Tragic Failures: Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic 9783110482324, 9783110479126

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Evina Sistakou Tragic Failures

Trends in Classics – Supplementary Volumes

Edited by Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos Scientific Committee Alberto Bernabé · Margarethe Billerbeck Claude Calame · Philip R. Hardie · Stephen J. Harrison Stephen Hinds · Richard Hunter · Christina Kraus Giuseppe Mastromarco · Gregory Nagy Theodore D. Papanghelis · Giusto Picone Kurt Raaflaub · Bernhard Zimmermann

Volume 38

Evina Sistakou

Tragic Failures

Alexandrian Responses to Tragedy and the Tragic

ISBN 978-3-11-047912-6 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-048232-4 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-048063-4 ISSN 1868-4785 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Logo: Christopher Schneider, Laufen Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck 1 Printed on acid-free paper * Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

To the late Daniel Jacob who would make an ideal reader of this book

Contents Preface

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Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

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. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria 11 The contexts of Hellenistic tragedy 11 Ptolemaic cultural politics and tragedy 15 Performing, reciting or reading tragedy? 20 25 Tragedy enters the Library . The Metaclassical Tragic 31 31 Tragedy as philosophy and its Hellenistic reworking The impossibility of Aristotelian tragedy 38 Callimachus on (not) writing tragedy 44 52 Establishing tragedy and the tragic in Alexandria . Alexandrian Tragedy 63 63 The star system of the Alexandrian tragedians Rupture and revival of tragic myth 69 Historical tragedy makes a comeback 77 Generic divergences and tragic crossovers 82 89 . Callimachus Displaces the Tragic Transcending the tragic in the Hymns 89 Tragic fragmentariness in the Aetia 98 Hecale, a mundane tragedy 105 . Redefining the Tragic in the Idylls of Theocritus A messenger speech without a messenger 115 The bucolic world’s a stage 122 Simaetha’s tragic failures 131 . Tragedy into Epic in Apollonius’ Argonautica 141 Distilling Attic tragedy into the Argonautica 141 Epic teleologies and tragic modalities 153 An Alexandrian epic on tragic passions 161

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Contents

. In the Metatragic Cosmos of the Alexandra 168 168 The Alexandra, a metatragic play From the tragedy of Cassandra to ‘becoming Alexandra’ Tragedy as textual unconscious 185 193 . The Romantic Tragic Domesticizing tragedy 193 202 The tragedy of love Parthenius, from tragedy to melodrama

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Conclusion: Tragic Failures and Hellenistic Challenges Bibliography 227 227 Abbreviations Editions 227 Translations 227 228 Bibliography Index

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Preface This book has its origins in a series of vexing questions that kept arising during my over twenty years of engagement with Hellenistic scholarship: Why is tragedy mostly neglected in the intertextual and aesthetic analysis of Hellenistic poetry, whereas archaic epic and lyric take center stage in the relevant bibliography? Why is Homer unequivocally accepted as ‘the’ archetype for the Hellenistic poets, whereas Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are not? Why is the tragic idea, both as represented on stage and as a philosophical quality, rarely used as a key for the interpretation of Alexandrian poetics? Did the learned poets, whose philological activity in the Museum was dedicated to the study of classical tragedy alongside epic and lyric, consider tragedy a dead genre by their own artistic standards? Did the Alexandrian poets and their audiences value the tragic effect, the arousal of pity-and-fear emotions, stemming from the representation of a classical tragedy on stage? Can a heightened sense of ‘the tragic’ be reconciled with the new outlook on life and art in the Hellenistic era? Questions may be easily multiplied, yet bibliography scarcely provides adequate answers. While my monograph was still in progress, I came across one exception, namely the study of Agnieszka Kotlińska-Toma, Hellenistic Tragedy. Texts, Translations and a Critical Survey (published by Bloomsbury in 2015). Kotlińska-Toma offers a comprehensive survey of Hellenistic tragedy with a commentary on the surviving testimonies and fragments, a study that only partly overlaps with my chapter on Alexandrian tragedy. Luckily I was able to consult this book before completing mine. Following the pattern of my previous monographs (Reconstructing the Epic. Cross-Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry, Leuven 2008 and The Aesthetics of Darkness. A Study of Hellenistic Romanticism in Apollonius, Lycophron and Nicander, Leuven 2012), I have tested the main thesis of my book against the broad range of Hellenistic poetry rather than review a particular poem or poet in isolation from the entire Alexandrian ‘corpus’. Studies of the latter type in regard to the tragic are occasionally found in Hellenistic bibliography. An illustrating example is Apollonius’ Argonautica, which has been examined from the viewpoint of tragedy reception in a series of lesser known dissertations (F. Stoessl, Apollonios Rhodios. Interpretationen zur Erzählungskunst und Quellenverwertung, Bern-Leipzig 1941; J. M. Nishimura-Jensen, Tragic Epic or Epic Tragedy. Narrative and Genre in Apollonius of Rhodes’ Argonautica, University of Wisconsin-Madison 1996; I. A. Schmakeit, Apollonios Rhodios und die attische Tragödie. Gattungsüberschreitende Intertextualität in der alexandrinischen Epik, Groningen 2003). An exceptional case is

