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"As the bright sun excels the other stars, As the sea far exceeds the river streams: So does sage Epicharmus men surpass, Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned." An inscription of a statue dedicated to Epicharmus in Syracuse
Epicharmus is considered to have lived within the hundred year period between c. 540 and c. 450 BC. He was a Greek dramatist and philosopher often credited with being one of the first comic writers, having originated the Doric or Sicilian comedic form. Aristotle (Poetics 5 1449b5 [1]) writes that he and Phormis invented comic plots (muthos).[2]
Most of the information we have about Epicharmus comes from the writings of Athenaeus, Suidas and Diogenes Laertius, but fragments and comments come up in a host of other ancient authors as well. There have also been some papyrus finds of longer sections of text, but these are often so full of holes that it is difficult to make sense of them.
Plato mentions Epicharmus in his dialogue Gorgias [3] and in Theaetetus. In the latter, Socrates refers to Epicharmus as "the prince of Comedy", Homer as "the prince of Tragedy", and both as "great masters of either kind of poetry".[4]
More references by ancient authors can be found discussed in Pickard-Cambridge's Dithyramb, Tragedy, Comedy [5] and they are collected in Greek in Kassel and Austin's new edition of the fragments in Poetae Comici Graeci, (2001).
Life and work
Epicharmus' birth place is not known, but late and fairly unreliable ancient commentators suggest a number of alternatives. The Suda (E 2766) records that he was either Syracusan by birth or from the Sikanian city of Krastos. Diogenes Laertius (VIII 78) records that Epicharmus was born in Astypalea, the ancient capital of Kos on the Bay of Kamari , near modern-day Kefalos. Diogenes Laertius also records that his father, was the prominent physician Helothales, moved the family to Megara, Sicily when Epicharmus was just a few months old. Although raised according to the Asclepiad tradition of his father, as an adult Epicharmus became a follower of Pythagoras.[6] All of this biographical information could be treated as suspect. More references to alternative origins and discussion of their likelihood can be found in Pickard-Cambridge's Tragedy, Comedy, Dithyramb, and more recently in Rodriguez Noriega Guillen's Epicarmo di Siracusa: Testimonios y Fragmentos. [7] The standard edition of his fragments by Kaibel has now been updated with the publication of Kassel and Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci.
It is most likely that sometime after the 484 BC, he lived in Syracuse, and worked as a poet for the tyrants Gelo and Hiero I.. The subject matter of his poetry covered a broad range, from exhortations against intoxication and laziness to such unorthodox topics as mythological burlesque, but he also wrote on philosophy, medicine, natural science, linguistics, and ethics.
Among many other philosophical and moral lessons, Epicharmus taught that the continuous exercise of virtue could overcome hereditary, so that anyone had the potential to be a good person regardless of birth.
He died in his 90s (according to a statement in Lucian, Macrobii, 25, he died at ninety-seven).
Diogenes Laertius records that there was a bronze statue dedicated to him in Syracuse, by the inhabitants, for which Theocritus composed the following inscription [8]:
"As the bright sun excels the other stars, As the sea far exceeds the river streams: So does sage Epicharmus men surpass, Whom hospitable Syracuse has crowned."
Theocritus Epigram 18 (AP IX 60; Kassel and Austin Test. 18) is also written in his honor.
Works
Epicharmus wrote somewhere between 35 and 52 comedies, though many have been lost or exist only in fragments. Along with his contemporary Phormis, he was alternately praised or denounced for ridiculing the great mythic heros.
His two most famous works were Agrostinos which dealt humorously with the agricultural lifestyle, and Marriage of Hebe to Hercules, in which Hercules was portrayed as a glutton. Additional works include Odysseus automolos, Cyclops, Amykos, and Promytheus.
Quotations
"Judgement, not passion should prevail."
"The mind sees and the mind hears. The rest is blind and deaf."
"A mortal should think mortal thoughts, not immortal thoughts."
"The best thing a man can have, in my view, is health."
"The hand washes the hand: give something and you may get something."
"Then what is the nature of men? Blown up bladders!" [9]
Notes
↑ Aristotle, Poetics, 5 1449b5 )
↑ cf. P.W.Buckham, p.245
↑ Plato, Gorgias, [505e]: "So that, in Epicharmus's phrase, 'what two men spake erewhile' I may prove I can manage single-handed". [11]
↑ "Summon the great masters of either kind of poetry- Epicharmus, the prince of Comedy, and Homer of Tragedy", Theaetetus, by Plato, section §152e. [12] (translation by Benjamin Jowett [13]). There is some variability in translation of the passage. Words like "king", "chief", "leader", "master" are used in the place of "prince" in different translations. The basic Greek word in Plato is "akroi" from "akros" meaning topmost or high up. In this context it means "of a degree highest of its kind" or "consummate" (cf. Liddell & Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon). [14]
↑ cf. A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Chapter IV, beginning on p. 230, on Epicharmus works and life, and citations by authors on him. Also it addresses the controversy about when and where he was born.
↑ cf. P.W.Buckham, p.164, "But Epicharmus was a philosopher and a Pythagorean"; and Pickard-Cambridge, p.232, "Epicharmus was a hearer of Pythagoras".
↑ [15]
↑ Theocritus, Epigrams, 17 -- {{cf. [16])
↑ cf. [17]
References
Philip Wentworth Buckham, Theatre of the Greeks, 1827.
P.E. Easterling (Series Editor), Bernard M.W. Knox (Editor), Cambridge History of Classical Literature, v.I, Greek Literature, 1985. ISBN 0-521-21042-9, cf. Chapter 12, p.367 on Epicharmus and others.
Rudolf Kassel, C. Austin (Editor) Poetae Comici Graeci: Agathenor-Aristonymus (Poetae Comici Graeci), 1991.
A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy (1927, repr. 1962).
Plato, Theaetetus.
William Ridgeway, contrib. The Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915.
Xavier Riu, Dionysism and Comedy, 1999. [18]
Lucia Rodríguez-Noriega Guillén, Epicarmo de Siracusa. Testimonios y Fragmentos. Edición crítica bilingüe.; Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1996. Reviewed by Kathryn Bosher, University of Michigan, in Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2005.10.24
Smith, William, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, 1870, article on Epicharmus, [19]
Theocritus, Idylls and Epigrams. (Theocritus translated into English Verse by C.S. Calverley, [20])
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