(). of Athens, was one of the best poets of the
Old Comedy (Anon. de Corn. p. xxviii.). He was contemporary with the
comic poets Cratinus, Crates, Eupolis, Plato, and Aristophanes (Suid. s.
v.Πλάτων), being somewhat younger than the first two, and
somewhat older than the others. One of the most important testimonies respecting him is
evidently corrupted, but can be amended very well; it is as follows (Anon. de
Com. p. xxix) :--Φερεκράτης Ἀθηναῖος νικᾷ ἐπὶ
θεάτρου γινόμενος, ὁ δὲ ὑποκριτὴς ἐξήλωκε Κράτητα. Καὶ αὖ τοῦ μὲν λοιδορεῖν
ἀπέστη, πράγματα δὲ εἰσηγούμενος καινὰ ηὐδοκίμει γενόμενος εὑρετικὸς
μύθων. Dobree corrects the passage thus : --Φ.Α.
νικᾷ ἐπὶ Θεοδώρου, γενόμενος δὲ ὑποκριτὴς ἐζήλωκε Κράτητα, κ.τ.λ. ;
and his emendation is approved by Meineke and others of our best critical scholars. From the
passage, thus read, we learn that Pherecrates gained his first victory in the archonship of
Theodorus, B. C. 438; and that he imitated the style of Crates,
whose actor he had been. From the latter part of the quotation, and from an important passage
in Aristotle (Aristot. Poet. 5) we see what was the
character of the alteration in comedy, commenced by Crates, and carried on by Pherecrates;
namely, that they very much modified the coarse satire and vituperation of which this sort of
poetry had previously been the vehicle (whatt Aristotle calls ἡ
ἰαμβικὴ ἰδέα), and constructed their comedies on the basis of a regular plot,
and with more dramatic action. * Dindorf reads ὑπόπικρος for ὑποκριτὴς in the above
passage. This makes no real difference in the meaning, except with reference to Pherecrates
having been an actor for Crates. The correction seems arbitrary, and moreover unnecessary, as
it expresses somewhat obscurely what is clearly stated in the next clause. Pherecrates
did not, however, abstain altogether from personal satire, for we see by the fragments of his
plays that he attacked Alcibiades, the tragic poet Melanthius, and others (Ath. viii. p.
343c., xii. p. 538b. ; Phot. Lex. p. 626, 10). But still, as the
fragments also show, his chief characteristics were, ingenuity in his plots and elegance in
diction : hence he is called Ἀττικώτατος (Ath. vi. p.
268e; Steph. Byz. p. 43; Suid. s.v.Ἀθηναία). His language is not, however, so severely
pure as that of Aristophanes and other comic poets of the age, as Meineke shows by several
examples.
Invention of the Pherecratean Metre
Of the invention of the new metre, which was named, after him, the Pherecratean, he himself boasts in the following lines (apud Hephaest. 10.5, 15.15, Schol in Ar. Naub. 563) :-- ἄνδρες, πρόσχετε τὸν νοῦνἐξευρήματι καινῷσυμπτύκτοις ἀναπαίστοις.
The system of the verse, as shown in the above example, is which may be best
explained as a choriambus, with a spondee for its base, and a long syllable for its
termination. Pherecrates himself seems to call it an anapaestic metre; and it might be
scanned as such : but he probably only means that he used it in the parabases, which were
often called anapaests, because they were originally in the anapaestic
metre (in fact we hold the anapaestic verse to be, in its origin, choriambic). Hephaestion
explains the metre as an hephthemimeral antispastic, or, in other words,
an antispastic dimeter catalectio (Hephaest. ll. cc.
; comp. Gaisford's Notes). The metre is very frequent in the choruses of the Greek
tragedians, and in Horace, as, for example, Grato
Pyrrha sub antro.
Works
There is a slight difference in the statements respecting the number of his plays. The
Anonymous writer on comedy says eighteen, Suidas and Eudocia sixteen. The extant titles, when
properly sifted, are reduced to eighteen, of which some are doubtful. The number to which
Meineke reduces them is fifteen, namely, Ἄγριοι, Αὐτόμολοι,
Γρᾶες, Δουλοδιδάσκαλος, Ἐπιλήσμων ἢ Θάλαττα, Ἰπνὸς ἢ Παννυχίς, Κοριαννώ,
Κραπάταλοι, Λῆροι, Μυρμηκάνθρωποι, Πετάλη, Τυραννίς, Ψευδηρακλῆς..
The Ἄγριοι
Of these the most interesting is the Ἄγριοι, on
account of the reference to it in Plato's Protagoras (p. 327d.), which
has given rise to much discussion. Heinrichs has endeavoured to show that the subject of the
play related to those corruptions of the art of music of which the comic poets so frequently
complain, and that one of the principal performers was the Centaur Cheiron, who expounded
the laws of the ancient music to a chorus of wild men (ἄγριοι). that is, either Centaurs or Satyrs; and he meets the obvious objection, that the term μισάνθοωποι, which Plato applies to the Chorus, is not suitable to describe
Satyrs or Centaurs, by changing it into ἡμιάνθρωποι
(Demonstratio et Restitutio loci corrupti e Platonis Protagra, Kiliae,
1813, and also in his work Epimenides aus Creta, &c. pp. 188, 192,
foll.). The same view is adopted by Ast and Jacobs, but with a less violent change in
Plato's text, namely, μιξάνθρωποι. The common reading
is, however, successfully defended by Meineke, who shows that there is no sufficient reason
for supposing that Cheiron appeared in the Ἄγριοι at
all, or that the Chorus were not really what the title and the allusion in Plato would
naturally lead us to suppose, namely, wild men. The play seems to have
been a satire on the social corruptions of Athens, through the medium of the feelings
excited at the view of them in men who are uncivilized themselves and enemies to the
civilized part of mankind. The play was acted at the Lenaea, in the month of February, B. C. 420 (Plat. l.c. ; Ath. v. p. 218d.).
Subjects of the other plays
The subjects of the remaining plays are fully discussed by Meineke.
Confusion with Crates and with Pherecydes.
The name of Pherecrates is sometimes confounded with Crates and with
Pherecydes.
Editions
Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. i. pp. 66-86, vol. ii. pp.
252-360; Bergk, Reliq. Comoed. Att. Antiq. pp.
284-306.