Pherecrates
Athenian Old Comedy poet (5th-century BCE)
Pherecrates (Greek: Φερεκράτης) was a Greek poet of Athenian Old Comedy, and a rough contemporary of Cratinus, Crates and Aristophanes.
He was victorious at least once at the City Dionysia, first probably in the mid-440s (IG II2 2325. 56; the fourth entry after Teleclides and three poets whose names have been lost, and just before Hermippus), and twice at the Lenaia, first probably in the mid- to late 430s (IG II2 2325. 122; just after Cratinus and just before Hermippus). He was especially famous for his inventive imagination, and the elegance and purity of his diction are attested by the epithet Ἀττικώτατος (most Attic) applied to him by Athenaeus and the sophist Phrynichus. He was the inventor of a new meter, called after him, the Pherecratean, which frequently occurs in the choruses of Greek tragedies and in Horace. According to an anonymous essay on tragedy, Pherecrates wrote 18 plays, suggesting that one or more of the 19 surviving titles must be eliminated somehow (i.e. by assigning the play to another author who wrote a comedy by the same name, and assuming an ancient scholarly error, or by identifying e.g. The Human Heracles and The Fake Heracles as a single play with multiple titles).
Surviving Titles and Fragments
288 fragments (including six dubia) of his comedies survive, along with the following 19 titles:
The standard edition of the fragments and testimonia is in Rudolf Kassel and Colin François Lloyd Austin's Poetae Comici Graeci Vol.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Pherecrates” is athenian Old Comedy poet (5th-century BCE). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Pherecrates, Athenian and Comedy, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “athenian Old Comedy poet (5th-century BCE)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1627567.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Pherecrates”, its source revision and the description used here.
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Pherecrates” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.