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Eupolis

situation of the people living there and the eponymous Demes, which makes
more sense after the occupation of Deceleia in 413 BCE (when conditions in
the countryside must have deteriorated enormously) than before it.
As Storey 2003. 114 himself notes, certainty is impossible in matters of
this sort. There is nonetheless no positive reason (other than a bit of wishful
thinking in regard to Hyperboles and Alcibiades) to put Demoi as early as
Storey would like to have it, and considerable reason to put it later. Telo-
Porciani 2002, by contrast, attempt to move the date of the play in the opposite
direction, setting it in 410 BCE on the basis of their reading of fr. 99.12-14. At
And. 1.45, Telo-Porciani argue, έν μακρώ τείχει (literally “in [the] long wall”)
is a collective singular that refers via synecdoche to the entire area enclosed
by the Piraeus wall and the Phaleron wall. Fr. 99.12-13 έν μακροΐν / τειχοϊν,
on the other hand, uses a dual and is thus not synecdoche, and Telo-Porciani
reject the notion that the preposition can in this case mean “contained with-
in”, suggesting that the phrase ought instead to be taken to refer to “una
permanenza sulle Lunghe Mura” (“a permanent location on the Long Walls”).
According to Th. 8.71, they note, at some point in June 411 BCE the Spartan
king Agis attacked Athens’ walls, and the Athenians responded by sending out
τούς δε ιππέας ... και μέρος τι των οπλιτών και ψιλών και τοξοτών άνδρας
(“the knights ... and a certain portion of the hoplites and light-armed troops
and bowmen”), who drove the Peloponnesian forces off. Telo-Porciani suggest
that the other hoplites—those not sent out by the Athenians to confront Agis’
troops—were stationed on the city’s walls, if only briefly, and that these are the
individuals referred to at fr. 99.12-13 as τούς έν μακροΐν / τειχοϊν. If the Four
Hundred (still in power at that point) also offered these men grain-rations that
were unavailable to other citizens, while simultaneously cutting off traditional
deme-based payments such as wages for service on the Boule (cf. Th. 8.65.3
[a measure said to have been proposed when the Four Hundred were still in
power in the city, but toward the end of their reign]; [Arist.] Ath. 33.1 [the
policy assigned instead to the Five Thousand]), this might have produced the
sort of complaints articulated by Eupolis’ chorus. Demoi can thus be placed
in 410 BCE, at one of the first two festivals that followed Agis’ attack and
the Athenian defensive measures that accompanied it, rather than two years
earlier, as is generally believed.
This thesis—which means that Eupolis’ comedy must have been conceived
during the oligarchic terror of 411 BCE and staged in the late winter or spring
of the next year, before the democracy had been restored—faces two basic sets
of objections. First, Thucydides’ notice that in June 411 BCE some of the city’s
hoplites were sent out to confront Agis’ men tells us nothing about a new
set of guards posted on the Long Walls at the same time. Telo-Porciani have