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

(Σώπατρος), literary.

1. Of Paphos, a writer of parody and burlesque (φλυακογράφος), who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and continued to flourish down to the reign of Ptolemy II., as Athenaeus (2.71, b.) informs us, on the authority of the poet himself : his period may therefore be regarded as the forty years from B. C. 323 to 283 (Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. s. a. 283). He is frequently mentioned by Athenaeus, who occasionally calls him Φάκιος, which seems to be a nickname, derived from the word φακῆ (lentile-porridge, which appears to have been the title of one of Sopater's plays), and applied to him as a punning variation upon Πάφιος.