The Peirazomene Papyrus: An Imperial Mime Fragment

Peirazomene (“she who is being tested”) is the heading of an anonymous mime preserved on British Library inv. 2208 (P.Lit.Lond. 52), a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus copied in the third century CE. The title is taken from a line of the piece itself (πειραζομένη βασανίζομαι).

Ernst Heitsch printed the text in Die griechischen Dichterfragmente der römischen Kaiserzeit I, 2nd edn. (Göttingen, 1963), pp. 41–42 (TLG 0275.001). I. C. Cunningham lists it among the mime papyri (Fragmenta Mimorum Papyracea 13), under the German title “Jungfrau in Nöten.”

The fragment is a verse dialogue of imperial-era popular entertainment, not a Classical poet’s name. It belongs with the other Heitsch lyric and mime papyri of the second and third centuries.