ALCIPHRON

Form: Gr. Alkiphron.

A Greek rhetorician of the 2nd century A.D., author of a collection of 118 fictitious Letters in three books. These, written in tolerably pure style and tasteful form, profess to be from sailors, peasants, parasites, and hetaerae. They are sketches of character, ingeniously conceived and carried out, which give us a vivid picture of the then state of culture, especially at Athens; the letters from hetaerae are particularly interesting, as their plots are taken from the New Attic Comedy, especially the lost plays of Menander.