DIPHILUS  , of

Sinope, poet of the new Attic comedy and contemporary of Menander (342-291 B.C.) . Most of his plays were written and acted at Athens, but he led a wandering life, and died at Smyrna . He was on intimate terms with the famous courtesan Gnathaena (Athenaeus xiii. pp . 579, 583) . He is said to have written too comedies, the titles of fifty of which are preserved . He sometimes acted himself . To judge from the imitations of Plautus . (Casina from theKn77pouge/at, Asinaria from the 'Ovayos, Rudens from some other play), he was very skilful in the construction of his plots . Terence also tells us that he introduced into the Adelphi (ii . I) a scene from the luvatro8vi7-aKOVTES, which had been omitted by Plautus in his adaptation 1 (Commorientes) of the same play . The style of Diphilus was simple and natural, and his language on the whole good Attic; he paid great attention to versification, and was supposed to have invented a peculiar kind of metre . The ancients were undecided whether to class him among the writers of the New or Middle comedy .

In his fondness for mythological subjects (

Hercules, Theseus) and his introduction on the stage (by a bold anachronism) of the poets Archilochus and Hipponax as rivals of Sappho, he approximates to the spirit of the latter . Fragments in H . Koch, Comicorum Atticorum, fragments, ii.; see J . Denis, La Comedie grecque (1886), ii. p . 414; R . W . Bond in Classical Review (Feb . 1910, with trans. of Emporos fragm.) .