Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/222

 204 THE COMEDIANS WHO SUCCEEDED ARISTOPHANES. The Greek Comedy properly ends with Posidippus, but there are some writers of a later date called comedians. Rhinthon, of Tarentum, is called a comedian by Suidas, but his plays seem to have been rather plilyacographies, or Tragi-comedies, and of those he left thirty-eight. He flourished in the reign of the first Ptolemy^. The titles of six of his plays are known 2. Sopater, of Paphos, was a writer of the same kind ; and also Sotades, of Crete, who flourished under Ptolemy Philadelphus, and wrote in the Ionic dialect^, and in the so-called Ionic a minor e metre. From the extravagant indecency of the Sotadean poems the name has become a by-word of reproach'^. 1 Suidas: 'Vbdcov, Tapavrivos, kci}/j.ik6s, apxvyos tt]5 KoXovfiiurjs 'IXapoTpa7(^5tas 6' effTi ^vaKoypa<pLa. vlbs 8^ ■^u Kepa/x^ois /cat '^k'^ovev irri tov irpuiTov JlToXefiaiov. Apd/xara 5^ avrov KoofxiKa rpayiKa Xrf. 2 Clinton, F. IT. iii. p. 486. 3 /j^^^, p^ ^qq, ^ See History of Greek Literature, il. p. 464.