Pherecrates


Pherecrates was a Greek poet of Athenian Old Comedy, and a rough contemporary of Cratinus, Crates and Aristophanes.
He was victorious at least once at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-440s, and twice at the Lenaia, first probably in the mid- to late 430s. He was especially famous for his inventive imagination, and the elegance and purity of his diction are attested by the epithet Ἀττικώτατος applied to him by Athenaeus and the sophist Phrynichus. He was the inventor of a new meter, called after him, the Pherecratean, which frequently occurs in the choruses of Greek tragedies and in Horace. According to an anonymous essay on tragedy, Pherecrates wrote 18 plays, suggesting that one or more of the 19 surviving titles must be eliminated somehow.

Surviving Titles and Fragments

288 fragments of his comedies survive, along with the following 19 titles:
The standard edition of the fragments and testimonia is in Rudolf Kassel and Colin François Lloyd Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci Vol. VII. The eight-volume Poetae Comici Graeci produced from 1983 to 2001 replaces the outdated collections Fragmenta Comicorum Graecorum by August Meineke, Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta by Theodor Kock and Comicorum Graecorum Fragmenta by Georg Kaibel.