Choerilus was an Athenian

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 tragic poet, who exhibited plays as early as 524 BC.

Biography

Choerilus was said to have competed with Aeschylus

Aeschylus

Aeschylus was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians whose work has survived, the others being Sophocles and Euripides, and is often described as the father of tragedy. His name derives from the Greek word aiskhos , meaning "shame"...

, Pratinas

Pratinas

Pratinas was one of the earliest tragic poets of Athens, he was a native of Phlius in Peloponnesus. About 500 BC he competed with Choerilus and Aeschylus, when the latter made his first appearance as a writer for the stage....

 and even Sophocles

Sophocles

Sophocles is one of three ancient Greek tragedians whose plays have survived. His first plays were written later than those of Aeschylus, and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides...

. According to Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker

Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker

Friedrich Gottlieb Welcker was a German classical philologist and archaeologist.-Biography:Welcker was born at Grünberg, Hesse-Darmstadt. Having studied classical philology at the University of Giessen, in 1803 he was appointed master in the high school, an office which he combined with that of...

, however, the rival of Sophocles was a son of Choerilus, who bore the same name. The Suidas

Suda

The Suda or Souda is a massive 10th century Byzantine encyclopedia of the ancient Mediterranean world, formerly attributed to an author called Suidas. It is an encyclopedic lexicon, written in Greek, with 30,000 entries, many drawing from ancient sources that have since been lost, and often...

 states that Choerilus wrote 150 tragedies and gained the prize thirteen times. His works are all lost; only Pausanias

Pausanias (geographer)

Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the times of Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece , a lengthy work that describes ancient Greece from firsthand observations, and is a crucial link between classical...

 mentions a play by him entitled Alope (a mythological personage who was the subject of dramas by Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

 and Carcinus

Carcinus (writer)

Carcinus was an Ancient Greek tragedian, and was a member of a family including Xenocles and his grandfather Carcinus of Agrigentum. He received a prize for only one out of his one hundred and sixty plays, many of them composed at the court of Dionysius II of Syracuse...

). His reputation as a writer of satyr

Satyr

In Greek mythology, satyrs are a troop of male companions of Pan and Dionysus — "satyresses" were a late invention of poets — that roamed the woods and mountains. In myths they are often associated with pipe-playing....

ic dramas is attested in the well-known line:

ἡνίκα μἑν βασιλεὐς ἥν Χοιρίλοε έν Σατύροις.

The Choerilean metre, mentioned by the Latin grammarians, is probably so called because the above line is the oldest extant specimen. Choerilus was also said to have introduced considerable improvements in theatrical masks and costumes.