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also the Alexandra, a semi-dramatic poem whose affinities with classical tragedy have been recognized by researchers in numerous publications. Yet the question I posed at the outset of my project had a somewhat different starting point. Rather than undertaking a painstaking research in tragic intertextuality or Quellenforschung, I devoted my attention to the tragic idea itself beyond the generic boundaries of drama. Special monographs on the history of the tragic idea point to the conclusion that ‘the tragic’ is primarily a modern conception (for an outline of this notion see the collection of critical texts by Vassilis Lambropoulos, The Tragic Idea, London 2006). In the quest for the tragic idea I have drawn upon theoretical approaches; among them Terry Eagleton, Sweet Violence. The Idea of the Tragic (Malden-Oxford 2003) and Julian Young, The Philosophy of Tragedy. From Plato to Žižek (Cambridge 2013) were valuable guides along the way. Accepting the fact that only modern thinkers became conscious of the universal notion of the tragic, does not imply that the ancient Greeks did not anticipate ‘the tragic’ as a distinct critical category. Thus, my study acknowledges the key importance of Aristotle’s Poetics in this respect, and it is against the Aristotelian scheme that the responses to tragic poetics in Alexandrian literature are evaluated. In effect, the title of the present monograph, Tragic Failures, suggests through word-play that the Hellenistic poets were faced with the dilemma of either composing tragedies according to the classical rules or to conceive the tragic idea afresh: in the former case they would be failed tragedians, whereas in the latter they could render the failures of everyday life the essence of the metaclassical tragic. The path they finally decided to take is the topic of the present book. In the solitary act of writing this book I was fortunate to share my thoughts and concerns with esteemed colleagues. Antonios Rengakos embraced my new Hellenistic endeavor with the blending of scholarly intelligence and warm generosity so characteristic of him. I am deeply indebted to two dear colleagues who read through the entire manuscript: David Sider, who provided me with his sage advice, especially on Plato and Aristotle, ancient literary criticism and the poetics of drama, and Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, whose critical acumen made me aware of the limits of interpretation in the analysis of the Alexandrian tragic. Moreover, they both helped me substantially improve the language and style of the original—an invaluable assistance to a non-native speaker of English. To grapple with the complex problem of Alexandrian scholarship and criticism I have benefited from the expertise of Fausto Montana; his insightful observations have helped me dispel several misconceptions in the introductory chapter. A special thanks goes to Agnieszka Kotlińska-Toma who has promptly made her study on Hellenistic tragedy available to me, while it was still at the stage of proofreading. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to the editors of Trends in Classics

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Franco Montanari and Antonios Rengakos for including my study in their renowned series, and Katharina Legutke for her efficiency in preparing the book for publication with De Gruyter.

Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic Tragedy delights by affording a shadow of that pleasure which exists in pain. Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Defense of Poetry’ (1821)

In envisaging the utopian city Plato expresses his much-debated thesis on the status of poetry. Except for hymns to gods and encomia to illustrious men, the citizens of this ideal city should not be exposed to potentially ‘dangerous’ poems, such as the Homeric epics and tragedy (Rep. 607a).¹ In the philosopher’s view this poetry not only conveys a distorted image of the truth because of its mimetic character but moreover endangers the morality of listeners who emotionally surrender to it (Rep. 605c-d): οἱ γάρ που βέλτιστοι ἡμῶν ἀκροώμενοι Ὁμήρου ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς τῶν τραγῳδοποιῶν μιμουμένου τινὰ τῶν ἡρώων ἐν πένθει ὄντα καὶ μακρὰν ῥῆσιν ἀποτείνοντα ἐν τοῖς ὀδυρμοῖς ἢ καὶ ᾄδοντάς τε καὶ κοπτομένους, οἶσθ᾽ ὅτι χαίρομέν τε καὶ ἐνδόντες ἡμᾶς αὐτοὺς ἑπόμεθα συμπάσχοντες καὶ σπουδάζοντες ἐπαινοῦμεν ὡς ἀγαθὸν ποιητήν, ὃς ἂν ἡμᾶς ὅτι μάλιστα οὕτω διαθῇ. When the best of us hear Homer or some other tragic poet imitating a hero in mourning, delivering a long speech of lamentation, singing, or beating his breast, you know how we feel pleasure and give ourselves up to it, how we follow in sympathy and praise the excellence of the poet who does this to us most effectively. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

Extreme emotionality occasioned by an artistic illusion, the empathetic participation and the ensuing pessimism of the spectator of tragedy threaten what Plato struggles to promote through his philosophy—the revelation of truth, the steadiness of morality, the prospect of collective happiness, the ideal of the good citizen. The Republic, as well as other Platonic passages, mark the beginning of viewing ‘the tragic’ as an abstract notion with ethical and philosophical ramifications that transcend the mere literary form we designate as ‘tragedy’.²

 A rejection grounded on Platonic moralism; on this thesis and Aristotle’s response to it, see Halliwell . On Plato’s negative stance towards poetry in general and the aesthetic pleasure stemming from it, see Belfiore .  A finely argued discussion of this interpretation of the tragic in Plato in Halliwell ,  – .

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Aristotle with the Poetics responds to the repudiation of tragedy and the tragic by Plato, though not on a philosophical basis.³ The moralistic rendering of tragedy and its proper aim in an ideal society, as highlighted in the Republic and other Platonic dialogues,⁴ is set against Aristotle’s formalistic views on tragic drama and his psychological theory on its reception by the audience. Aristotle views tragedy as an art form compliant with a set of strict rules—serious subject matter, unity of plot, the law of possibility and necessity governing the action, goodness, propriety and verisimilitude of character, representation in dramatic form. According to Aristotle’s anatomy of the genre, the critical stages of the plot are anagnorisis, peripeteia and pathos. It is probably the latter as defined in the Poetics that has incited the most common preconception of tragic theory, namely that the tragic thematizes, first and foremost, human suffering (Poet. 1452b and 1453a): ⁵ πάθος δέ ἐστι πρᾶξις φθαρτικὴ ἢ ὀδυνηρά, οἷον οἵ τε ἐν τῷ φανερῷ θάνατοι καὶ αἱ περιωδυνίαι καὶ τρώσεις καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα. νῦν δὲ περὶ ὀλίγας οἰκίας αἱ κάλλισται τραγῳδίαι συντίθενται, οἷον περὶ ᾿Aλκμέωνα καὶ Οἰδίπουν καὶ Ὀρέστην καὶ Μελέαγρον καὶ Θυέστην καὶ Τήλεφον καὶ ὅσοις ἄλλοις συμβέβηκεν ἢ παθεῖν δεινὰ ἢ ποιῆσαι. A pathos is an act involving destruction or pain, for example deaths on stage and physical agonies and woundings and so on. Nowadays the best tragedies are about a few families only, for example, Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and others whose lot it was to suffer or commit fearful acts. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

