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Iophon

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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Greek tragic poet, son of Sophocles. He gained the second prize in 428 B.C., Euripides being first, and Ion third. He must have been living in 405, the date of the production of the Frogs of Aristophanes, in which he is spoken of as the only good Athenian tragic poet, although it is hinted that he owed much to his father's assistance. He wrote 50 plays, of which only a few fragments remain. It is said that Iophon accused his father before the court of the phratores of being incapable of managing his affairs, to which Sophocles replied by reading the famous chorus of the Oedipus at Colonus (688 ff.), with the result that he was triumphantly acquitted.

See Aristophanes, Frogs, 73, 78, with scholia; Cicero, De senectute, vii. 22; Plutarch, Moralia, 785 B; A. Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum fragmenta (1889); O. Wolff, De Iophonte poeta (Leipzig, 1884).