What is a mime in drama?

In drama, a mime is a person who conveys a story by means of pantomime. Mimes today are thought of as people in white face paint and black clothes doing comedy, but the mime or pantomime as a term was used as far back as the Ancient Greeks for dramas as well as comedies.

Even though the word was not used or known prior to the Ancient Greeks or Romans, there is some evidence that older civilizations used mime not only as entertainment, but also as a form of communication when there was a lack of common languages to bind large troops of people. These mimes were often used to tell of prosperous hunts or to entice the gods to give the hunters the hunt they acted out.