12

Eupolis

in forming and transmitting it); Luraghi and Alcock 2003 (a collection of essays
on the topic); Luraghi 2008. 173-208. Th. 4.41.3, 80.2; 5.14.3 makes it clear that
the helots became increasingly restive after the Athenian capture of Pylos and
the conversion of the place into an anti-Spartan Messenian stronghold in 425
BCE. Whether this was connected with Eupolis’ choice of them to make up
his chorus is impossible to say.
No other known comedy is entitled Heildtes, but cf. Cratinus’ Drapetides,
Callias’ Pedetai and Pherecrates’ Automoloi, on the one hand, and Crates’
and Plato Comicus’ Metoikoi, on the other; and see on Lakones. Note also
Sophocles’ satyr play Epi Tainaroi or (Epitainarioi) Satyroi (frr. 198a-e).
Content Nothing is known of the content of Heildtes beyond the identity of
the chorus (see Title) and the fact that it included at least one Doric-speaker
as a character (frr. 147; 149; perhaps 151; note also fr. 154). In addition, ancient
scholarship seems to have regarded the assignment of the play to Eupolis as
problematic (only frr. 147; 150; 154; elsewhere “whoever wrote Heildtes” or
the like), meaning that we cannot be certain that the fragments of the play
collected here actually belong to him. See Mueller 1847, who concludes “Ich
gestehe, dass ich diese und andere Fragen mir viel leichter vorlegen als Ibsen
kann” (p. 470).
Storey 2003. 177-8 combines the notice at Hdt. 9.80 that helots sent to
collect Persian spoils after the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE stole as much of
the money and other goods as they could; Thucydides’ observation (1.128.1)
that sometime in the early 460s BCE the Spartans executed a group of helots
who had sought sanctuary in Poseidon’s temple at Taenarum; what is likely
a mention of the precinct of that temple in fr. 149; and the plot of Euripides’
suppliant drama Heracleidae to imagine “a comedy centred around a chorus
of cunning slaves deceiving their less intelligent Spartan masters” that fea-
tured helots who sought help or safety at Taenarum. Like all such hypotheses,
Storey’s is non-falsifiable; because Heildtes is lost, any assertion about it might
be true. But that is no reason to lend the thesis any credence or to treat it
as the basis for further research and reconstruction. See further on Kolakes
and Taxiarchoi, and cf. the general introduction in Vol. I on the question of
reconstructing lost comedies.
The following have also been assigned to Heildtes: frr. 191 (Runkel); 372
(Kock); 398 (Meineke); 416 (Schiassi); 472 (Ahrens); 480 (Runkel).
Date If Dindorf’s interpretation of test. dub. i is accepted, Heildtes must date
to between 429 and 425 BCE. The play is otherwise undated.1

1 Storey 2003. 179 (also 174; cf. Storey 1990. 7), following Kaibel, dates the play to