294

Eupolis

that Phrynis shaped Timotheus’ style, and Timotheus himself boasts at one
point (PMG 802) of having defeated Phrynis in a contest.* * * 179 Neither source
makes reference to Phrynis’ age, but in each case it is easy to believe that the
underlying idea is that he was the older of the two men.180 This is a flimsy
chain of argument but the best that can be done with the limited material at
our disposal, and taken together would seem to put Phrynis in his mid-50s at
a minimum when Clouds II was composed, and in his 60s or older at the time
Demoi was staged.
Telo takes it for granted that Phrynis must have been dead by the time
Demoi was staged, and uses this as proof that the play included an Underworld
scene, since Pyronides could not have encountered Phrynis in the upper world.
As the evidence reviewed above makes clear, the situation is more complex
and ambiguous than this, and Phrynis might well have been alive in 412 BCE.
Be all that as it may, he must have been represented in the original production
as an old man, since the audience will have known who he was and thus how
he should be portrayed, be it dead or alive. Whoever staged the mid-4th-cen-
tury revival of Demoi in Southern Italy that Asteas’ vase-painting recalls, on
the other hand, likely knew little or nothing about Phrynis except perhaps that
he was an exponent of the “New Music” (cf. Ar. Nu. 969, 971 [quoted above];

Polion (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 25.78.66) dated to 430-420 BCE
and discussed by Kärpati 2012. For IG II2 2311 (the inscriptional evidence for the
events; ca. 380 BCE), see Rotstein 2012. 102-6.
179 Timotheus refers to Phrynis in this fragment (preserved ap. Plu. Mor. 539c) as τον
Κάρβωνος (“the son of Karbon”; thus codd.), which recalls Istros’ Κάνωπος υιόν
(“the son of Kanops”), on the one hand, and Poll. 4.66 Φρϋνιν δέ τον Κάμωνος
(“Phrynis the son of Kamon”, with a reference to the description of his poetry in
Ar. Nu. 971), on the other. It is tempting to think that all this material ultimately
goes back to the same source (or one of the same sources) as ΣΕΑΜ Ar. Nu. 971 ~
Suda φ 761.
180 Of the other men mentioned by Pherecrates’ Music, the floruit of Melanippides was
at the very beginning of the 5th c. BCE. Cinesias (PA 8438; PAA 569985; Stephanis
#1406), on the other hand, is an onstage character in Birds (415 BCE) and was still
active in the 390s BCE, suggesting that he was born in mid-century or a bit earlier,
while Timotheus died in 366/5 BCE at the age of 90, according to Marm.Par. FGrH
239 A 76, putting his birth around 455 BCE. Cinesias and Timotheus were thus
contemporaries, and—despite Dover 1968 on Ar. Nu. 971, who has got the order
of the names in Pherecrates wrong—Music is not presenting her lovers in simple
chronological order, although she makes it clear that Melanippides was older than
the others (Pherecr. fr. 155.6-7).