Plato was an Athenian comic poet

Ancient Greek comedy

Ancient Greek comedy was one of the final three principal dramatic forms in the theatre of classical Greece . Athenian comedy is conventionally divided into three periods, Old Comedy, Middle Comedy, and New Comedy...

 and contemporary of Aristophanes

Aristophanes

Aristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete...

. None of his plays survive intact, but the titles of thirty of them are known, including a Hyperbolus (c. 420-416 BC), Victories (after 421), Cleophon (in 405), and Phaon (probably in 391). The titles suggest that his themes were often political. In 410 BC, one of his plays took first prize at the City Dionysia

Dionysia

The Dionysia[p] was a large festival in ancient Athens in honor of the god Dionysus, the central events of which were the theatrical performances of dramatic tragedies and, from 487 BC, comedies. It was the second-most important festival after the Panathenaia...

.

Phaon included a scene (quoted in the Deipnosophistae

Deipnosophistae

The Deipnosophistae may be translated as The Banquet of the Learned or Philosophers at Dinner or The Gastronomers...

of Athenaeus

Athenaeus

Athenaeus , of Naucratis in Egypt, Greek rhetorician and grammarian, flourished about the end of the 2nd and beginning of the 3rd century AD...

) in which a character sits down to study a poem about gastronomy

Gastronomy

Gastronomy is the art or science of food eating. Also, it can be defined as the study of food and culture, with a particular focus on gourmet cuisine...

 (in fact mostly about aphrodisiac

Aphrodisiac

An aphrodisiac is a substance that increases sexual desire. The name comes from Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of sexuality and love. Throughout history, many foods, drinks, and behaviors have had a reputation for making sex more attainable and/or pleasurable...

s) and reads some of it aloud. The poem is in hexameters, and therefore sounds like a lampoon of the work of Archestratus

Archestratus

Archestratus was an Ancient Greek poet of Gela or Syracuse, in Sicily, who wrote some time in the mid 4th century BCE. His humorous didactic poem Hedypatheia , written in hexameters, advises a gastronomic reader on where to find the best food in the Mediterranean world...

, although the speaker calls it "a book by Philoxenus", meaning either the poet Philoxenus of Cythera

Philoxenus of Cythera

Philoxenus of Cythera was a Greek dithyrambic poet, an exponent of the "new music."On the conquest of the island by the Athenians he was taken as a slave to Athens, where he came into the possession of the dithyrambic poet Melanippides, who educated him and set him free...

, the glutton Philoxenus of Leucas, or both indiscriminately.

Surviving Titles and Fragments

Only the titles and assorted fragments of the following plays by Plato Comicus survive.

Adonis The Alliance Ambassadors Amphiareos Ants Cleophon Daidalos Europe Festivals Greece, or the Islands

Griffins Hyperbolus Io Laius Laconians, or Poets Little Child The Long Night Meneleos Peisander Perilalges

Phaon Pieces of Furniture The Poet The Resident Aliens The Sophists Syrphex Victories The Women from the Temples Xantriai, or Kerkopes Zeus Being Wronged