Choerilus ( grc-gre, Χοιρίλος) was an

Athenian Athens ( ; el, Αθήνα, Athína ; grc, Ἀθῆναι, Athênai (pl.) ) is both the capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. With a population close to four million, it is also the seventh List ...

tragic poet, who exhibited plays as early as 524 BC. He was born in 546 BC. He died around 460 BC (about 86 years old). Choerilus started writing tragedies when he was 22 years old. He staged 160 plays and won the prize 13 times. His works are all lost; only Pausanias mentions a play by him entitled ''Alope'' (a mythological personage who was the subject of dramas by

Euripides Euripides (; grc, Εὐριπίδης, Eurīpídēs, ; ) was a tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars ...

and Carcinus). cites Pausanias vol. i. p. 14. He lived in Athens for most of his life.

Biography

Choerilus was said to have competed with

Aeschylus Aeschylus (, ; grc-gre, Αἰσχύλος ; c. 525/524 – c. 456/455 BC) was an ancient Greek tragedian, and is often described as the father of tragedy. Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Gree ...

, Pratinas and even

Sophocles Sophocles (; grc, Σοφοκλῆς, , Sophoklễs; 497/6 – winter 406/5 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. is one of three ancient Greek tragedians, at least one of whose plays has survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or c ...

. According to

Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker (4 November 1784 – 17 December 1868) was a German classical philologist and archaeologist. Biography Welcker was born at Grünberg, Hesse-Darmstadt. Having studied classical philology at the University of Giess ...

, however, the rival of Sophocles was a son of Choerilus, who bore the same name. His reputation as a writer of

satyr plays The satyr play is a form of Attic theatre performance related to both comedy and tragedy. It preserves theatrical elements of dialogue, actors speaking verse, a chorus that dances and sings, masks and costumes. Its relationship to tragedy is str ...

is attested in the line:

ἡνίκα μὲν Βασιλεὺς ἦν Χοιρίλος ἐν Σατύροις.
Back in the days when old Choerilus over the Satyrs was king.

The Choerilean metre (a

catalectic A catalectic line is a metrically incomplete line of verse, lacking a syllable at the end or ending with an incomplete foot. One form of catalexis is headlessness, where the unstressed syllable is dropped from the beginning of the line. A line ...

hexameter Hexameter is a metrical line of verses consisting of six feet (a "foot" here is the pulse, or major accent, of words in an English line of poetry; in Greek and Latin a "foot" is not an accent, but describes various combinations of syllables). It w ...

), mentioned by the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

grammarians, is probably so called because the above line is the oldest extant specimen. Choerilus was also said to have introduced considerable improvements in theatrical masks and costumes.

References

Sources

* In this article, he is the first poet of this name discussed. This article cites: ** ** 6th-century BC Athenians 5th-century BC Athenians Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights Tragic poets Year of birth unknown Year of death unknown {{greece-poet-stub