Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/269

Rh PHERECRATES. which were ascribed to Orpheus, Musaeus, and the other mythological bards. Melampus, for ex- ample, quotes from her in his book rrepl waXuwv (Fabric. Bibl. Grace, vol. i. p. 116) ; and Pliny quotes from her respecting eagles and hawks, evidently from some book of augury, and perhaps from a work which is still extant in MS., entitled Orneosophium (Plin. H.N. x. 3, 8. s. 9 ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. i. pp. 210, 211 ; Olearii, Dissert, de Poetriis Graecis, Harab. 1734, 4to.). There is an epigram of Antipater of Thessalonica, alluding to a statue of Phemonoe, dressed in a (pdpos. (Brunck, AtmL vol. ii p. 114, No. 22 ; A nth. Pal. vi. 208.) [P.S.] PHENEUS {iffVios). 1. An Arcadian au- tochthon, is said to have founded the town of Pheneos in Arcadia. (Paus. viii. 14. § 4.) 2. A son of Melas, was slain by Tydeus ( Apollod. i. 8. § 5). [L. S.] PHERAEA (*epa^o). 1. A surname of Artemis at Pherae in Thessaly, at Argos and Sicyon, where she had temples. (Callim. Hymn, in Dian. 259 ; Paus. ii. 10. § 6,23. § 5.) 2. A surname of Hecate, because she was a daughter of Zeus and Pheraea, the daughter of Aeolus, or because she had been brought up by the sheplierds of Pheres, or because she was worshipped at Pherae. (Tzetz. ad Lye. 1180 ; Spanheim, ad Callim. I. c.) [L. S.] PHERAULAS (^epauAcxs), is introduced by Xenophon, in the Cyropaedeia, as a Persian of humble birth, but a favourite with Cyrus, and dis- tinguished by qualities of body and mind which would not have dishonoured the noblest rank. He comes before us in particular as the hero of a graphic scene, exhibiting a disregard of wealth, such as is usually called romantic. (Xen. Cyrop. ii. 3. §§7, &c., viii. 3).^ [E.E.] PHERECLUS (^epeKXos), a son of Harmonides, is said to have built tlie ship in which Paris carried off Helen, and to have been slain in the Trojan war by Meriones. (Horn. //. v. 59, &c.; Plut. nes.'ir.) [L.S.] PHERE'CRATES (^^peKpdr-ns), of Athens, was one of the best poets of the Old Comedy (An m. de Com. p. xxviii.). He was contemporary with the comic poets Cratinus, Crates, Eupolis, Plato, and Aristophanes (Suid. s. v. UAdrcov), being some- what younger than the first two, and somewhat older than the others. One of the most important testimonies respecting him is evidently corrupted, but can be amended very well ; it is as follows (Anon, de Com. p. xxix) : — ^epeKpaTTfs 'Adr]i'a7os viKa enl ^fdrpov yivo/xevos, 6 5e viroKpnrjs e^T/Aw/ce KpctTTjTO. Ka: av tou jxev KoiBopdu dnecTTr], irpd-y- fiara 5^ €tVTJ7ou/ii6j/os kuli'cL tivSokljjlh •ycuo/xivos tvperiKos /jlvBwv. Dobree corrects the passage thus : — 4». A. viKO, 4ir ©eoScipov, yevo/j-eyos Se VTroKpiTTjS f^T^AwKf KpaTiyra, k.t.A. ; and his emendation is approved by Meineke and others of our best critical scholars. From the passage, thus read, we learn that Pherecrates gained his first victory in the archonship of Theodoras, b. c. 438 ; and that he imitated the style of Crates, whose actor he had been. From the latter part of the quotation, and from an important passage in Aristotle {Pott. 5), we see what was the character of the alteration in comedy, commenced by Crates, and carried on by Pherecrates ; namely, that they very much modified the coarse satire and vituperation of which this sort of poetry had previously been the vehicle vou m. PHERECRATES. 257 (what Aristotle calls ri la/j-^iKri i^ea), and con- structed their comedies on the basis of a regular plot, and with more dramatic action.* Pherecrates did not, however, abstain altogether from personal satire, for we see by the fragments of his plays that he attacked Alcibiades, the tragic poet Melanthius, and others (Ath. viii. p. 343, c, xii. p. 538, b. ; Phot. Lex. p. 626, 10). But still, as the fragments also show, his chief characteristics were, ingenuity in his plots and elegance in diction : hence he is called 'ATTiKcjiraTos (Ath. vi. p. 268, e ; Steph. Byz. p. 43 ; Suid. s.v. ^Adrjvaia). His language is not, however, so severely pure as that of Aris- tophanes and other comic poets of the age, as Meineke shows by several examples. Of the invention of the new metre, which was named, after him, the Plierecratean^ he himself boasts in the following lines (op. Hepliaest. x. 5, XV. 15, Schol in Ar. Nub. 563) :— avSpes, irpoa^cTe rbv vovv e^evprj/jLari KaivQ (TVfxiTTVKTOis duairaicTTois. The system of the verse, as shown in the above ex- ample, is — — — w w — — which may be best explained as a choriambus, with a spondee for its base, and a long syllable for its termination. Pherecrates himself seems to call it an anapaestic metre ; and it might be scanned as such : but he probably only means that he used it in the parabases, which were often called a7ia- paests., because they were originally in the ana- paestic metre (in fact we hold the anapaestic verse to be, in its origin, choriambic). Hephaestion ex- plains the metre as an hephtheminieral antispastic, or, in other words, an antispastic dimeter cataledia (Hephaest. II. cc; comp. Gaisford's Notes). The metre is very frequent in the choruses of the GreciC tragedians, and in Horace, as, for example, Grato Pyrrha sub antra. There is a slight difference in the statements re- specting the number of his plays. The Anonymous writer on comedy says eighteen, Suidas and Eu- docia sixteen. The extant titles, when properly sifted, are reduced to eighteen, of which some arr doubtful. The number to which Meineke reduces them is fifteen, namely, "Aypioi. Avroiaokoi, Fpdes, AovXoSiSdaKaXos, 'ETriX^afxtcu rj ©aAoTTO, 'Ittuos jj Havwxis, KopLavvw., KpaTraraAoj, Arjpoi, Mi/p- lULTjKdvdpwiroi^ nera'A'T?, Tvpavvis, '^€vSripaKijs. Of these the most interesting is the "Aypioi, on account of the reference to it in Plato's Protuyoras (p. 327, d.), which has given rise to much discussion. Heinrichs has endeavoured to show that the subject of the play related to those corruptions of the art of music of which the comic poets so frequently complain, and that one of the principal performers was the Centaur Cheiron, who expounded the laws of the ancient music to a chorus of wild men (dypioi), that is, either Centaurs or Satyrs ; and he above passage. This makes no real difference in the meaning, except with reference to Pherecrates having been an actor for Crates. The correction seems arbitrary, and moreover unnecessary, as it expresses somewhat obscurely what is clearly stated in the next clause. s
 * Dindorf reads viroinKpos for vnoKpiriis in the