Callias Schoenion was a poet of the Old Comedy

Old Comedy

Old Comedy is the first period of the ancient Greek comedy, according to the canonical division by the Alexandrian grammarians. The most important Old Comic playwright is Aristophanes, whose works, with their pungent political satire and abundance of sexual and scatological innuendo, effectively...

, not to be confused with the three Athenian aristocrats named Callias, the last of which, Callias III

Callias III

Callias , son of Hipponicus by the former wife of Pericles, an Alcmaeonid and the third member of one of the most distinguished Athenian families to bear the name of Callias...

, appears in Plato's Protagoras

Protagoras (dialogue)

Protagoras is a dialogue of Plato. The traditional subtitle is "or the Sophists, probative". The main argument is between the elderly Protagoras, a celebrated sophist, and Socrates...

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Callias is best known for a few extant fragments of a comedy, The Letter Tragedy. This comedy featured a 24-piece chorus that consisted of the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet. On this work there has been debate since the early 19th century over the meaning of the play's claim to have influenced Greek tragedy. Many scholars take Callias' claim to have been ironic and a joke. He appears to have been given the teasing nickname Schoinion by his rivals, probably because his father was a rope maker. It is also recorded that he lampooned the philosopher Socrates

Socrates

Socrates was a classical Greek Athenian philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known chiefly through the accounts of later classical writers, especially the writings of his students Plato and Xenophon, and the plays of his contemporary ...

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