SECTION III. THE REMAINING GREEK TRAGEDIANS. THE materials for compiling an account of the tragic writers, who were partly contemporary with, and partly subsequent to, the three great masters, are exceedingly meagre. Little more can be done than to furnish a catalogue of names, arranged in chronological order, with such incidental notices of these dramatists and their works as antiquity has left us. 1 ARISTARCHUS of Tegea, was the contemporary of Sophocles and Euripides. He lived upwards of a hundred years, exhibited seventy tragedies, but was only twice successful. Of all these seventy plays only one line is left us, quoted in Athenæus (xiii. 612.) According to Festus, his Achilles was imitated by Ennius, and also by Plautus in his Pænulus. 3 2ION CHIUS began to exhibit, Olymp. LXXXII. 2, B. C. 451. The number of his dramas is variously estimated at from twelve to forty. Bentley has collected the names of eleven. The same great critic has also shown that this Ion was a person of birth and fortune, distinct from Ion Ephesius, a mere begging rhapsodist. Besides tragedies, Ion composed dithyrambs, elegies, &c., and several works in prose. Like Euripides, he was intimate with 5 Socrates. Ion was so delighted with being decreed victor on one occasion in the tragic contests at Athens, that he presented each citizen with a vase of Chian pottery. We gather from a 1. Suidas in V. 2. Schol. Aristoph. Pax, 835. Suidas in Ion. 3. Epist. ad Mill. Chronic. Johann. Malal. subject. 4 4. His Elegies are quoted, Athen. x. p. 436, &c.: his 'Eminuía (a work giving an account of all the visits paid by celebrated men to Chios,) ib. iii. p. 93, &c. 5. Diog. Laert. ii. 23. 6. Athen. i. p. 4. joke of 1Aristophanes, on a word taken from one of his dithyrambs, that Ion died before the exhibition of the Pax, B. c. 419. ACHEUS ERETRIENSIS was born Olymp. LXXIV. B. C. 4842, the very year Æschylus won his first prize. We find him contending with Sophocles and Euripides, Olymp. LXXXIII. 2. B. c. 4473. With such competitors he was not very successful. He gained the dramatic victory only once. Athenæus however accuses Euripides of borrowing from this poet. Most of the plays ascribed to him by the ancients are suspected by Casaubon to have been satyric3. EUPHORION was the son of Eschylus. He conquered four times with posthumous tragedies of his father's composition; and also wrote several dramas himself. One of his victories is commemorated in the argument to the Medea of Euripides; where we are told that Euphorion was first, Sophocles second, and Euripides third with the Medea. Olymp. LXXXVII. 2. 431. ARISTEAS, Son of Pratinas, is mentioned in the Vit. Anonym. of Sophocles as having contended with Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. His chief merit lay in his satyric dramas, in which, according to Pausanias, he and his father were surpassed by Æschylus alone. THEOGNIS, as we learn from a line in the opening of the Acharnians, was exhibiting at the time in which that comedy was 1. Οἰκέτης, οὐκ ἦν ἄρ ̓ οὐδ ̓ ἃ λέγουσι κατὰ τὸν ἀέρα, ὡς ἀστέρες γιγνόμεθ ̓, ὅταν τις αποθάνῃ; Τρυγαῖος, μάλιστα. Οἰκέτης, καὶ τίς ἐστιν ἀστὴρ νῦν ἐκεῖ; Τρυγαῖος. Ἴων ὁ Χῖος, ὥσπερ ἐποίησεν πάλαι ἐνθάδε τὸν ΑΟΙΟΝ ποθ', ὡς δ ̓ ἦλθ ̓, εὐθέως, ΑΟΙΟΝ αὐτὸν πάντες ἐκάλουν ΑΣΤΕΡΑ.