Epicharmus

Kathryn Bosher (Independent Scholar - North America)

The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.1: Greek Writing and Culture: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial, -800--100.
Vol. editors: Jonathan Burgess (University of Toronto), Anca Dan (École Practique de Hautes Études PSL), Martine Diepenbroek (University of Johannesburg), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Mali Skotheim (Ashoka University), Laura Swift (The Open University), Guendalina Daniela Maria Taietti (University of Liverpool)

Dates

Born c. -540
Died c. -450
Activity c. -520-c. -450

Places

Born in Ancient Greece
Active in Ancient Greece

Activities

Primary

Playwright / Dramatist

Resources

Epicharmus' Works

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Epicharmus was a comic playwright and perhaps a philosopher, who worked in Syracuse in the first half of the 5th century BCE. He was a contemporary of Aeschylus, as well as Pindar and Bacchylides. Little of his work survives, but antiquity thought very highly of him. He is credited, for example, with the invention of comic plot structure, and praised and remembered well into the Roman period. He is important not only in his own right, but because he shows that the development of ancient drama was not the story of Athens alone. At least one other city, Syracuse, played an important role.

Many tales circulated about Epicharmus in antiquity. These give us a sense of his enormous importance in the history of Greek literature, but they obscure the details of his life, and even of his work.

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1838 words

Citation: Bosher, Kathryn. "Epicharmus". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=11802, accessed 22 November 2024.]