Ίκάριοι Σάτυροι

139

and the opsophagos orator Hyperides. The traveller might be Dionysus; cf. Orth
HGL II (2014) 1046.159 Both fragments seem to contain parodic, possibly para-
tragic, passages. The context in fr. 18 is different: it contains a scene in which a
famished person is described and four politicians are satirized in the manner of
Old Comedy. In fr. 19 two further notorious Athenians, Aristomedes and Autocles,
are ironically named after legendary figures, perhaps in a sympotic context.
It seems worth considering a possible connection between the title and the
content of the play. Frr. 16 and 17 contain directions to the traveller, including
the encounter with emblematic Athenian personalities such as Pythionice,
Chaerephilus’ sons and Hyperides. Besides, in all the preserved fragments, con-
temporary Athenians (politicians, merchants) are satirized through their descrip-
tion as legendary figures (Marsyas, Tereus) or are attributed zoological (mostly
fishy) characteristics: in fr. 15 Chaerephilus sons are called common mackerels,
in the next fr. 16 they are called perches, the orator Hyperides is called a fish-
river, the orator Cephisodorus is termed an ass.160 On the basis, therefore, of the
available indications, Ikarioi in the title probably does not mean the inhabitants
of the island Icaria, nor “the people of the deme of Icaria”, for they would be
called Ikarieis·, rather, it may be an equivalent to Attikoi or Athenians’ (after the
eponymous hero Icarius, who was instructed by Dionysus in the use of wine).161
A parallel might be Telecleides’ Amphiktyones “Amphictyon and his followers”;
see Storey 2011, 288. Interestingly, an Attic tradition (Philoch. FGrHist 328 F 5b)
associates Amphictyon, the early king of Attica, with Dionysus; the god came to
Attica and instructed Amphictyon how to mix wine with water.162 Also cf. titles
consisting of the plural of a singular entity, such as Cratinus’ Archilochoi, Odysseis,
Ploutoi and Telecleides’ Hesiodoi.
Concerning the Satyroi of the title, an interpretative key could be fr. 19.1, where
a certain Autocles is called Marsyas, the Satyr who is said to have invented the flute
and contested with Apollo.163 Satyrs and flutes are the emblems of his dissolute

159 Cf. on fr. 7 from the play Dionysos, where a character, who might be the eponymous
god, asks for information on current Athenian politics. It has also been suggested that
the instructions in frr. 16 and 17 are spoken by Silenus (Crusius 1889, 228).
160 For a description of Satyrs as animals given to transforming themselves cf. Pl. Pit.
291a-b πολλοί μέν γάρ λέουσι των άνδρών εϊξασι και Κενταύροις και τοιούτοισιν
έτέροις, πάμπολλοι δέ Σατύροις και τοϊς άσθενέσι και πολυτρόποις θηρίοις· ταχύ δέ
μεταλλάττουσι τάς τε ιδέας και την δύναμιν εις άλλήλους.
161 Schweighauser IX (1807) 442 first notes that Ikarioi are normally the islanders, and
continues: “verum tamen’lKapioi Uli, a quibus fabulae titulum fecit Timocles, ab oppido
Attico nominati videntur”.
162 Bagordo 2013,45 with n. 34, however, doubts whether Amphiktyones means “Amphic-
tyon and his followers”, on the grounds that this would render the comedy a mytho-
logical burlesque, of a kind which Telecleides is not likely to have written.
163 Constantinides 1969, 55 suspects that Autocles is the short name of the notorious ped-
erast Autocleides; cf. below, Commentary on fr. 19.1.