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Hermippus

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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'"HERMIPPUS the one-eyed," Athenian writer of the Old Comedy, flourished during the Peloponnesian War. He is said to have written 40 plays, of which the titles and fragments of nine are preserved. He was a bitter opponent of Pericles, whom he accused (probably in the Moipcu) of being a bully and a coward, and of carousing with his boon companions while the Lacedaemonians were invading Attica. He also accused Aspasia of impiety and offences against morality, and her acquittal was only secured by the tears of Pericles (Plutarch, Pericles, 32). In the AproirwALSES (" Bakeresses") he attacked the demagogue Hyperbolus. The <opµocOpot (Mat-carriers) contains many parodies of Homer. Hermippus also appears to have written scurrilous iambic poems after the manner of Archilochus.

Fragments in T. Kock, Comicorum Atticorum fragments, i. (I 880), and A. Meineke, Poetarum Graecorum comicorum fragmenta (1855).