Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/183

 PREDECESSORS OR CONTEMPORARIES OF ARISTOPHANES. 165 the first half of the Peloponnesian war, and on this account we cannot class the dramatic efforts of the Siceliotes with those of the Attic poets. But the Sicilian Comedy comes first in chronological order, and Aristotle connects Crates with Epicharmus. Before therefore we speak of the Attic comedians, we must give some account of Epicharmus and his school. Epicharmus, the son of Helothales, whom Theocritus calls the inventor of Comedy and who, according to Plato^, bore the same relation to ^Comedy that Homer did to Tragedy, was a native of Cos^ and went to Sicily with Cadmus, the son of Scythes, about the year 488 B.C. After residing a short time at the Sicilian Megara'^, he was removed to Syracuse along with the other inhabitants of that town, when it was conquered by Gelo in B.C. 484. Diogenes Laertius states that Epicharmus was only three months old when he went first to Sicily : but this is con- tradicted by his own statement, that the poet was one of the audi- tors of Pythagoras*, who died in 497 B.C., by the statement of Aristotle^, that he was long before Chionides and Magnes, and by the fact that he was a man of influence in the reign of Hiero, who died eighteen years after the date of Epicharmus' arrival in Sicily. Besides being a Pythagorean and a comic poet, he is said to have been a physician, as was also his brother. This has been consi- dered an additional proof of his Coan origin*^. He was ninety ' "A re  o rav Koi/xciidiav Fivpoov ''Eirixo.piJ.or 'fi Ba/c%6, x^^'^^ov VLV olvt' dXaOivov Tlv w5' dvedrjKaf, Tol XvpaK6<yaai? euidpvuTat neXw/sets rf iroXec, or dvdpi TToXtra, "Zujpbv yap elx^ XPVf^oLTwv, fxe/xvafjiivoL TeXeiu eirlx^ipa. HoXXi yap ttottolv ^odv rots Traicrlu elire xpri(np.a. MeydXa xctpts avT($. Epig. XVII. 2 Thecetet. p. 152 e : ol dKpoi ttJs Troirjcrews eKarepas, Kiofxasbia^ p-ev 'EtrixO'PfJ.oi, rpayipdias 8^ "Op.r]pos. ^ Diog. Laert. viii. 78. ^ Diog. u. s. : Kul ovTos rjKOVde Uvdayopov. ^ 'EKeWev [e/c StK-eX^as] yap rjv 'Eirlxapp.o's 6 TrotT/xTj?, iroXXu} irpSrepos uv Xi.o}vi8ov Kol MdyvrjTos. Arist. Poet. ill. 5. — Chionides, on the authority of Suidas and Eudo- cia, began to exhibit B.C. 487: Aristotle's expression, ttoXXc^ Trporepos dou Xiojuidov, would therefore almost induce us to carry back the date of Epicharmus' first Comedy still higher than B. c. 500. 7 Miiller, Dor. iv. 7, § ■2.
 * See Miiller, Dorians, i. 8, § 5, note (q), and iv. 7, § "2.