1. Of Athens, a tragedian, coupled with Thespis by some ancient authorities as both being the originators of tragedy; Phrynichus first won a competition for tragedy between 511 and 508 BC. Of his plays only scanty fragments survive. He produced, probably in 492, with Themistoclēs as choregos, a play dealing with the capture of Miletus by the Persians in 494 during the Ionian Revolt (see PERSIAN WARS), and was fined by the Athenians because, Herodotus said, he had reminded them too vividly of the misfortunes of a kindred people. His Phoenissae (‘Phoenician women’), celebrating the Greek victories over the Persians in 480–79, with the chorus composed of the wives of the enemy's Phoenician sailors, was also famous. This may have been produced in 476, a year in which Themistocles was again his choregos. Aristophanes seems to have admired his lyrical passages particularly, while mocking his dramas' deficiency in action.
2. One of the extreme oligarchs at Athens at the time of the revolution of the Four Hundred in 411 BC, towards the end of the Peloponnesian War. After his return from Sparta, where he had gone to negotiate peace, he was assassinated in the agora.
