292

Eupolis

(i. e. among the various “islanders” mentioned but not fully catalogued at Hdt.
8.46 (a list of Greek forces at the Battle of Salamis)) and appears in the Tribute
Lists from 450/49 BCE to 416/5 BCE (IGI3 263.IV.19 and 289.1.29, respectively).
It was assessed ten talents of tribute in 425/4 BCE (IG I3 71.1.73) and was still
an active member of the Empire in 413 BCE, when Tenian naval forces partic-
ipated in the Sicilian Expedition (Th. 7.57.4). Nothing appears to be known of
its behavior in the final portion of the war, except that a contingent of Tenian
troops supported the Athenian oligarchs in 411 BCE (Th. 8.69). For Tenos’
relations with Athens in the 4th and 3 d centuries BCE, see Reger 1992; and for
Tenos in this period more generally, Etienne 1990.
For Tenos’ supposed reputation as a home for venomous creatures, cf.
Hsch. τ 802 Τη via.· έχιδνα (“Tenian: a viper”); Plin. Nat. 4.65 (claiming that
the place was also known as Ophioussa, “Serpent Island”; thus also St.Byz. p.
621.10-11 Meineke); Matthews 1996. 254.
2 σκόρπιους έχεις τε.:: συκοφάντας For the comparison of sycophants
to venomous creatures, cf. Ar. Th. 528-30 (adapting the proverb “Look for a
scorpion under every stone!” to refer to politicians) with Austin-Olson 2004
ad loc.; Pl. 885 (a magical ring imagined bearing the inscription “[protection]
against a sycophant’s bite”); [D.] 25.52 πορεύεται διά τής αγοράς, ώσπερ έχις
ή σκόρπιός ήρκώς τό κέντρον (“he makes his way through the marketplace,
just like a viper or a scorpion with its stinger raised”), 96 συκοφάντην καί
πικρόν καί έχιν την φύσιν άνθρωπον (“a person who is a sycophant and
bitter and a viper by nature“; said in what follows to be likely to bite); D.L.
6.51 (when Diogenes was asked which wild animals had the worst bite, he
replied: “Of wild animals, the sycophant; of tame animals, the flatterer”); and
for similar comparisons, e. g. Cratin. fr. 80; Anaxil. fr. 22.1-5; S. Ant. 531; E.
Ale. 310; Men. Dy sc. 480. For the sycophant, an alleged malicious abuser of
the legal system better conceived as a creation of the collective social imagi-
nation than as unambiguously identifiable with any particular real individual
or group of individuals, but in any case a standard Aristophanic villain, see
Olson 1998 on Ar. Pax 191; Christ 1998. 48-71 (both with further bibliography).
For scorpions, see Keller 1909-1913 II.471-8; Beavis 1988. 21-34 (p. 21 “the
most feared invertebrates in antiquity”), esp. 27-8. Raspe took the reference
to be instead to the homonymous fish (the sculpin or bullhead), for which see
Olson-Sens 2000 on Archestr. fr. 30.1. This appears to be the first attestation
of έχις, which does not mean that the word was invented only now; whether
έχΐνος (“hedgehog”; see fr. 453 n.) and feminine έχιδνα (also “viper”; already
at Hes. Th. 297, 304) are cognates is disputed.