CHOERILUS. (I) An Athenian tragic poet, who exhibited plays as early as 524 B.C. He was said to have competed with Aeschylus, Pratinas, and even Sophocles. According to F. G. Welcker, however, the rival of Sophocles was a son of Choerilus, who bore the same name. Suidas states that Choerilus wrote 150 tragedies and gained the prize 13 times. His works are all lost ; only Pausanias (i.i4) mentions a play by him entitled Alope. Choerilus was also said to have introduced considerable improve ments in theatrical masks and costumes.
See A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (1889) ; F. G. Welcker, Die griechischen Tragodien, pp. 18, 892.
(2) An epic poet of Samos, who flourished at the end of the 5th century B.C. After the fall of Athens he settled at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia, where he was the associate of Agathon, Melanippides, and Plato, the comic poet. The only work that can with certainty be attributed to him is the IIEpofis or IIEpILKb. a history of the struggle of the Greeks against Per sia. The treatment of contemporary events was a new departure in epic ; he apologizes in the introductory verses (preserved in the scholiast on Aristotle, Rhetoric, iii.i4). The Perseis was at first successful, but later critics reversed this favourable judg ment. Aristotle (Topics, viii. I.) calls Choerilus's comparisons far fetched and obscure, and the Alexandrians displaced him by Anti machus in the canon of epic poets.
G. Kinkel, Epicorum Graecorum Frag. i. (1877) ; for another view of his relations with Herodotus see Milder in Klio 0997), (3) An epic poet of Iasus in Caria, who lived in the 4th century B.C. He accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaigns as court-poet. He is well known from the passages in Horace (Epis tles, ii. 1, 232 ; Ars Poetica, 357), according to which he received a piece of gold for every good verse he wrote in honour of the deeds of his master.
See G. Kinkel, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, i. (1877) ; A. F. Nake, De Choerili Samii Aetate Vita et Poesi aliisque Choerilis (1817), where the above poets are carefully distinguished ; and the articles in Pauly-Wissowa's Realencyklopadie, iii. 2 (1899).