Diphilus

Diphilus, of Sinope, poet of the new Attic comedy and contemporary of Menander (342-291 BC). Most of his plays were written and acted at Athens, but he led a wandering life, and died at Smyrna.

He was on intimate terms with the famous courtesan Gnathaena (Athenaeus xiii. pp. 579, 583). He is said to have written 100 comedies, the titles of fifty of which are preserved. He sometimes acted himself. To judge from the imitations of Plautus. (Casina from the KXflpo€9z€voL, Asinaria from the ‘Ova’yós, Rudens from some other play), he was very skilful in the construction of his plots. Terence also tells us that he introduced into the Adelphi (ii. I) a scene from the ~iwcL7roOv1~1a~ovre1, which had been omitted by Plautus in his adaptation (Commorienles) of the same play.

The style of Diphilus was simple and natural, and his language on the whole good Attic; he paid great attention to vérsification, and was supposed to have invented a peculiar kind of metre. The ancients were undecided whether to class him among the writers of the New or Middle comedy. In his fondness for mythological subjects (Hercules, Theseus) and his introduction on the stage (by a bold anachronism) of the poets Archilochus and Hipponax as rivals of Sappho, he approximates to the spirit of the latter.

Fragments in H Koch, Comicorum Atticorum fragmenta, ii.; see J Denis, La Comédie grecque (1886), ii. p. 414; RW Bond in Classical Review (Feb. 1910, with trans. of Emporos fragm.).

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.