Afterlives of a Tragic Poet_ Anecdote, Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of...

7212019 Afterlives of a Tragic Poet_ Anecdote Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of Euripides

httpslidepdfcomreaderfullafterlives-of-a-tragic-poet-anecdote-image-and-hypothesis-in-the-hellenistic 118

Afterlives of a Tragic Poet 1

Peter Bing

Afterlives of a Tragic PoetAnecdote Image and Hypothesis in the

Hellenistic Reception of Euripides

Richard Kannicht Octogenario

Hermippus of Smyrna the 3rd century B C biographer and student of Callimachus wrote

a life of Euripides in which he recounts the following story that goes to the heart of this poetrsquos reception1

ξ λ 6Elaquo micro laquo κ κ E laquo laquo micro λ κ λ micro 984006 Ϊ laquo 984006laquo )M sup1 ) $ laquo lsaquoλrsaquo E α microλ 984006 984006 micro micro 984006α micro A 984006

Vita Euripidis p5 Schwartz I = TrGF 51 T A 1 III 4 (Kannicht)

Hermippus says hellip that following Euripidesrsquo death Dionysius [the 1st] tyrant of Sicily[from ca 405ndash367 and notorious as author of both tragedy and comedy himself] sentEuripidesrsquo heirs the sum of one talent and got the poetrsquos harp his writing tablet and hisstylus After he had seen the instruments he ordered those who brought them to setthem up as a votive gift in the temple of the Muses and he had an inscription made in hisown and Euripidesrsquo name It is for this reason that he [scil Euripides] was called laquomostbeloved by strangersraquo because he was particularly loved by foreigners whereas the Athe-nians bore him ill-will

This anecdote which concerns the transfer of a poetrsquos instruments ndash the emblems of hisart ndash from their native setting to a distant land is very much a product of its age It recallsother Hellenistic texts both in verse and prose that describe how custody of the poeticheritage shifts to a new place ndash to a setting in which that legacy is better appreciated morelovingly safeguarded No longer for sale to the highest bidder the emblems of the poetrsquoscraft are sanctified within a shrine of the Muses2 A comparable tale was told of how the

1 Section 2 and part of the introduction of this essay appears in Matthaios Montanari Rengakos 2011199ndash206Cf Bollanseacutee 1999 98ndash100 and 223

2 See also the later more scurrilous tradition at Lucian adv indoct 15 (= TrGF 1 76 T11) concerning Dionysiusrsquo reaction when his tragedies were mocked laquo laquo sup3laquo raquo micro A-

laquo χ laquo 984006 9 9 laquo λ microlaquo ) laquo λ laquo α $ Ρlaquo ) ) ) 984006

Well when he dis covered that he was being la ghed at he took great pains to proc re the wa tablets on



2 Peter Bing

Ptolemies unscrupulously acquired from Athens the official Lycurgan copy of the threegreat tragedians the so-called laquoStaatsexemplarraquo they offered to give the Athenians a de-

posit of fifteen talents if only they could borrow the originals to make copies ndash or so theysaid The Ptolemies however gladly forfeited the huge sum so as to keep the prototype3

As with the instruments of Euripides in Hermippusrsquo tale these precious literary objectswere deposited in a shrine of the Muses the Alexandrian Museum of which the great li-brary likely formed a part Another example ndash this time a poem epigram 37 AB of theMilan Posidippus papyrus ndash similarly traces a poetic objectrsquos journey to a new land It de-scribes how a lyre carried by laquoArionrsquos dolphinraquo was washed ashore in Egypt and de-

posited in the temple of Ars inoe Philadelphus The poem plausibly reflects Ptolemaicclaims to be the new custodians of the literary heritage here in particular of the Lesbictradition of lyric verse embodied by Arion4

For Hermippus the fate of Euripidesrsquo poetic implements ndash his lyre writing tablet and

stylus ndash exemplifies this tragedianrsquos special popularity beyond his native Athens Though unappreciated at home foreigners adore him hence he is xenophilotatos Previous studieshave had nothing to say about this term Yet it is worth noting how peculiar it is to-gether with its underlying concept The related adjective philoxeinos is of course well-attested already in the Odyssey in the sense of laquoloving strangersraquo laquohospitableraquo (61218576 9176 13202) and not infrequent thereafter in poetry (especially Pindar and tra-gedy) and in prose But while the actively cordial philoxeinos makes perfect sense withinthe norms of ancient Greek hospitality the passive xenophilos laquobeloved by strangersraquo isa cultural oddity It is not surprising therefore that Hermippusrsquo expression xenophilos

is a hapax ndash a unique term to designate a unique playwright it is moreover not even rec-orded in LSJ5 Indeed the word is a pointed and witty inversion of the conventional vir-tue embodied in the more common philoxeinos For while philoxeinos reflects the idea-lized attitude of a host toward any given stranger xenophilos regards the anomalousquality of a stranger beloved abroad by every imaginable host ndash even as he is unappreci-ated in his native land

In the case of Euripides that popularity abroad is borne out by various types of evi-dence As is well known papyri show that texts of this tragedian far outnumber those of Aeschylus and Sophocles and indeed that he was the most widely read Greek poet afterHomer ndash at least in Greco-Roman Egypt where most of the papyri were found But thesame holds true for South Italy where drama was a favored subject in vase painting andwhere the number of depictions of Euripidean tragedies greatly exceed those of the othertragedians6 Didascalic notices moreover though hardly plentiful nonetheless also con-firm this general impression Starting in 386 B C when the Athenians added the revival of

3 Gal comm in Hipp Epidem (CMG V 102 1 p 79) Cf Fraser 1972 325 with n1474 See my treatment of this poem in Bing 2009 247ndash2515 It does occasionally appear as a name6 This is true generally and not just in South Italy for post-5th cent B C vase painting See Kuch 1978 196

n 46 citing Trendall and Webster 1971 Now see especially Taplin 2007 108ndash219 esp 109 laquocompared with Aeschyl s and Sophocles E ripides made a far greater impact on mythological pict res S rely this m st




an older tragedy to the standard program of the Greater Dionysia7 restagings of Euripidesare especially prominent8 Elsewhere as well such Euripidean revivals were evidently allthe rage To take just one paradigmatic example consider the elaborate 3rd cent B C in-scription from Tegea near its theater (IG V 2 118 = DID B 11) commemorating the careerof a performerathlete9 The text informs us that this actor whose name is unfortunatelymissing was also a boxer he took the prize in the menrsquos category of this sport at the Ptol-emaia in Alexandria As this suggests this guy was probably a bruiser someone who with his boxerrsquos physique was sufficiently imposing to play the great tragic heroes Hisspecialty was Euripides and his far-flung engagements as recorded in the inscription mir-ror the ubiquitous impact of this tragedian He triumphed at the Soteria of Delphi andagain at the Heraia of Argos playing Euripidesrsquo Herakles at the Greater Dionysia in Athenswith that same dramatistrsquos Orestes and with his Archelaus at both the Argive Heraia and theNaia of Dodona Further he was victorious with Archestratusrsquo Antaios at Delphi and with

