Epicharmus of Kos

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Epicharmus of

philosopher who is often credited with being one of the first comic writers, having originated the Doric or Sicilian comedic form.[1]

Literary evidence

Most of the information about Epicharmus comes from the writings of

Diogenes Laërtius, although fragments and comments come up in a host of other ancient authors as well. The standard edition of his fragments was made by Kaibel (1890) to which there has been various additions and emendments.[2] There have also been some papyrus finds of longer sections of text, but these are often so full of holes that it is difficult to make sense of them. Plato mentions Epicharmus in his dialogue Gorgias[3] and in Theaetetus. In the latter, Socrates refers to Epicharmus as "the prince of Comedy", Homer as "the prince of Tragedy", and both as "great masters of either kind of poetry".[4] Aristotle (Poetics 5.1449b5)[5] writes that he and Phormis invented comic plots (μῦθοι, muthoi).[6]

The 12th-century philosopher Constantine of Nicaea cites Epicharmus.[7]

Life

All of his biographical information should be treated as suspect. Epicharmus' birthplace is not known, but late and fairly unreliable ancient commentators suggest a number of alternatives. The Suda (E 2766) records that he was either

Bay of Kamari, near modern-day Kefalos. Diogenes Laërtius also records that Epicharmus' father was the prominent physician Helothales, who moved the family to Megara in Sicily, when Epicharmus was just a few months old. Although raised according to the Asclepiad tradition of his father, as an adult Epicharmus became a follower of Pythagoras.[8]

It is most likely that sometime after 484 BC, he lived in

Hiero I. The subject matter of his poetry covered a broad range, from exhortations against intoxication and laziness to such unorthodox topics as mythological burlesque, but he also wrote on philosophy, medicine, natural science, linguistics, and ethics. Among many other philosophical and moral lessons, Epicharmus taught that the continuous exercise of virtue could overcome heredity, so that anyone had the potential to be a good person regardless of birth. He died in his 90s (according to a statement in Lucian,[9]
he died at ninety-seven).

Diogenes Laërtius records that there was a bronze statue dedicated to him in Syracuse, by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed the following inscription:[10]

As the bright sun excels the other stars,
As the sea far exceeds the river streams:
So does sage Epicharmus men surpass,
Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned.

Theocritus' Epigram 18 (AP IX 60; Kassel and Austin Test. 18) was written in his honour.

The cosmopolitan scientist and traveler Alexander von Humboldt turned Epicharmus into the protagonist of the only literary text he ever published; it appeared 1795 in Friedrich Schiller's journal Horen under the title "Die Lebenskraft oder der Rhodische Genius" [The Vital Force or the Rhodian Genius]. Epicharmos figures here as a natural philosopher and interpreter of art.[11]

Works

Epicharmus wrote between thirty-five and fifty-two comedies, though many have been lost or exist only in fragments. Along with his contemporary Phormis, he was alternately praised and denounced for ridiculing the great mythical heroes. At the time it would have been dangerous to present comedies in Syracuse like those of the Athenian stage, in which attacks were made upon the authorities. Accordingly, the comedies of Epicharmus are calculated not to give offence to the ruler. They are either mythological travesties or character comedies.[12]

His two most famous works were Agrōstīnos ("The Country-Dweller," or "Clodhopper"), which dealt humorously with the rustic lifestyle, and Hebes Gamos ("The Marriage of Hebe"), in which Heracles was portrayed as a glutton. He also depicted Odysseus as an unheroic figure of burlesque by parodying the Homeric image for comic effect in his Odysseùs Autómolos (Ulysses the Deserter).[13] Additional works include

  • Alkyon
  • Amykos ("Amycus")
  • Harpagai
  • Bakkhai
  • Bousiris ("Busiris")
  • Ga Kai Thalassa ("Earth and Sea")
  • Deukalion ("Deucalion")
  • Dionysoi ("The Dionysuses")
  • Diphilus
  • Elpis ("Hope"), or Ploutos ("Wealth")
  • Heorta kai Nasoi
  • Epinikios
  • Herakleitos ("Heraclitus")
  • Thearoi ("Spectators")
  • Hephaistos ("Hephaestus"), or Komastai ("The Revelers")
  • Kyklops ("The Cyclops")
  • Logos kai Logeina
  • Megaris ("Woman From Megara")
  • Menes ("Months")
  • Odysseus Nauagos ("Odysseus Shipwrecked")
  • Orya ("The Sausage")
  • Periallos
  • Persai ("The Persians")
  • Pithon ("The Little Ape" or "Monkey")
  • Seirenes ("Sirens")
  • Skiron
  • Sphinx
  • Triakades
  • Troes ("Trojan Men")
  • Philoktetes ("Philoctetes")
  • Choreuontes ("The Dancers")
  • Chytrai ("The Pots")

Reproducing a mid-4th century BC accusation from

Diogenes Laërtius in his Lives of Eminent Philosophers[14] conserves a late opinion that Plato plagiarized several of Epicharmus's ideas. "[H]e [Plato] derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the essays dedicated to Amyntas [of Heraclea]...." Laërtius then lists, in III, 10
, the several ways that Plato "employs the words of Epicharmus."

Quotations

Notes

  1. ISBN 0-19-928785-6
  2. ^ Notably Pickard-Cambridge's Dithyramb, Tragedy, Comedy (1927); Kassel and Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci (2001) and Lucía Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén, Epicarmo de Siracusa: testimonios y fragmentos (1996).
  3. ^ Plato, Gorgias [505e]: "So that, in Epicharmus's phrase, 'what two men spake erewhile' I may prove I can manage single-handed". [1]
  4. ^ "Summon the great masters of either kind of poetry- Epicharmus, the prince of Comedy, and Homer of Tragedy", Theaetetus, by Plato, section §152e. [2] (translation by Benjamin Jowett [3]). There is some variability in translation of the passage. Words like "king", "chief", "leader", "master" are used in the place of "prince" in different translations. The basic Greek word in Plato is "akroi" from "akros" meaning topmost or high up. In this context it means "of a degree highest of its kind" or "consummate" (cf. Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon). [4]
  5. ^ Aristotle, Poetics 5.1449b5
  6. ^ cf. P. W. Buckham, p. 245
  7. ^ Merle Eisenberg and David Jenkins, "The Philosophy of Constantine the Philosopher of Nicaea", Byzantinische Zeitschrift 114.1 (2021): 145.
  8. ^ cf. P.W.Buckham, p.164, "But Epicharmus was a philosopher and a Pythagorean"; and Pickard-Cambridge, p. 232, "Epicharmus was a hearer of Pythagoras".
  9. ^ Lucian, Macrobii, 25 (cf. [5])
  10. ^ Theocritus, Epigrams, 17 (cf. [6])
  11. ^ Andreas Daum: Social Relations, Shared Practices, and Emotions: Alexander von Humboldt’s Excursion into Literary Classicism and the Challenges to Science around 1800. In: Journal of Modern History 91 (2019), pp. 1‒37, see especially pp. 12‒19, 28, 32, 35.
  12. ^  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Epicharmus". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 9 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 680–681.
  13. ^ Martin Revermann, 'Paraepic poetry:point(s) and practices,' in Emmanuela Bakola, Lucia Prauscello, Mario Telò, Greek Comedy and the Discourse of Genres, Cambridge University Press 2013 pp.101-127 esp.pp.107ff.
  14. Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers
    , iii. 9
  15. ^ Humanistictexts.org Archived 2008-02-20 at the Wayback Machine

References

External links

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