(Σώφρων), of Syracuse, the son of Agathocles and Damnasyllis, was the principal writer, and in one sense the inventor, of that species of composition called the Mime (μῖμος), which was one of the numerous varieties of the Dorian Comedy.
For this reason he is sometimes called a comic poet, a denomination which has led Suidas (s. v.) and, after him, some modern writers, into the mistake of distinguishing two persons of the name, the one a comic poet, and the other the mimographer.
The time at which Sophron flourished is loosely stated by Suidas as "the times of Xerxes and Euripides ;" but we have another evidence for his date in the statement that his son Xenarchus lived at the court of Dionysius I., during the Rhegian War (B. C. 399-387; see Clinton, F. H. s. a. 393). All that can be said, therefore, with any certainty, is that Sophron flourished during the middle, and perhaps the latter part of the fifth century B. C., perhaps about B. C. 460-420. rather more than half a century later than Epicharmus.
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