Ameipsias

vol. I p.1819-1820

Ameipsias

1) Son of Lykomedes, Athenian (Θορίκιος). Ταμίας τῆς θεοῦ in the year 876/5, CIA II 670. 671; cf. 2083.

2) Attic comic playwrite (Suidas), contemporary of Aristophanes. <30> Little remains of his poetry: seven titles and a few mostly short fragments. The Κόννος (performed 423 alongside Aristophanes' Clouds and Kratinos' Bottles; Kratinos won first prize, Ameipsias second. Hypoth. Ar. Nub. 5), named after the musician, son of Metrobios, dealt with similar material to the Clouds, but in a different way. The chorus was made up of φροντισταί, i.e. of sophists, though Protagoras was missing in it (Athen. V 218 c). <40> Socrates, a student of Konnos, arrives dressed in poor philosopher-clothes, and is welcomed by the chorus partly mockingly and partly sympathetically (Diog. Laert. II 27). The Κωμασταί were victorious over Aristophanes' Birds and Phrynichos' Monotropos in the year 414 (Hypoth. Arist. Av. 1). The idea that the Κόννος and the Κωμασταί of Ameipsas were identical with the fragments of Phrynichos with the same names, and that Ameipsas had only had them performed in place of Phrynichos, is an inadmissible conjecture from Bergk (de rell. com. Att. 869). <50> Further titles are Ἀποκοτταβίζοντες (importance Athen. XV 665 e. 666 a), Κατεσθίων (doubted by Meineke without grounds), Μοιχοί, Σαπφώ, and the somewhat more often cited Σφενδόνη (performed after 427). It should be noted that the titles Κωμασταί Μοιχοί Σαπφώ also turned up in middle comedy. Aristophanes' judgement, who refers to the more popular poets Kratinos and Ameipsias as ἄνδρες φορτικοί in the second Clouds (524), dissatisfied by his inferiority, and who also makes fun of the cheap and crude humour of Ameipsias in the Frogs (15), cannot be rejected or accepted today. The number of his theatrical victories is broken off in the list CIA II 977 d. Meineke hist. cr. 199. Fragments in Meineke II 701. Kock I 670. <page break 1819/1820>

[Kaibel.]