Chaeremonrsquos Achilles at Dodona The inscription concludes by telling us that he won afurther 88 prizes at agones skenikoi in a whole range of cities at Dionysia and at whateverother festivals those cities held (λ laquo laquo $laquo laquo λ laquo Νlaquo laquo sup1 laquo ) Presumably heretoo he often played Euripides though one may wonder particularly at the more minor fes-tivals whether these were truly full-fledged productions of tragedy and not rather high-lights favorite speeches and arias as Albrecht Dihle in particular has argued10

That Euripides was xenophilotatos then is no exaggeration But in what sense was he be-loved And by whom Evidence suggests that this tragedian appealed to very different

audiences each of whom saw in him their own distinct Euripides On the one hand wehave Euripides the paradigm of avant-garde Hellenistic artistry The aesthetic terms usedalready by Aristophanes in the Frogs to characterize Euripidesrsquo style as s lender leptos (828876 1108 1111) or lean ischnos (941) vis-agrave-vis Aeschylusrsquo mighty thundering epibremetas (814) are precisely those that Callimachus and his followers were to champion11 Not sur-

prisingly then one important source of Callimachusrsquo Aetia Prologue was the choral song on old age from Euripidesrsquo Herakles (637ndash700)12 Similarly for Apollonius the influence of Euripides on his Argonautica is well known13 On the other hand we find Euripides the

paradigm of life and inexhaustible font of wisdom This Euripides is the one whose texts philosophers constantly cite as an ethical model thus according to Diog Laert 722 Zenocontinually quoted Suppliants 861ndash863 as a behavioral ideal for the young (laquo 984006 laquo λ Klaquo E laquo) and according to that samesource (7180) Chrysippus incorporated so much of Medea in one of his works that whensomeone studying his treatise was asked what he was reading he replied laquoThe Medea of

7 TrGF 1 DID A 1 201ndash203 = IG II2 2318 col8 λ micro raquo [] sup1 []

8 Note especial ly the Euripidean revivals in three consecutive years 341ndash339 (TrGF 1 DID A 2a 2ndash3 18ndash1932ndash33) but cf also for the years post 308 (DID B 8) and in the 3rd century (DID B 11 1)

9 On this inscription see Sifakis 1967 84 Regarding the inscriptionrsquos date and the political circumstances of the performances it cites cf Revermann 19992000 462ndash465

10 Cf Dihle 1981 32 See f rther his ill minating disc ssion of Hellenistische Theaterpra is pp 28 38



4 Peter Bing

Chrysippusraquo14 This Euripides is also the one whose sententiae filled ancient gnomologicalcollections

It is this second Euripides the paradigm of life who is the focus of my essay What was itthat set this tragedian apart and made him so beloved I will try to illuminate his appeal bylooking at three different kinds of Euripides-reception In a first step I will consider thatreception as it appears in the anecdotal tradition Next I will examine the hypotheses or

prose plot-summaries of Euripides rsquo plays as a manifestation of his popularity Finally Iwill look at an example of Euripides-reception in South Italian vase painting

1

The anecdotal tradition may suggest one poss ible quality that lay at the heart of Euripidesrsquo

popularity He was able to get under peoplersquos skin into their guts and heads in such a wayas virtually to invite life to imitate art Euripidean art in particular This is not surprising

perhaps given how Hellenistic schoolchildren evidently learned Euripides by rote as part of their standard curriculum Callimachusrsquo epigram 26 GP (= Anth Pal 6310) humorouslydepicts how even a tragic mask of Dionysus gapes in boredom at pupilsrsquo endless recitationof the Bacchae in their schoolroom15 We get an inkling of how deeply Euripides penetratedthe Hellenistic psyche in a marvelous anecdote from Lucianrsquos How to Write History 591 =TrGF 51 (10) ANOMEA iv d I quote it in full with D Kovacsrsquo translation (1994)

Alaquo 984006λ laquo τ ξ α ξ λ Ϊlaquo $micro laquolaquo laquo laquo λ ) ) λ ξ κ laquo ξ laquo rsquo sup1Ωlaquo laquo laquo λ laquo micro laquo laquo laquo laquo α Ϊlaquo laquo ) λ 984006 λ α ξ κE A ) λ κ Plaquo 9- λ κ π laquo 4 λ )

rsquo τ $ 5Elaquo (F 136 1)λ Ν 9 9 9840069 $ λ λ Ν κ Ω

λ laquo ξ laquo laquo Alaquo sup2 )laquo laquo laquo ) ) 984006 ) )laquo laquo κ A sup3laquo $micro laquo laquo λ $laquo laquo κ ) - λ 984006laquo laquo Alaquo 9 9 λ Plaquo 9 M9 κ

They say my handsome Philo that during the reign of Lysimachus (305ndash281) a diseasewith these symptoms fell upon the inhabitants of Abdera All the population togethercaught a fever one that was strong and persistent from the very first day Around theseventh day a plentiful discharge of blood from the nostrils in some cases or a profusesweat in others broke up the fever But it brought their minds around into a laughablecondition For they were all out of their minds for tragedy and they uttered iambic verse




and shouted it aloud For the most part they sang individually the Andromeda of Eur-ipides and they performed in song the speech of Perseus and the city was full of these sal-low and emaciated seventh-day tragic actors reciting lsaquoEros tyrant of gods and men alikersaquoand all the rest at the top of their voices And this lasted for a long time until winter ndash and

it was a cold one ndash came and stopped their raving The cause of this as I think was pro-vided by Archelaus the tragic actor He enjoyed a high reputation at that time and at theheight of summer in a fierce heat he acted the Andromeda for them The result was thatthe majority caught the fever immediately after the theater and when they recovered laterthey slipped back into tragedy since Andromeda haunted their memories and Perseuswith the Medusa was still flitting about each manrsquos mind

