430

Eupolis

Didymus (Hypomnemata Aristophanous fr. 42, p. 255 Schmidt): The author of Atalantai
(Call. Com. fr. *4) describes him as looking like this and as having a large beak, as does
Eupolis in Taxiarchoi
Discussion Storey 2003. 247, 257
Citation context A gloss on Ar. Av. 1294 Όπουντίω δ’ οφθαλμόν ούκ εχων
Κόραξ (“One-eyed Raven [was the name given to] Opountios”; 414 BCE)
drawn from Didymus’ commentary (1st century BCE) on Aristophanes, which
was itself an assemblage of earlier material, here including what must be a list
of komdidoumenoi. The material from Symmachus (ca. 100 CE) that follows in
the scholion (discussing the reference to Lycurgus as “Ibis” in Av. 1296) is likely
to be traced to Didymus as well, and thus once again back to other, now-lost
Hellenistic sources.
Interpretation Opountios is PAA 748440. The only other reference to him is
at Ar. Av. 153-4 (“I wouldn’t become Opountios for a talent of gold”), where
Σ claims that he was one-eyed (merely a deduction from Av. 1294) and a
συκοφάντης ... πονηρός (probably a guess based on a disparaging characteri-
zation of him offered somewhere in a comedy). The name is borne by only one
other Athenian, a candidate for ostracism in the 480s or 470s BCE (PAA 748445,
from the deme Oa; three ostraka found in the Kerameikos as part of the grosser
Kerameikosfund that includes numerous votes cast against Megacles son of
Hippocrates, Callias, Themistocles and Cimon).258 This man is likely a relative
from an earlier generation (see introductory n. to Taxiarchoi on Date), and the
name suggests family connections to the city of Opous in Lokris, mention of
which sets up the joke at Av. 153-4. The obvious conclusion is that the older
Opountios was the father or great-uncle of the man mentioned by Callias
(assuming Callias was the author of Atalantai), Aristophanes and Eupolis, who
was also involved in politics and thus worth taking repeated on-stage swipes
at in the 420s and 410s BCE, and perhaps a bit earlier as well.
Ravens were known for pecking out the eyes of their victims (cf. Dunbar
1995 on Ar. Av. 582-4; Olson 2002 on Ar. Ach. 92-3; and see in general Schmidt
2002), and “a raven without an eye” might accordingly be equivalent to collo-
quial English “without a nickel in his pocket”. But the texts cited by Didymus

258 For the ostraka—part of a single great deposit of about 9000 sherds from the
Kerameikos excavated in the mid-1960s—and the date of the first Opountios in
particular, see Willemsen 1968. 28-9; Thomsen 1972. 92-108, esp. 92-3; Brenne
2002. 40-3, 65. For the ostracism procedure and its social function, see Rhodes
1981. 268-71; Martin 1989; Brenne 1994; Kosmin 2015.