122

Eupolis

new play, even if a careless spectator might be fooled into thinking that it
was. Eupolis apparently responded to the attack (or some other attack much
like it) in Baptai by claiming that he had actually helped Aristophanes write
Knights (fr. 89 with n.).
The play by Phrynichus mentioned in 556 is unidentified. But Σ™ claims-
on the basis of what additional evidence, if any, we do not—that the scene with
the old woman and the sea-monster was a parody of the Andromeda story,
while jRVENM maintains that the old woman represented Hyperbolos’ mother.
The play by Hermippus mentioned in 557 is apparently Artopdlides (“Female
Bread-Vendors”) (thus xRVEM, partially corrupt), about which almost nothing
else is known.62 The “image of the eels” mentioned in 559 is an allusion to
Ar. Eq. 864-7 δπερ γάρ οί τάς έγχέλεις θηρώμενοι πέπονθας. / δταν μεν ή
λίμνη καταστή, λαμβάνουσιν ούδέν· / εάν δ’ άνω τε καί κάτω τον βόρβορον
κυκώσιν, / αίρούσι- καί σύ λαμβάνεις, ήν την πόλιν ταράττης (“For your
situation’s like that of people who hunt for eels. Whenever the lake’s calm,
they don’t catch anything, whereas if they stir up the muck, they capture
them. And you also get something, if you throw the city into disorder”; ad-
dressed to the Paphlagonian/Cleon). Perhaps the point is that this image was
stolen and re-used by other comic poets (thus Dover 1968 ad loc., although he
seems to imagine only a single, particularly injurious borrowing), or perhaps
Aristophanes means something far more cutting: his rivals’ plays tear Athens
up just as badly, and for just as parochial reasons, as Cleon’s politics do.

test, ii
ΣΕΜ Ar. Nu. 549
ώς περί ζώντος αύτοΰ διαλέγεται έν οίς φησι (Ar. Nu. 591)· Κλέωνα τον
λάρον. καί Άνδροτίων (FGrH 324 F 40) δε φησιν αύτόν επί Αλκαίου (422/1
BCE) τεθνάναι δυσίν έτεσιν ύστερον Ίσάχρου (424/3 BCE), έφ’ ού (Kuster·
Ίσαρχος δε φησιν, άφ’ ού ΕΜ) αί πρώται Νεφέλαι (test, viii) έδιδάχθησαν.
πώς οϋν δύναται καί τού Μαρικά μεμνήσθαι, δς έδιδάχθη μεν προ τών
Νεφελών, ώς καί νϋν αυτός φησιν, έκεϊ δε ό Εϋπολις ώς τεθνηκότος Κλέωνος

62 That Hyperboles’ mother was one of these bread-vendors, and thus that Hermippus’
satire presented her as working in a notoriously base profession, is generally taken
for granted, although there is no specific evidence to that effect. Sonnino 1997.
46-7 points to the mention of the use of a τηλία (“tray”, sometimes specifically
“bread-tray”) by Hyperbolos’ mother in fr. 209 and suggests that Hermippus may
have taken the idea over from Eupolis.