Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology/Hermippus 1.

HERMIPPUS (Ἕρμιππος). 1. An Athenian comic poet of the old comedy, was the son of Lysis and the brother of the comic poet Myrtilus. He was a little younger than Telecleides, but older than Eupolis and Aristophanes (Suid. s.v.). He vehemently attacked Pericles, especially on the occasion of Aspasia's acquittal on the charge of ἀσέβεια, and in connection with the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. (Plut. Peric. 32, 33,) He also attacked Hyperbolas, (Aristoph. Nub. v. 553, and Schol,) According to Suidas, he wrote forty plays, and his chief actor was Simermon (Schol. in Aristoph. Nub. 535, 537, 542). There are extant of his plays several fragments and nine titles; viz. Ἀθηνᾶς γοναί, Ἀρτοπώλιδες, Δημόται, Εὐρώπη, Θεοί, Κέρκωπες, Μοῖραι, Στρατιῶται, Φορμοφόροι. The statement of Athenaeus (xv. p. 699, a.) that Hermippus also wrote parodies, seems to refer not to any separate works of his, but to parodies contained in his plays, of which there are examples in the extant fragments, as well as in the plays of other comic poets. Besides the comedies of Hermippus, several of the ancient writers quote his Iambics, Trimeters, and Tetrameters. Meineke's analysis of these quotations leaves little room to doubt that Hermippus published scurrilous poems, like those of the old iambic poets, partly in Iambic trimeters, and partly in trochaic tetrameters. (Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec. vol, i. pp. 90 — 99, vol, ii. pp. 380 — 417; Bergk, Comment. de Reliq. Com. Att. Ant. c. 3.)