We have all experienced that particular irritation of having a tune stuck in our heads and notbeing able to get it out have we not Well this s tory takes that experience to a new path-ological level From summerrsquos heat till winterrsquos frost Andromeda haunts or rather ndash like

an obsessive lover stalking her beloved season after season ndash literally laquolikes to lurk aboutraquo(984006laquo) within these poor citizens of Abdera and cling to their memories In-deed as they recite lsaquoEros tyrant of gods and men alikersaquo their symptoms resemble preciselythose of exhausted lovers16 Andromeda must have had a particular allure It was through reading this play we recall that Dionysus in Aristophanesrsquo Frogs became consumed with longing ndash for Euripides (vv 52ndash54 66ndash67) a state which prompts him to journey Orp-heus-like to Hades so as to bring the object of his desire back to the upper world17 In anycase it is not that the disease causes the Abderites to spout Euripides Rather the illnesssimply taps something that had evidently taken deep root in the psyche of the populacesufficiently deep that they retained a detailed recollection of various parts of the tragedy aswell as of the manner of its performance Thus in addition to bellowing regular trimeters( 984006 λ ) they apparently sang one of Andromedarsquos soloarias (A )) and performed a stichic speech of Perseus as a song ( 9) ndash this last possibly an example of how in the Hellenistic age parts of tra-gedy that had originally been spoken were set to music18 This kind of adaptation was ap-

parently part and parcel of Archelausrsquo performance at Abdera and it carried over into thespectators who now lived their lives according to a Euripidean play-book

16 See e g Theokr 14617 Aristophanes humorously milks the sexual peculiarity of this longing when Heracles tries to figure out the

object of Dionysusrsquo desire by enumerating the possibilities (v 56ff) laquoa woman a boy a manraquo Thetruth however is beyond even Heraclesrsquo imaginings notwithstanding his omnivorous sexual appetiteDionysusrsquo longing is laquofor a dead manraquo ( laquo v67) ndash a necrophiliac passion that of courseanticipated the Hellenistic ardor for this poet

18 Cf Dihle 1981 31 who points to the early 2nd cent B C inscription (Syll 3 648 B) describing how at Del- phi the flute-player cum actor Satyrus of Samos staged an excerpt from Euripidesrsquo Bacchae in which he played the role of Dionysus as a song to choral and musica l accompaniment ( )Θ λ ) ndash although laquodie Rolle des Dionysos in jenem Stuumlck besteht nur aus Sprech-versenraquo Setting trimeters to music as Dihle notes is called ) (Lucian salt 27) See

also Kannichtrsquos notes ad Euripides (10) ANOMEA iv d A new example of this phenomenon appearsin the 2nd cent A D musical papyrus of the younger Carcinusrsquo Medea (P Louvre E 10534) published byBeacutelis 2004 and re edited by West 2007 West wo ld date the m sical setting of the trimeters to Roman



6 Peter Bing

To be sure the case of the Abderites is extreme And one might reasonably wonderwhether this anecdote is anything but an amusing cock-and-bull story After all fictional life had long imitated Euripidean art starting right in the poetrsquos lifetime Aristophanic he-roes regularly and hilariously follow Euripidean play-books and adopt the persona of hischaracters to further whatever madcap ends they have in the comic world they inhabitThus in Acharnians to take just one example Dikaiopolis begs Euripides to dip into histragic wardrobe and lend him the tattered costume and props of Telephus wearing these he can mimic the tragic hero and thus better persuade his comic audience (vv393ndash489)Scenes of comic characters channeling Euripides may well have set the paradigm for talessuch as that about the delirious citizens of Abdera

Yet given that it was told about the actual city of Abdera at a particular historical mo-ment (the reign of Lysimachus) and in connection with a well-known personage (the actorArchelaus) the tale invites us to imagine such Euripidomania as a real-life phenomenon

And in fact the notion that life might follow a Euripidean script was hardly limited to fic-tion In his De oratore (3214) Cicero quotes a speech of Gaius Gracchus In it the re-former and orator appears desperate following the murder in 133 B C of his brother Tibe-rius near the door of the temple of Juppiter Capitolinus together with 300 Gracchansupporters who had been clubbed and stoned to death Forbidden even to bury hisbrother whose body had been unceremoniously dumped into the Tiber and wondering

perhaps what avenue lay open to him Gaius doubtless felt as though all those supports onwhich he had previously relied had been knocked out from under him that he stood now bereft At such a moment he chose to cast his predicament in a series of anguished ques-

tions and disconsolate answers clearly based on the model of Euripidesrsquo distraught her-oine Medea That tragic figure had assailed Jason with the questions microlaquo microlaquo laquo laquo λ λ $984006 ν microlaquolaquo Plaquo laquo ω 984003 laquo (vv 502ndash505) laquoNow where can I turn To my fatherrsquos house which I betrayed togetherwith my country when I came with you To Peliasrsquo wretched daughters They wouldsurely give a warm welcome in their house to me who killed their fatherraquo Cicero citesGaiusrsquo words so as to evoke and extol his poignant delivery Significantly (in light of theEuripidean echoes) he compares this with actorsrsquo use of emotive gesture in the theater

Quid fuit in Graccho quem tu melius Catule meministi quod me puero tanto opere fer-retur laquoQuo me miser conferam Quo vertam In Capitoliumne At fratris sanguinemadet An domum Matremne ut miseram lamentantem videam et abiectamraquo19 Quae sicab illo esse acta constabat oculis voce gestu inimici ut lacrimas tenere non possentHaec ideo dico pluribus quod genus hoc totum oratores qui sunt veritatis ipsius actoresreliquerunt imitatores autem veritatis histriones occupaverunt

19 It may be that Gracchus was quoting not from Euripides rsquo but from Enniusrsquo Medea (fr CIV Jocelyn = ROL

284ndash285) the corresponding lines of which Cicero cites just a bit later at de orat 3217 quo nunc me vor- tam Quod iter incipiam ingredi domum paternamne Anne ad Peliae filias It is worth not ing however thatEnni srsquo te t comprises only Medearsquos q estions t the answers Those are present in E ripidesrsquo version




What was it about Gracchus whom you Catulus remember better than I that wastalked about so much when I was young laquoWhere can I take refuge in my misery Wherecan I turn To the Capitol But that is overflowing with my brotherrsquos blood To homeSo that I can see my mother in misery grief-stricken and downcastraquo People generally

agreed that when delivering these words he used his eyes voice and gestures to such effect that even his enemies could not contain their tears I am talking about this in somedetail because the orators who act in real life have abandoned this entire field while theactors who are only imitators of reality have appropriated it(James M May amp J Wisse transl)

Schanz Hosius in their Geschichte der roumlmischen Literatur (I 218) echo Cicero in their praise of this speech also adopting his clear preference for real-world oratory versus thetheatrical variety Conditioned by this perspective when they point out the Euripideansource it is to stress how Gaiusrsquo speech excels its model laquoWe know the prototype for this

dilemma It comes from Euripidesrsquo Medea But oh how the orator has infused his modelwith an intellectual power that he draws from liferaquo (laquowelche Gedankenwucht hat derRedner aus dem Leben diesem Vorbild eingefloumlszligtraquo) From the perspective of Euripides-re-ception it seems more relevant to me to stress how the tragedian here provides Gracchuswith a means for coming to grips with the situation for framing it rhetorically evoking sympathy and even (for those who can hear the echoes of Medea) suggesting that thespeaker is not to be trifled with he is rather a potent formidable character even in a mo-ment of such apparent weakness Thus at a critical juncture in his career Gaius Gracchuschose to adopt the role of a latter-day Medea transforming the landmarks of Colchis and

