• Tragic Playwright Choerilus (Χοιρίλος), 524 B.C.
  

Choerilus was said to have competed with Aeschylus, Pratinas and even Sophocles. According to Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker, however, the rival of Sophocles was a son of Choerilus, who bore the same name. The Suda states that Choerilus wrote 150 tragedies and gained the prize thirteen times. His works are all lost; only Pausanias mentions a play by him entitled Alope (a mythological personage who was the subject of dramas by Euripides and Carcinus). His reputation as a writer of satyric dramas is attested in the well known line:

The Choerilean meter, mentioned by the Latin grammarians, is probably so called because the above line is the oldest extant specimen. Choerilus was also said to have introduced considerable improvements in theatrical masks and costumes.