EPICHARMUS, the son of Helothales, was born in the island of Coe, and accompanied Cadmus, the son of Scythes, to Sicily about the year D.C. 485. Ile must have arrived at maturity by this time ; for he was a pupil of Pythagoras (who died in D.C. 497), and, according to Aristotle ('Poet.,' iii. 6), lived long before Chlonldes and Magnes (who, if we may believe Suidas, began to exhibit in B.C. 487) • so that there can be no truth in the statement of Diogenes, that Epicharmus was I rought from Cos to Sicily when a child of three months old (vlii. 78). He and his brother were physicians, and therefore perhaps belonged to the Coan house of the Asclepiads. It appears that he resided some short time at Mown, and possibly removed to Syracuse when Cele transported the inhabitants of Megara thither (ac. 484). It was at blegara that Epicharmus probably got the idea of writing comedies; fur the Magareans, as well In Greece as in Sicily, are always spoken of as the originators of that branch of the drama. Epicharmus is called by Thoocritus ('Epigram.,' xvii.) the inventor of comedy, and Plato says that he was the chief comedian, jut as Homer was the chief tragedian. (' Theretet.; p. 152, E.) The latter remarks refer, we believe, to his having first furnished the comus, or band of revellers, who were the original chorus in comedy, with a systematic dialogue and a plot of an epic character. That the comedies of Epicharmua had a chorus, and that this chorus was the representative of the comus, as in the old Athenian comedy, appears probable from the fact that one of his dramas was called ' Vulcau, or the 'Connate: "The subjects of the plays of Epicharmus," Faye Muller (' Darlene,' iv. 7, § 2),
"were mostly mythological, that is, parodies or travesties of mythology, nearly in the style of tho satirical drama of Athena Thus, in the comedy of ' Hercules was represented in the most ludicrous light, as a voracious glutton ; and he was again exhibited in the same character (with a mixture perhaps of satirical remarks on the luxury of the times), in ' The Marriage of Hobo,' iu which an astonishing number of dishes was mentioned. He also, like A riatophastes, handled political subjects and invented comic character& like the later Athenian poets; and indeed the extent of his subjects was very wide. The piece called ' The Plunderings,' which dcacribed the devastation of Sicily in his time, had a political meaning ; and this was perhaps also the case with 'The Isisuds ' at least it was mentioned in this play that Moron had prevents.! Anaxilas from destroying Locri. In his 'Persians' also there were allusions to the Watery of the times. Eplcharmus also introduced and almost per fected characters which were very common in the drama of later times ; and if the plot of The Mew:thud' of Plautus was, as the poet seems to state in the prologue, taken from a comedy of Epiehar mu, it must bo granted that the ingenious construction of plots was not beyond the powers of that poet." Epicharmus lived to the age of ninety (Diog., Laert., viii. 78), or ninety-seven (Lucian, Macrob., axe.). The titles of thirty-five of his comedies are given in Fabricius (ii. p. 300).