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 disfiguring their faces with the lees of wine. Sudas mentions the names of nine of his tragedies, and ascribes to another Phrynicus, 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 drachmas; or, according to Aelian, 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.

one of the last and most noted writers of the old comedy at Athens, flourished B.C. 485, and was the contemporary of Eupolis, Euripides, and Aristophanes. He obtained the second prize, B.C. 405, the year before Athens was taken by the Spartans. Plutarch states that in one of his plays he defended Alcibiades when he was accused of having mutilated the statues of Hermes. Aristophanes ridicules Phrynicus for introducing too frequently on the stage characters in low life. The fragments of Phrynicus have been collected by Morel, Ex Veterum Comicorum Fabulis quae integra non extant, Par. 1553; by Hertelius, Vetustissimorum Comicorum Sententiae, Bale, 1560; and by Grotius, Excerpta ex Tragediis et Comedias, Gr. Lat. Par. 1626. (See also Meineke, Frag. Com. Graec.; and Bergk, Relig. Com. Att. Ant.)