Bill Allan (Professor of Greek at Oxford) reports at the TLS on an exciting discovery:
Imagine for a moment that only eight of Shakespeare’s thirty-eight plays had survived intact – which ones would you hope had made it? How different would our view of Shakespeare be depending on your selection? That’s more or less where we are with Euripides (c.485–406 BCE), eighteen of whose works – seventeen tragedies and one satyr-play, a kind of mythological burlesque – have survived complete from an original ninety or so. (It is even worse with Aeschylus and Sophocles, the other star tragedians of classical Athens, of whose plays less than one in ten survive.) The qualification “more or less” is an important one, however, because various types of evidence throw light on the plays that have been lost: plot summaries, for example, or short quotations cited by other ancient writers. But these quotations tend to be pompous and moralizing passages that don’t tell us much about the drama as a whole.
That’s why the discovery of a fragmentary papyrus containing substantial sections (ninety-seven lines of Greek) of two plays of Euripides is such a big deal in the world of classics. Not well known before, the texts come from his Ino, a tale of jealousy, revenge, murder and suicide, and Polyidus, a play of miraculous resurrection and celebration. This is the most significant discovery of “new” tragedy in nearly sixty years.
The papyrus was excavated by a team from the Egyptian ministry of antiquities at the ancient necropolis of Philadelphia, south of Cairo, on November 19, 2022, and it has just been published (in late August) and classified as P. Phil. Nec 23. The fact that it has a legitimate provenance is noteworthy […]. The location is significant in itself. More than 70 per cent of so-called “literary papyri” (those containing works of ancient literature, rather than laundry lists and the like), and nearly half of those containing work by Euripides, come from the rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus […]. But this papyrus was buried, not thrown away, and since people are usually buried with items that were precious to them, it suggests the owner was an educated and literate woman, and a big fan of tragedy.
The papyrus contains thirty-seven lines from Ino and sixty from Polyidus. Although we have a relatively large number of Euripidean papyri (170), reflecting his huge popularity throughout all periods in the ancient world – he currently ranks third in frequency after papyri of Homer (1,680) and the orator Demosthenes (204) – this is only the third appearance on papyrus of Ino, and by far the most substantial, and only the second of Polyidus. These were very different plays, and their variety illustrates the range and dynamism of Greek tragedy as a genre, which could accommodate the joyful happy endings of plays like Polyidus as readily as it did plots, such as Ino’s, full of violence, gore and lamentation.
So how do the new texts enhance our view of the plays? In Ino (as we know from an ancient plot summary), the titular heroine returns home from a lengthy bout of ecstatic Dionysiac worship to discover that her husband, Athamas, has married another woman, Themisto, who has borne him twin sons. Disguised as a household slave, Ino then learns that Themisto (a classic evil stepmother) is plotting to kill Ino’s two sons, Learchus and Melicertes. Ino wreaks vengeance by swapping the kids at the last minute, so that Themisto kills her own twins, then commits suicide. Out hunting, Athamas is overcome by madness and kills his son Learchus; Ino in grief throws herself and Melicertes into the sea, and both are transformed into sea deities. A papyrus fragment of Ino from Oxyrhynchus, first published in 2012 (P. Oxy. 5131), contains part of the scene in which Athamas and Ino react as Learchus’ corpse is brought on stage. This newer and longer text from Philadelphia comes from an earlier point in the action, as Ino gloats triumphantly over the distraught Themisto after she has orchestrated the deaths of her children. “I detest you”, Ino says to her rival, and “How fine a prize it is to prevail in a just cause”, referring to her rescue of her sons from Themisto’s plot to murder them. This self-righteous and sarcastic tirade gives us a new perspective on her characterization, while the audience’s awareness that her triumph will not last long makes her vaunting words highly ironic. In the Ars Poetica, the Roman poet Horace recommended that when dramatizing famous characters, one should keep their traditional qualities: sit Medea ferox inuictaque, flebilis Ino, “let Medea be fierce and indomitable, Ino tearful”, but the new papyrus reminds us that Ino could be a far more active and disturbingly complex character, one who saves (temporarily) her own children, but kills the no less innocent children of others.
