Anthos (play)

Anthos
Written by	Agathon
Date premiered	5th century BCE
Place premiered	Athens
Original language	Ancient Greek
Genre	Athenian tragedy

Anthos or Antheus (Flower) is a play by the 5th century BCE Athenian dramatist Agathon. The play has been lost. The play is mentioned by Aristotle in his Poetics (1451b) as an example of a tragedy with a plot which gives pleasure despite the incidents and characters being entirely made up. ^{[1] [2]} Anthos is the only known Greek tragedy play whose plot was entirely invented by the poet. ^[3] Other 5th century tragedies were based on myth, or less frequently on actual history. ^[3]

The play's plot is not clear; H. J. Rose claimed that Parthenius of Nicaea sourced the story of Antheus and Cleoboea from this Anthos (or rather Antheus), a typical Potiphar's wife tale where Antheus rejects the married Cleoboea's amorous advances, and she in revenge kills him by throwing a boulder on him after convincing him to go down into a well. ^{[4] [5]}

See also

• Ancient Greece portal
• Theatre portal

• Hippolytus
• Philonome
• Yusuf and Zulaikha

References

1. Aristotle 2000, p. 69.
2. Wright 1907, p. 269.
3. Austin 2011, p. 25.
4. Rose 2004, p. 231.
5. Pitcher 1939, pp. 145–8.

Bibliography

• Aristotle (2000). "Poetics". Classical Literary Criticism. Translated by Dorsch, T.S. Penguin Classics. ISBN   9780140446517.
• Austin, N. (2011). Sophocles' Philoctetes and the Great Soul Robbery. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN   9780299282745.
• Pitcher, Seymour M. (1939). "The Anthus of Agathon" . The American Journal of Philology. 60 (2). doi:10.2307/291196. JSTOR   291196 . Retrieved September 27, 2024.
• Rose, Herbert J. (2004). A Handbook of Greek Mythology (6th ed.). London, New York: Routledge. ISBN   0-415-04601-7.
• Wright, W.C.F. (1907). A short history of Greek literature from Homer to Julian. University of California.