Aristophon

(Ἀριστόφων). There are three Athenians who are called orators, and have frequently been confounded with one another (as by Casaubon, ad Theophrast. Charact. 8, and Burmann, ad Quintil. 5.12. p. 452). Ruhnken (Hist. Crit. Orat. Gr. p. xlv., &c.) first established the distinction between them.

1. A native of the demos of Azenia in Attica. (Aeschin. c. Tim. p. 159, c. Ctes. pp. 532, 583, ed. Reiske.) He lived about and after the end of the Peloponnesian war. In B. C. 412, Aristophon, Laespodius and Melesias were sent to Sparta as ambassadors by the oligarchical government of the Four Hundred. (Thuc. 8.86.) In the archonship of Eucleides, B. C. 404, after Athens was delivered of the thirty tyrants, Aristophon proposed a law which, though beneficial to the republic, yet caused great uneasiness and troubles in many families at Athens; for it ordained, that no one should be regarded as a citizen of Athens whose mother was not a freeborn woman. (Caryst. apud Atwcn. xiii. p. 577; Taylor, Vit. Lys. p. 149, ed. Reiske.) He also proposed various other laws, by which he acquired great popularity and the full confidence of the people (Dem. c. Eubul. p. 1308), and their great number may be inferred from his own statement (ap. Aeschin. c. Ctes. p. 583), that he was accused 75 times of having made illegal proposals, but that he had always come off victorious. His influence with the people is most manifest from his accusation of Iphicrates and Timotheus, two men to whom Athens was so much indebted. (B. C. 354.) He charged them with having accepted bribes from the Chians and Rhodians, and the people condemned Timotheus on the mere assertion of Aristophon. (C. Nepos, Timoth. 3; Aristot. Rh. 2.23; Deinarch. c. Demosth. p. 11, c. Philocl. p. 100.) After this event, but still in B. C. 354, the last time that we hear of him in history, he came forward in the assembly to defend the law of Leptines against Demosthenes, and the latter, who often mentions him, treats the aged Aristophon with great respect, and reckons him among the most eloquent orators. (c. Lept. p. 501, &c.) He seems to have died soon after. None of his orations has come down to us. (Comp. Clinton, Fast. Hell. ad Ann. 354.)

2. A native of the demos of Colyttus, a great orator and politician, whose career is for the greater part contemporaneous with that of Demosthenes. It was this Aristophon whom Aeschines served as a clerk, and in whose service he was trained for his public career. [Aeschines.] Clinton (F. H. ad ann. 340) has pointed out that he is not the same as the one whom Plutarch (Vit. X. Orat. p. 844) mentions, but that there the Azenian must be understood. Ulpian (ad Demosth. De Coron. p. 74a.) confounds him with Aristophon the Azenian, as is clear from Aeschines (c. Ctesiph. p. 585). This orator is often mentioned by Demothenes, though he gives him the distinguishing epithet of ὁ Κολυττεύς only once (De Coron. p. 250, comp. pp. 248, 281; c. Mid. p. 584; Schol. ad Demosth. p. 201a.), and he is always spoken of as a man of considerable influence and authority. As an orator he is ranked with Diopeithes and Chares, the most popular men of the time at Athens. There are some passages in Demosthenes (as c. Timocr. p. 703, De Coron. Trier. p. 1230) where it is uncertain whether he is speaking of Aristophon the Azenian or the Colyttian.

3. Archon Eponymus of the year B. C. 330. (Diod. 17.62 Plut. Dem. 24.) Theophrastus (Charact. 8) calls this Aristophon an orator. That this man, who was archon in the same year in which Demosthenes delivered his oration on the crown, was not the same as the Colyttian, s clear from that oration itself, in which (p. 281) the Colyttian is spoken of as deceased. Whether he was actually an orator, as Theophrastus states, is very doubtful, since it is not mentioned anywhere else, and it is a probable conjecture of Ruhnken's that the word ῥήτωρ was inserted by some one who believed that either the Azenian or Colyttian was meant in that passage. (Clinton, F. H. ad ann. 330.) [L.S]

(Ἀριστοφῶν), a comic poet respecting whose life or age nothing is known, but from the titles of whose comedies we must infer, that they belonged to the middle comedy. We know the titles of nine of his plays, viz. 1. Πλάτων (Athen. 12.552), 2. Φιλωνίδης (Athen. 11.472), 3. Πυφαγοριστής (D. L. 8.38; Athen. 6.238, iv. p. 161, xiii. p. 563), 4. Βαβίας (Stob. Serm. 96. 19), 5. Δίδυμοι ἢ Γιύραυνος (Pollux, 9.70), 6. Ἰατρός (Athen. 6.238; Stob. Serm. 6.27), 7. Καλλωνίδης (Athen. 13.559), 8. Παρακαταθήκη (Stob. Serm. 96. 21), and 9. Πειρίθους. (Athen. 7.303.) We possess only a few fragments of these comedies, and two or three others of which it is uncertain to which plays they belonged. (Meineke, Hist. Crit. Com. Gr. p. 410, &c.) [L.S]

(Ἀριστοφῶν), a painter of some distinction, the son and pupil of Aglaophon, and the brother of Polygnotus. He was also probably the father of the younger Aglaophon, and born at Thasos. Some of his productions are mentioned by Pliny (35.11. s. 40), and Plutarch (de audiend. Poet. 3). It is probably through a mistake that Plutarch (Plut. Alc. 16) makes him the author of a picture representing Alcibiades in the arms of Nemea. [See Aglaophon.] [C.P.M]

(Ἀριστόφων). The name of two Attic orators, both contemporaries of Demosthenes. The first (of the deme Azenia) defended the law of Leptines against Demosthenes in B.C. 354. No oration of either Aristophon is extant.

• son of Lysinus, Olympic victor: Paus. 6.13.11, Paus. 6.14.1