—Pax, 798, &c. Ion had begun one of his Dithyrambs with Αοῖον ἀμεροφονταν ἀστέρα μείναμεν, &c. 8. Dicæopolis describes himself as having lately been anxiously expecting in the theatre a tragedy of Eschylus to commence, when the herald proclaimed, to his great vexation, Εἴσαγ ̓, ὦ Θέογνι, τὸν χορόν. Acharn. 11. represented, i. e. Olymp. LxxxVIII. 4. B. C. 425. This poet is ridiculed in the same play for the frigidity of his inanimate compositions'. He was still a competitor for the tragic prize at the period in which the Thesmophoriazusa was composed; for in that play the comedian again attacks him2. The Scholiast on the Acharnians, v. 11, says that this Theognis was one of the Thirty Tyrants. The name Theognis certainly does occur in the catalogue of that body given by Xenophon3. 4 PHILOCLES is said by Suidas to have been the nephew of Eschylus, and the father of Morsimus. A trilogy of his, intitled the Pandionid, was recorded by Aristotle in the Didascaliæ. The Tereus, one of the plays in this trilogy, written in imitation of the Tereus of Sophocles, "is wittily ridiculed by Aristophanes in the Aves. This tragedian was termed Χολή or Bile, from his harsh and bitter language". In figure he was deformed hence Aristophanes takes occasion to cut sundry jokes upon him. In the Thesmophoriazusæ, Mnesilochus, following up the principle laid down by Agathon, that as the man is so is the poetry, begins, Ταῦτ ̓ ἆρ ̓ ὁ Φιλοκλῆς αἰσχρὸς ὤν αἰσχρῶς ποιει.168. In the Aves he finds in his shape a similarity to the lark, "κορυδὸς Φιλοκλέει....ν. 1995. 1. Θέωρος. χρόνον μὲν οὐκ ἄν ἦμεν ἐν Θράκῃ πολὺν καὶ τοὺς ποταμοὺς ἔπηξ ̓ ὑπ ̓ αὐτὸν τὸν χρόνον, 2. Ο δ' ἂν Θέογνις ψυχρὸς ὤν ψυχρῶς ποιεῖ.—Thesmoph. 170. 4. Suidas in Φιλοκ.--Suidas mentions two persons of this name, the one a tragic, the other a comic poet. Kuster contends that the Lexicographer is mistaken, and that his two accounts refer to one and the same individual-the tragedian. 5. Πει. τὶ τὸ τέρας τουτί ποτ ̓ ἐστὶν; οὐ σὺ μόνος ἄρ ̓ ἤσθ ̓ ἔποψ; ἀλλὰ χ ̓ οὗτος ἕτερος; Επ. ἀλλ ̓ ἔστιν μέν οὗτος Φιλοκλέους ἐξ Εποπος· ἐγὼ δὲ τούτου πάππος· ὥσπερ εἰ λέγεος 6. In allusion to this characteristic, Bdelycleon, speaking of the chorus of waspish old dicasts, says, ἀλλὰ μὲ Δί ̓ οὐ ῥᾳδίως οὕτως ἂν αὐτοὺς διέφυγες, εἴπερ ἔτυχον τῶν μελῶν τῶν Φιλοκλέους βεβρωκότες.Vespa, 461. 7. The Scholiast supposes Philocles to have been ὀξυκέφαλος ἐν τῷ ἄνω καὶ ὀρνιθώδης τὴν κεφαλήν. AGATHON was the contemporary and friend of Euripides1. At his house Plato lays the scene of his Symposium, given in honour of a tragic victory won by the poet. Agathon was no mean dramatist. Plato represents him as abounding in the most exquisite ornaments and the most dazzling antitheses. Aristophanes pays a handsome tribute to his memory as a poet and a man, in the Rana (v. 84.), where Bacchus calls him ἀγαθὸς ποιητὴς καὶ ποθεινὸς τοῖς φίλοις. In the Thesmophoriazusa which was exhibited six years before the Rana, Agathon, then alive, is introduced as the friend of Euripides, and ridiculed for his effeminacy. He is there brought on the stage in female attire, and described as Εὐπρόσωπος, λευκὸς, ἐξυρημένος, Γυναικόφωνος, ἁπαλὸς, εὐπρεπὴς ἰδεῖν—191. 