368

Eupolis

the fact that one of the characters discussing lunch is Phormio and the other
speaker plays the fool, as Dionysus often does in Aristophanes’ Frogs, does
not show show that Dionysus is the second speaker, although he might be.
The reference in fr. 273 to a woman(?) to be auctioned off also makes it clear
how little we know of what went on onstage in Eupolis’ comedy. Perhaps
she is a member of Dionysus’ entourage (like the Bacchae in the eponymous
Euripidean play), although this too risks trying to force the fragments of
Taxiarchoi into a pre-conceived notion of a “standard Dionysiac plot”, and
the individual ordering the sale is in any case unlikely to be Phormio (see n.
ad loc.).
The idea (first put forward in Wilson 1974) that Taxiarchoi included a
rowing-scene that served as a precedent and perhaps a model for a similar
scene at the beginning of Aristophanes’ Frogs in 405 BCE is based on fr. 268n
(cf. fr. 268o) and is now treated as a critical commonplace (e. g. Luppe 1980. 118;
Handley 1982. 24; Sommerstein 1985. 149 on Ar. Pax 348; Dover 1993. 39; Slater
2002. 186; Storey 2003. 248 “A comedy about Dionysus joining the navy”). But
it finds very little support in the text of Eupolis (see n. ad loc.), and everything
else—including the identity of the chorus, taxiarchs being responsible for re-
cruiting and organizing foot-soldiers rather than rowers—suggests that the
play focussed on the hoplite experience rather than military experience gen-
erally. That the Archidamian War served as a basic background to Taxiarchoi
seems obvious, although the attitude the play adopted toward the hostilities
is not apparent from what is preserved for us. Not every comedy that treated
the war with Sparta, after all, need have been as deeply disgruntled with it as
Aristophanes’ plays from the second half of the 420s BCE at least pretend to
be. Nor need Dionysus always emerge unambiguously triumphant in comedies
of the early Peloponnesian War period in which he plays a part (pace Bowie),
as is apparent from the hypothesis of Cratinus’ Dionysalexandros (test, i.40-4),

could make a worse hoplite?); cf. Orth 2014. 72-3 on Aristomenes’ Dionysos asketes
(“Dionysus the athlete”). Wilamowitz connected Dionysus’ motivation with the
claim at Androtion FGrH 324 F 8 (preserved by Σν Ar. Pax 347, along with fr. 274;
cf. Paus. 1.23.10) that Phormio was released from an unpaid fine that prevented
him from participating in Athenian public life (i. e. because it rendered him άτιμος)
via a payment of 100 minas f τού Διονυσίου. But the text is corrupt and obscure
precisely at the point where Dionysus(?) enters the story, and the connections
Wilamowitz alleges are tenuous. Storey 2003. 260 offers a series of extravagant
suggestions about the plot of Taxiarchoi as a whole, none of them more than
guess-work.