Corinth into those familiar to his audience in Rome Familiarity with his Greek tragicmodel would have been second nature to Gaius given how his mother Cornelia thedaughter of Scipio Africanus had immersed her sons in Greek literature and culture fromearliest childhood How many in his audience would have been aware of the Euripideanmodel That is hard to say But he evidently used it to such stupendous effect that even hisenemies could not remain detached but wept like spectators at a deeply moving tragedy

I want to mention one further instance of life imitating Euripidean art perhaps the mostfamous one namely the closing scene of Plutarchrsquos Crassus (332ndash4) The setting of this nar-rative is in the palace of king Artabazes of Armenia the time just after the Parthian victoryover Crassus at Carrhae in 53 B C a celebration is under way ndash not as one might expect

commemorating Crassusrsquo defeat but rather the wedding of the kingrsquos sister to the son of the king of Parthia Plutarch goes out of his way to stress how ndash even in this remote setting ndashboth the Parthian sovereign and the king of Armenia are versed in Greek literature IndeedArtabazes is described as writing tragedies himself And what is on the program at thisrevel A performance of Euripidesrsquo Bacchae 20 But just as the tragic actor is singing Agaversquosscene from the end of the tragedy a messenger comes to the door carrying the head of thetriumvir Crassus following Carrhae he had been killed and decapitated by one Poma-xathres who as it happens is present at this revel When to great applause the head is

20 Sauron 2007 253ndash255 suggests that the hellenophile Artabazesrsquo choice to have this play performed at hissisterrsquos wedding was pointedly political laquoOn peut alors supposer que la figure de Dionysos en geacuteneacuteral etles B h t drsquo E ripide en partic lier ont p constit er de la part drsquo Artavazdegraves n p issant levier de



8 Peter Bing

thrown into the midst of the company the actor playing Agave hands the mask and cos-tume of Pentheus to one of the chorus members seizes the severed head and begins singing her famous lines laquoWe bring to the palace this fresh-cut tendril from the mountains ablessed quarryraquo (1169ndash1171) This delights all those present But when the actor goes onto his dialogue with the chorus ndash laquoWho slew himraquo laquoMine is the honorraquo (1179) ndashPomaxathres jumps up and grabs the head It is his right to declaim these lines he feelsnot the actorrsquos Greatly pleased the king gives him presents according to ancestral customand also gives a talent to the actor laquoThey say that with such a finale as in tragedy theexpedition of Crassus came to an endraquo (laquo 984006 κ K mdash ) ) Here as Charles Garton has remarkedlaquoillusion and reality have become oneraquo the laquofictive arrogating [the] realraquo thereby dissolv-ing the boundary between theater and life21 In a final macabre gesture that seems to under-line the fusion of these normally discrete spheres of action the king rewards the laquoperform-

anceraquo of both the actor and his real-life counterpart without distinction Anecdotes such asthese suggest the extent to which the dramas of Euripides might enter into everyday life

permeate discourse and shape perceptions of events 22

2

Yet one form of Hellenistic Euripides reception has been thought to suggest a differentmore detached experience of this tragedianrsquos work namely the narrative hypotheses or

plot-summaries of Euripidesrsquo plays These texts ndash which are to be distinguished from thelearned didascalic hypotheses that circulated under the name of Aristophanes of Byzan-tium or from elaborate Byzantine synopses ndash have been found in a wide array of papyriranging in date from the 1st through the 3rd cent A D23 For the most part they exhibitsuch formal consistency that they have plausibly been thought to derive from one originalsingle-authored collection whose date ndash judging by the style ndash was likely between the 2nd

21

Cf Garton 1972 38ndash39 His discuss ion in chapter 1 of the laquoappreciative meanraquo by which an audience bal-ances its critical detachment against a sympathetic involvement in the theatrical illusion remains stimulat-ing and helpful

22 A similar tale of life imitating Euripidean art ndash and specifically his Bacchae ndash appears in the amusing taleabout the 1st cent A D Cynic Demetriusrsquo response to an uneducated reader in Lucianrsquos adv indoct 191Here the performative and written aspects of Euripidean reception merge into each other with fascinating results laquo ξ sup2 Kmicrolaquo Ω K ) $ $- ndash laquo Blaquo ρ E micro Ν ξ micro Plaquo λ micro laquo Alaquo ndash 4laquo micro laquo5A )P Ϊ ν micro laquoraquolaquoOnce in Corinth Demetrius the Cynicfound some illiterate person reading aloud from a very handsome volume the Bacchae of Euripides I think it was He had got to the place where the messenger is relating the destruction of Pentheus by Agave when

Demetrius snatched the book from him and tore it in two lsaquoBetterrsaquo he exclaimed lsaquothat Pentheus shouldsuffer one rending at my hands than many at yours rsaquoraquo (transl H W Fowler amp F G Fowler) My thanks toProf R Houmlschele for drawing my attention to this te t




cent B C and 1st cent A D24 As the papyri show this collection was available indepen-dent of the plays themselves and arranged in alphabetical order according to title Building on a comparison made already by Wilamowitz Guumlnther Zuntz dubbed it Tales from Eur- ipides after Lambrsquos Tales from Shakespeare 25 Zuntz also had a strong opinion about thefunction of this text With typical bluntness he asserted that these hypothesesrsquo laquosole pur-

pose is to summarize the action of the play hellip [They] are not des igned to introduce thereader to the plays They are meant as a substitute for the plays This is to say hellip thelsaquoTales of Euripidesrsaquo were retold for the use of readers interested in mythology rather thanin poetryraquo26 This assessment which sees these texts as mythography operating mostlyapart from the plays has become the dominant view among scholars27 Yet I believe thetexts themselves suggest something different And I want to illustrate that difference byreference to the hypothesis of the lost play Melanippe the Wise We know the text fromvarious sources It appears in two closely related versions in works by 12th cent authors

John Logothetes and Gregory of Corinth in their commentaries on a rhetorical treatise of Hermogenes Concerning the Pursuit of Intensity Substantial portions have also emerged inthe 2nd cent A D Oxyrhynchus papyrus 2455 part of an alphabetic edition of Euripi-dean hypotheses whose fragments start with Mu and run with interruptions to the endof the alphabet28 Further fragments of several lines survive in a Leiden papyrus probablyof the 1st cent (P Lugd Bat 252)29 These papyrus texts are nearly identical to the medi-eval versions30 Kannichtrsquos text in TrGF 5 which I reproduce is thus a composite of thesevarious sources

