Born in 446 B.C., Eupolis was almost exactly the same age as Aristophanes. He died young,
however - immediately after winning first prize with his play Demes
in 412. His first production was in 429, and in the next
seventeen years he was to write, we are told, fourteen comedies.
Four of them won first prize at the Dionysia, and three won first
prize at the Lenaea.
Eupolis was a political militant. From his very first plays his critical
attitude of (amongst others) Pericles is evident. In the Colonels,
he made one of his characters the seasoned warrior Phormion,
trying to convert the softy Dionysus into a fighter. In Dionysus,
the audience would have recognized Pericles without too much
trouble. His play The Age of Gold, produced in the same
year as Aristophanes' Knights (424), was a bitter jest at
the expense of Cleon's government and its times. His Flatterers
of 421 gives an almost photographic picture of the house of a
rich Athenian (Callias) famous for the symposia he threw, as
mentioned by Plato and Xenophon. Eupolis described the partygoers
as a bevy of hangers-on jostling each other to get at the rich
buffet. Two of the partygoers were Protagoras (the well-known
Sophist) and Alcibiades (here portrayed as a ladykiller). The
play laid into the lifestyle of certain individuals banded
together under the banner of the Sophist movement: the movement
as such Eupolis did not, so far as we know, ever pass judgment on.
(Other comedies, too, deal
with the atmosphere of 'Sophist' circles). He produced his last
play, Demes, in 412, after the Sicilian Catastrophe.
Athens was in the throes of one of its greatest crises: its
institutions and organs of power were paralysed and all that was
left was the glorious past. Eupolis decided to have the best and
worthiest leaders return from the dead (headed by Myronides), and
show the right way to go about things. The final panel was
composed of Solon, Miltiades, Aristides, and Pericles. The
delegates from Down Under outfaced the New Age representatives by
superior argument, pertinent criticism, and punishment.
