Phrynichus

▪ Greek comic poet

flourished late 5th century BC, Athens

      comic poet of Attic Old Comedy. Phrynichus, son of Eunomis, belonged to the last generation to write in that style. He produced his first play in 434 or 429 BC. (His contemporary Eupolis produced his first in 429.) Phrynichus is credited with three victories in the festival contests: two at the Lenaea (one of them in 428) and one at the Great (or City) Dionysia (Great Dionysia) (some time between 420 and 414).

      More than 90 fragments have survived, as well as the titles of 11 comedies: Ephialtes, Cronus, Revelers, Connus, Monotropos (“Solitary Man”), Muses, Mystics, Grass Cutters, Satyrs, Freedmen, and Tragodoi (which in the 5th century BC could mean “Singers in the Tragic Chorus” or “Tragic Actors,” but not “Tragic Poets”). Phrynichus competed in the Great Dionysia of 414 BC, where Monotropos came in third; the Revelers of the comic poet Ameipsias came in first, and Aristophanes' Birds took second place. At the Lenaea of 405 BC, Phrynichus's Muses came in second to Aristophanes' Frogs.

      The titles of some plays (e.g., Ephialtes and Connus, named for politicians of the time) indicate political invective. Muses presents a trial of a poet whose work had caused damage to the Muses (Muse), especially Tragedy. The play includes a moving reference to Sophocles, who had just died. Phrynichus's experimentations with metre earned him a reputation as a bad poet. The prolific scholar Didymus Chalcenterus (Didymus Chalkenteros) (1st century BC) wrote a commentary on Cronus.

▪ Greek tragic poet

flourished c. 500 BC, Athens

      Athenian tragic poet, an older contemporary of Aeschylus. Phrynichus is the earliest tragedian of whose work some conception can be formed.

      Phrynichus's first victory in the festival contests probably occurred about 510 BC, and he may have been the first to introduce female masks (i.e., female characters) into tragedy. After the Persians captured Athens's former ally Miletus in 494, Phrynichus produced the tragedy The Capture of Miletus, which so harrowed Athenian feelings that he was fined. In 476, with the financial backing of the important Athenian democratic politician Themistocles, he won first prize in the Great Dionysia competition with Phoenissae (“Phoenician Women”), a play about the Greek victory over the Persian fleet at the battle of Salamis (480 BC) and the lamentation that followed at the court of the Persian king Xerxes (Xerxes I). Of the many Greek tragedies whose titles have survived, The Capture of Miletus and Phoenissae, along with Aeschylus's Persae (472 BC; “Persians”), are the only 5th-century tragedies that have historical subject matter.

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