Phrynichus, son of Polyphradmon (fl. 494 B.C.)
The least shadowy among the pre-Æschylean dramatists is Phrynichus. Tradition gives us the names of nine of his plays, and tells us that he used the trochaic tetrameter in his dialogue, and introduced women's parts. We hear that he made a play on the Capture of Milêtus;* that a fine was put on him for doing so, and notice issued that the subject must not be treated again. The fall of Milêtus was a national grief, and perhaps a disgrace; at any rate, it involved party politics of too extreme a sort. Phrynichus had better fortune with his other play from contemporary history, the Phœnissæ;* its chorus representing the wives of Xerxes' Phœnician sailors, and its opening scene the king's council-chamber, with the elders waiting for news of the great war. He won the prize that time, and probably had for 'chorêgus' Themistocles himself, the real, though of course unmentioned, hero of the piece. It is the lyrics that we most regret to have lost, the quaint obsolete songs still hummed in the days of the Peloponnesian War by the tough old survivors of Marathon, who went about at unearthly hours of the morning—
"Lights in their hands, old music on their lips,
Wild honey and the East and loveliness."[1]
A certain grace and tenderness suggested by our remains of Phrynichus enable us to realise how much Æschylus's grand style is due to his own character rather than to the conditions of the art in his time; though it remains true that the Persian War did for tragedy what the Migrations seem to have done for Homer, and that Phrynichus and Æschylus are both of them 'men of Marathon.'
- ↑ Aristoph. Vesp. 220.
