Bibliography
Epicharmus wrote somewhere between thirty-five and fifty-two comedies, though many have been lost or exist only in fragments. Along with his contemporary Phormis, he was alternately praised or denounced for ridiculing the great mythic heroes.
His two most famous works were Agrostinos ("The Country-Dweller," or "Rustic"), which dealt humorously with the agricultural lifestyle, and Hebes Gamos ("The Marriage of Hebe"), in which Heracles was portrayed as a glutton. Additional works include
- Alkyon
- Amykos ("Amycus")
- Harpagai
- Bakkhai
- Bousiris ("Busiris")
- Ga Kai Thalassa ("Earth and Sea")
- Deukalion ("Deucalion")
- Dionysoi ("The Dionysuses")
- Diphilus
- Elpis ("Hope"), or Ploutos ("Wealth")
- Heorta kai Nasoi
- Epinikios
- Herakleitos ("Heraclitus")
- Thearoi ("Spectators")
- Hephaistos, or Komastai ("The Revelers")
- Kyklops ("The Cyclops")
- Logos Kai Logeina
- Megaris ("Woman From Megara")
- Menes ("Months")
- Odysseus Automolos ("Odysseus the Deserter")
- Odysseus Nauagos ("Odysseus Shipwrecked")
- Orya ("The Sausage")
- Periallos
- Persai ("The Persians")
- Pithon ("The Little Ape" or "Monkey")
- Seirenes ("Sirens")
- Skiron
- Sphinx
- Triakades
- Troes ("Trojan Men")
- Philoktetes ("Philoctetes")
- Choreuontes ("The Dancers")
- Chytrai ("The Pots")
According to Diogenes Laërtius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers, III, 9, Plato plagiarized several of Epicharmus's ideas. "[H]e [Plato] derived great assistance from Epicharmus the Comic poet, for he transcribed a great deal from him, as Alcimus says in the essays dedicated to Amyntas [of Heraclea]…." Laërtius then lists, in III, 10, the several ways that Plato "employs the words of Epicharmus."
