[Magnes,] of the city of Ikarion;[1] Attic or Athenian; comic poet. As a young man he overlaps in time with the aged Epicharmus.[2] He composed 9 comedies, and won 2 victories.
This man was a poet of Old Comedy. "Very frequently he set up trophies of victory over rival choruses, sending all sounds and plucking and fluttering wings and speaking Lydian and making fig-fly sounds and smearing with frog-like [colors]. It did not suffice, for when approaching old age -- being no longer young -- he was cast aside because he was an old man who had lost the ability to be funny."[3] A scholion [comments]: "sending" [means] "sending out". "Plucking" would be a reference to [the play] Barbatistai [Barbiton-players]. It is a play of Magnes. The barbitos is a sort of musical instrument.[4] "Fluttering wings" [is said] because he composed a play Birds. He also wrote Lydians and Fig-flies and Frogs. Froglike [batracheion] is a sort of color;[5] from this [we get] also the froglike cloak.[6] They used to smear their faces with froglike before the invention of masks.