(Ξενοκλῆς), literary. 1, 2. There were two Athenian tragic poets of this name, of the family of Carcinus; the one the son of the elder Carcinus, and the father of the younger Carcinus, the other the son of the younger Carcinus, and therefore the grandson of the elder Xenocles. [CARCINUS.] Thus it appears that this family maintained some celebrity on the tragic stage of Athens during four generations, which is as long as the artistic duration of the family of Aeschylus. Apart from this claim upon our attention, the history of this family has exercised the critical skill of some of the greatest scholars of the day, on account of the interesting, but obscure allusions made to the members of it by the Athenian comic poets and other writers. Indeed, to have developed a consistent and probable account of the family of Carcinus out of the few difficult passages of Aristophanes, Plato, and Pherecrates, in which they were attacked, and out of the mixture of truth and nonsense contained in the scholia on Aristophanes, in Suidas, and a few other ancient writers, may be regarded as a triumph of criticism, the merit of which is due to Meineke, to whose investigation some valuable particulars have been added by Welcker, Kayser, and Wagner. The complicated minuteness of the question forbids the attempt, within our present limits, to discuss it fully : we can only give the general result.
Carcinus the elder, who was about contemporary with Aeschylus, had three sons, according to Aristophanes and some of the grammarians, or four, according to Pherecrates and others of the grammarians. (Aristoph. Wasps 1493, 1500; Schol. ad loc. ; Pherecr. apud Schol. Aristoph. l.c., as amended by Meineke; Schol. ad Aristoph. Nub. 1263, Pac. 778, Ran. 86.) The discrepancy between two comic poets who were contemporary with the family, respecting the number of the sons of Carcinus, is a curious circumstance; and we are inclined to suspect that some joke is contained in the passage of Pherecrates, who first calls them three, and then makes another person reply " No! they are not three, but four." There is also a great diversity as to the names of the sons of Carcinus. (Schol. ad Aristoph. ll. cc.) Besides the names of Xenocles and Xenotimus, on which all the scholiasts are agreed, they mention Xenarchus, Xenocleitus, Diotimus, which is perhaps a mere variation of Xenotimus, and Datis, which is not a Greek name at all, but appears to be a nickname applied to Xenocles, on account of certain faults in his language, the appellation being derived from the well-known story about the blunder made by Datis, the Persian general, when he attempted to speak Greek, which gave rise to the term δάτισμος (Schol. ad Aristoph. Pac. 289, 290). Of these sons of Carcinus two (or three) were engaged as choreutac in acting their father's dramas, in which great prominence was given to the orchestic element ; and their dancing is ridiculed by Aristophanes (Pac. 775-790, Vesp. 1497, foll.), and Pherecrates (l.c.). Xenocles alone was a tragic poet; and in this character he is several times attacked by Aristophanes. He appears to have been of a mean personal appearance; for, in one passage, Aristophanes distinguishes him from his brothers thus (Vesp. 1500),
, and, in another passage, among other examples of
- ὁ σμικρότατος, ὃς τὴν τραγῳδίαν ποιεῖ
- ὁ δὲ Ξενοκλέης;
Δ.
- ἐξόλοιτο νὴ Δία.
There is another and a very important passage, in which the allusion to Xenocles is less apparent, but which, when properly understood, contains a very refined and ingenious attack upon him and his drama entitled Licymnius (Nub. 1259, full. the correct explanation is given by some of the Scholiasts, and by Meineke and others, as quoted below).
In these allusions we have sufficient materials for the date of Xenocles; for it appears, from the passage last quoted, that he had met with a signal defeat in a dramatic contest, shortly before the exhibition of the Clouds (B. C. 423 or 422), and the mention of him in the Frogs shows that he was still alive in B. C. 405. In Ol. 91, B. C. 415, he obtained a victory over Euripides (Aelian, Ael. VH 2.8; the date being corrected from Diod. 12.82, and Schol. ad Aristoph. Wasps 1317). On this occasion each poet exhibited a tetralogy; that of Xenocles consisting of the tragedies Oedipus, Lycaon, Bacchae, and the satyric drama Athamas ; that of Euripides, of the tragedies Alexander, Palamedes, Troades, and the satyric drama Sisyphus. The indignation of Aelian at this judgment shows the low estimate in which Xenocles was held by the ancients; but it is always difficult to judge how far such estimates are anything more than mere echoes of the opinions passed by the Athenian comic poets on their contemporaries. There are, however. other grounds for believing that the poetry of Xenocles was very indifferent; that it resembled, in fact, the worser parts of Euripides. His sophistical declamations appear to be alluded to in one passage of Aristophanes (Thesm. 440) ; and the scholiast on another passage (Ran. 86) tells us that his poetry was rude and allegorical. The impurity of his language has been already mentioned. In another passage of Aristophanes (Pac. 792), and in a fragment of the comic poet Plato (Sophist., ap. Schol. Aristoph. l.c.), he is designated by the appellations μηχανοδίφας and δωδεκαμήχανος, which refer, without doubt, to the unnatural construction of his plots, in which complicated devices and sudden surprises (the Deus ex machine for example) were employed to produce the result which ought to have been effected by the natural development of the drama itself.
No fragments of the plays of Xenocles have come down to us, except the parody of a few words of the Licymnius, which is supposed to be contained in the passage of the Clouds referred to above.
Respecting the younger Xenocles no particulars are recorded, except the fact of his being the son of Carcinus II., and the express distinction made between him and the elder Xenocles by a Scholiast on Aristophanes (Ran. 86).
The following genealogical table has been constructed by Meineke to exhibit the probable relations of the members of the family. The three persons in the left hand column were not literary persons, and therefore nothing has been said of them in this article.
It should be added, to guard the reader against some confusion, that Xenocles is sometimes erroneously called Philocles, and even Meineke has slipped into this mistake three or four times (pp. 505, 515, bis, 516), and once (p. 108, comp. p. 506, note) he has written Xenocles for Carcinus. (Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 326 Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. pp. 505-517; Welcker, die Griech. Tragöd. pp. 1016-1024, 1067; Kayser, Hist. Crit. Trag. Graec. pp. 84-105; Wagner, Frag. Trag. Graec. pp. 82, 83, in Didot's Bibliotheca.)