Pyronides

Abstract

Pyronides is the protagonist of Eupolis' play <i>Demes</i>. Planning to retrieve from the underworld the best Athenian statesmen from the past (Aristeides, Miltiades, Solon, and Pericles), Pyronides is the catalyst for the dramatic action. The rarity of the name Pyronides, which occurs only twice as the name of an actual person, suggests that it must be Eupolis' comic invention. The name derives from <i>pyr</i> "fire" and likely alludes to the character's fiery nature or to his civic role as the purifier. From the early twentieth century until the publication of Plepelits' (1970) edition of <i>Demes</i>, the comic hero of this play was wrongly identified as the Athenian general Myronides (<i>PAA</i> 663265 = (?) 663260). This misidentification occurred even though the reading Pyronides appears in all but one manuscript of Plutarch, <i>Pericles</i> 24.10 - a text that preserves Pericles' question, addressed to Pyronides, about the latter's only surviving son (fr. 110).