The representation of such acts before the eyes of the spectators arouses the emotions of pity and fear and it is through this, essentially cognitive, procedure that catharsis is achieved. In Aristotle’s teleological explanation, the purification of negative emotions is the lesson learnt by the audience of tragedy and as such accounts for the ultimate goal of mimetic poetry.⁶ It seems that Aristotelian criticism, especially given the literary/aesthetic orientation of the Poetics, has dominated over a more universal, metaphysical con Plato rejects the tragic conception of life, a notion that transcends the literary genre of tragedy, as argued by Halliwell ().  On the notion of the tragic in Philebus, Cratylus, Phaedo and Laws, see Halliwell ,  – .  The ambiguous term pathos in Aristotle is explained by Rees  and Belfiore ,  – .  Tragic emotion as a cause of catharsis is a huge topic: for recent discussions, see Belfiore , esp.  – , Halliwell ,  –  and Munteanu ,  – .

Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

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ception of the tragic in antiquity. To regard the tragic as the quintessence of a philosophical and ethical stance towards life, as a worldview and a state of humanity, for which tragedy provides only the vehicle for its expression is not as obvious for the ancient Greeks as it is for modern thinkers. In antiquity, the adjective tragikos either points to anything pertaining to tragic drama itself, and in this respect has the narrow sense of a technical term, or, when used figuratively, implies seriousness and solemnity.⁷ Even so, the tragic appears to be a matter of tonality and style rather than of poetic essence. That said, the tragic idea may have informed, subconsciously at least, the audience expectations in classical Athens. In a famous passage from the Poetics (1453a) Aristotle asserts that Euripides is the τραγικώτατος τῶν ποιητῶν on the grounds of exerting the most powerful tragic effect on the audience (ἐπὶ γὰρ τῶν σκηνῶν καὶ τῶν ἀγώνων τραγικώταται αἱ τοιαῦται φαίνονται). He draws this conclusion on the basis of Euripidean plot structure which he describes as follows (1453a): ἀνάγκη ἄρα τὸν καλῶς ἔχοντα μῦθον…μεταβάλλειν οὐκ εἰς εὐτυχίαν ἐκ δυστυχίας ἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον ἐξ εὐτυχίας εἰς δυστυχίαν μὴ διὰ μοχθηρίαν ἀλλὰ δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν μεγάλην ἢ οἵου εἴρηται ἢ βελτίονος μᾶλλον ἢ χείρονος…ἡ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὴν τέχνην καλλίστη τραγῳδία ἐκ ταύτης τῆς συστάσεώς ἐστι. διὸ καὶ οἱ Εὐριπίδῃ ἐγκαλοῦντες τὸ αὐτὸ ἁμαρτάνουσιν ὅτι τοῦτο δρᾷ ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις καὶ αἱ πολλαὶ αὐτοῦ εἰς δυστυχίαν τελευτῶσιν. τοῦτο γάρ ἐστιν ὥσπερ εἴρηται ὀρθόν. The line of the plot should go from good fortune to bad and not the other way round; the change should be produced not through wickedness, but through some large-scale piece of ignorance; the person ignorant should be the sort of man I have described—certainly not a worse man, though perhaps a better one…Well then, the best tragedy, judged from the standpoint of the tragic art, comes from this sort of arrangement. That is why those who censure Euripides for doing this in his tragedies and making many of them end with disaster are making just the same mistake. For this is correct in the way I said. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

The passage, apart from posing the fundamental question of hamartia in relation to the ethos of the character, defines tragedy as a plot directed from eutuchia ‘good fortune’ towards dustuchia ‘misfortune’, a plot type which calls for a ca-

 Tragikos: as a technical term e. g. in Hdt. . τραγικοῖσι χοροῖσι, Aeschin. Ktes.  τραγικοὶ ποιηταί, Xen. Cyr. .. τραγικὴ σκηνή, Pl. Rep. b τραγικὴ σκευή; implying the serious tone of tragedy in Pl. Laws c σπουδὴ τραγική, also intended as a pun in Aristoph. Frogs  τραγικὸς λῆρος; suggesting anything stately and majestic e. g. in Pl. Rep. b τραγικῶς κινδυνεύω λέγειν, Arist. Rhet. b διὰ τὸ σεμνὸν ἄγαν καὶ τραγικόν, Aristoph. Peace  –  οὐκοῦν ἐχρῆν σε Πηγάσου ζεῦξαι πτερόν,/ ὅπως ἐφαίνου τοῖς θεοῖς τραγικώτερος.

