EUPOLIS

Eupolis is coupled with Aristophanes as a chief representative of the Old Attic Comedy. He was born about 446 B.C., and died before the end of the Pelponnesian War. He made his first appearance as a dramatist in his seventeenth year, and carried off the prize seven times. According to a badly attested story, he was drowned in the sea by Alcibiades in revenge for his treatment of him in one of his plays. We still have the titles, and some fragments, of fifteen of his pieces. He was at first on terms of intimate friendship with his contemporary Aristophanes, but an estrangement afterwards set in, and the two poets attacked each other with great bitterness. Eupolis is praised by the ancients for the splendour of his imagination, the coherence with which his plots are developed, the high quality of his patriotism, the grace and majesty of his language, and the telling character of his wit. The fragments that remain show great mastery of form. Like Aristophanes, he made an attempt to stem the current of moral degeneracy setting in at his time.