Fragments on Seleucus and Drinking

Ἀποσπάσματα περὶ Σελεύκου καὶ Ποτοῦ

The Fragments on Seleucus and Drinking is a lost comedy by the obscure poet Epinicus, known only through seventeen fragmentary passages preserved within the Deipnosophistae of the second-century CE scholar Athenaeus. Athenaeus cites these excerpts for their lexical and cultural value, embedding them in his discursive work on dining and intellectual conversation. The title suggests the play involved satire targeting a figure named Seleucus, most likely a Hellenistic king from the Seleucid dynasty, and engaged with the social customs and potential excesses of the drinking party, or symposium. Based on this thematic focus and the symposium's traditional role as a setting for Athenian comedy, the fragments likely contained political satire directed at contemporary monarchy alongside broader social critique characteristic of Middle or New Comedy periods.

The work survives exclusively through this indirect tradition; there is no independent manuscript transmission for Epinicus. The fragments exist as isolated quotations, often just a few lines, which Athenaeus employs to illustrate points about vocabulary, drinking vessels, or royal behavior. One preserved fragment describes the poet observing King Seleucus drinking beer made from barley meal in the summer and using this seemingly trivial detail to demonstrate how a poet's skill can dignify any subject. Another passage humorously catalogues enormous drinking cups, comparing their capacity to that which an elephant could hold and naming one after the mythical hero Bellerophon. While the fragments attest to no direct literary influence, they contribute to scholarly understanding of the thematic range within Hellenistic comedy and the popular reception of contemporary rulers. They provide valuable philological data for the study of comic language and serve as a testament to the preservation practices of ancient grammarians and compilers like Athenaeus, through whose work otherwise lost texts fragmentarily endure.