24 This is the conclusion of Diggle 2005 66 who finds that laquothe types of clausulae he [scil the author of thehypotheses] favours and his pervasive use of them allied to the rhetorical nature of his prose and therhythms with which he embellishes it all mark him as an adherent of the Asiatic school of rhetoric whoseorigins are associated with Hegesias of Magnesia in the 3 rd centuryraquo

25 Wilamowitz 1907 134 n19 and 170 made the comparison with Lamb See Zuntz 1955 135ndash13926 Zuntz 1955 13527 It is echoed e g by Turner 1968 101 laquoclearly a work of popularization retelling the story of the plays in

digest form so that the reader could skip the original if he felt so inclinedraquo Rusten 1982 358 laquothe nar-ratives were meant solely to summarize the plot and contained no critical comments or didascalicinformation they were thus designed for readers who wished to be familiar with Euripidean plots with-out reading the plays themselves and belonged not to scholarship but to mythographyraquo or morerecently Kannicht 1997 68 laquolsaquoTales From Euripidesrsaquo die die vielfach kanonisch gewordene der euripideischen Stuumlcke in schlichter Prosa so vermitteln daszlig s ie deren Lektuumlre unter stofflicher Ruumlck-sicht gegebenenfalls ersetzen konntenraquo tending in this direction though occasionally contradicting her-self see van Rossum-Steenbeek 1998 159 laquoThe narrative hypotheses consist of independent retellingsof tragedies hellip they may easily be read without the text of the plays or even instead of them hellip theauthor andor other readers and users of the collection did not have to read or consult the tragedies toobtain the information they needed for some reason or anotherraquo Yet on p161 she says laquoMost of oursubliterary papyri seem to have helped the readers to acquire information on or form a picture of the

literature they were reading or about to read These papyrus texts have an auxiliary or introductorycharacterraquo

28 Editio princeps by T rner 1962



10 Peter Bing

(TrGF 51 (44) i Kannicht)M[ π 984006 laquo $middot

Zlaquo [ rsquoπ ξ laquoα

6Elaquo microlaquo Alaquo λlaquo 4 ξ Elaquo K λ λ 984006 ξ laquo X-laquo microlaquo 6Ilaquo 984006- M microlaquo ξ 984003 984006 8laquo micro $ 984006laquoκ ξ M PΩ π ξ κ - laquo microlaquo laquo laquo - 12laquo laquo κ

984006 κ κ -laquo micro ξ κ 984006 ξlaquo 16984006 ξ micro - ξ micro raquolaquo laquosup3laquo ) - sup2 ξ 9 microlaquo 6Elaquo - 209 λlaquo sup2 984006 -laquo M9 9 λ 984006laquo π ξ λ micro

laquo λ laquo 24 984006

Melanippe the Wise whose first line islaquoZeus [hellipraquoThe plot is thisAeolus was begotten by Zeusrsquo son Hellen By Eurydice he fathered Cretheus Salmoneusand Sisyphus and by Cheironrsquos daughter Hippe the extraordinarily beautiful MelanippeNow after committing a murder he himself went into exile for a year and Melanippe wasimpregnated by Poseidon with twin sons Anticipating her fatherrsquos return she gave the in-fants when she had borne them to her nurse to place in the ox-stable in accordance with

their fatherrsquos instruction Upon the rulerrsquos homecoming some of the ox-herds saw the in-fants being guarded by the bull and suckled by one of the cows Taking them to be cow-born monsters they brought them to the king who following his father Hellenrsquos opiniondecided to burn up the infants and instructed his daughter Melanippe to furnish themwith funeral apparel Melanippe put the apparel on them and also interceded for themwith an ambitious speech

First of all it is worth saying again that as P Oxy 2455 makes clear this text was part of analphabetic collection of Euripidean hypotheses and that hypotheses preserved in other pa-

pyri point to the same sort of collection Thus although scholars starting with Wilamowitz

have noted the sometimes verbatim similarity between parts of these hypotheses and moregeneral works of mythography such as the Library of Ps-Apollodorus or Hyginusrsquo Fabu- lae 31 and have argued from this that the hypotheses served a similarly independent mytho-




graphic function it is noteworthy that our collection was not made to form a coherentmythological narrative whether organized genealogically and chronologically like Ps-Apollodorus or thematically like Hyginus or Partheniusrsquo Peri erocirctikocircn pathematocircn Ratherthe hypothesesrsquo raison drsquoecirctre are the tragedies of Euripides They appear together in the col-lection for no other reason than that they refer to his works Their relatively large numberin the papyri vis-agrave-vis synopses of the other tragedians suggests the popularity of Eur- ipides ndash not of the prose hypothesis as independent genre

Further E G Turner (1968 101ndash102) noted how the alphabetic organization of thehypotheses laquoclearly looks back to a complete and [alphabetically] ordered edition of Eur-ipides hellipraquo Each hypothesis moreover is introduced ndash as in the case of our Melanippe the Wise ndash by title and opening verse terms which laquoare themselves derived from a definitiveedition or catalogue hellip This is how works were entered in Callimachusrsquo Pinakes raquo That is tosay the collection of hypotheses was keyed to a standard text of Euripides and designed so

as to facilitate its use in conjunction with such a text What after all would be the point of including a dramarsquos first line if not to allow readers to find the scroll containing forexample Melanippe the Wise when they look for it in the book-bucket of his tragedies with titles in laquoMuraquo Clearly the hypothesis leads to the text

In addition as Zuntz (1955 137) points out John Logothetes probably found this hypothesis and that to the Sthenoboia in an earlier source that had extracted them from acomplete edition of Euripides laquofor he was able to add to the arguments quotations fromeach of these playsraquo In other words that source had linked the hypothesis to the play pre-cisely as the hypothesis itself invites its readers to do A concrete link to the play may also

be apparent when in line 24 of the hypothesis Gregory of Corinth adds to the words λ the article so as to produce λ micro Kannicht rightly glosses thischange (ad loc ) as meaning laquoillam orationemraquo that is laquothat well-known laquoraquo And headds in a recent letter (92008) laquoa hint at the fame of Melanippersquos speechraquo

That seems to be suggested too in the further qualification that laquo receives here Al-though the hypotheses certainly omit elements that are present in the tragedies or addothers that help fill in the background they often highlight particular moments in thedrama In the case of Melanippe we observe how at the critical point when she has alreadydressed her children in funeral garb in preparation for their fiery death the hypothesis tellsus she delivered an laquoambitious speechraquo laquo 984006laquo as an appeal (l25) As van Ros-sum-Steenbeek (1998 12) notes the hypotheses contain laquominimum employment of adjec-tivesraquo Hence the use of the evaluative 984006laquo here is striking What is its function inthis text I would say that it refers readers to Euripides giving them a gentle nudge asthough to suggest laquoGo look for yourselfraquo

