Iophon ( grc-gre, Ἰοφῶν,
fl.
''Floruit'' (; abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for "they flourished") denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indicatin ...
428 BC – 405 BC) was a
Greek tragic
poet and son of
Sophocles.
Iophon gained the second prize in tragic competition in 428 BC,
Euripides being first, and
Ion third. He must have been alive in 405 BC, the date of the production of ''
The Frogs'' of
Aristophanes, in which he is spoken of as the only good
Athenian tragic poet, although it is hinted that he owed much to his fathers' assistance. He wrote fifty plays, of which only a few fragments and the following eight titles remain: ''Achilles'', ''Actaeon'', ''Aulodoi'' ("The Flute-Singers"), ''Bacchae'', ''Dexamenus'', ''Iliou Persis'' ("The Sacking of Troy"), ''Pentheus,'' and ''Telephus''.
It is said that Iophon accused his father before the court of the ''phratores'' of being incapable of managing his affairs, so that he might gain the guardianship of his father's fortune. Sophocles replied to this charge by reading the chorus of the ''
Oedipus at Colonus'' (688 ff.), which he was currently writing. The piece so proved that he was still in possession of all his mental faculties that he was acquitted.
References
* This work in turn cites:
** Aristophanes, ''Frogs'', 73, 78, with ''
scholia''
**
Cicero, ''De senectute'', vii. 22
**
Plutarch, ''Moralia'', 785 B
**
A. Nauck, ''Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta'' (1889)
** O. Wolff, ''De Iophonte poëta'' (Leipzig, 1884)
5th-century BC Athenians
Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights
Tragic poets
5th-century BC writers
Year of birth unknown
Year of death unknown
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