Cinesias

Who was Cinesias?

Cinesias was an innovative dithyrambic poet in classical Athens whose work has survived only in a few fragments. An inscription indicates that he was awarded a victory at the Dionysia in the early 4th century. His contemporary, the comic poet Aristophanes, ridiculed him in his play The Birds, in which Cinesias attempts to borrow wings from the birds as an aid to poetic inspiration. Aristophanes refers to him also in The Frogs, Ecclesiazusae, Lysistrata, and in a fragmentary verse. Another comic poet, Strattis, wrote an entire play against Cinesias, of which only fragments survive, and he was considered by Pherecrates to have had a corrupting influence on dithyrambic poetry.