One cannot unproblematically compare these hypotheses to Lambrsquos Tales from Shakes- peare 32 Yet when Lamb writes of his hope that laquowhat these Tales shall have been to the young readers that and much more it is the writers rsquo wish that the true Plays of Shakespearemay prove to them in older yearsraquo one cannot help recalling that several papyri with Eur-

32 The early 19th cent milieu conditions that workrsquos expectat ion that its Tales will serve the education of laquoveryyo ng children and yo ng ladies in partic lar beca se boys being generally permitted the se of their



12 Peter Bing

ipidean hypotheses were evidently written as school exercises33 Moreover Plutarch atteststhat in their education laquochildren did not go straight to poetry first they were given a sum-mary ndash laquo laquoraquo as he calls them in his treatise on How a Young Man Should Study Poetry (aud poet 14d)34 Inasmuch then as they help introduce the reader to a given

play or facilitate his experience thereof these texts must be seen as feeding ult imately intothe publicrsquos avid consumption and keen enjoyment of Euripidean tragedy In this sensehypotheses such as that for Melanippe the Wise are one more indicator of Euripidesrsquo statusas xenophilotatos in the Hellenistic Age

3

I want to close with another manifestation of Euripides-reception which like the hypo-

theses is at a remove from the tragedies themselves and raises similarly thorny questionsabout its function and relation to the plays I am referring to the reflections of Euripideantragedy in South Italian vase painting The popularity of Athenian tragedy in general wasso great that already by the mid 5th cent it had spread to other parts of the Greek worldespecially to Sicily and South Italy Greek colonies of South Italy became avid consumersof Athenian drama35 During this time Athenian potters and painters appear to have mi-grated to these regions setting up local workshops from which the several regional wareswould develop in the fourth century Taras became the hub of Apulian vase productionwhere artists and patrons favored monumental vessels decorated with elaborate scenes

from Greek mythology often inspired by Greek tragedy The population of Taras was alsoknown for being crazy about theater36 In his Life of Pyrrhus (161ndash2) Plutarch tells of how the Tarentines threatened by the encroaching power of Rome invited Pyrrhus to be theirgeneral yet were themselves incapable of taking arms because they were addicted to their

pleasures In desperation Pyrrhusrsquo agent suspended all fes tivals all revels shut the gym-nasia and even the theater (Zon 82) so that he could levy the necessary troops Even soas other sources add (Dion Hal ant 194 Cass Dio fr 393ndash5) when the Roman fleet

33 See Crib iore 1996 192 301 Cf van Rossum-Steenbeek 1998 3134 Thus Marrou 1956 165 Note however van Rossum-Steenbeekrsquos caution about what precisely Plutarch

might have meant by laquo laquo and whether these might refer to verse-hypotheses 1998 73n 50

35 No doubt as Allan 2001 69ndash70 has stressed laquothe crucial factor in Megale Hellas was theatrersquos role inaffirming Greek identity Patrons like Hieron in the west (and Archelaus in the north) recognized andexploited both the panhellenic appeal of tragedy and its potential as a vehicle of Hellenization hellip If we ask what made tragedy in particular such a suitable medium for the maintenance of Hellenism the crucial fac-tor I would suggest was its status in the classica l period as a public performance art (as opposed to a privatereaderrsquos text) which made the experience of tragedy an essentially communal activity and therefore oneideally suited to the creation and confirmation of a shared cultural and ethnic identityraquo For Hellenization

as one motivating factor particularly in the Macedonian receptionappropriation of Euripides cf Rever-mann 19992000 456ndash458 A further factor influencing how Macedon ndash and in its wake the Ptolemies ndasheagerly made E ripides one of their own (a Macedonian like them) was his sheer c lt ral prestige he was




sailed into the harbor of Taras in 282 B C they met no resistance because the entire popu-lation was in the theater absorbed in a performance

A large volute krater (over 80cm tall) from this theater-crazy Tarentine milieu was ac-quired by the Michael C Carlos Museum of Emory University in 1994 (accession no19941)37 Belonging to the later phase of Apulian painting that flourished in the last quarterof the fourth cent B C it was painted by an anonymous artist of great talent whom wecall the Underworld Painter after the subject he depicted on his famous volute krater inMunich We recognize his work by his use of elaborate pattern rich detail and color aswell as by the range of emotion he gives his characters His mythological representationsare particularly intricate and in the case of this krater give us the only surviving pictorialrepresentation of Euripidesrsquo Melanippe the Wise

Let us have a closer look at this vase

The Underworld painter divided his main scene into two registers Above the gods as-semble on the rocky landscape of Mt Olympus to watch ndash as though from the theologeion

in a theater ndash the human tragedy unfold below38 The relevance of some of the gods is not



14 Peter Bing

immediately apparent but the presence of Poseidon Melanippersquos lover and father of hertwin sons is striking He sits at the far right trident in hand conversing with Aphroditeand Eros deities of obvious symbolic importance for the action of the play39

In the drama depicted above we see a cast of characters that overlaps remarkably with those mentioned in the hypothesis to the play We recognize them with ease as their namesare carefully inscribed beside each one virtually constituting a list of the dramatis personae We see moreover that the characters are in the midst of precisely that critical scene de-scribed in the hypothesis In the center an old man dressed and labeled as a herdsman() arrives from the country ndash signaled by the tree ndash probably from the cattle-yard(laquo) mentioned in the hypothesis holding a pair of twin infants wrapped in ananimal skin tied to the end of a s taff Gazing at the twins his eyebrows downcast in an ex-

press ion poss ibly of pity or anxiety he presents them to a hooded grizzled old man This we learn from the label is Hellen the elder statesman of the family Tightly gripping his hi-

mation he leans forward on his staff with outstretched arm looking solely at the herdsmanand past the twins His forward-pointing arm may suggest that he is casting the herdsmanout along with his precious baggage a gesture visually equivalent to his brutal advice in thehypothesis when he tells his son to have the babies burned Behind Hellen an old white-haired woman called 984006laquo nurse supports a young woman who raises her hand to herchest and looks on in obvious distress She is named Melanippe and she stands (appropri-ately enough) immediately below her lover and father of her children the god Poseidon inthe upper register To the right of the presentation scene stands a mature man of royal bear-ing holding a scepter crowned with a bird He is labeled Aeolus Behind him a male

youth named Kretheus crowns a high-stepping mare a likely reference to Hippe motherof Melanippe Pollux mentions a theatrical mask for Hippe suggesting that she appeared inthe play perhaps as a deus ex machina at the end so as to achieve a satisfactory resolution

While the depiction is quite close to Euripidesrsquo plot as we know it from the hypothesisnot all the characters could have appeared together in a given scene Nor are they shownwearing masks It may be that the central figures of the herdsman and Hellen hint at laquoa the-atrical origin in their cos tume with the undertunic that covers their arms to the wristraquo40 orwith the herdsmanrsquos laquoparticularly splendidraquo boots41 yet other characters do not The

painting is thus not a snapshot of a s ingle moment of performance and it does not insist onits own theatricality As Oliver Taplin has emphasized tragedy typically appears as hereat a remove from performance in South Italian vase painting ndash a sharp contrast with depic-tions of comedy where theatricality is explicit and specific42 What we have then is a re-flection of a decisive moment in the play which at the same time includes other charactersfrom other scenes These appear to have been telescoped in a kind of literal synopsis that isa scene where laquoeverything is seen togetherraquo For from the presence of Poseidon in the reg-ister above to that of Melanippersquos mother Hippe below the picture seems to allude to thewhole arc of the narrative ndash without of course being in any way a scene-by-scene repre-sentation In this sense it is again remarkably similar to the hypothesis

39 What one wonders is the meaning of the dappled fawn lying on the ground between the gods attentive totheir conversation Might the play ultimately have involved a sacrificial substitute for the twins as with E ripidesrsquo Iphi i




Was its purpose similar as well In my opinion it served an analogous function namelyto provide an overview of cast and plot ndash and even highlight a particularly memorablescene ndash for someone interested in Euripidesrsquo play Perhaps our krater was used as an actualmixing vessel but its high artistic quality suggests that it was mainly a display-piece itschief function communication Did it decorate its ownerrsquos home then That is possibleLike most Apulian vases however it probably ended up in a tomb Indeed the back of theMelanippe krater contains a standard funerary scene set around a stele decorated with fil-lets on either s ide of which a young man and a young woman bring offerings for the tombThis depiction may suggest that the krater had a funerary purpose from the start Whythen would someone choose a depiction of a Euripidean tragedy in particular of Melanippe the Wise to display in such a crucial setting

One aspect that might have resonated in these circumstances was the kraterrsquos genealogi-cal focus its concern with a familyrsquos survival across generations the depiction of four gen-

erations (Hellen ndash Aeolus ndash Melanippe ndash her infant twins) in a single scene is unusual andstriking43 A further factor may be that the Melanippe myth itself had strong regional sig-nificance We know that Euripides wrote another tragedy on this theme called Melanippe Desmotis i e Melanippe the Captive Though the details of the plot are unclear Melanippeand her babies were evidently transported from their native Thessaly to Metapontum nearTaras where the heroine languished in prison while her children were reared by the localqueen in ignorance of their true parentage until a final anagnorisis 44 Thus we find an intri-guing link between Melanippe and the region from which our krater comes ndash one that sig-nificantly ties the colonial setting to the heritage of the Greek mainland Indeed scholars

have suggested a connection between laquoEuripidesrsquo use of this Metapontine legend and Athe-nian strategic interest in the area in his timeraquo Collard Crop and Lee (1995 245) go so faras to propose that laquoEuripides could have envisaged a production thereraquo That local signifi-cance of the saga may have led Ennius (ca 239ndash169 B C) a native of Messapian Rudiaenear Taras to choose Melanippe as the theme for one of his tragedies (most of which wedo well to note take their subjects from Euripides)45

Our painter then or his patron may have found a special relevance in this particularsaga More generally as J R Green (1999 54) has noted for a theater-loving people likethe Tarantines depictions of great moments from tragedy may have become laquopoints of ref-erence in their lives hellip not least at key periods of emotional crisis such as the death of amember of a familyraquo

The vase resembles the hypothesis inasmuch as it provides a selective and summary re-flection of the play Like the hypothesis moreover it offers a list of characters and displayshighlights Yet it differs from the hypothesis in that its orientation is retrospective ratherthan prospective It serves in other words to remind rather than introduce For withoutsome prior familiarity with the plot a viewer would be hard put to interpret the scene46 A

43 This aspect has been stressed by Nozawa 2005 33ndash3844 For the plot cf Collard Cropp Lee 1995 242ndash24745 Allan 2001 suggests a similar loca l significance for two depictions of the tale of the Heraclidae found on late

5th cent vases from Heraclea (modern Policoro not far south from Metapontum) and likely inspired byE ripidesrsquo play of that name Allan followed by Taplin 2007 129 proposes that these vases pla sibly point



16 Peter Bing

precious souvenir then which its owner wanted to have with him even in death At theclose of the 5th cent Aristophanesrsquo Dionysus had felt an overwhelming urge to bring Eur-ipides back up from Hades to the world of the living Now the terms are reversed and the

proud owner of this krater evidently wanted to take his Euripides with him to the graveThere too Euripides was xenophilotatos a most welcome guest beloved by strangers

Bibliography

Allan W Euripides in Megale Hellas Some Aspects of the Early Reception of Tragedy GampR48 2001 67ndash86

Beacutelis A Un papyrus musical ineacutedit au Louvre CRAI 2004 1305ndash1329Bing P The Scroll amp The Marble Ann Arbor 2009

Bollanseacutee J Hermippos of Smyrna and his Biographical Writings Leuven 1999Collard C M J Cropp K H Lee (Hgg) Euripides Selected Fragmentary Plays Vol-

ume 1 Warminster 1995Cribiore R Writing Teachers and Students in Graeco-Roman Egypt Atlanta 1996Dies Gymnastics of the Mind Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt Princeton

2001Daniel R W Papyri Ostraca Parchments and Waxed Tablets in the Leiden Papyrological In-

stitute (Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava 25) Leiden 1991Diggle J Rhythmical Prose in the Euripidean Hypotheses in G Bastianini A Casanova

(Hgg) Euripide e i papyri Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi Firenze 10ndash11 giugno

2004 Florenz 2005 27ndash67Dihle A Der Prolog der lsaquoBacchenrsaquo und die antike Uumlberlieferungsphase des Euripides-TextesSitzungsb d Heid Akad d Wiss philos -hist Kl 2 Heidelberg 1981

Fantuzzi M Epigram and Theater in P Bing J S Bruss (Hgg) Brillrsquos Companion to Hel-lenistic Epigram Leiden 2007 477ndash495

Fantuzzi M R Hunter Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry Cambridge 2004Fraser P M Ptolemaic Alexandria Oxford 1972Funke H Euripides JbAC 8ndash9 19651966 233ndash279Garton C Personal Aspects of the Roman Theatre Toronto 1972Green J R Tragedy and the Spectacle of the Mind Messenger Speeches Actors Narrative

and Audience Imagination in Fourth-Century BCE Vase Painting Studies in the History of Art 56 1999 36ndash63

Gutzwiller K J Seeing Thought Timomachusrsquo Medea and Ecphrastic Epigram AJPh 1252004 339ndash386

