Page:The Theatre of the Greeks, a Treatise on the History and Exhibition of the Greek Drama, with Various Supplements.djvu/177

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CHAPTER I. SECTION V. AGATHON AND THE REMAINING TRAGEDIANS. 'E7rt0i;Xt'5es ravr^ icrrl Kal crrWyCtyX/iara, "KeXiSSvuv [lovaela, Xu^Tjral t^x^V^) "A (ppovda doLTTOV, tju fxbvov x^P^^ Xd^ri. Aristophanes. IN addition to the seven Tragedians, of whom we have at- tempted to give some account, a list of thirty-four names of tragic poets, so called, has been drawn up^ Of these, very few are worthy of even the slightest mention, and we have but scanty information respecting those few, of whom we might have wished to know more. Ion, the son of Orthomenes of Chios, was, according to Suidas, not only a tragedian, but a lyric poet and philosopher also. He began to exhibit in B.C. 451, and wrote twelve, thirty, or forty dramas. The names of eleven have been collected ^ He gained the third prize when Euripides was first with the Hippolytus in B.C. 428 ^ He wrote, not only Tragedies, but elegies'^, dithy- rambs^, and an account of the visits paid by eminent men to his native island^. Though he did not exhibit till after Euripides had commenced his dramatic career, and though he was, like that poet, a friend of Socrates'^, we should be inclined to infer, from his having written dithyrambs, that he belonged to an earlier age of the ^ By Clinton, F. H. ii. pp. xxxii. — xxxv. ^ By Bentley {Epistola ad Millium.) ^ Argum. Hippolyti. ■* Athenaeus, X. p. 436. ^ Aristoph. Pax, 798. ^ Athenteus, iii. p. 93. Diogenes Laert. ir. p. 23.