Surprises aren’t one thing you usually affiliate with the research of historical Greek drama. But in September 2024 students assembly on the College of Colorado Boulder have been handled to simply that. Two lecturers primarily based on the college offered what they imagine to be parts of two misplaced performs by Euripides, Ino and Polyidus.
The invention was made in November 2022 when Basem Gehad, an archaeologist primarily based in Egypt, despatched the classicist Yvona Trnka-Amrhein {a photograph} of a papyrus that had lately been uncovered on the historical village of Philadelphia, 100km southwest of Cairo. It wasn’t all that huge – barely 10.5 sq. inches, all informed. However Trnka-Amrhein rapidly noticed that it was particular. By evaluating the papyrus towards a database of Greek texts, she realised that she was taking a look at beforehand unknown texts by Euripides. She wanted affirmation, although – so referred to as on her mentor, John Gilbert, a specialist in Euripidean fragments, for assist. Collectively, they concluded that, whereas 20 of the 98 strains on the papyrus have been already recognized, the remaining 78 hadn’t been seen for nearly 2,000 years.
As Trnka-Amrhein has put it, that is ‘type of an enormous deal’. Euripides was one of many three ‘huge names’ in Greek tragedy, alongside Sophocles and Aeschylus. Granted, he wasn’t essentially the most profitable. Born in c.480 BC, he most likely got here from a modest household, and had a brooding, introspective character, bordering nearly on the misanthropic. This did little to endear him to the Athenian public, and over his 50-year profession in theatre he received the Dionysia – the annual competition at which chosen tragedies competed for prizes – solely 5 occasions, together with as soon as posthumously. However prizes aren’t the whole lot. He was extraordinarily prolific. We don’t know what number of performs he produced with any certainty. Some historical authorities say 92, others 75. His significance is tough to overstate, although. His performs are exceptional for his or her selection, the inventiveness of their building and their (typically hectic) surprises. Due to Seneca’s adaptation of his works for Roman audiences, he had a decisive affect on Renaissance drama – and has loved a contemporary surge of recognition because the Second World Battle.
Fragments and tales
Sadly, most of Euripides’ work has not come all the way down to us. Solely 17 full tragedies and one satyr play have survived. One other intact play, the Rhesus, has been wrongly attributed to him. Assuming that he wrote round 90 performs, which means greater than 80 per cent of his oeuvre has been misplaced.
Effectively, not ‘misplaced’ fully. Of the ‘misplaced’ performs, some 49 survive in fragmentary type. Some seem as quotations in texts by different classical authors. Some excerpts have been often reproduced in historical anthologies, instructional texts or the like. And a few scraps of initially full copies survive in papyrus or (extra not often) parchment.
Considerably surprisingly, extra of Euripides’ performs have survived than both Sophocles’ or Aeschylus’ – and vastly greater than the handfuls of ‘lesser’ dramatists. As Christopher Collard has famous, we’ve 1,220 textual content fragments from Euripides’ performs, in comparison with 1,140 from 107 recognized works by Sophocles (seven full), and simply 520 from 73 recognized performs by Aeschylus (seven full). That is all of the extra placing on condition that among the Euripidean fragments are fairly prolonged.
Fragments, after all, aren’t the identical as an entire play. However even when a lot of Euripides’ performs are principally – or fully – misplaced, we nonetheless know fairly a bit about a few of them. Within the third century BC, Aristophanes of Byzantium recorded the names of Euripides’ performs, along with the dates they have been first carried out in Athens. Round 200 years later a compilation now often called Tales from Euripides supplied plot summaries for round 25 of his works. Understandably, these are mild on element; however they offer us an honest thought of what among the fragmentary performs might need appeared like. One of the crucial intriguing upshots of that is how ‘untragic’ a few of Euripides’ tragedies have been. Take Andromeda. First carried out in 412 bc, it was Alexander the Nice’s favorite play. He was reputed to have the ability to recite nice chunks of it from reminiscence. Its sweetness could have been a part of its enchantment. After Perseus rescues Andromeda from the ocean monster, the 2 fall in love, get married and reside fortunately ever after.
Get misplaced
Nonetheless, this isn’t an enormous quantity to go on. A plot abstract is not any substitute for the actual factor. So why do the fragmentary performs matter? For a very long time, many students didn’t suppose they did. In 1939 H.D.F. Kitto’s Greek Tragedy – nonetheless used as an undergraduate textbook – didn’t even point out them. It was typically assumed that the 18 full performs that survived did so as a result of they have been the very best. Anything merely wasn’t price bothering with.
