Today we are used to sequels, in movies, in literature, sometimes even in music. When a work is successful, the second part immediately arrives to continue exploiting the vein. But that was not always the case. There was someone who invented sequels, before whom there had never been one. He was a Greek playwright and his name was Phrynicus.
Very little is known about his life. He was born in Athens at the end of the 6th century BC. (circa 540 BC) and at some point he comes into contact with Thespis, the first actor in history whose man is known, inventor of Greek tragedy and theatrical tours, who takes him as a student. In fact, some scholars consider that Phrynicus also had something to do with the invention of tragedy.
What is known is that in the year 511 or 510 B.C. he won his first dramatic contest with a play whose title we do not know. Perhaps it was with one of his most famous compositions, such as Actaeon , Alcestis , Altea or The women of Pleuron , Anteo or The Libyans , The Danaids , The Egyptians , and Tantalum , all of them mythologically themed.
Also that he introduced in his works an independent actor other than the leader of the choir, laying the foundations of the theatrical dialogue, as well as the iambic verse. He is also credited with the invention of the prologue, the part that preceded the entrance of the choir (some tragedies of his contemporary Aeschylus, such as The Supplicants and The Persians , they had no prologue).
In the year 494 B.C. he presented his masterpiece, the historically themed tragedy The Taking of Miletus . This work is important for several reasons. First of all, it is the first tragedy that had a plot based on real historical events. Secondly, because in it a female character appeared for the first time in Greek tragedy (although played by a man on stage) in an important role. And also, because for the first time an author was fined for staging excessively real events. .
And it is that the capture of the city of Miletus by the Persians during the Ionian Revolt in that same year was still very recent, with the deportation of all its inhabitants to a place called Ampé on the coast of the Persian Gulf, near the mouth of the Tigris. Of all continental Greece, only Athens and Eretria had supported the revolt of the Ionian cities of Asia Minor, and for the Athenians the loss of Miletus had been a severe blow.
The reaction of the citizens, when only a few months had passed since the fall of the city, showed that the Athenians felt somehow responsible for that fact. During the performance, as Herodotus tells it, the entire theater burst into tears and the performance of the work was prohibited.
However, Phrynicus knew how to take advantage of that bad experience. Considering, indeed, that having bathed the public in tears was a sign that his historical tragedy had been a complete success, he prepared a second part 18 years later. Never before had a play had a sequel, so it can be said that Phrynicus was the first to think of doing it.
It was called The Phoenician and with it he won the prize in the contest of the year 476 BC. Of course, this time the theme was the victory of the Greeks over the Persians at the Battle of Salamis, a much more pleasant theme for fellow Athenians than him.
If Phrynicus had uncovered the box of the second parts, his contemporary Aeschylus did not want to be left behind and, four years later, he dealt with the same theme in his work The Persians , where he not only imitated the beginning of Las Fenicias (according to Glaucus of Regio around 400 BC), but with it he developed his own contribution to the world of sequels, inventing the trilogy.
Phrynicus died in Sicily in 470 BC, where he had gone, like other poets of the time, attracted by the patronage of the tyrant Hiero. None of his works have survived to this day, although some fragments can be traced to later writers. According to Francisco Miguel del Rincón, he would still have had time to write a third historical drama, whose title would be Los justos , The Persians or Council companions .