MIMES 295 official exposition on the stage. They mostly read their tragedies to one another. Plato amused his friends with a new kind of literature, the mime. It was a form which seems to be intro- ducing itself among ourselves at the present moment — the close study of little social scenes and conversa- tions, seen mostly in the humorous aspect. The two great mime-writers, Epicharmus and Sophron, had by this time made their way from Sicily to all the cul- tured circles of Greece. Plato's own efforts were in prose, like Sophron's, though we hear that he slept with the poems of Epicharmus under his pillow. A mass of material lay ready to hand — one Tisamenus of Teos had perhaps already utilised it — in the conversa- tions of Socrates with the divers philosophers and digni- taries. Plato's earliest dialogue ^ seems to be preserved. In the Laches Socrates is formally introduced to the reader as a person able, in spite of his unpromising appearance, to discuss all manner of subjects. Two fathers, who are thinking of having their sons trained by a certain semi-quackish fencing-master, ask the great generals Laches and Nikias to see one of his perform- ances and advise them, Socrates is called into the discussion, and after some pleasant character-drawing it is made evident that the two generals have no notion what courage is, nor consequently what a soldier ought to be. The Greater Hippias is more outspokenly humo- ^ I follow mainly the linguistic tests as given in C. Ritter's statistical tables. The chief objections to this method are — (i) the statistics are not yet sufficiently comprehensive and delicate ; (2) it is difficult to allow for the fact, which is both attested by tradition and independently demonstrable, that Plato used to work over his published dialogues. But I do not expect the results of Campbell, Dittenberger, Schanz, Gomperz, Biass, Ritter, to be seriously modified.
