Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Achaeus 3.
ACHAEUS (Ἀχαιός) of Eretria in Euboea, a tragic poet, was born B. C. 484, the year in which Aeschylus gained his first victory, and four years before the birth of Euripides. In B. C. 477, he contended with Sophocles and Euripides, and though he subsequently brought out many dramas, according to some as many as thirty or forty, he nevertheless only gained the prize once. The fragments of Achaeus contain much strange mythology, and his expressions were often forced and obscure. (Athen. x. p. 451, c.) Still in the satyrical drama he must have possessed considerable merit, for in this department some ancient critics thought him inferior only to Aeschylus. (Diog. Laer. ii. 133.) The titles of seven of his satyrical dramas and of ten of his tragedies are still known. The extant fragments of his pieces have been collected, and edited by Urlichs, Bonn, 1834. (Suidas, s. v.) This Achaeus should not be confounded with a later tragic writer of the same name, who was a native of Syracuse. According to Suidas and Phavorinus he wrote ten, according to Eudocia fourteen tragedies. (Urlichs, Ibid.)[R. W.]