Diogenes of Athens (tragedian) explained

Diogenes of Athens (grc|Διογένης ὁ Ἀθηναῖος) was a writer of Greek tragedy in the late 5th or early 4th century BC. His works are listed by the Suda^[1] as Semele,^[2] Achilles, Helen, Herakles, Thyestes, Medea, Oedipus, and Chrysippus. He was either born or flourished at the time of the Thirty Tyrants and the suppression of Athenian democracy, around 404–403 BC.^[3]

This Diogenes is sometimes confused with Diogenes of Sinope, to whom a similar list of tragedies is attributed^[4] by Diogenes Laërtius.^[5]

Athenaeus preserves a geographically confused fragment^[6] from Diogenes, having to do with a laurel grove along the Halys river where Lydian and Bactrian girls perform sacred music for Artemis as the goddess of Mount Tmolus.^[7]

Notes and References

1. J. Radicke and Felix Jacoby, Die Fragmente Der Griechischen Historiker, edited by G. Schepens (Brill, 1999), pt. 4, fasc. 7, p. 195.
2. For which see also David D. Leitao, The Pregnant Male as Myth and Metaphor in Classical Greek Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 66.
3. Suda δ 1142, Diogenes.
4. Radicke, p. 195.
5. Diogenes Laërtius 6.80.
6. Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 14.38.636.
7. Albert de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Brill, 1997), p. 284.