SOPHRON of Syracuse, next to Epicharmus the greatest representative of Sicilian comedy, flourished about 430 b.c. He was the author of mimes, written in prose, containing both male and female characters—Μίμοι drδp∈Γoι and Μίμοι γυναικείοι—and depicting scenes from the daily life of the Sicilian Greeks. From the extremely scanty fragments which remain of his writings we can only see that he used the local dialect, frequently sacrificing refinement to vigour; he sometimes reminds us of Plautus in his employment of bold and expressive figures and turns of expression. But we can judge of the dramatic power and vivacity of his compositions from the story that Plato first introduced them to Athens, and studied them in order to give animation to his own dialogues; and some idea of the general character of his mimes may be derived from the 2d and 15th idyls of Theocritus, which are said to have been imitated from the ' Ακέστριαι and ' Iσθμιάζovσαι of his Syracusan predecessor.

The fragments of Sophron, most of which have been preserved to illustrate some point of grammar or dialect, are collected in Ahrens, De Graecae Linguae Dialectis, vol. ii. pp. 464-476.