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Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

lamitous denouement.⁸ Nevertheless, it should be noted that the second best tragic plot according to Aristotle is the one that presents a transition from bad to good fortune, as in Euripides’ Iphigenia in Aulis (Poet. 1454a).⁹ How are we to explain these apparently conflicting views? Through recognizing that in both cases, and sometimes irrespective of the happy ending, the pitiful and the fearful are evoked by the suffering of the characters and their imminent calamity, which, however, in the latter plot paradigm is averted by a sudden twist of fortune near the end of the play.¹⁰ Thus, and despite Aristotle’s formalism in the categorization of plot types, we have to surmise that tragedies were expected to present a serious storyline about a noble hero consisting of sorrowful and terrible events with an unhappy closure, or at least with a prospect of ending badly—what Aristotle enigmatically subsumes under the recurrent term spoudaion. ¹¹ To put it differently, any such story would be characterized as ‘tragic’ even when hosted by genres other than tragedy.¹² In both Plato and Aristotle the Homeric epics and tragedy are considered as an aesthetic category on their own, as if constituting an organic whole that defies generic boundaries. Formulations such as ἀκροώμενοι Ὁμήρου ἢ ἄλλου τινὸς τῶν τραγῳδοποιῶν ‘listening to Homer or any other tragic poet’ (Rep. 605c) or Ὅμηρον ποιητικώτατον εἶναι καὶ πρῶτον τῶν τραγῳδοποιῶν ‘Homer is the foremost and most poetical of the tragic poets’ (Rep. 607c) reflect a transgeneric understanding of the tragic by Plato. Aristotle reworks this view into an evolutionary model according to which tragedy is the perfected form and telos of all serious poetry beginning with the Homeric epic (Poet. 1449a): κατὰ τὴν οἰκείαν φύσιν οἱ μὲν ἀντὶ τῶν ἰάμβων κωμῳδοποιοὶ ἐγένοντο, οἱ δὲ ἀντὶ τῶν ἐπῶν τραγῳδοδιδάσκαλοι ‘those whose natural bent made lampooners

 A comprehensive, in-depth analysis of this thesis, which reflects the confrontation of Aristotelian rationalism with the tragic vision of the poets, in Halliwell ,  – .  See Belfiore ,  – .  Halliwell ,  –  and extensively treated in  – .  Golden () argues that spoudaios is not a quality of action but of character, and therefore the definition of tragedy by Aristotle should be translated as follows: “tragedy is an imitation of an action that reveals nobility of character”. For Held () tragedy is teleologically oriented towards the actions of the spoudaioi, i. e. heroes that possess moral and intellectual virtue. Spoudaios denoting primarily material and social excellence is discussed in Belfiore ,  – .  The spoudaion is one of the two ingredients that are essential to the making of tragedy—the other one is the dramatic form; Homer is the example par excellence (Poet. b): ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ σπουδαῖα μάλιστα ποιητὴς Ὅμηρος ἦν (μόνος γὰρ οὐχ ὅτι εὖ ἀλλὰ καὶ μιμήσεις δραματικὰς ἐποίησεν).

