Phry'nichus
2. A tragic actor, son of Chorocles, whom Suidas confounds with the great tragic poet, but who is distinguished from him by a scholiast on Aristophanes (
Aristoph. Birds 750), who mentions four Phrynichi, the tragic poet, the tragic actor, the comic poet, and a general.
This actor is no doubt the person whose dancing is ridiculed by Aristophanes, in passages which Bentley erroneously referred to the tragic poet (
Vesp. 1481, 1515).
He is also mentioned by Andocides as
Φρύνιχος ὁ ὀρχησάμενος (
De Myst. p. 24); and an attack in the
Clouds of Aristophanes (1092), on the tragic actors of the day is explained by the scholiast as referring to Phrvnichus. (See Meineke,
Hist. Crit. Com. Graec. pp. 148, 149.)