5 His poetry seems to have corresponded with his personal appearance: profuse in trope, inflexion, and metaphor; glittering with sparkling ideas, and flowing softly along, with harmonious words and nice construction, but deficient in manly thought and vigour. Agathon may, in some degree, be charged with having begun the decline of true Tragedy. It was he who first commenced the practice of inserting choruses betwixt the acts of the drama, which had no reference whatever to the circumstances of the 1. Plat. Symp. §. 3. 2. He is called ̓Αγάθων ὁ κλεινός by Aristophanes, Thesmoph. 29. 3. See Agathon's panegyric on Love, Symp. p. 56. See also Athen. V. 187, and Ælian V. H. xvi. 13. 4. In accordance with this, Socrates, when asked by Aristodemus why he was so handsomely dressed, replies—ταῦτα δή ἐκαλλωπισάμην, ἵνα καλὸς παρὰ καλὸν ἴω.-Symp. p. 8. 5. His servant is thus made to characterize it: μέλλει γὰρ ὁ καλλιεπής ̓Αγαθών καὶ κηροχυτεῖ, καὶ γογγύλλει, καὶ χρανεύει.—Thesmoph. 49. Philostratus calls him an imitator in verse of Gorgias's prose: ̓Αγαθὼν ὁ τῆς τραγωδίας ποιητής, ὃν ἡ κωμωδία σοφόν τε καὶ καλλιεπῆ οἶδε, πολλαχοῦ τῶν λαμβείων γοργιάζει.—De Soph. 1. 6. Τοῖς δὲ λοιποῖς τὰ ἀδόμενα οὐ μᾶλλον τοῦ μύθου, ἤ ἄλλης τραγῳδίας ἐστι· δι ̓ ὅ ἐμβόλιμα ᾄδουσι, πρώτου ἄρξαντος ̓Αγάθωνος τοιούτου. Aristot. Poet. xviii. 22. piece: thus infringing the law by which the Chorus was made one of the actors. 1Aristotle blames him also for want of judgment in selecting too extensive subjects. He2 "occasionally wrote pieces with fictitious names, (a transition towards the New Comedy) one of which was called the Flower3; and was probably, therefore, neither seriously affecting nor terrible, but in the style of the Idyl." *One of his tragic victories is recorded, Olymp. XCI, 2, B. C. 416. He too, like Euripides, left Athens for the court of Archelaus. He died before the representation of the Ranc3. CARCINUS was a tragic writer contemporary with Aristophanes, who pours forth his jests most lavishly upon him and his three sons, Xenocles, Xenotimus, and Demotimus. In the Nubes, Strepsiades alludes to the incessant lamentations of the deities in the plays of Carcinus; where, on hearing his creditor Amynias crying out 'I poi, uo, he says, ea τίς ουτοσί ποτ ̓ ἔσθ ̓ ὁ θρηνῶν; οὔ τι που τῶν Καρκίνου τις δαιμόνων ἐφθέγξατο;-1240. and then the poor creditor is made to parody a passage from the Tlepolemus of the father or of Xenocles the son. In the Vespa, the diminutive size and ungainly appearance of this tragic family, with the ambiguous name Kápkivos, supply matter for several lines of joke and raillery. In the Pax, the merciless Comedian devotes sixteen verses to a similar attack. 8 Xenocles was the shortest of the dwarfish sons of Carcinus. With Philocles and Theognis he is thus introduced, in the exemplification of Mnesilochus, before mentioned (p. 63): ὁ δὲ Ξενοκλέης ὤν κακὸς κακῶς ποιεῖ.—Thesmoph. 169. He is mentioned with still more disrespect in the Rana (v. 86.) Ἡρακλῆς, ὁ δὲ Ξενοκλέης; Διόνυσος. ἐξόλοιτο νὴ Δία. 8. So Bdelycleon asserts, when speaking of the family, ὁ σμικρότατος, ὃς τὴν τραγῳδίαν ποιεῖ. Vespa, 1511, E |