Epicharmus of Cos

Epicharmus of Cos was an ancient Greek comic poet and playwright associated with Syracuse in Sicily. His lost comedies helped shape early Greek comedy and later traditions of comic drama.

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Syracuse: An ancient Greek city on Sicily’s southeastern coast, founded by settlers from Corinth. Epicharmus worked in the city whose rulers supported Greek culture and performance.
Doric Greek: A group of ancient Greek dialects used in regions including Sicily and the Peloponnese. Fragments attributed to Epicharmus preserve features of Doric speech.
Fragments of ancient Greek comedy: Surviving quotations and testimonia from Greek comedies whose complete texts are lost. Most knowledge of Epicharmus’s plays comes through excerpts preserved by later writers.
Dionysius I of Syracuse: A ruler of Syracuse from 405 to 367 BCE who was also associated with tragic poetry. Ancient biographical tradition connects Epicharmus with the earlier Syracusan court, in contrast to Dionysius’s later period.
Magna Graecia: The ancient Greek settlements and communities of southern Italy and Sicily. His Sicilian career belongs to a wider Greek-speaking world beyond mainland Greece.
Satyr play: An ancient Greek dramatic form that combined mythic subjects with a chorus of satyrs and comic elements. Its mythological parody offers a useful comparison with Epicharmus’s myth-based comic plots.
Athenaeus: A Greek author of the late second or early third century CE, known for the dialogue Deipnosophistae. His work preserves quotations and references to Epicharmus’s comedies.
Xenophanes: A sixth-century BCE Greek poet and philosopher known for criticizing anthropomorphic ideas about the gods. Later accounts connect both men to Sicily, but their surviving reputations center on different forms of thought.
Greek comedy: A dramatic genre of ancient Greece that used comic plots, characters, and performance. Epicharmus is among the earliest known poets associated with this genre.
Old Comedy: The earliest surviving phase of Athenian comedy, known especially through Aristophanes. Epicharmus predates its surviving masterpieces and represents a distinct Sicilian tradition.