AGATHON

Agathon is best known to us from what Plato says of him in his Symposium, describing the banquet given by the former in celebration of his tragic victory. He is introduced as a handsome young man, well dressed, of polished manners, courted by the fashion, wealth and wisdom of Athens, and dispensing hospitality with ease and refinement. The Epideixis, in praise of love, which he recites in the Symposium, is full of the artificial and rhetorical expressions which might be expected from a former pupil of Gorgias. Aristotle tells us that he was the first to introduce into the drama arbitrary choral songs, which had nothing to do with the subject, and that he wrote pieces with fictitious names, which appear to have been half way between the idyl and comedy. His intimacy with Aristophanes doubtless saved him from many well-deserved strictures, though in one of his comedies, the latter burlesques his flowery style, representing him as a delicate and effeminate youth, and it may be only for the sake of punning on his name that he makes Dionysus call him a noble poet.

Agathon was a friend of Euripides, accompanying him to the court of Archelaus of Macedon, where he died about 402 B.C. He had all the faults, without the genius, of his famous contemporary, and these he carried to excess, attempting to surprise the spectators with unexpected developments and strange, improbable dénouments. Add to this his fondness for epigram, antitheses and other rhetorical embellishments, after the fashion of Gorgias, and no wonder that whatever he possessed of ability was smothered beneath his mannerisms. Yet, of the latter, he appears to have been proud, considering them essential to his verse; for when asked to purge himself of such blemishes, he replied: "You do not see that that would be to purge Agathon's play of Agathon." His poetry was full of trope, inflection and metaphor; glittering with sparkling ideas and flowing softly along, with harmonious words and nice construction, but lacking in the element of truly virile expression and deficient in manly thought and vigor. With him begins the decline of tragic art in its higher sense.

• Aeschylus and His Tragedies - Biography of the Greek dramatist and analysis of his poetic qualities.
• The Age of Euripides - A look at the political and religious atmosphere in which Euripides composed his plays.
• Aristarchus - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Aristarchus of Tegea.
• Chaeremon - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Chaeremon.
• Critias - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Critias.
• Ion - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Ion of Chios.
• Neophron - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Neophron of Sicyon.
• Sophocles and His Tragedies - Biography of the Greek dramatist and analysis of his poetic qualities.
• Tragic Costumes - A description of the costumes worn by tragic actors in ancient Greece.
• Zenocles - A biographical note on the Greek dramatist Zenocles.

• Greek Tragedies (Volume I)
• The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy
• Tragedy in Athens: Performance Space and Theatrical Meaning
• Intimate Commerce: Exchange, Gender, and Subjectivity in Greek Tragedy
• Female Acts in Greek Tragedy