(fl 440–c420 bce). Greek comic poet. He won victories at the City Dionysia and the Lenaea between 440 and 430 bce. 19 titles and 250 fragments of his work are known. In a fragment of the Cheiron (preserved in Pseudo-Plutarch, On Music, 1141d–1142a = Edmonds, frag.144b), he presents Music (mousikē), personified as a woman, describing the various outrages she has endured at the hands of modern composers, all of whom were active in the 5th century. As the fragment begins, Justice asks how this came to pass, and Music replies:
music: My woes began with Melanippides. He was the first who took
and lowered me, making me looser [chalarōteran] with his dozen
strings [chordais dōdeka]. Yet after all I found him passable
compared with the woes I suffer now. But Cinesias, cursed Athenian, producing
exharmonious twists in every strophe has so undone me that in the poesy of his
dithyrambs, like reflections in a shield, his dexterity appears to be
left-handed. Yet still and all I could put up with him. But Phrynis inserted
his own spinning-top [strobilon], bending and twisting me to total
corruption, having twelve harmoniai [dōdech' harmonias] in his five
strings [pentachordois]. Yet him too in the end I could accept, for if
he slipped he got back on again. But Oh, my dear! Timotheus buried and crushed
me most shamefully!
justice: And who is this Timotheus?
music: A redhead from Miletus. I say he's caused me more
woes than all the others put together, doing those perverted ant-crawlings [ektrapelous
murmēkias]. And when he finds me on a walk alone, he undoes me and
pays me off with his twelve strings.
The precise meaning of each of Pherecrates' plays on words is not certain, but the irony of ‘left-handed dexterity’; the deprecating epithet ‘redhead’, a slave's name; the general imagery of modern musicians raping Music with various tools or implements; the expansion of the kithara to as many as 12 strings; and the winding chromaticism commonly associated with Timotheus are unmistakable. This lament of Music is a most valuable supplement to knowledge of the ‘new music’ at Athens.
A second, very short fragment appears just a few lines later in Pseudo-Plutarch's On Music (1142a). It may be an additional passage from the Cheiron; if so, it probably still refers to the style of Timotheus in describing ‘exharmonious high-pitched whistlings; he filled me up with turns like a cabbage’.
See also Greece, §I; Phrynis of Mytilene; Melanippides; and Timotheus.
A. Körte: ‘Pherekrates’, Paulys Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, xix/2 (1938), 1989–90
I. Düring: ‘Studies in Musical Terminology in 5th-Century Literature’, Eranos, xliii (1945), 176–97
J.M. Edmonds, ed. and trans.: The Fragments of Attic Comedy (Leiden, 1957–61), i, 206–85
G. Pianko: ‘Un comico contributo alla storia della musica greca: Chirone di Ferecrate’, Eos, liii (1963), 56–63
W.D. Anderson: Ethos and Education in Greek Music (Cambridge, MA, 1966), 50–55
W. Süss: ‘Über den Chiron des Pherecrates’, Rheinisches Museum, cx (1967), 26–31
E.K. Borthwick: ‘Notes on the Plutarch De Musica and the Cheiron of Pherecrates’, Hermes, xcvi (1968), 60–73
D. Restani: ‘Il Chirone di Ferecrate e la “nuova” musica greca’, RIM, xviii (1983), 139–92
A. Barker, ed.: Greek Musical Writings, i: The Musician and his Art (Cambridge, 1984), 236–8
D. Restani: ‘In margine al Chirone di Ferecrate’, RIM, xix (1984), 203–5
M.L. West: ‘Analecta musica’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, xcii (1992), 28–9
W.D. Anderson: Music and Musicians in Ancient Greece (Ithaca, NY, 1994), 127–34
THOMAS J. MATHIESEN