Machon (
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
: Μάχων, fl. 3rd century BC) was a
playwright
A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes play (theatre), plays, which are a form of drama that primarily consists of dialogue between Character (arts), characters and is intended for Theatre, theatrical performance rather than just
Readin ...
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. Greek comedy was distinguished from tragedy by its happy endings and use of comically ...
.
He was born in
Corinth
Corinth ( ; , ) is a municipality in Corinthia in Greece. The successor to the ancient Corinth, ancient city of Corinth, it is a former municipality in Corinthia, Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese, which is located in south-central Greece. Sin ...
or
Sicyon
Sicyon (; ; ''gen''.: Σικυῶνος) or Sikyōn was an ancient Greek city state situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day regional unit of Corinthia. The ruins lie just west of th ...
, and lived in
Alexandria
Alexandria ( ; ) is the List of cities and towns in Egypt#Largest cities, second largest city in Egypt and the List of coastal settlements of the Mediterranean Sea, largest city on the Mediterranean coast. It lies at the western edge of the Nile ...
. It is said that he taught the grammarian
Aristophanes of Byzantium
__NOTOC__
Aristophanes of Byzantium ( ; Byzantium – Alexandria BC) was a Hellenistic Greek scholar, critic and grammarian, particularly renowned for his work in Homeric scholarship, but also for work on other classical authors such as ...
. 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
Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...
, preserved in the ''
Deipnosophistae
The ''Deipnosophistae'' (, ''Deipnosophistaí'', lit. , where ''sophists'' may be translated more loosely as ) is a work written in Ancient Greek by Athenaeus of Naucratis. It is a long work of Greek literature, literary, Ancient history, h ...
'' of
Athenaeus
Athenaeus of Naucratis (, or Nαυκράτιος, ''Athēnaios Naukratitēs'' or ''Naukratios''; ) was an ancient Greek rhetorician and Grammarian (Greco-Roman), grammarian, flourishing about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century ...
.
Dioscorides
Pedanius Dioscorides (, ; 40–90 AD), "the father of pharmacognosy", was a Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of (in the original , , both meaning "On Materia medica, Medical Material") , a 5-volume Greek encyclopedic phar ...
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, vol. V, pp. 623–5 (the two comic fragments, XIX and XX in Gow)
* Harry Thurston Peck, ''Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities'' (1898
Machon
Ancient Corinthians
Ancient Sicyonians
Ptolemaic court
New Comic poets
3rd-century BC Greek people
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