The New International Encyclopædia/Cratinus

CRATI′NUS (Lat., from Gk. Κρατῖνος, Kratinos) ( ? –c.421 B.C.). An Athenian comic poet. He was born in the latter part of the sixth century B.C., and was one of the seven poets of the Old Comedy named in the canon of the Alexandrians. He first presented a comedy in 453; in all he left twenty-one plays with which he had won nine victories. He is said to have been the first to give comedy a political turn, and by the introduction of a third actor to place it on a level with tragedy. A follower of Cimon and the Conservative Party, he sharply attacked Pericles in two plays; and in his Ἀρχίλοχοι, Archilochoi, he represented a contest of poets which may well have been Aristophanes's model in his Frogs. Aristophanes defeated Cratinus in 425 with his Acharnians, and in 424 with the Knights. In the parabasis of the latter play he refers to his elder rival as 'an ancient ruin,' whereupon Cratinus retorted in 423 with his Wineflask, which won the first prize over Aristophanes's Clouds. The fragments of his work are collected by Kock, Comicorum Alticorum Fragmenta, vol. i. (Leipzig, 1880).