Editing Diphilus (section)

[[File:Diphilus (Poet).jpg|thumb|Portrait of the poet Diphilus, a Roman copy from the early 1st century]]

'''Diphilus''' ([[Greek Language|Greek]]: Δίφιλος), of [[Sinop, Turkey|Sinope]], was a poet of the new Attic [[Ancient Greek comedy|comedy]] and a contemporary of [[Menander]] (342–291 BC). He is frequently listed together with Menander and [[Philemon (poet)|Philemon]], considered the three greatest poets of [[New Comedy]]. He was victorious at least three times at the [[Lenaia]], placing him third before Philemon and Menander.<ref>IG II2 2325. 163</ref> Although most of his plays were written and acted at [[Athens]] he died at [[Smyrna]]. His body was returned and buried in Athens.<ref>{{cite web| url = https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/87122656/diphilus| title = Diphilus - Find A Grave Memorial}} </ref>

According to [[Athenaeus]], he was on intimate terms with the famous courtesan [[Gnathaena]].<ref>[[Athenaeus]], [[Deipnosophistae]]
 [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2013.01.0003:book=13:chapter=46 13.46]</ref> Athenaeus quotes the comic poet [[Machon]] in support of this claim. Machon is also the source for the claim that Diphilus acted in his own plays.<ref>[[Athenaeus]], [[Deipnosophistae]][https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2013.01.0003:book=13:chapter=43 13.43]</ref>

An anonymous essay on comedy from antiquity reports that Diphilus wrote 100 plays. Of these 100 plays, 59 titles, and 137 fragments (or quotations) survive. From the extant fragments, Diphilus' plays seem to have featured many of the [[Plautus#Stock characters|stock characters]] now primarily associated with the [[Theatre of ancient Rome#Roman comedy|comedies]] of the Roman playwright [[Plautus]], who translated and adapted a number of Diphilus' plays. Swaggering soldiers, verbose cooks, courtesans, and parasites, all feature in the fragments. In contrast to his more successful contemporaries, Menander and Philemon, Diphilus seems to have had a preference for the mythological subjects so popular in [[Ancient Greek comedy#Middle Comedy (mese)|Middle Comedy]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Olson|first1=S.Douglas|title=Broken Laughter: Select Fragments of Greek Comedy|url=https://archive.org/details/brokenlaughterse00olso|url-access=limited|date=2007|publisher=Oxford University Press|location=Oxford|pages=[https://archive.org/details/brokenlaughterse00olso/page/n426 408]–409}}</ref>

To judge from the imitations of [[Plautus]] (''Casina'' from the Κληρούμενοι, ''Asinaria'' from the Ὀναγός, ''Rudens'' from some other play), he was very skillful in the construction of his plots. [[Terence]] also tells us that he introduced into the ''Adelphi'' (ii. I) a scene from the Συναποθνήσκοντες, which had been omitted by Plautus in his adaptation (''Commorientes'') of the same play.<ref name="EB1911">{{EB1911|inline=1 |wstitle=Diphilus |volume=8 |page=290}}</ref>

According to the [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh Edition]]:
{{blockquote|The style of Diphilus was simple and natural, and his language on the whole good [[Attic Greek|Attic]]; he paid great attention to versification, and was supposed to have invented a peculiar kind of metre. The ancients were undecided whether to class him among the writers of the New or Middle comedy. In his fondness for mythological subjects (''[[Hercules]]'', ''[[Theseus]]'') and his introduction on the stage (by a bold anachronism) of the poets [[Archilochus]] and [[Hipponax]] as rivals of [[Sappho]], he approximates to the spirit of the latter.<ref name="EB1911"/>}}