Machon (

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

: Μάχων, fl. 3rd century BC) was a playwright of the

New Comedy Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece (the others being tragedy and the satyr play). Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods: Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, an ...

. He was born in

Corinth Corinth ( ; el, Κόρινθος, Kórinthos, ) is the successor to an ancient city, and is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Since the 2011 local government refor ...

or Sicyon, and lived in

Alexandria Alexandria ( or ; ar, ٱلْإِسْكَنْدَرِيَّةُ ; grc-gre, Αλεξάνδρεια, Alexándria) is the second largest city in Egypt, and the largest city on the Mediterranean coast. Founded in by Alexander the Great, Alexandri ...

. It is said that he taught the grammarian Aristophanes of Byzantium. Two fragments from two of his plays, ''Agnoia'' (Ignorance) and ''Epistole'' (The Letter), survive, along with 462 verses from a book of anecdotes about the words and deeds of notorious Athenians, preserved in the '' Deipnosophistae'' of

Athenaeus Athenaeus of Naucratis (; grc, Ἀθήναιος ὁ Nαυκρατίτης or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; la, Athenaeus Naucratita) was a Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourishing about the end of th ...

Dioscorides Pedanius Dioscorides ( grc-gre, Πεδάνιος Διοσκουρίδης, ; 40–90 AD), “the father of pharmacognosy”, was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of '' De materia medica'' (, On Medical Material) —a 5-vo ...

wrote an

epitaph An epitaph (; ) is a short text honoring a deceased person. Strictly speaking, it refers to text that is inscribed on a tombstone or plaque, but it may also be used in a figurative sense. Some epitaphs are specified by the person themselves be ...

for Machon that has also survived.

References

* A. S. F. Gow, ''Machon: The Fragments'' (Cambridge, 1965) hardback , paperback
info online
* Rudolf Kassel and Colin Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci (for the comic fragments) * Harry Thurston Peck, ''Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities'' (1898
Machon
Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights Ancient Corinthians Ancient Sicyonians Ptolemaic court New Comic poets 3rd-century BC Greek people {{AncientGreece-writer-stub