CRATINUS (Gr. krc -te-nos) (c. 520-423 B.c.), Athenian dramatist, chief representative of the old comedy. Hardly any thing is known of his life, and only fragments of his works have been preserved. But a good idea of their character can be gained from the opinions of his contemporaries, especially Aris tophanes. His comedies were notable for their vigorous political satire, a marked exception being the burlesque 'OSuocreIs, probably written while a law was in force forbidding all political references on the stage. Persius calls the author "the bold," as in the Nemesis and Archilochi, he attacks Pericles, then at the height of his power. The Panoptae was a satire on the sophists and specula tive philosophers of the day. Of his last comedy the plot has come down to us. Aristophanes and others taunted him with being a doting drunkard. Cratinus was roused to put forth all his strength, and in 423 B.C. produced the lIu-rLvrf, or Bottle, which defeated the Clouds of Aristophanes. In this comedy, Cratinus represents the comic muse as the faithful wife of his youth. His guilty fond ness for a rival—the bottle—has aroused her jealousy. She de mands a divorce from the archon; but her husband returns peni tent to her side. In Grenfell and Hunt's Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. (1904), containing a further instalment of their edition of the Behnesa papyri discovered by them in 1896-97, is the argument of a play by Cratinus—the Dionysalexandros (i.e., Dionysus in the part of Paris), aimed against Pericles. The style of Cratinus has been likened to that of Aeschylus; and Aristophanes, in the Knights, compares him to a rushing torrent. According to the statement of a doubtful authority, which is not borne out by Aristotle, Cratinus increased the number of actors in comedy to three. He wrote 21 comedies and gained the prize nine times.