Epicharmus

Epicharmus, a famous Greek poet, was born in the island of Cos, in the 6th century B.C. He spent the latter part of his life at the court of Hiero of Syracuse, and died at the age of ninety. Epicharmus is called by Theocritus the father of comedy, and Plato assigns to him a place among comic writers as high as that of Homer among epic poets. None of Epicharmus's works survive entire; but we possess several fragments and the titles of thirty-five. They embraced a wide variety of topics, mythological, social, and political. From one of them Plautus borrowed the plot of his Menæchmi. See Lorenz, Leben u. Schriften des Epicharmus (1864).