PHRYNICHUS, a tragic poet of Athens, was the son of Polyphradmon or Phradmon, and the disciple of the celebrated Thespis, being a little earlier than Æschylus. He gained the tragic prize, B.C. 511, and is said to have introduced several improvements into the dramatic art, bringing on the stage female characters, and making the actors adopt the use of masks, instead of disguising their faces with the leaves of wine. Suidas mentions the names of nine of his tragedies, and ascribes to another Phrynichus, son of Melanthus, a tragedy entitled The Sack of Miletus, which recalled so forcibly to the Athenians the melancholy
fate of that Greek city, that they punished the poet by a Phrynicus fine of a thousand Attic drachmæ, or, according to Ælian, banished him from Athens. As the son of Phradmon is said to have died in Sicily, probably at the court of Hiero, where Æschylus also took refuge, it is not unlikely that this tragedy may have been his production.