Rhinthon  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search

Related e

Wikipedia
Wiktionary
Shop


Featured:

Rhinthon (ca. 323–285 BC) was a Hellenistic dramatist.

The son of a potter, he was probably a native of Syracuse and afterwards settled at Tarentum.

He invented the hilarotragoedia, a burlesque of tragic subjects. Such burlesques were also called phlyakes ("fooleries") and their writers phlyakographoi. He was the author of thirty-eight plays, of which only a few titles (Amphitryon, Heracles, Orestes) and lines have been preserved, chiefly by the grammarians, as illustrating dialectic Tarentine forms. The metre is iambic, in which the greatest licence is allowed. The Amphitruo of Plautus, although probably imitated from a different writer (Archippus of the Middle Comedy), may be taken as a specimen of the manner in which such subjects were treated. There is no doubt that the hilarotragoedia exercised considerable influence on Latin comedy, the Rhinthonica (i.e. fabula) being mentioned by various authorities amongst other kinds of drama known to the Romans. Scenes from these travesties are probably represented in certain vase paintings from Lower Italy.




Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "Rhinthon" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

Personal tools