Epicharmus of Kos

Epicharmus was a Greek comic dramatist and thinker who lived in Sicily between the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC. Alongside Phormis, he is regarded as one of the first important writers of comedy, and his work links the stage with the philosophical ideas of the Pythagorean tradition. The dates of his birth and death are uncertain; ancient sources place him roughly between 550 and 460 BC.

His birthplace is also unclear. Aristotle associates him with Megara Hyblaea in Sicily, where he spent much of his life, while later and less reliable writers mention Cos, Syracuse and other places. He is said to have been raised in his father's medical tradition before becoming a follower of Pythagoras. In the later part of his life he worked in Syracuse for the tyrants Gelo and Hiero I, and he apparently overlapped there with Aeschylus.

He wrote somewhere between thirty-five and fifty-two comedies, of which only titles and around three hundred fragments survive. His plays parodied mythological heroes, as in Odysseus Shipwrecked, The Marriage of Hebe and Philoctetes, and introduced stock figures such as the parasite, the visitor and the philosopher. He wrote in the Doric dialect of Syracuse and avoided direct attacks on the rulers, which would have been risky in that city.

His verses ranged across morality, medicine, natural science and ethics. He taught that the steady practice of virtue could overcome inherited disposition, so that anyone might become a good person whatever their birth. Plato mentions him in the Gorgias and the Theaetetus, where Socrates calls him the prince of comedy.

His influence was twofold: in the theatre, as a forerunner of Athenian comedy and of stock characters that passed into mime, and in philosophy, as a channel for Pythagorean ideas. Syracuse raised a bronze statue in his honour, and the poet Theocritus wrote an inscription for it.