Reimagining Comedy in Theocritus' Idyll 14

Abstract

This article argues that Aeschinas and Thyonichus in Theocritus' Idyll 14 are dramatised as fictional, self-conscious characters engaged in an impersonation of two friends of New Comedy. Theocritus reimagines the two friends of comedy in an exchange characterised by rhetorical and poetical extravagance. The unnaturalness and sophistication of the characters and their speechifying draw awareness to the 'metapoetic mode of comedy' that defines the Idyll.