Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 2.djvu/44

Rh 30 EPICHARMUS. Persian war (b. c. 485-4). Thus it appears that, J3ce Cratinus, he was an old man before he began to write comedy ; and this agrees well with the fact that his poetry was of a very philosophic character. (Anon, de Com. I. c.) The only one of his plays, the date of which is certainly known, is the Nao-ot, b. c. 477. (Schol. Find. PytJi. i. 98 ; Clinton, sub ann.) We have also express testimony of the fact that Elothales, the father of Epicharraus, formed an acquaintance with Pythagoras, and that Epicharmus himself was a pupil of that great philosopher. (Diog. Laert. I. c. ; Suid. s. v.; Plut. Numa, 8.) We may therefore consider the life of Epicharmus as divisible into two parts, namely, his life at Megara up to B. c, 484, during which he was engaged in the study of philosophy, both physical and metaphysical, and the remainder of his life, which he spent at Syracuse, as a comic poet. The question respecting the identity of Epi- charmus the comedian and Epicharmus the Pytha- gorean philosopher, about which some writers, both ancient and modern, have been in doubt, may now be considered as settled in the affirmative. (Menag. ad La'drt. I. c. ; Perizon. ad Aelian. V. H. ii. 34 ; Clinton, Fast. Hell. vol. ii. Introd. p. xxxvi.) The number of the comedies of Epicharmus is differently stated at 52 or at 35. There are still extant 35 titles, of which 26 are preserved by Athenaens. The majority of them are on mytho- logical subjects, that is, travesties of the heroic myths, and these plays no doubt very much resem- bled the satj'-ric drama of the Athenians. The following are their titles : — 'Akvc}i/,"A/xvkos, Buk- XO', Bovffipis, AevKaXluf^ Ai6vv(T0i,"li€r]s yafxas, "HcpaiffTOs rj Koi/xaaTai, Ku/cXw^', A070S Kai Ao- yeiua, 'OSva-aeus avTS/xoXos, ^OSvacrevs vavaySs, lS,€ipijv€S, 2/ftpwi', 2^171, Tpcoes, 4>7AoKT7jTrjs. But besides mythology, Epicharmus wrote on other subjects, political, moral, relating to manners and customs, and, it Avould seem, even to personal character ; those, however, of his comedies which belong to the last head are rather general than individual, and resembled the subjects treated by the writers of the new comedy, so that when the ancient vmters enumerated him among the poets of the old comedy, they must be understood as re- ferring rather to his antiquity in point of time than to any close resemblance between his works and those of the old Attic comedians. In fact, we have a proof in the case of Crates that even among the Athenians, after the establishment of the genuine old comedy by Cratinus, the mytholo- gical comedy still maintained its ground. The plays of Epicharraus, which were not on mytholo- gical subjects, were the following : — 'Aypaa-rli/os (Sicilian Greek for ^ Ay polnos), 'Apirayal, To, koI QaKouraa^ Ai^iXos, 'EAttis ^ IlAoiiTos, 'Eoprd Koi Nacrot, 'ETriifiicios, 'HpaKAetroy, ©edpoi, Mcyapis, MTjj'es,'OptJa, IleplaXXos, Uepaai, Tliewv, TpiaKaSes, XopfvouTcs, Xvrpai. A considerable number of fragments of the above plays are preserved, but those of which we can form the clearest notion from the extant fragments are the Marriage of Hebe, and Hepliaestus or the Revellers. M tiller has observed that the painted vases of lower Italy often enable us to gain a complete and vivid idea of those theatrical representations of which the plays of Epicharmus are the type. The style of his plays appears to have been a curious mixture of the broad buffoonery which dis- tinguished the old Megarian comedy, and of the EPICLEIDAS. sententious wisdom of the Pythagorean philosopher His language was remarkably elegant: he was celebrated for his choice of epithets: his plays abounded, as the extant fragments prove, with yvufxai, or philosophical and moral maxims, and long speculative discourses, on the instinct of ani- mals for example. Miiller observes that " if the elements of his drama, which we have discovered singly, were in his plays combined, he must have set out with an elevated and philosophical view, which enabled him to satirize mankind without dis- turbing the calmness and tranquillity of his thoughts ; while at the same time his scenes of common life were marked with the acute and penetrating genius which characterized the Sicilians." In proof of the high estimate in which he was held by the an- cients, it may be enough to refer to the notices of him by Plato {Theaet. p. 152, e.) and Cicero. {Tusc. i. 8, ad Ait. i. 19.} It is singular, how- ever, that Epichannus had no successor in his peculiar style of comedy, except his son or disciple Deinolochus. He had, however, distinguished imitators in other times and countries. Some writers, making too much of a few words of Aris- totle, would trace the origin of the Attic comedy to Epichannus ; but it can hardly be doubted that Crates, at least, was his imitator. That Plautus imitated him is expressly stated by Horace {Epist. ii. 1. 58),— " Plautus ad exemplar Siculi properare Epicharmi." The parasite, who forms so conspicuous a charac- ter in the plays of the new comedy, is first found in Epicharmus. The formal peculiarities of the dramas of Epi- charmus cannot be noticed here at any length. His ordinary metre was the lively Trochaic Tetra- meter, but he also used the Iambic and Anapaestic metres. The questions respecting his scenes, num- ber of actors, and chorus, are fully treated in the work of Grysar. Some writers attribute to Epicharmus separate philosophical poems ; but there is little doubt that the passages referred to are extracts from his comedies. Some of the ancient writers ascribed to Epicharmus the invention of some or all of those letters of the Greek alphabet, which were usually attributed to Palamedes and Simonides. The fragments of Epichannus are printed in the collections of Morellius {Sententiae vet. Comic., Paris, 1553, 8vo.), Hertelius {Collect. Fragm. Comic, Basil. 1560, 8vo.), H. Stephanus (Poesis FMlosopMca, 1573, 8vo.), and Hugo Grotius (Fx- cefpt. e-x Trag. et Comoed., Paris, 1626, 4to.), and separately by H. P. Kruseman, Harlem. 1834. Additions have been made by Welcker {Zeitschrift fur die Alterthiimswissenscliaft, 1835, p. 1123), and others. The most important modern work on Epi- charmus is that of Grysar, de Doriensitan Comoedia, Colon. 1 828 ; the second volume, containing the fragments, has not yet appeared. (See also Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 298 ; Harless, de Epicharmo, Essen, 1822 ; Miiller, Dorians, bk. iv. c. 7 ; Bode, Geschichte d. Hellen. Dichtkunst, vol. iii. part i. p. 36.) ^ [P. S.] EPICLEIDAS ('EiTi/fAerSas), brother of Cleo- menes III., king of Sparta. According to Pausa- nias (ii. 9. § 1. 3), Cleomenes poisoned Eurydami- das, his colleague of the house of Proclus, and shared the royal power with his brother Epicleidas. The latter afterwards fell in the battle of Sellasia, B. c. 222. [C.P.M.]