Editing Agathon (section)

==Life and career==
Agathon was the son of Tisamenus,<ref name=OCD>{{cite book|title=Oxford Classical Dictionary|page=25|edition=2}}</ref> and the lover of [[Pausanias (Athenian)|Pausanias]], with whom he appears in both the ''Symposium'' and Plato's ''[[Protagoras (dialogue)|Protagoras]]''.<ref>[[Pierre Lévêque]], ''Agathon'' (Paris: Societe d'Edition Les Belles Lettres, 1955), pp. 163-4.</ref>  Together with Pausanias, around 407 BC he moved to the court of [[Archelaus I of Macedon|Archelaus]], king of [[Macedon]], who was recruiting playwrights; it is here that he probably died around 401 BC. Agathon introduced certain innovations into the Greek theater: [[Aristotle]] tells us in the ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'' (1451<sup>b</sup>21) that the characters and plot of his ''[[Anthos (play)|Anthos]]'' were original and not, following Athenian dramatic orthodoxy, borrowed from mythological or historical subjects.<ref>Aristotle, ''Poetics'' 9.</ref>  Agathon was also the first playwright to write choral parts which were apparently independent from the main plot of his plays.

Agathon is portrayed by Plato as a handsome young man, well dressed, of polished manners, courted by the fashion, wealth, and wisdom of Athens, and dispensing hospitality with ease and refinement. The [[epideictic]] speech in praise of love which Agathon recites in the ''Symposium'' is full of beautiful but artificial rhetorical expressions, and has led some scholars to believe he may have been a student of [[Gorgias]].  In the ''Symposium,'' Agathon is presented as the friend of the comic poet Aristophanes, but this alleged friendship did not prevent Aristophanes from harshly criticizing Agathon in at least two of his comic plays: the ''Thesmophoriazousae'' and the (now lost) ''Gerytades''.  In the later play ''Frogs'', Aristophanes softens his criticisms, but even so, it may be only for the sake of punning on Agathon's name (ἁγαθός "good") that he makes [[Dionysus]] call him a "good poet".

Agathon was also a friend of [[Euripides]], another recruit to the court of Archelaus of Macedon.