Herodas

The method is entirely Alexandrian: Sophron had written in a peculiar kind of rhythmical prose; Theocritus uses the hexameter and Doric, Herodas the scazon or "lame" iambic (with a dragging spondee at the end) and the old Ionic dialect with which that metre was associated.

His persons talk in vehement exclamations and emphatic turns of speech, with proverbs and fixed phrases; and occasionally, where it is designed as proper to the part, with the most naked coarseness of expression.

[2] In Mime I the old nurse, now the professional go-between or bawd, calls on Metriche, whose husband has been long away in Egypt, and endeavours to excite her interest in a most desirable young man, fallen deeply in love with her at first sight.

The whoremonger, remarking that he has no evidence to call, proceeds to a peroration in the regular oratorical style, appealing to the Coan judges not to be unworthy of their traditional glories.

[4] The jealous woman accuses one of her slaves, whom she has made her favourite, of infidelity; has him bound and sent degraded through the town to receive 2,000 lashes; no sooner is he out of sight than she recalls him to be branded "at one job".

The only pleasing person in the piece is the little maidservant permitted liberties as a verna brought up in the house whose ready tact suggests to her mistress an excuse for postponing execution of a threat made in ungovernable fury.

[4] 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.