Δήμοι (Introduction)

305

11.455 had already assigned the play to 412 BCE, and that date—which puts
the performance after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition and the Spartan
occupation of Deceleia in 413 BCE, but before the oligarchic coup of 411 BCE-
remained the scholarly communis opinio for almost two centuries. The dating
has been challenged, however, in the two most significant recent treatments
of the issue, by Ian Storey (who argues that Demoi belongs in 417 or perhaps
416 BCE, before the ostracism of Hyperboles in 416 BCE or so, the flight of
Alcibiades into exile in 415 BCE, and the Sicilian Expedition) and by Mario
Telo and Leone Porciani194 (who put the play in 410 BCE, after the overthrow
of the democracy in 411 BCE and in a period when the so-called Five Thousand
were in control of the city’s government). The discussion that follows is in-
tended to show that the arguments in favor of these alternative dates are either
unconvincing or flatly contradicted by other information about Eupolis and
his play, and that Demoi is best kept in 412 BCE.
As Storey 2003. 112 notes, the two most substantial bits of evidence tra-
ditionally offered in support of a date of 412 BCE for Demoi— aside from a
circular insistence that the comedy must have been written and staged in the
aftermath of the disaster in Sicily because only such a disaster could justify
the writing and staging of such a comedy—are (1) the reference to individuals
living within the Long Walls at fr. 99.12-14 (generally taken to mean that
Demoi belongs after the occupation of Deceleia, since Thucydides 7.27.4-5
leaves little doubt that the rural population of Attica was drawn within the
city’s walls again at that point) and (2) the seeming allusion at fr. 99.81-9 to
the wild charges of impiety associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries that tore
Athenian society apart in 415 BCE.195 Storey 2003. 113 counters the first point
by observing that Andocides 1.45196 makes it clear that a substantial number
of people, including Athenians of hoplite status, were resident within the

194 Telo and Porciani 2002, followed in essentials but with less detailed argument by
Telo 2007. 16-24.
195 Prosopographic considerations are of no assistance in this regard (evidence re-
viewed at Storey 2003. 112), although see below on Demostratos in fr. 103. Other
criteria for dating the play (including the supposed appearance of a πρόβουλος as
a character and what Beta 1994 takes to be a reference to a proposal by Peisander
in 415 BCE allowing the torture of Athenian citizens) have been advanced, but lack
any probative value; see Storey 2003. 112-13.
196 άνακαλέσαντες δέ τούς στρατηγούς άνειπεΐν έκέλευσαν Αθηναίων τούς μέν έν
άστει οίκούντας ίέναι εις τήν αγοράν τα όπλα λαβόντας, τούς δ’ έν μακρώ τείχει
εις τό Θησεϊον, τούς δ’ έν Πειραιεΐ είς τήν'Ιπποδάμειαν αγοράν (“they summoned
the generals and ordered them to tell the Athenians who were resident in the
walled city to get their hoplite equipment and go to the Agora; those inside the