Antiphanes

Who is Antiphanes?

Antiphanes is regarded as the most important writer of the Middle Attic comedy with the exception of Alexis.

He was apparently a foreigner who settled in Athens, where he began to write about 387. He was extremely prolific: more than 200 of the 365 comedies attributed to him are known to us from the titles and considerable fragments preserved in Athenaeus. They chiefly deal with matters connected with the table, but contain many striking sentiments. About 130 titles of his plays are known.

Stephanus, Athenian comic poet of the New Comedy, is said to have exhibited some of the plays of Antiphanes and was probably his son. One quotation by Athenaeus is the only surviving fragment of the works of Stephanus.