Pherecrates (Greek: Φερεκράτης) was aGreekpoet of AthenianOld Comedy, and a rough contemporary ofCratinus,Crates andAristophanes.
He was victorious at least once at theCity Dionysia, first probably in the mid-440s (IG II2 2325. 56; the fourth entry afterTeleclides and three poets whose names have been lost, and just beforeHermippus), and twice at theLenaia, 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 byAthenaeus and thesophistPhrynichus. He was the inventor of a newmeter, called after him, thePherecratean, which frequently occurs in the choruses ofGreek tragedies and inHorace. According to an anonymous essay on tragedy,[citation needed] 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).
288 fragments (including six dubia) of his comedies survive, along with the following 19 titles:
The standard edition of the fragments and testimonia is inRudolf Kassel andColin François Lloyd Austin'sPoetae Comici Graeci Vol. VII. The eight-volumePoetae Comici Graeci produced from 1983 to 2001 replaces the outdated collectionsFragmenta comicorum graecorum [de;fr] byAugust Meineke (1839-1857),Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta byTheodor Kock (1880-1888) andComicorum Graecorum Fragmenta byGeorg Kaibel (1899).
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Pherecrates".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 21 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.| International | |
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