Crates (comic poet)

Crates (Greek: Κράτης) was an Athenian Old Comic poet, who was victorious three times at the City Dionysia, first probably in 450 BC.[1] His career had apparently ended by 424 BC, when Aristophanes portrays him in The Knights as a figure from the past.[2] Before he began writing, he was an actor for Cratinus.[3]

Aristotle claims in the Poetics that Crates was the first comic poet to create complete plots, rather than personal abuse, and his surviving fragments support this.[2] His style of comedy was apparently therefore rather different from that of Aristophanes' more political and topical works,[2] and by the end of the fourth century BC this was the dominant style of comedy.[4] He was also supposedly the first Athenian comic poet to write a drunk character.[3]

Sixty fragments (four uncertain) survive.[3] According to the Suda[5] and an anonymous writer on comedy,[6] he wrote seven plays; another source[7] says eight.[3] Eleven titles are attributed to him:

Of these titles, Feasts may be a mistake caused by confusion with Plato Comicus's play of that name;[13] the Men in Chains might be a mistake for Games, by confusion with Callias' Men in Chains;[14] and the Politicians, attested in only one fragment, might be a mistake for Heroes or Neighbours.[15] Crates' Metics is attested only in a single fragment preserved in the Etymologicum Genuinum; other plays of that name by Pherecrates and Plato Comicus are attested, and it is unclear whether all three are separate works.[14]