Archippus (;

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

: Ἅρχιππος; fl. late 5th century BC) was an

Athenian Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

poet of the

Old Comedy Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with their daring pol ...

. His most famous play was the ''Fishes'', in which he satirized the fondness of the Athenian

epicure Epicureanism is a system of philosophy developed by Epicurus ca. 300 BCE. Epicurean or epicure may also refer to: * Epicure (gourmet), a person interested in food, sometimes with overtones of excessive refinement *'' The Epicurean'', 1827 novel w ...

s for fish. The Alexandrian critics attributed to him the authorship of four plays previously assigned to

Aristophanes Aristophanes (; ; ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Ancient Greek comedy, comic playwright from Classical Athens, Athens. He wrote in total forty plays, of which eleven survive virtually complete today. The majority of his surviving play ...

(''Dionysus Shipwrecked'', ''Islands'', ''Niobos'', and ''Poetry''). Archippus was ridiculed by his contemporaries for his fondness for playing upon words.Schol. on Aristophanes, ''

Wasps A wasp is any insect of the narrow-waisted suborder Apocrita of the order Hymenoptera which is neither a bee nor an ant; this excludes the broad-waisted sawflies (Symphyta), which look somewhat like wasps, but are in a separate suborder. Th ...

'', 481 Titles and fragments of six plays are preserved: ''Amphitryon'', ''The Donkey's Shadow'', ''Fishes'', ''Hercules Getting Married'', ''Pinon'', and ''Ploutos''.

Notes

References

* * T. Kock (1880) ''Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta'', i. * A. Meineke (1885) ''Poetarum Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta''

External links

Archippus (poet)
– referenceworks.brillonline.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Archippus (Poet) Ancient Athenian dramatists and playwrights Ancient Greek satirists Old Comic poets 5th-century BC Greek poets