EU'POLIS, a writer of the old comedy, was born at Athens about the year P.c. 446 (Clinton's' Fasti Hellcnici; ii. p. 63), and was there fore a contemporary of Aristophanea, who was in all probability born a year or two after. The time and manner of his death are involved in great obscurity. It is generally said that he was thrown overboard by the orders of Alcibiades, when that general was on his way to Sicily in B.C. 415, because Eupolis had ridiculed him in his comedy of the Baptee ; ' but this story, which is sufficiently improbable in itself, was refuted by Eratosthenea, who brought forward aome comedies which he had written subsequently to that period (Cicero, ' ad Attic.' vi. 1); besides, his tomb was, according to Pausaniaa (ii. 7, 3), on the banks of the Asopua, in the territory of the Sicyoniaas. Another account states that he fell in a sea-fight in the Hellespont, and that he was buried in .iEgina. We have the names of twenty four of hies plays, but no adequate specimens of them. To judge from the titles, the object of Eupolis must have been, in almost every case, mere personal satire. The Maricaa; which appeared in Re., 421 was
an attack upon Hyperbolua, the demagogue ; the Antolycus (P.c. 420) was intended to ridicule a handsome pancmtiaat of that name, who is the hero of Xenophon's 'Symposium ;' the Lacedwmoniana ' was directed against the political opinions of Cimon ; and the object of the ' Baptto' was to ridicule Alcibiades for taking part in the obscene rites of Cotytto. (See Buttmann's Essay on the Cotyttia and the Baptm, Mythologus,' ii. p. 159, &c.) Aristophanea and Eupolis were not upon good terms. Aristophanes speaks very harshly of his brother poet in the Clouds' (551, &c.), and charges him with having pillaged from ' The Knights' the materials for his 'Maricaa; ' and Eupolis in his turn made jokes on the baldneas of the great comedian (SchoL on ' The Clouds,' 532). Eupolis published his first play when he was only seventeen years old (Suidaa).