A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

(Ἀφαρεύς), an Athenian orator and tragic poet, was a son of the rhetorician Hippias and Plathane. After the death of his father, his mother married the orator Isocrates, who adopted Aphareus as his son. He was trained in the school of Isocrates, and is said to have written judicial and deliberative speeches (λόγοι δικανικοὶ καὶ συμβουλευτικοί). An oration of the former kind, of which we know only the name, was written and spoken by Aphareus on behalf of Isocrates against Megacleides. (Plut. Vit. X. Orat. p. 839 ; Dionys. Isocr. 18, Dinarch. 13; Eudoc. p. 67 ; Suid. s.v. Phot. Bibl. 260.) According to Plutarch, Aphareus wrote thirty-seven tragedies, but the authorship of two of them was a matter of dispute. He began his career as a tragic writer in B. C. 369, and continued it till B. C. 342. He gained four prizes in tragedy, two at the Dionysia and two at the Lenaea. His tragedies formed tetralogies, i. e. four were performed at a time and formed a didascalia; but no fragments, not even a title of any of them, have come down to us.

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