Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/890

854 P H R P H R her native town ; the former was golden or plated with gold, the latter was of marble. It is said that at her request Praxiteles promised her the most beautiful of his works, but would not tell her which was it. Having dis covered by a stratagem that of his works he prized most a statue of Love (Eros) and one of a Satyr, she asked of him the former and dedicated it in Thespise. Being accused of impiety by En: Mas, she was defended by the orator Hyperides, one of her lovers. When it seemed that the verdict was about to be against her, he rent her robe and displayed her lovely bosom, which so moved her judges that they acquitted her. According to others it was Phryne herself who thus displayed her charms. She is said to have made an attempt on the virtue of the philo sopher Xenocrates, and to have signally failed. PHRYNICHUS, the name of a number of distinguished Greeks, of whom the most prominent were the following. 1. PHRYNICHUS, one of the earliest tragic poets of Athens, was the son of Polyphradmon, and a pupil or follower of Thespis, who is commonly regarded as the founder of tragedy. But such were the improvements introduced by Phrynichus that some of the ancients regarded him as its real founder. He flourished, according to Cyrillus and Eusebius, in 483 B.C., but he gained a poetical victory (probably his first) as early as 511. His famous play the Capture of Miletus was probably composed shortly after the conquest of that city by the Persians (494). It moved the Athenians to tears ; they fined the poet 1000 drachms for reminding them of the woes of their friends, and decreed that the play should never be used again. In 476 Phrynichus won another poetical victory, probably with his play the Phoenissx, which celebrated the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis (480). The drama derived its name from the chorus of Phoenician women. On this occasion Themistocles acted as choragus, and it is probable that the play was written to revive his waning popularity by reminding the Athenians of his great deeds. The Persians of TEschylus (exhibited in 472) was an imitation of the Phoenissaz of Phrynichus. Phry nichus died in Sicily, perhaps at the court of Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, who welcomed those other great contemporary poets ^Eschylus and Pindar. The titles of his plays mentioned by Suidas and others show that he treated mythological as well as contemporary subjects ; such are the titles The Danaides, Action, Alcestis, Tantalus. But in his plays, as in the early tragedies generally, the dramatic element was subordinate to the lyric element as represented by the chorus. Indeed in his earliest dramas there can only have been one actor, for the introduction of two actors was a novelty due to his younger contemporary ^Eschylus, who first exhibited in 499. Phrynichus was especially famous for the sweetness of his songs, which were sung by old people down to the time of Aristophanes. Connected with the predominance of the chorus in early tragedies was the prominence in them of the dance. There is an epigram ascribed to Phrynichus in which he boasts that the figures of his dances were as various as the waves of the sea. According to Suidas it was Phrynichus who first introduced female characters on the stage (played by men in masks). The few remains of his works are collected by Wagner and Nauck in their editions of the fragments of the Greek tragedians. 2. PHRYNICHUS, a poet of the Old Attic Comedy and a contemporary of Aristophanes, is said by Suidas to have been an Athenian, but according to the scholiast on Aristo phanes (Frogs, 13) he was satirized as a foreigner. His first comedy was exhibited in 429 B.C. (according to Suidas, as corrected by Clinton and Meineke). He composed ten plays, of which the Solitary ("Monotropos") was exhibited in 414 along with the Birds of Aristophanes and gained the third prize, and the Muse? carried off the second prize in 405, Aristophanes being first with the Frogs. This poet (Frogs, 13) accuses Phrynichus of employing vulgar tricks to raise a laugh, and he was further charged with plagiarism and defective versification, but such accusations were too commonly bandied between rival poets to merit much attention. He was not included by the Alexandrian critics in their canon of the best poets. The remains of his works, which have been edited with the other frag ments of the Attic Comedy by Meineke and Bothe, are too scanty to allow us to judge of their merits. 3. PHRYNICHUS ARABIUS, a grammarian of Bithynia, lived in the reigns of the emperors Marcus Antoninus and Commodus (2d century A.D.). According to Suidas he was the author of the following works : (1) an Atticist, or On Attic Words, in two books; (2) Tttfe/xevtov crwaywy?/; (3) SCX/HO-TIKT) Trapaa-Kevri, or Sophistical Preparation, in forty-seven or (according to others) seventy -four books. We have an account of the last-mentioned work by Photius, who had read thirty-six books of it. The copy used by Photius contained only thirty -seven books, but he states that the author in a preface addressed to the emperor Commodus, to whom the work was dedicated, promised, if life lasted, to write as many more books. Separate parts of the work were dedicated to various friends, and Phrynichus excused its delays and imperfections on the ground of numerous illnesses. It consisted of a collection of Attic words and phrases, arranged in alpha betical order, and distinguished according to the purposes they were meant to serve, whether oratorical, historical, conversational, jocular, or amatory. The models of Attic style, according to Phrynichus, were Plato, Demosthenes and the other nine Attic orators (viz., Antiphon, Ando- cides, Lysias, Isocrates, Isseus, ^Eschines, Dinarchus, Lycurgus, Hyperides), Thucydides, Xenophon, ^schines the Socratic, Critias, Antisthenes, Aristophanes and the other poets of the Old Comedy, together with J5schylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Of these, again, he assigned the highest place to Plato, Demosthenes, and ^Eschines the Socratic. The work was learned, but prolix and garrulous. A fragment of it, contained in a Paris MS., was published by Montfaucon, and again by Im. Bekker in the first volume of his Anecdota Grszca (Berlin, 1814). We possess another work of Phrynichus which is not mentioned by Photius, but is, perhaps, identical with the Atticist mentioned by Suidas. This is the Selection (Ecloge) of Attic Words and Phrases. It is dedicated to Cornelian us, a man of literary tastes, and one of the emperor s secretaries, who had invited the author to undertake the work. It is a collection of current words and forms which deviated from the Old Attic standard. Side by side with these incorrect words and forms are given the true Attic equiva lents. The work is thus a "lexicon antibarbarum," and is interesting as illustrating the changes through which the Greek language had passed between the 4th century B.C. and the 2d century A.D. Phrynichus is especially severe upon Menander, and wonders what people can see in him to admire so much. The style is concise and pointed, and is occasionally relieved by touches of dry humour. The book is divided into two parts, of which the second appears in some editions as a separate work under the title of Epitome. Editions of it, with valuable notes, have been published by Chr. Aug. Lobeck (Leipsic, 1820) and W. G. Rutherford (London, 1881). Lobeck devotes his attention chiefly to the later, Rutherford to the earlier usages noticed by Phrynichus. There was also an Athenian general Phrynichus in the Pelopon- nesian War, who took a leading part in establishing the oligarchy of the Four Hundred at Athens in 411 B.C. He was assassinated in the same year.