Pratinas of Phlius

Pratinas of Phlius was a Greek poet active in Athens around 500 BC, to whom tragedies and, probably, dithyrambs are attributed. His name appears in the record of the city's earliest tragic poets, at a time when Athenian theatre was taking its first steps as a recognised genre.

Some fifty works are attributed to him, of which thirty-two would have been satyr plays, a form of which he is considered one of the first practitioners. Four fragments of his lyric output have survived. One of the most frequently cited is an exhortation not to follow either the tense or the relaxed harmony of the Ionian mode, but to plough a middle furrow and compose in the Aeolian harmony, for this was suitable for every kind of boastful singer. The reference seems to be linked to the theory of ethos, according to which each musical mode expressed a particular character; the Aeolian was understood as a mean between intense modes, such as the Mixolydian, and the serenity of the Ionian.

Another fragment, preserved by Athenaeus in the Deipnosophistae, records his complaint against the abuses suffered by the dithyramb, especially the growing prominence of the aulos, an instrument he criticised for its sound and for the annoyances typical of wind instruments. His defence of the song against the instrument anticipates a debate that would return with force in the following century. There are indications that a word in the text contains a play on the name of the tragedian Phrynichus, although the reading is not certain.

Pratinas stands out as a didactic and conservative poet, who defended traditional music decades before Aristophanes attacked the so-called New Music associated with Euripides and the dithyrambic poets. His work, known chiefly through fragments, is a valuable route to understanding how the relationship between music, character and poetic form was conceived in classical Greece.