Pherecrates (
Greek: Φερεκράτης) was a
Greek poet of Athenian
Old Comedy, and a rough contemporary of
Cratinus,
Crates
A crate is a large strong container, often made of wood.
Crate may also refer to:
* Crate Township, Chippewa County, Minnesota, United States
* Crate Entertainment, a US video game developer
* CrateIO, a fully searchable document oriented data s ...
and
Aristophanes.
He was victorious at least once at the
City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-440s (IG II2 2325. 56; the fourth entry after
Teleclides Telecleides ( grc, Τηλεκλείδης) was an Athenian Old Comic poet. A contemporary of Cratinus, he was active , and is known to have won at the Dionysia three times and the Lenaia five times. Only eight titles and a few fragments of his ...
and three poets whose names have been lost, and just before
Hermippus), and twice at the
Lenaia, first probably in the mid- to late 430s (IG II2 2325. 122; just after Cratinus and just before Hermippus). He was especially famous for his inventive imagination, and the elegance and purity of his diction are attested by the epithet Ἀττικώτατος (most Attic) applied to him by
Athenaeus and the
sophist Phrynichus. He was the inventor of a new
meter, called after him, the
Pherecratean, which frequently occurs in the choruses of
Greek tragedies
Greek tragedy is a form of theatre from Ancient Greece and Greek inhabited Anatolia. It reached its most significant form in Athens in the 5th century BC, the works of which are sometimes called Attic tragedy.
Greek tragedy is widely believed t ...
and in
Horace
Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 – 27 November 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). The rhetorician Quintilian regarded his ' ...
. According to an anonymous essay on tragedy, Pherecrates wrote 18 plays, suggesting that one or more of the 19 surviving titles must be eliminated somehow (i.e. by assigning the play to another author who wrote a comedy by the same name, and assuming an ancient scholarly error, or by identifying e.g. The Human Heracles and The Fake Heracles as a single play with multiple titles).
Surviving Titles and Fragments
288 fragments (including six dubia) of his comedies survive, along with the following 19 titles:
*''Agathoi'' ("The Good Men")
*''Agrioi'' ("The Wild Men," or "The Savages")
*''Anthropherakles'' ("The Human Heracles"; possibly the same play as ''Pseuderakles'')
*''Automoloi'' ("The Deserters")
*''Graes'' ("The Old Women," or "The Hags")
*''Doulodidaskalos'' ("The Slave Teacher")
*''Epilesmon'' ("The Forgetful Man") or ''Thalatta'' ("The Sea")
*''Ipnos'' ("The Kitchen") or ''Pannychis'' (The All-Night Festival")
*''Korianno'' ("Corianno")
*''Krapataloi'' ("The Good-For-Nothings")
*''Leroi'' ("Jewelry")
*''Metalles'' ("The Miners")
*''Metoikoi'' ("The Resident Aliens")
*''Myrmekanthropoi'' ("The Ant-Men")
*''Persai'' ("The Persians")
*''Petale'' ("Petale")
*''Tyrannis'' ("Tyranny")
*''Cheiron'' ("
Chiron")
*''Pseuderakles'' ("The Fake Heracles"; possibly the same play as ''Anthropherakles'')
The standard edition of the fragments and testimonia is in
Rudolf Kassel and
Colin François Lloyd Austin's ''Poetae Comici Graeci'' Vol. VII. The eight-volume ''Poetae Comici Graeci'' produced from 1983 to 2001 replaces the outdated collections ''Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum'' by
August Meineke (1839-1857), ''Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta'' by
Theodor Kock (1880-1888) and ''Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta'' by
Georg Kaibel (1899).
References
*
*
{{Authority control
Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights
Old Comic poets
5th-century BC Athenians
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown