Note 70 — Chapter I · DRAMATIC CONTESTS AT ATHENS

C. I. A. ii. 971 a (quoted, Appendix B) [B.C. 463 is the latest possible date of the events referred to in this part of this inscription. Capps (Introduction of Comedy into City Dionysia) with great probability dates them 473-472; he fixes the date of the granting of a comic chorus (whether at the Lenaea or City Dionysia is uncertain) by the archon at 487, when, according to Suidas s.v. Χιωνίδης, Chionides began to exhibit; and the date of the first choregia in tragedy at about 502. This would justify sufficiently Aristotle’s ὀψέ ποτε. Suidas’ date for Chionides’ first exhibition is not really inconsistent with the Dorian tradition recorded by Aristotle that Epicharmus was πολλῷ πρότερος Χιωνίδου καὶ Μάγνητος, since the generally recorded date of the former, B.C. 488 onwards, is most probably a ‘floruit’ date, based on the time of his first performances at Syracuse, not the date of the beginning of his career at Megara Hyblaea, which may have been a good deal earlier. Capps shows ground for believing that Aristotle and Suidas—the former directly, the latter perhaps indirectly—obtained their knowledge from the official records, and are therefore quite reliable. At the head of the inscription, C. I. A. ii. 971 a, are the words πρῶ]τον κῶμοι ἦσαν τ[ῶν ..., which must originally have formed part of the general heading of the whole inscription, whose earlier columns are lost. Capps conjectures (with some reason) that it originally ran ἀπὸ (name of archon) ἐφ’ οὗ πρῶτον κῶμοι ἦσαν τῶν ἐν ἄστει Διονυσίων οἵδε ἐνίκων. But κῶμοι cannot mean ‘comedies’, as Köhler and Wilamowitz assumed when they dated the beginning of choregia in comedy by this inscription. Cf. Wilhelm, Urkunden dramatischer Aufführungen in Athen, pp. 11 ff, 241 ff.]