Sopater
Σώπατρος
(Σώπατρος), literary.
1. Of Paphos, a writer of parody and burlesque (φλυακογράφος), who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, and continued to flourish down to the reign of Ptolemy II., as Athenaeus (2.71, b.) informs us, on the authority of the poet himself: his period may therefore be regarded as the forty years from B. C. 323 to 283 (Clinton, F. H. vol. ii. s. a. 283). He is frequently mentioned by Athenaeus, who occasionally calls him Φάκιος, which seems to be a nickname, derived from the word φακῆ (lentile-porridge, which appears to have been the title of one of Sopater's plays), and applied to him as a punning variation upon Πάφιος.
Works
The following titles of his plays are preserved by Athenaeus and Suidas (s.v. Suidas has made the mistake of distinguishing two Sopaters, the one a comedian and the other a parodist): -- Βακχίς Βακχίδος γάμος Βακχίδος μνηστῆρες Γαλάται Εὐβονλοθεόμβροτος Ἱππόλυτος Κνιδία Μύσται Μυστάκου Θητίον Νεκυία Ὀρέστης Πύλαι Σίλφαι Φακῆ Φυσιόλογος
Further Information
Fabric. vol. ii. p. 492; Ulrici, Gesch. d. Hellen. Dichtk. vol. ii. p. 325.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.