A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

Smith, William

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. William Smith, LLD, ed. 1890

3. An Athenian comic poet of the Old Comedy, as some lines upon Theramenes, from his Δημοτυνδάρεως, clearly show (Phot. and Suid. s. v. τριῶν κακῶν); although the greater number of the titles of his plays refer to the nativities of the gods, a class of subjects which belongs to the Middle Comedy. He must therefore be assigned to the last period of the Old Comedy and the beginning of the Middle; as is further proved by an allusion, in the play already quoted, to Hyperbolus, who died in B. C. 411. (Schol. ad Lucian. Tim. 30.) This play, the Δημοτυνδάρεως, is conjectured by Kühn, with much inigenuity, to have been a sort of parody on the recal of Tyndarus to life, applying the fable to the resuscitation of the Atheinian people. The period, at which such a subject is likely to have been chosen, would be the year B. C. 402, after the overthrow of the Thirty Tyrants. The titles of his plays, as mentioned by Suidas, are, Νίπτρα, Δημοτυνδάρεως, Διονύσου γοναί, Μουσῶν γοναί, Ἀφροδίτης γοναί, to which Eudocia adds Ἄρεως γοναί. (Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol. i. pp. 260, 261, vol. ii. pp. 867-872; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. ii. p. 488.)

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