By contrast, Polyidus reimagines an episode from Cretan mythology in which King Minos and Queen Pasiphaë force the seer Polyidus (“Much-knowing”, an apt nom parlant) to find and resurrect their dead son Glaucus, who has drowned in a vat of honey. (He fell in while playing ball.) This now unfamiliar myth was also dramatized in largely lost plays by Aeschylus (Cretan Women) and Sophocles (Prophets), and Aristophanes is known to have written a comedy called Polyidus, which may have been a parody of Euripides’ version. (If so, it suggests that Euripides’ tragedy made a splash and could be easily recalled by the theatre audience.) The new papyrus text contains a scene in which Minos and Polyidus argue about the king’s request to bring Glaucus back to life. Polyidus attacks Minos’ hubris and spells out the dangers of excessive wealth and of divine vengeance […]
But for all Polyidus’ pious moralizing, it turns out to be a happy-ending plot that emphasizes magic and resurrection rather than the typically “tragic” motifs of human limits and mortality. Similarly, whereas stubbornness and arrogance often lead to downfall in Greek tragedy, here the king’s demand that his son be restored to life leads to happiness all round, with parents and son reunited, and Polyidus returning home with a hefty reward.
New papyrus discoveries such as these are hugely valuable and stimulating. We see, for example, an Ino who is far from a submissive, weeping woman, but whose conduct suggests (to say the least) an unsettling attitude to motherhood; and a Polyidus who has to grapple with a parent’s obsessive desire to recover their child. More generally, new texts of this scale and importance help to challenge scholarly assumptions that narrow the themes and stagecraft of tragedy to a set of dubious “rules” based on a small pool of evidence. (Let’s not forget that we have less than 1 per cent of all that was originally produced on the tragic stage in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.) They allow us to appreciate not only the innovative skill of the playwrights, but also the great range and inexhaustible diversity of tragedy as a genre. It was, to be sure, always an emotional rollercoaster, but it could lead just as well to joy and jackpots as to mayhem and death. Our expanding evidence for the lost plays challenges our preconceptions by taking us beyond the canon of extant tragedies and has the potential to reinvigorate our understanding of tragedy, the premier genre of classical Athens and one of the most influential of ancient literary forms.
The discovery of such new fragments always a thrill, and I hope for many more!
The fact that it has a legitimate provenance is noteworthy […].
Yes. My first thought when I saw the post title was “Oh, not another hoax!”, but this sounds like the real thing.
I’m wondering:
1. Are these 97 more or less complete lines? One of the most disappointing books I ever bought was the Oxford Classical Text of Greek tragic fragments (Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta Selecta). The editor omitted on principle all the short bits quoted by ancient authors, many of which are excellent stuff, even out of context: that’s why they were quoted. He included page after page of longer fragments that were nothing but half-lines: a whole page (or rather column) of left halves of lines, followed by a page of right-halves of lines from the other side of the same sheet of papyrus. Solving puzzles can be fun, but I much prefer texts that can actually be read, not just examined for clues about plot and vocabulary and such.
There is a numbered fragment of the lyric poet Simonides that consists of the letter epsilon, with a dot underneath to show that the reading is uncertain, and backwards square brackets on both sides to show that the preceding and following letters are all missing. Like this, but in Greek and with an underdot: ]e[
2. When are we going to be able to read these texts? I understand the eminent Euripideans invited to do the initial work don’t want to just slap a transcription up on the web and invite comments from the general public. Less qualified but quicker readers might beat them to all but the least obvious corrections, supplements of lacunae, and conjectures. But surely such a team of experts can put together a plausible text and prose translation in a few weeks at most. Why not post it on the web? Serious Hellenists will still buy the annotated edition with introduction and full commentary when it comes out . . . if we live long enough and (if it’s published by Brill or De Gruyter, now a single company) sell a kidney to pay for it.
