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Eupolis

(B.) has been charged by another party (D.) with a responsibility that requires
(A.)’s cooperation and that (A.)’s intransigence—for which (A.) feels he has
good reason (12, 28-9)—has so far made it impossible to fulfill (17-18). (B.)
therefore sends (C.) to report to (D.) on the situation and to ask (D.) to pursue
an alternative plan—better put, to choose one of two different alternative
plans—described in 15-17. That (D.) has the ability to dispatch troops and
seemingly funds as well (15-16) suggests that he is a general or more likely
represents some public decision-making body. Why (B.) wants (D.) to do this
is unclear from what little of the text survives (although see below), except
that this will apparently offer a way to work around (A.)’s resistance, and the
implication of 22-6 is that (B.)’s willingness to appeal to (D.) increases the
pressure on (A.) considerably: (A.) must cooperate (i. e. yield to persuasion)
or risk ruining himself.
Goossens 1935b. 335-40 (followed in different ways by Schmid and
Schwarze) argued that (A.) was Pericles, that (B.) was Cleon, and that the
situation presupposed in 15-16 is that in Athens in the early years of the
Peloponnesian War: the choice is between sending an army to confront the
Peloponnesian troops ravaging the Attic countryside—what (B.) would like
to see happen—and Pericles’ policy of withdrawing the rural population
within the city’s walls (cf. Th. 2.13.2 τα έκ των άγρών έσκομίζεσθαι, 14.1
έσεκομίζοντο έκ τών άγρών παϊδας καί γυναίκας και την άλλην κατασκευήν
ή κατ’ οίκον έχρώντο, 18.4 οί γάρ Αθηναίοι έσεκομίζοντο έν τώ χρόνω τούτω);
the Prospaltians—like the Acharnians in Aristophanes’ comedy of 425 BCE-
are ready to fight, even if Pericles insists that they abandon their farms for
the common good. On this interpretation, the money (B.) seemingly requests
along with troops is presumably intended to bribe a Spartan king or general,
as King Pleistoanax was supposedly bribed by Pericles to withdraw an army
from Attica in 445 BCE (Plu. Per. 22.2; cf. Ar. Nu. 859 with Dover 1968 ad loc\
But the specification that (A.) must be Pericles requires a huge imaginative
leap for which there is no solid evidence in the text, particularly since (B.)
focusses not on the larger political and social situation, but on the need for
his interlocutor to yield to good arguments and on the personal consequences
of behaving foolishly (esp. 23-6).179

179 Sensible further remarks on the weaknesses in Goossen’s thesis at Storey 2003.
236-7. Schiassi argued on even more tenuous grounds that (A.) was instead a
Heracles-Cleon figure.