Eupolis

278
Batalos: Aeschines in his On the False Embassy (2.99); he is mocked for effeminacy. But
Eupolis refers to an asshole as a batalos, so perhaps this is why they refer to sexual
perverts as bataloi
ZVxLS Aeschin. 1.126 (275 Dilts)
Βάταλον] “Βάταλον” καταπύγωνα και μαλακόν. ... και Δημοσθένη διά μαλακίαν
ούτως όνομασθήναι ... δοκεϊ δέ μοι λελέχθαι Βάταλος παρά τό Εύπόλιδος σκώμμα·
εκείνος γάρ | (πεποίηκε add. Sauppe) ύπό των βαπτών ονόματα (sic Σν5: om. Σ" : τό
των Βατάλων όνομα Meineke) f κεΐσθαι τοϊς αίσχροΐς καί (τόν^ πρωκτόν (sic Sauppe
ex Harp. : Τιγράνην yam°sLS) βάταλον ύπ’ αύτών (αύτοϋ Meineke) καλεϊσθαι
Batalos] “Batalos” (means) a pathic and an effeminate. ... Demosthenes too was called
by this name on account of effeminacy ... He seems to me to have been called Batalos
in accord with Eupolis’ joke; because the latter f (“has caused” added by Sauppe)
names by the baptai (thus Σν5 : omitted by Σ''“ : “the name of the Bataloi” Meineke) f
to be applied to shameful persons and an asshole (thus Sauppe from Harpocration :
“Tigranes” EamgsI s) to be called a batalos by them (“by him” Meineke)
Citation context Two closely related notes on an odd word in Aeschines; the
text of the scholion on Aeschines is corrupt and problematic. Similar material is
preserved at e.g. Clem.Al. Paid. Ill 3.23 (I p. 250.4-5 Stählin); xmgVxLS1 Aeschin.
2.99 (218 Dilts); Hsch. ß 317; Phot, ß 97; Suda ß 177-8, and see the later sources
collected at Stefanis 1988. 110-11.
Text Kassel-Austin collect various other conjectures intended to make sense
of the scholion on Aeschines; Dilts prints Meineke’s version of the text with
Sauppe’s supplement.
Discussion Lambin 1982. 254; Delneri 2006. 335-40
Interpretation Eupolis certainly used the word βάταλος (thus both Harpo-
cration and the scholion to Aeschines). But the portion of the scholion that
refers to Baptai is difficult to emend convincingly, and the word is perhaps
best understood as a misguided correction of a form of βάταλος by someone
familiar with the title of Eupolis’ most famous comedy. If so, this would need
to be treated as a fragment without play-title rather than assigned specifically
to Baptai.
As the scholion to Aeschines would have it, Demosthenes was called
Batalos (D. 18.180; Aeschin. 1.126; 2.99) by reference to Bat(t)alos of Ephesus
(#519 Stephanis), a pipe-player accused of various sorts of sexual and artistic
depravity who according to Plu. Dem. 4.4 was mocked in a play by Antiphanes
(cf. Kassel-Austin on his Αύλητής) and who thus most likely belongs to the
4th rather than the 5th century BCE. The attestation in Eupolis, however, shows
that the word βάταλος is older than that, and Furnee 1972. 154, 179 (followed