Δήμοι (test. *viii)

291

back. Ribbons are tied around and trail from the lyre, presumably as another
symbol of agonistic victory. Phrynis’ body is rigid and leans exaggeratedly
backward, as he digs in his heels in an attempt to keep himself from being
pulled to the right. The index finger of his left hand is raised, as if he is making
a point of some sort to the other character, at whom he stares directly. The
second character (to the right) is a bearded old man labeled ΠΎΡΩΝΙΔΕΣ, who
wears a chiton (specifically an exomis, suspended from his left shoulder alone
and marking him as a simple, poor character; see Stone 1981. 175-6; Tee 2015.
112) and over that a himation; no phallus is visible. He holds a walking stick
(appropriate for an old man or a peasant; see Stone 1981. 246-7) in his left
hand and is barefoot. Pyronides is striding vigorously to his left while looking
back at Phrynis, on whose left wrist his own right hand maintains a firm grip.
His mouth is open, as if he were speaking.
There is no other evidence that Phrynis (for whom, see below) was a char-
acter in Demoi, and Taplin’s association of the scene on this pot with the action
in Eupolis’ play depends on the rare, most likely invented name Pyronides
(for which, see the general introduction to the play, Content). Aristophanes
is not known to have recycled the names of his central characters, and it is
thus a reasonable hypothesis that Eupolis adopted a similar practice, meaning
that any onstage Pyronides can be taken prima facie to be a character in
Demoi. It is nonetheless worth noting that there are many other overlaps in
the identities of the central figures in Aristophanes’ early comedies—basically
one disgruntled and perversely ambitious old countryman after another—to
the extent that one might reasonably ask whether audiences could be expected
or at least tempted to detect continuities among them and to read them all
together (“Here he is again; I wonder what the poet has called him this year?”).
If so, it might also be the case that not every comic poet changed the name
of his central character in each new play, allowing for the possibility of e. g. a
multi-festival series of “Adventures of Pyronides”—and thus for the possibility
that the Asteas pot “quotes” a scene of Eupolis but not from Demoi.
Much of what is known of the citharode Phrynis (PAA 965030; Stephanis
#2583) comes from Pherecr. fr. 155 (ap. Plu. Mor. 1141d-2a), where the person-
ified Music describes the abuse she suffered from a series of lovers/musicians,
in order Melanippides, Cinesias, Phrynis and Timotheus, and from a scholion
on Aristophanes’ Clouds preserved in a slightly different form in the Suda. In
the course of a long rant on the degraded modern style of education, the Just
Argument declares (Ar. Nu. 969, 971)175 that in his day beatings were dispensed

1/5 Ar. Nu. 970 = fr. 930, which was inserted into the text of Clouds by Brunck at the
suggestion of Valkenaer, but is omitted (appropriately) by modern editors.