Antiphanes (comic poet)


Antiphanes is regarded as the most important writer of the Middle Attic comedy with the exception of Alexis.
He was apparently a foreigner and, by some accounts, was the child of slaves. He settled in Athens, where he began to write about 387. He was extremely prolific: more than 200 of the 365 comedies attributed to him are known from the titles and considerable fragments preserved in Athenaeus. His plays chiefly deal with matters connected to mythological subjects, although others referenced particular professional and national persons or characters, while other plays focused on the intrigues of personal life. The Suda claims he died at the age of seventy-four after being struck by a pear. About 130 titles of his plays are known.
Stephanus, an Athenian comic poet of the New Comedy, is said to have exhibited some of the plays of Antiphanes and was probably his son. One quotation by Athenaeus is the only surviving fragment of the works of Stephanus.

Surviving titles and fragments