164

Eupolis

his work belongs fundamentally to the first half of the 5th century. By Eupolis’
time he was thus a classic, the sort of poetry that upper-class boys were
made to memorize in school (cf. Ar. Nu. 966-8 “(The music-master) used to
teach them songs (άσμ’ έδίδασκεν) to learn by heart..., either ‘Pallas terrible
sacker-of-cities’ (PMG 735b) or ‘A cry that travels afar’ (PMG 948), straining
tight the harmony their fathers passed down”) and that later on, as adults, they
sang in symposia (cf. Ar. V. 1225-48). See in general Kugelmeier 1996. 37-72.
If the emphasis in Eupolis’ original was on the fate of Pindar’s poetry,
one of his characters may have denounced depraved modern taste in music,
and Meineke accordingly associated the passage with fr. 148; cf. Strepsiades’
description at Ar. Nu. 1355-79 of the hostility expressed by the Socratically
mis-educated Pheidippides toward the poetry of Simonides and Aeschylus
(which he refuses to sing) and his preference for Euripides; and on larger
changes in Athenian education in this period, as mousike (see fr. 366 n.) began
to yield to grammata, Morgan 1999, esp. 47-9; Ford 2001. 103-8. If Eupolis’
emphasis was instead on the reason for the supposed reverse of Pindar’s
fortune, the point might have been metatheatrical and thus appropriate e. g.
to a parabasis: the majority of the local population no longer likes good po-
etry (perhaps explaining a loss by the playwright at a recent festival). Cf.
fr. 392 and Aristophanes’ complaints about the hostile reception of Clouds
the previous year at V. 1044-50, esp. 1045 ας ύπό τού μή γνώναι καθαρώς
ύμείς έποιήσατ’ άναλδεϊς (“(novel ideas) that you rendered stunted, because
you didn’t understand them correctly”). Kassel-Austin compare Pindar’s own
O. 9.103-4 άνευ δε θεού, σισιγαμένον / ού σκαιότερον χρήμ’ έκαστον (“but
without a god’s help, no action is worse for being left unadvertised”) and
fr. 121.4 θνάσκει δε σιγαθέν καλόν εργον (“but a fine action dies when left
unadvertised”), although both passages refer to the public reception of an
athlete’s accomplishments (or lack thereof) rather than to that of the songs
that tell of them.
νόμων In reference to Larensius’ research, the word certainly means
“laws”. But already in early lyric poetry νόμοι are “melodies, tunes” (LSJ s.v.
II; in comedy at e. g. Cratin. fr. 308; Ar. Eq. 1279; Pax 1160; Epicrat. fr. 2), so
perhaps Eupolis used the word of Pindar’s poetry, and Athenaeus cleverly
brought the two ideas together.
διδάσκουσιν refers in the first instance to academic instruction, in this
case in Rome; cf. Ar. Nu. 966 (cited and translated above) άσμ’ έδίδασκεν. For
“teaching” laws in Athens, cf. Luc. Anach. 22. But in an Athenian dramatic
context, the word and its cognates are also used of staging tragedies, comedies
and dithyrambs (sc. by “teaching” the chorus; LSJ s.v. Ill; in comedy at e.g.
Cratin. fr. 17.3; Ar. V. 1029; fr. 348.3). The speaker might thus have meant not