effeminate, unmanly perverse,
obscene, superficial, pagan. (Bibilakis:
1996 147-73)

15. Conclusions: Mimes display…
Popular social morality (or lack thereof!)
Struggle between dominant and subversive ideologies:
‘equilibrium of hegemony’
Historical and cultural dimensions /limitations of
humour in popular culture.
Historical and cultural dimensions/ limitation of what
is popular culture overall.

16. Thank you!