Pratinas

Reputation

This innovation of Pratinas was adopted by his contemporaries; but Pratinas is distinguished by the large proportion of his satyric dramas. He composed, according to the Suda, fifty plays, of which thirty-two were Satyr plays. Böckh, however, from an alternate reading of the Suda, assigns to Pratinas only twelve satyric dramas, thus leaving a sufficient number of tragedies to make three for every satyric drama, that is, twelve tetralogies and two single plays. In merit, the satyric dramas of Pratinas were considered the best ever written by his contemporaries, except only those of Aeschylus.

Pratinas ranked high among the lyric, as well as the dramatic poets of his age. He also wrote dithyrambs and the choral odes called hyporchemata, and a considerable fragment of one of these is preserved in Athenaeus. Hyporcheme was closely related to the satyric drama by the humorous character which it often assumed, and dithyrambs by its ancient choruses of Satyrs. Pratinas may perhaps be considered to have shared with his contemporary Lasus of Hermione the honor of founding the Athenian school of dithyrambic poetry. Some interesting fragments of his hyporchemes are preserved, especially a considerable passage in Athenaeus which gives an important indication of the contest for supremacy which was then going on both between poetry and music, and between the different kinds of music. The poet complains that the voices of the singers were overpowered by the noise of the flutes, and expresses his desire to replace the prevailing Phrygian scales then commonly used with the Dorian. It is impossible to say how much of his lyric poetry was separate from his dramas; in which, both from the age at which he lived, and from express testimony, we know that great importance was assigned not only to the songs, but also to the dances of the chorus. Athenaeus mentions him as one of the poets who were called "orchestikoi" (ὀρχηστικοί), from the large part which the choral dances bore in their dramas.

Family

His son Aristias was also highly distinguished for his satyric plays, and a monument was erected by the inhabitants of Phlius in honor of him.