Ταξίαρχοι (Introduction)

371

figure brought onstage as a character in a late 5th-century comedy unless he is
explicitly hauled out of the Underworld, like the Athenian politicians in Demoi
and Solon in Cratinus’ Cheirdnes (fr. 246), or unless another character visits the
Underworld to speak with him, as Dionysus visits Euripides and Aeschylus in
Aristophanes’ Frogs (cf. Nicopho’s Ex Haidou Anion, “Coming up from Hades”
with Pellegrino 2013. 55). Perhaps Dionysus went to the Underworld to see
Phormio (as Kock, comparing Frogs, hypothesized), or perhaps Phormio was
somehow conjured up from the dead. That there is no positive evidence to
support either thesis in what little survives of the play does not make them
impossible, but it does confine such theses to the realm of fantasy. The simpler
and therefore preferable conclusion is accordingly that Taxiarchoi was staged
before Phormio’s death likely in the early 420s BCE near the beginning of
Eupolis’ career.197

Storey further cites as grounds for dating Taxiarchoi to the mid-410s BCE what
an ancient scholar alleges is a reference to Sophocles’ Tereus in fr. 268b, combined
with an allusion to that play at Ar. Av. 100-1 (414 BCE). But the Birds reference
is a terminus ante quem for the Tereus, which is generally put in the early 420s
BCE (Fitzpatrick 2001. 90 n. 3; Sommerstein, Fitzpatrick and Talboy 2006. 157-9
(giving undue deference to Storey’s dating); Milo 2008. 13-19, esp. 19, with further
references), and as such is no more suggestive of the original date of performance
than is the extended parody of Euripides’ Telephus (438 BCE) in Aristophanes’
Thesmophoriazusae (411 BCE). (For the possibility that POxy. 5093 col. iv.14-22
puts Tereus precisely in 431 BCE, see Luppe 2010; Luppe 2012.) Finally, Storey
argues that because Taxiarchoi mentioned some unknown person as a Idpodytes (fr.
2681), and because Aristophanes mentioned the Idpodytes Orestes at Ach. 1166-8
and Av. 712, 1491, Taxiarchoi likely belongs in the mid-410s BCE. But there is no
logical connection between the references to Orestes and Eupolis’ Idpodytes, and
even if there were, one could just as easily argue that Taxiarchoi belonged around
the date of Acharnians (425 BCE). More important, whoever the man targeted by
Eupolis was, he was also mocked by Telecleides, whose career belongs firmly in
the mid-440s to mid-420s BCE, meaning that fr. 2681 argues for an early date for
Taxiarchoi, not for a later one. At fr. 268.84 ξενοκ[, Lobel detected a mention of the
tragic poet and dancer Xenocles son of Carcinus (PA 11222; PAA 732205) referred
to at e.g. Ar. V. 1510-11. Even if Lobel’s thesis is correct, it does not allow us to
date Taxiarchoi any more precisely within Eupolis’ lifetime.
197 Handley 1982. 25 notes that an ostrakon cast against Cleophon (#601 or 602 Lang)
and presumably dating to the mid-410s BCE (i. e. the last ostracism) was found
in the same deposit as the Agora pot (test, iv), which—following Webster 1960.
261-3—he takes to be part of a set produced to celebrate a single dramatic vic-
tory and that contains a vase on which a seated man is depicted rowing a fish.
Calling the ostrakon the “best guide to the date of the vases”, Handley suggests that