Plato(2)

Extract

Plato (2), Athenian comic poet (see comedy (greek), old), won his first victory at the City *Dionysiac.410 bce (IG 2. 2325. 63). He produced Hyperbolus at some date during 420–416 bce, Victories after 421 (it referred to Ar. Pax), Cleophon in 405 and Phaon (probably) in 391. We have thirty titles and 300 citations. Many of the citations refer to people known to us from Aristophanes (esp. Av.) and from historians. The titles (see cleophon(1); hyperbolus) show that many of his plays were strongly political, and at least one of them, Envoys, belongs to the 4th cent., since it mentions an embassy of Epicrates and Phormisius to Persia (fr. 127). Other titles, e.g. Zeus kakoumenos, point to mythological burlesque; Sophists ridiculed contemporary artistic (and possibly, though not certainly, philosophical) innovations (see sophists).