Eupŏlis

, a comic poet of Athens, who flourished 435 years before the christian era, and severely lashed the vices and immoralities of his age. It is said that he had composed 17 dramatical pieces at the age of 17. He had a dog so attached to him, that at his death he refused all aliments, and starved himself on his tomb. Some suppose that Alcibiades put Eupolis to death, because he had ridiculed him in a comedy which he had written against the Baptæ, the priests of the godde Cotytto, and the impure ceremonies of their worship; but Suidas maintains that he perished in a sea-fight between the A then i ans and the Lacedæmonians in the Hellespont, and that on that account his countrymen, pitying his fate, decreed that no poet should ever after go to war. Horace , bk. 1 , satire 4; bk. 2 , satire 10.— Cicero , Letters to Atticus , bk. 6 , ltr. 1 .— Ælian.