302

Eupolis

Philoxenus was mocked in comedy as a whore. Eupolis in Poleis:-. Also Phrynichus
in Satyroi (fr. 49)
Meter Dactylic hexameter.
Discussion Raspe 1832. 105; Meineke 183911.514; van Leeuwen 1898. 115 (on
Ar. Nu. 686); Edmonds 1957. 394-7; Storey 1995; Storey 2003. 224-5
Citation context Part of a scholion on Ar. V. 83-4 μά τον κύν’, ώ Νικόστρατ’,
ού φιλόξενος, / έπεί καταπύγων έστίν ό γε Φιλόξενος (“No, by the dog,
Nicostratus, he’s not philoxenos (‘fond of guests’), because Philoxenus is a
faggot”; rejecting a supposed attempt by an audience member to identify
Philocleon’s disease, which begins with philo-) and presumably drawn from
a catalogue of kdmoidoumenoi.
Text Σν offers the unmetrical εστιν, which a late scribe or editor corrected
to εστι (Σ ).
Interpretation The combination of the meter and the epicizing εστι δε τις at
the beginning of the line (see below) suggests an oracle. Raspe noted that the
oracle-monger Hierocles appears to have been among the characters in Poleis
(fr. 231 with n.) and took him to be the speaker. Van Leeuwen suggested that
there might be a deliberate obscurity in the language concealed by the need for
modern printed texts to differentiate between upper- and lower-case letters;
the sense might be either “a female Philoxenus” or “a guest-loving female”,
with the unexpected demotic rather than a personal name at the end of the
line serving to make clear that it is the former.
The standard prosopographies combine as PA 14707 = PAA 941310:
(1) the Φιλόξενος έκ Διομείων referred to in the comic fragments preserved
by Σν Ar. V. 82 and seemingly also at Ar. Nu. 686 (characterized as an effem-
inate)
(2) Philoxenus the son of Eryxis and father of another Eryxis mentioned at Ar.
Ra. 934 (mockingly characterized as “a brown horse-cock”, whatever that may
mean), who was supposedly a pupil of Anaxagoras (Aeschin. Socr. SSR VI.A F
73 ap. Ath. 5.220b) and is described by other sources (e. g. Arist. EE 1231'15—17;
Theophil. fr. 6, FHG iv.516 ap. Ath. 1.6b; Ael. VH 10.9) as a notorious glutton.
Whether this is correct is impossible to say, but the name is common (at
least twenty 5th-/4th-century examples in LGPN II). See in general Storey
1995; Stamma 2014. 264-5. Diomeia was a city deme of the tribe Aigeis that
was located outside the city walls and included the sanctuary of Heracles at
Cynosarges, but is otherwise not securely located; Athenaeus refers several