The New International Encyclopædia/Agathon

AG′ATHON, (Gk. Ἀγάθων) (447?–401? B.C.). An Athenian tragic poet. He gained his first victory at the Lenæan festival, in 416 B.C., and this victory is celebrated in Plato's Symposium. He was well-to-do and had many friends, among whom were Euripides and Plato. His style was flowery and ornate rather than strong or sublime, and his works were full of the rhetorical figures which marked the style of Gorgias. Still, after Æschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, he was the most important tragic poet of Greece. According to Aristotle, he began the practice of making the chorus songs mere interludes, disconnected in theme from the dialogue. He is ridiculed in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazusæ. About thirty short fragments of Agathon are preserved.