‘Comic Books’ in Greco-Roman Antiquity

Did the ancient Greeks and Romans have comic books? This paper scrutinizes two papyrus fragments from the late II to III century A.D., both showing vignettes interspersed with portions of Greek text that contain the words spoken by the characters appearing in each vignette (the result being an agonal parodic contrast centred on the labours of Herakles). The nature and structure of these peculiar artefacts is reconstructed and contextualized within the broader knowledge and diffusion of ‘comics’ in Greco-Roman antiquity.