Introduction

33

8. Eupolis and Other Comic Poets
Comedy was a deeply competitive business in late 5th-century Athens. Poets
had first to get their plays approved by the relevant archon at the beginning
of the year for performance via award of a chorus, a stipend and a slot on the
program, and then six to nine months later competed against (most likely)
four other men at the festival in question. Onstage mockery of rivals com-
bined with aggressive advertisement of the particular excellence of one’s own
dramatic product thus unsurprisingly appears to be the norm (cf. fr. 205). The
extent to which comic poets also actively cooperated with one another behind
the scenes is more difficult to judge, both because there was no obvious benefit
to publicly admitting to dependence on another man, and because claims by
other parties that one playwright borrowed from or worked for another are
not necessarily to be believed.
As noted in Section 1, Aristophanes and Eupolis were almost exact contem-
poraries, and both had brilliant early theatrical careers. At some point in his
Pytine (victorious at the City Dionysia in 423 BCE), Cratinus—seemingly the
most important comic poet of the previous generation—charged Aristophanes
with using Eupolis’ words (fr. 213). The similarity between fr. 99.34-539 and
Ar. Eq. 1288-940 led some ancient scholars to interpret this as a claim that part
of the parabasis of Knights (City Dionysia 424 BCE) was in fact composed by
Eupolis.41 Precisely what Cratinus meant, including whether he was referring
to an already established rivalry between the two younger men rather than
merely getting in a hostile dig at Aristophanes, who had mocked him at Eq.
531-6 as an antiquated drunk who needed to retire, is unclear. But Ar. Pax
762-3 (City Dionysia 421 BCE) in any case contains what early commentators
took to be a mocking reference to Eupolis, who supposedly boasted in his
Autolykos (fr. 65) about the way his status as a dramatic victor improved his
odds when he trolled for boys in the city’s wrestling schools. The specific
chronology of the interpretation is difficult—Autolykos I likely belongs to 420
BCE, putting it after Peace rather than before it—and whether there is any
real connection between the texts is again uncertain, as also in the case of the
claim preserved in the scholia that an unflattering reference at Ar. Pax 740

39 δστις ούν άρχειν τοιούτους άνδρας «[ίρειται - ] / μήτε πρόβατ’ αύτω τεκνοϊτο
μήτε γή κ[αρπόν φέροι]
40 δστις ούν τοιοΰτον άνδρα μή σφόδρα βδελύττεται, / ούποτ’ έκ ταύτοϋ μεθ’ ήμών
πίεται ποτηριού
41 For full discussion of all these issues, see Kyriakidi 2006. Vianello 1907. 73-6 offers
a review of early discussion of the question in modern scholarship.