12

Eupolis

the play’s author on the way to Sicily, i. e. as part of the preliminaries to the
Athenian expedition that invaded the island in 415 BCE. The notice in the
Suda is thus normally taken to refer to the Battle of Cynosema in 411 BCE,
meaning that Eupolis’ career lasted only about seventeen years. That a certain
Eupolis appears in a list of battle casualties seemingly from the same period
(test. dub. 51) does not prove the thesis regarding the date of the comic poet’s
death correct, for the name is not unique (see Name and Identity, above). But
neither is it common, and nothing is lost by assuming that this is our Eupolis,
just as nothing is gained by denying the possibility.1
The Suda assigns Eupolis a total of seven victories at the City Dionysia
and the Lenaea contests, and the Victors List for the Lenaea (test. 12) gives
him three triumphs there, meaning that the other four must have come at the
City Dionysia. The Lists show that Eupolis was victorious after Aristophanes
(so after 426 BCE) at the City Dionysia (test. 11), and before him (so before
425 BCE) at the Lenaea (test. 12). He was thus extremely successful as a very
young man, and the other evidence we have regarding the careers of the
individuals whose names appear before and after Eupolis in the Victors Lists
makes it clear that he and Aristophanes were the two most brilliant stars of a
fresh generation of comic poets that burst onto the Athenian dramatic scene
in the mid- to late 420s BCE. Beyond this, we know that Noumeniai took third
place at the Leneae in 425 BCE, when Aristophanes’ Acharnians took first
(test. 13a), and that Kolakes took first place at the City Dionysia in 421 BCE,

1 Thus also Storey 2003. 53. The entry for Eupolis in the print version of PAA largely
follows Storey’s occasionally problematic chronology for the individual comedies
and contains a number of significant oversights, obscurities and errors. In par-
ticular: (1) The potential connection to the war-casualty Eupolis (PAA 442520) is
ignored. (2) Eupolis’ first victory at the City Dionysia (test. 11) was not necessarily
in 424 BCE, which is merely one possible date (actually 425, 424 or at the latest
421 BCE), while his first victory at the Lenaea (test. 12) did not necessarily come
in 426, which is merely the latest possible date. (3) The most important prosopo-
graphical reference in Chrysoun genos is to Cleon in power (fr. 316.1). (4) The date
of Autolykos II (“reedited and performed a year or later”, sc. than 420 BCE) is in
fact obscure. (5) Demoi is unlikely to date as early as 418 BCE, just as Taxiarchoi
is unlikely to date as late as 415 BCE. (6) The Phormio mentioned in Demoi (fr.
138) is not the late 5th-century Athenian general put onstage as a character in
Taxiarchoi (thus implicitly PAA, by failing to differentiate between the two fig-
ures) but the mid-6th-century Athenian archon. (7) Fr. 41 of Astrateutoi makes no
reference to Cleonymus, who is not in fact mentioned in the play. (8) Platonius On
the Differentiation of Comedy (test. 35; unhelpfully cited as “Platon 1 3, line 13”)) is
irrelevant to the question of the date and place of Eupolis’ death.