Nevertheless it seems that this isn’t actually the case. Euripides’ performs survived as a result of they have been copied and recopied down the centuries. There are any variety of explanation why this chain of textual replica might need been damaged. Papyrus and parchment could also be sturdy supplies, however they’re nonetheless susceptible. It doesn’t take a lot for a manuscript to be burned or misplaced. Over a protracted sufficient timescale, it solely takes one copy to be destroyed for a whole play – or an entire clutch of performs – to be eradicated eternally. And tastes change. In Byzantine theatres, by far the preferred classical performs have been Euripides’ Orestes, Phoenician Girls and Hecuba – none of which might be prone to pack out the West Finish at this time. Performs that don’t replicate what audiences anticipate merely get forgotten.
The truth is, most of the full performs which have come all the way down to us at this time have solely survived by likelihood. Whereas ten performs – together with the pseudo-Euripidean Rhesus – have been transmitted in a number of manuscript traditions, 9 others (the so-called ‘alphabetic’ performs) are recognized thanks solely to a single quantity of a collected version, containing titles starting with epsilon, iota and kappa. What we’ve is a random choice: not the very best in any respect.
Inform us extra
That is what makes the fragmentary stays so necessary. Even when they’re brief on element, they offer us a good suggestion about what the remainder of Euripides’ oeuvre was like. Because the classicist Matthew Wright has emphasised, they inform us that he appreciated love tales; that he ‘had a penchant for lesser-known myths’; and that he was a extra versatile, imaginative author than both Sophocles or Aeschylus.
However there’s a lot they don’t inform us. We don’t have sufficient data to reconstruct Euripides’ growth as a playwright. We don’t understand how he refined his artwork, or if his views modified over time. That is notably galling as, if we did know this, it might assist us to grasp the character and performance of Greek tragedy throughout essentially the most pivotal interval in its historical past.
That is the place the brand new discoveries are available in. Over the previous few many years there have been a handful of finds. In 2014 P.J. Finglass persuasively recognized a papyrus fragment present in Oxyrhynchus as belonging to Euripides’ Ino. However these have tended to be slightly restricted. What units the Colorado discovery aside is its scale. By any requirements, 78 new strains is a big leap ahead.
So what do they inform us? Till they’re printed, it’s troublesome to make sure. However some tantalising particulars have already emerged. As we all know from different sources, Polyidus begins with King Minos and Queen Pasiphae’s son drowning in a vat of honey. Devastated, they ask the seer Polyidus to resuscitate him utilizing a herb that he has seen one snake use to revive one other. What makes the brand new fragment vital is that it comprises a dialogue between Minos and Polyidus in regards to the morality of bringing a useless individual again to life.
The Ino is much more intriguing. Based on a abstract by Hyginus, Athamas, the king of Thessaly, marries Ino and has two kids. When Ino vanishes, Athamas assumes she has died, so marries once more and has one other two sons. On studying that Ino is, in truth, alive, Athamas has her introduced again to the palace. His second spouse, Themisto, is understandably mad with jealousy. She plots to kill Ino’s kids, however – mistaking Ino for a slave – unwittingly recruits her as an confederate. Ino then tips Themisto into killing her personal sons. This drives Athamas mad. He kills his eldest son by Ino whereas searching, whereupon Ino drowns herself and her youthful son.
However how correct was Hyginus’ abstract? In Medea, Euripides’ refrain claims that Ino was pushed mad by Hera and killed each of her personal kids. When she returns to sanity, she realises what she has completed and kills herself. Since this model is unattested elsewhere, it presents us with a puzzle: was Hyginus mistaken? Or was Euripides simply taking part in quick and unfastened with the story?
Fascinatingly, the brand new fragment means that Euripides launched an entirely totally different aspect into the plot of Ino. Based on Trnka-Amrhein, it has Athamas marrying a third spouse – and casts Ino because the sufferer. ‘The third spouse … is attempting to remove Ino’s kids’; however ‘Ino turns the tables on her, inflicting her to kill her personal kids and commit suicide’.
New credentials
Does this rework how we see Euripides as a dramatist? No. Nevertheless it does add to it. The Polyidus bolsters Euripides’ philosophical credentials – maybe lending credence to an historical custom which claimed that he got here to drama after a profession in philosophy. The Ino could reinforce the sense of tragic continuity between Euripides, Sophocles and Aeschylus – giving the mislead Nietzsche’s allegation that he was liable for the ‘decline’ of Greek drama. For a tiny piece of papyrus, that’s rather a lot – and definitely ‘an enormous deal’.
Alexander Lee is a fellow within the Centre for the Examine of the Renaissance on the College of Warwick. His newest guide is Machiavelli: His Life and Instances (Picador).