The New International Encyclopædia/Sophron of Syracuse

SOPHRON (Lat., from Gk. Σώφρων) OF SYRACUSE (B.C. 460–420). A Greek writer of mimes. Though from time immemorial the Greeks of Sicily had practiced the mimes at their public festival, Sophron was the first to reduce them to the form of a literary composition. They consisted in the representation of scenes from actual life, chiefly in the lower classes, brought out by a dramatic dialogue, interspersed with numerous colloquial forms of speech. These pieces of Sophron, which were in the Doric-Greek dialect and in a kind of cadenced prose, were great favorites with Plato, who made use of them for the dramatic form of his dialogues (Quint., i. 10, 17; Diog. Laert., iii. 13). It is said that Theocritus borrowed his second and fifteenth idyls from Sophron. Very unsatisfactory fragments have been preserved. Consult Botzon's collection (Marienburg, 1867) and his De Sophrone et Henarcho Mimographis (Lyck, 1856).