> There is a numbered fragment of the lyric poet Simonides that consists of the letter epsilon, with a dot underneath to show that the reading is uncertain, and backwards square brackets on both sides to show that the preceding and following letters are all missing. Like this, but in Greek and with an underdot: ]e[
Yes but at least the rest of that particular quote is known from other sources.
A bunch of presentations here. The text was published in Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, vol. 230, pp. 1–40, which apparently is not online.
It’s published by the Philosophische Fakultät der Uni Köln ! Only on parchment, I imagine. They do provide links:
Links zu anderen Papyrologie- und Epigraphik-Seiten im WWW
Thanks, Y and Stu. I hadn’t realized it had been published already, though it’s an hour’s drive each way for me to read the article.
From the picture of the MS, it looks like roughly half the lines in the left column are missing a third or so of the words at the end. Could be worse, and the right column at least looks readable as a text. Assuming the scribe and his predecessors were competent, of course. I once read a paper in which someone diagnosed a mediaeval scribe as severely dyslexic: the manuscript he had copied (Ovid, I think) was so incompetently written, and in such a characteristic way (letters scrambled) that simple incompetence or semiliteracy could not explain its badness.
@Michael: It’s an hour’s drive each way for me to read the article.
To Cologne and back ? That means flatland driving, or compensating amounts of uphill and downhill and no unilateral Baustellen. So maybe Aachen or (t’other side of) Bonn ? Or nearer, but in the glamorous and learnèd sticks.
No, to the nearest university with JStor and Cambridge Journals and other such. There’s a mountain in between, too, which makes it a very unpleasant drive in rain, snow, fog, or (at my age) after dark. I’m in Staunton, in the Shenandoah Valley, across the Blue Ridge from the University of Virginia.
“the best small town in Virginia”
“Here [Blackfriars Playhouse], the American Shakespeare Center troupe performs Shakespeare’s works on a simple stage, without elaborate sets, and with the audience sharing the same light as the actors.”
That “sharing the same light” is an extremely interesting idea, quite new to me. Unless everyone is in the dark, it should dissuade surreptitious groping.
I live a block from the Blackfriars and will be there tonight, sitting on a Gallant Stool (on-stage), for the opening performance of Merry Wives of Windsor. I thought about what necktie to wear, and settled on my Guinness tie: it’s an alcoholic beverage, and it’s “extra stout”, just like Falstaff. It is one of the best Shakespeare theaters in the world. You can see what it looks like here: https://americanshakespearecenter.smugmug.com/. From the preview pictures, it looks like Falstaff may not be all that fat, but the actor, who is also playing Banquo and Canon Chasuble this season, is 6’7″, so definitely large. Seriously, come see plays here, if you’re not too far away.
I am saddened to learn that the combined research resources of JMU and W&L do not obviate the need to leave the Shenandoah Valley. And I suppose Mary Baldwin’s curriculum is not so classics-heavy as it once was.
Seriously, come see plays here, if you’re not too far away.
To my dismay, the last Rhine ferry has just cast off.
@ Michael Hendry,
Cheers from across the Blue Ridge
Can we start singing “Country Roads” already? 😉
Here’s Toots and the Maytals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQFKMar4x-w
Jah love, my brothers & sisters!
Thanks for that, it made my morning. Funky Kingston is such a great album!
The great Lester Bangs: “perfection, the most exciting and diversified set of reggae tunes by a single artist yet released.”
Robert Christgau: “The quick way to explain the Maytals is to say that in reggae they’re the Beatles to the Wailers’ Rolling Stones. But how do I explain Toots himself? Well, he’s the nearest thing to Otis Redding left on the planet: he transforms ‘do re mi fa sol la ti do’ into joyful noise.”
@jack morava: Thanks! I didn’t know that version, it’s great!