In the dramatic contest of 499/96 B.C. another Athenian dramatic poet, Choerilus, besides Pratinas and Aeschylus participated. According to ancient lexicographers, Choerilus first appeared in the Great Dionysia in the years 523/20 B.C. and won thirteen victories on the whole. The number of tragedies that are attributed to him is exceptionally large (160), but only one title has survived. This is Alope, that dealt with an attic myth about Hippothoon's mother, an eponypous hero of one of the attic phylai.
We know a little further information about Phrynichus, the son of Polyphrasmon. His first dramatic victory is dated in the Great Dionysia in 511/508 B.C. and an alphabetical catalogue of his works has survived fragmentarily. It seems that he composed tragedies among which are the Egyptians and the Danaids with subjects from the same myth as the Suppliants of Aeschylus. He also composed tragedies on the known mythological subjects of Actaeon, Meleager and Alcestis. However, the most known reference to Phrynichus is owed to Herodotus. According to him the Athenians imposed a fine of 1000 dracmas on the poet and forbade him to repeat the performance of the play Capture of Miletus, because it reminded them of the humiliation of the subjugation of their allied city. This prohibition must have taken place in 493/2 B.C., during the archonship of Themistocles. Themistocles himself was later the choregos in another tragedy by Phrynichus, most probably that of Phoenician Women, which refer to the great victory of Salamis.
Pratinas of Phlius contributed desicively to the restructure of satyrical drama and some scholars date his settlement in Athens to around 515 B.C., a period during which Athenian ceramic representations of satyrical dramas greatly increased. In 467 B.C. the son of Pratinas, Aristias, took second place in the dramatic contest that he participated in with his father's tragedies Perseus, Tantalus and with the satyric drama Palaistai.
We owe the addition of the second actor to Aeschylus' genius, thus contributing to the development of the plot of tragedies and to the culmination of dramatic tension. Aeschylus' Persians with choregos Pericles was presented in 472 B.C. This tragedy together with Phrynichus' two works, indicate an early interest in contemporary political and historical issues and it is not incidental that important politicians were connected with these choices.
