Crates (comic poet)

Template:Short description Crates (Template:Langx) was an Athenian Old Comic poet, who was victorious three times at the City Dionysia, first probably in 450 BC.Template:Sfn His career had apparently ended by 424 BC, when Aristophanes portrays him in The Knights as a figure from the past.Template:Sfn Before he began writing, he was an actor for Cratinus.Template:Sfn

Aristotle claims in the Poetics that Crates was the first comic poet to create complete plots, rather than personal abuse, and his surviving fragments support this.Template:Sfn His style of comedy was apparently therefore rather different from that of Aristophanes' more political and topical works,Template:Sfn and by the end of the fourth century BC this was the dominant style of comedy.Template:Sfn He was also supposedly the first Athenian comic poet to write a drunk character.Template:Sfn

Sixty fragments (four uncertain) survive.Template:Sfn According to the Suda and an anonymous writer on comedy, he wrote seven plays; another source says eight.Template:Sfn Eleven titles are attributed to him:

• Geitones ("Neighbours")
• Eortai ("Feasts")
• Heroes ("Heroes")
• Theria ("Wild Beasts")
• Lamia ("Lamia")
• Metoikoi ("Metics")
• Paidiai ("Games")
• Pedetai ("Men In Chains")
• Rhetores ("Politicians")
• Samioi ("The Samians")
• Tolmai ("Daring Deeds")

Of these titles, Feasts may be a mistake caused by confusion with Plato Comicus's play of that name;Template:Sfn the Men in Chains might be a mistake for Games, by confusion with Callias' Men in Chains;Template:Sfn and the Politicians, attested in only one fragment, might be a mistake for Heroes or Neighbours.Template:Sfn Crates' Metics is attested only in a single fragment preserved in the Etymologicum Genuinum; other plays of that name by Pherecrates and Plato Comicus are attested, and it is unclear whether all three are separate works.Template:Sfn