Testimonia (test. 2)

39

According to test. 2a (n.), Eupolis’ first comedy dates to 429 BCE.
Combining this information with the claim here that he staged his first play
at age seventeen puts his birth in 447 or 446 BCE. As for his death, there
was fighting in the Hellespont in 412/1 BCE (Th. 8.61-2); none of Eupolis’
plays obviously or necessarily dates after the mid-410s BCE (see test. 3 n.);
and Wilamowitz suggested that the poet was perhaps to be identified with
the homonymous war-casualty from 412/1? BCE whose name is recorded
in test. dub. 51 (n.). Kaibel is dubious of dates offered by both the Suda and
Anon. De Com., taking the former to be an echo of similar claims regarding
Aristophanes, and the latter to represent an effort to produce a suitable fiction
to explain Eupolis’ death when the story about Alcibiades drowning him was
discredited by Eratosthenes (see test. 3 with n.).
Nothing else is known of the prohibition on poets serving on military
expeditions that supposedly followed Eupolis’ death. But κωλύω does not
suggest formal legislative action, and it is tempting to suppose that some
Hellenistic scholar noted that no poet after Eupolis was known to have died in
battle and conjectured that this must have been the result of formal or informal
Athenian policy, after which the hypothesis ossified into fact. Alternatively,
this may be a bad deduction from e. g. a cutting remark in a parabasis about
the lack of military service performed by someone’s poetic rivals. Phrynichus
is supposed to have died in Sicily shortly before this (Phryn. Com. test. 2.6),
and Pherecrates was perhaps a war-casualty in the same period (Olson 2010b).
Eupolis’ father Sosipolis (PAA 863170) is otherwise unknown. The name is
relatively rare in Athens (only three other secure 5th-/4th-century examples),
Eupolis much less so (about 20 other 5th-/4th-century examples). The shared
second element in any case suggests a family onomastic tradition.44
For the number of Eupolis’ plays (said to be fourteen in test. 2a), see
Introduction Section 2. For Eupolis’ competitive record, see test. 11-13.

test. 2 K.-A. (test, ii-iii Storey)
a. Anon, περί Κωμωδίας (Proleg. de com. III.9-13, 33-5), pp. 7, 9 Koster
οί μέν ούν τής αρχαίας κωμωδίας ποιηταί ούχ ύποθέσεως αληθούς άλλα
παιδιάς εύτραπέλου γενόμενοι ζηλωταί τούς αγώνας έποίουν- καί φέρεται
αύτών πάντα τά δράματα τξε' σύν τοΐς ψευδεπιγράφοις. τούτων δε είσιν άξι-
ολογώτατοι’Επίχαρμος (test. 6a), Μάγνης (test. 3), Κρατϊνος (test. 2a), Κράτης
(test. 2a), Φερεκράτης (test. 2a), Φρύνιχος (test. 2), Εϋπολις, Αριστοφάνης

44 For the phenomenon, see Lambert 2012. 329-30.