Epigenes of Athens ( grc-gre, Ἐπιγένης ὁ Ἀθηναῖος, c. 4th century BC) was an
Athenian comic poet of the
Middle 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 ...
.
Pollux indeed speaks of him as ''neôn tis kômikôn,'' but the terms "middle" and "new," as Clinton remarks, are not always very carefully applied. Epigenes himself, in a fragment of his play called ''The Little Tomb'' (Mnêmation) speaks of
Pixodarus, prince of
Caria, as "the king's son"; and from this
Meineke argues that the comedy in question must have been written while
Hecatomnus, the father of Pixodarus, was yet alive, and perhaps about 380 BC. We find besides in
Athenaeus, that there was a doubt among the ancients whether the play called ''Disappearance of the Money'' (Argyrion Aphanismos) should be assigned to Epigenes or
Antiphanes. These poets therefore must have been contemporaries. The Suda mentions two other plays written by Epigenes: ''Heroine'' and ''Revelry''.
The fragments of the comedies of Epigenes have been collected by Meineke and Kock.
[Theodor Kock, ''Comicorum Atticorum Fragmenta'', vol.2, p.416-419]
References
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Footnotes
{{DEFAULTSORT:Epigenes Of Athens
Middle Comic poets
4th-century BC Athenians