Αύτόλυκος α β' (Introduction)

185

the Spartan nauarch Lysander was still in Athens in 404 BCE, after Athens
had been defeated in the Peloponnesian War; when Eteonicus lost the case
in court, made further trouble and finally appealed to Lysander, Lysander
unexpectedly sided with Autolykos (Paus. 9.32.8). Plu. Lys. 15.5 reports that
Autolykos was executed in 404 BCE by the Thirty Tyrants “as a favor to
Kallibios” the Spartan harmost (Poralla #405), in connection with which event
D.S. 14.5.7 calls Autolykos άνήρ παρρησιαστής, “an outspoken individual”.
Autolykos’ victory in the pankration was commemorated by a statue by the
important mid-4th-century sculptor Leochares that stood in the Prytaneion
in Athens (Paus. 1.18.3; 9.32.8; Plin. Nat. 34.79).* * * * 94 As Lippold 1925. 1994-5
saw, the commissioning of the statue by a prominent artist fifty years or so
after the subject’s death, along with the placement of it in the administrative
center of the city rather than on the Acropolis, where statues of victorious
athletes normally were erected, suggests that this was not a simple victory
monument set up by a later generation of the family as a way of proclaiming
their own significance, but a retrospective public recognition of Autolykos’
status as a hero of the Athenian democratic resistance to tyranny and some-
thing approaching an apology for how he had been treated. For Autolykos’
father Lykon (PA 9271; PAA 611820), see fr. 61 n. For his mother, see also frr.
232; 295 with n.
Herodicus—drawing on what sources, we do not know, although it is a
reasonable assumption that he had a copy of one of the plays—claims that
Autolykos I targeted the title-character’s Panathenaic victory. Beyond that, we
know next to nothing of the plot of either version of the comedy,95 although fr.
48, especially if it comes from the prologue, makes it a reasonable guess that
it/they involved the interlocked affairs of three different households; cf. the
seemingly explicit echo of fr. 52 in fr. 53, which might be taken to support the

execution later in 404, after Lysander had left the city, is impossible to say, although
Diodorus Siculus seems to imply that Autolykos became a general thorn in the
Spartans’ side, and Kallibios may have wanted to be rid of him on that account
alone.
94 Vatin’s claim to have inscriptional evidence for the presence of a copy of this statue
at Delphi is probably not to be taken seriously; see SEGXXIV 380.
95 Despite Schiassi, who imagines a bitter, ugly satire of the alleged degeneracy of
Autolykos and his family (although without much comment on what actually
went on onstage), and Fisher, whose arguments mostly have to do in one way or
another with how Callias was presented in the play—despite the fact that we have
no evidence that he was a character or even mentioned in the course of it.