Callias ( grc-gre, Καλλίας), sometimes called by the nickname Schoenion (), was a poet of the

Old Comedy Old Comedy (''archaia'') is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians.Mastromarco (1994) p.12 The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes – whose works, with the ...

, not to be confused with the three Athenian aristocrats named Callias, the last of which,

Callias III Callias ( el, Kαλλίας) was an ancient Athenian aristocrat and political figure. He was the son of Hipponicus and an unnamed woman (she later married Pericles), an Alcmaeonid and the third member of one of the most distinguished Athenian ...

, appears in Plato's '' Protagoras''. Callias is best known for a few extant fragments of a comedy, ''The Letter Tragedy''. This comedy featured a 24-piece chorus that consisted of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. On this work there has been debate since the early 19th century over the meaning of the play's claim to have influenced Greek tragedy. Many scholars take Callias' claim to have been ironic and a joke. The titles of his other known plays are: ''Aigyptios'' (The Egyptian), ''Atalante'', ''Batrakhoi'' (Frogs), ''Kyklopes'' (The Cyclopes), ''Pedetai'' (Men In Shackles), ''Scholazontes'' (Men At Leisure), and a fragmentary title ''...era Sidera'', which has been reconstructed as either ''Hypera Sidera'' (Iron Pestles) or ''Entera Sidera'' (Iron Guts). Callias appears to have been given the teasing nickname Schoinion by his rivals, probably because his father was a rope maker.Maurizio Sonnino, "Short Notes on Two Comic Fragments (Callias fr. 18 K.-A.; Theopompus Comicus fr. 64 K.-A.)," ''Phoenix'', Vol. 53, No. 3/4. Autumn - Winter 1999, p. 330. It is also recorded that he lampooned the philosopher

Socrates Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no te ...

References

{{authority control Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights Old Comic poets