ABSTRACT
Below are presented some extracts from the ancient sources, literary and inscriptional, concerning the life and work of the five principal dramatists. Much of the material in the literary sources, especially in the ‘Lives’ (Vitae) found in medieval manuscripts of the poets’ works (dating from the tenth century onwards), is highly unreliable and full of legendary accretions – though the Vitae also preserve a fair amount of authentic material deriving from public records, lost contemporary or near-contemporary writings, and the researches of Hellenistic scholars. The following selection, so far as possible, concentrates on texts which are either early or based on early sources; from the Vitae, only extracts are printed. Full collections of evidence relating to the life and work of the various dramatists (except, for the present, Euripides) will be found in Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta or Poetae Comici Graeci as the case may be (see Chapter 6, pp. 172-3); testimonia for Euripides are collected in D. Kovacs, Euripidea (Leiden, 1994), and Euripidea Altera (Leiden, 1996). Reference numbers at the beginning of each extract are keyed to these collections.