Hanink J Literary Politics and the Euripidean Vita PCPS 54 2008 115ndash135Kannicht R TrGF V Euripides in G W Most (Hg) Collecting Fragments Goumlttingen 1997

67ndash77Ders Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (TrGF) V 1ndash2 Goumlttingen 2004Kovacs D Euripidea Leiden 1994Kuch H Zur Euripides-Rezeption im Hellenismus Klio 60 1978 191ndash202Luppe W Das neue Fragment aus der Hypothesis zu Euripidesrsquo lsaquoMelanippe Sophersaquo ZPE 89

1991 15ndash17Marrou H I A History of Education in Antiquity New York 1956




Matthaios S F Montanari A Rengakos (Hgg) Ancient Scholarship and GrammarArchetypes Concepts and Contexts Berlin 2011

Nozawa E The Melanippe Krater by the Underworld Painter Its Funerary Aspect and An-cestral Emphasis MA thesis Emory University 2005

Revermann M Euripides Tragedy and Macedon Some Conditions of Reception ICS24ndash25 19992000 451ndash467

van Rossum-Steenbeek M Greek Readersrsquo Digests Leiden 1998Rusten J Dicaearchus and the Tales From Euripides GRBS 23 1982 357ndash367Sansone D Iphigeneia in Colchis in M A Harder R F Regtuit G C Wakker (Hgg)

Apollonius Rhodius Hellenistica Groningana 4 Leuven 2000 155ndash172Sauron G Lrsquoactualiteacute des Bacchantes drsquo Euripide dans les conflits ideacuteologiques de la fin de

lrsquoeacutepoque Helleacutenistique in F Massa-Pairault G Sauron (Hgg) Images et moderniteacute helleacuten-istiques Appropriation et repreacutesentation du monde drsquoAlexandre agrave Ceacutesar CEFR 390 Rom2007 247ndash259

Sifakis G M Studies in the History of Hellenistic Drama London 1967Snell B The Discovery of the Mind New York 1960Taplin O Comic Angels Oxford 1993Ders Pots amp Plays Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Cen-

tury BC Los Angeles 2007Trendall A D T B L Webster Illustrations of Greek Drama London 1971Turner E G The Oxyrhynchus Papyri XXVII London 1962Ders Greek Papyri Oxford 1968West M L A New Musical Papyrus Carcinus Medea ZPE 161 2007 1ndash10von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff U Analecta Euripidea Berlin 1875Ders

Einleitung in die griechische Tragoumldie Berlin 1907Zuntz G The Political Plays of Euripides Manchester 1955



Copyright of Antike und Abendland is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed

to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holders express written permission However

users may print download or email articles for individual use



2 Peter Bing

Ptolemies unscrupulously acquired from Athens the official Lycurgan copy of the threegreat tragedians the so-called laquoStaatsexemplarraquo they offered to give the Athenians a de-

posit of fifteen talents if only they could borrow the originals to make copies ndash or so theysaid The Ptolemies however gladly forfeited the huge sum so as to keep the prototype3

As with the instruments of Euripides in Hermippusrsquo tale these precious literary objectswere deposited in a shrine of the Muses the Alexandrian Museum of which the great li-brary likely formed a part Another example ndash this time a poem epigram 37 AB of theMilan Posidippus papyrus ndash similarly traces a poetic objectrsquos journey to a new land It de-scribes how a lyre carried by laquoArionrsquos dolphinraquo was washed ashore in Egypt and de-

posited in the temple of Ars inoe Philadelphus The poem plausibly reflects Ptolemaicclaims to be the new custodians of the literary heritage here in particular of the Lesbictradition of lyric verse embodied by Arion4

For Hermippus the fate of Euripidesrsquo poetic implements ndash his lyre writing tablet and

stylus ndash exemplifies this tragedianrsquos special popularity beyond his native Athens Though unappreciated at home foreigners adore him hence he is xenophilotatos Previous studieshave had nothing to say about this term Yet it is worth noting how peculiar it is to-gether with its underlying concept The related adjective philoxeinos is of course well-attested already in the Odyssey in the sense of laquoloving strangersraquo laquohospitableraquo (61218576 9176 13202) and not infrequent thereafter in poetry (especially Pindar and tra-gedy) and in prose But while the actively cordial philoxeinos makes perfect sense withinthe norms of ancient Greek hospitality the passive xenophilos laquobeloved by strangersraquo isa cultural oddity It is not surprising therefore that Hermippusrsquo expression xenophilos

is a hapax ndash a unique term to designate a unique playwright it is moreover not even rec-orded in LSJ5 Indeed the word is a pointed and witty inversion of the conventional vir-tue embodied in the more common philoxeinos For while philoxeinos reflects the idea-lized attitude of a host toward any given stranger xenophilos regards the anomalousquality of a stranger beloved abroad by every imaginable host ndash even as he is unappreci-ated in his native land

In the case of Euripides that popularity abroad is borne out by various types of evi-dence As is well known papyri show that texts of this tragedian far outnumber those of Aeschylus and Sophocles and indeed that he was the most widely read Greek poet afterHomer ndash at least in Greco-Roman Egypt where most of the papyri were found But thesame holds true for South Italy where drama was a favored subject in vase painting andwhere the number of depictions of Euripidean tragedies greatly exceed those of the othertragedians6 Didascalic notices moreover though hardly plentiful nonetheless also con-firm this general impression Starting in 386 B C when the Athenians added the revival of

3 Gal comm in Hipp Epidem (CMG V 102 1 p 79) Cf Fraser 1972 325 with n1474 See my treatment of this poem in Bing 2009 247ndash2515 It does occasionally appear as a name6 This is true generally and not just in South Italy for post-5th cent B C vase painting See Kuch 1978 196

n 46 citing Trendall and Webster 1971 Now see especially Taplin 2007 108ndash219 esp 109 laquocompared with Aeschyl s and Sophocles E ripides made a far greater impact on mythological pict res S rely this m st
















4 Peter Bing




1






















6 Peter Bing






















8 Peter Bing




2



21

















10 Peter Bing
























12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography
















































4 Peter Bing




1






















6 Peter Bing






















8 Peter Bing




2



21

















10 Peter Bing
























12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography















































6 Peter Bing






















8 Peter Bing




2



21

















10 Peter Bing
























12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography














































8 Peter Bing




2



21

















10 Peter Bing
























12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography














































10 Peter Bing
























12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography














































12 Peter Bing



3



















14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography











































14 Peter Bing






















16 Peter Bing



Bibliography














































16 Peter Bing



Bibliography

































Afterlives of a Tragic Poet_ Anecdote, Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of...

Documents

Transcript of Afterlives of a Tragic Poet_ Anecdote, Image and Hypothesis in the Hellenistic Reception of...