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of them turned to comedy, while those naturally inclined to epic became tragedians’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom).¹³ No doubt the tragic emerged as a reflection on Attic tragedy—an unprecedented literary phenomenon with its own rules of form, content and style, and with a unique impact on contemporary audiences. When Aristophanes in the Frogs recreates an imaginary competition between Aeschylus and Euripides, in effect between two traditions of tragic theatre, he dramatizes, in the face of Dionysus, the infallible instinct of the contemporary Athenian audience, its sixth sense as regards the tragic essence—and, by contrast, the comic essence—of the plays presented on the Attic stage.¹⁴ In the fourth century Plato marks the beginning of a philosophical, substantially ontological, approach to the tragic, that eventually does not develop into a comprehensive theory.¹⁵ In Aristotle the philosophical essence of the tragic is an undercurrent sensed throughout the Poetics but subordinated to the aesthetic study of tragedy as a generic class. Criticism of tragedy and the tragic fades out in the Hellenistic age—except perhaps for the obscure Neoptolemus of Parium—and is revived with Horace’s Ars Poetica who resets the Aristotelian standards of how to compose a ‘classical-type’ tragedy, while drastically turning his attention away from the tragic.¹⁶ Under the shadow of Aristotle, poets, indeed entire traditions of dramatic writing, of the subsequent centuries addressed the tragic as a quality inseparable from its theatrical realization as tragedy. This lack of contemplation on the tragic per se extends from Roman tragic theatre (a good part of which, however, was written against the background of Seneca’s Stoicism), through Medieval and Renaissance tragedies with their theological and moral emphasis, to the protoRomantic Shakespearean tragedy and the Neoclassical French tragedians Corneille and Racine. It was German Idealism and Romantic philosophy that has abstracted the tragic as an idea with its own hypostasis by disconnecting it from its

 That Aristotle views the Homeric epic as a proto-tragedy that is inferior to tragedy proper is argued by Halliwell (,  – ). This Platonic and Aristotelian line of argument has found many followers, also among modern scholars, cf. e. g. Rinon () who systematically explores the notion of the tragic in Homer.  Tragic thematics are caricatured to an even greater extent in fourth-century comedy, see the fascinating discussion of the relevant passages in Hanink b,  – .  The philosophical exploration of the tragic sense of life is taken over by the Stoics, see e. g. Nussbaum () who argues that the tragic plot best expresses the attitudes of Stoicism towards human suffering.  As Most (,  – ) rightly points out, after Aristotle there are two distinct traditions of theorizing on the tragic genre, that of the grammarians (culminating with Horace) and that of the philosophers (from Theophrastus to Boethius).

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historical and cultural context.¹⁷ One of the most fascinating, but still unresolved, debates of Western philosophy and aesthetics is the definition of ‘the tragic idea’ as an existential proposition of humanity (das Tragische is a basically Germanic concept), an intellectual adventure involving all the great names of European thought: Lessing, Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Hölderlin, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Wagner, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin.¹⁸ Far from attempting further scrutiny of their theses, it is sufficient to state that we should be wary of confusing ancient with modern conceptions of ‘the tragic’ which are strikingly different. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the tragic idea as explored by modern thinkers is irrelevant to the interpretation of ancient tragic poetics; quite the contrary, since the modern tragic is perceived as the abstraction of the generic essence of Greek tragedy.¹⁹ In effect, the tragic is a philosophical concept in raising fundamental questions about human freedom, necessity and ethics.²⁰ Obviously to explore a literary genre through philosophy (even if the latter inevitably reflects the cultural and ideological preoccupations of its immediate historical context) is tantamount to viewing it through a distorting mirror—which, however, is still a mirror. And beyond the numerous contradictions between tragic theory and tragic practice, ancient as well as modern philosophy of the tragic may supplement each other towards a better understanding of the literary tragic itself.²¹ Within this theoretical framework, and by taking into account the limi-

 That our view of tragedy is deeply, and unconsciously, influenced by the Romantic construction of ‘the tragic’ is argued by Most () and Goldhill ().  A presentation of the principal views on the tragic from the mid eighteenth century to the present day, arranged by thinker in chronological order, is provided by Szondi  and later supplemented by Lambropoulos .  Fascinating examples are Richard Wagner’s idealistic rendering of Greek tragedy as the total art form, the Gesamtkunstwerk, that he attempted to revive through opera (see his  essay “Art and Revolution”, cf. Lambropoulos ,  – ), Friedrich Nietzsche’s the Birth of Tragedy ( and revised ) written in his shadow, and Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory who in The Interpretation of Dreams () takes Sophocles’ King Oedipus as a point of departure for his conception of the unconscious (see e. g. the impact of this theory on classical studies in Bowlby ).  A valuable guide to philosophical thinking on the tragic is the collective volume by de Beistegui/Sparks . For the interaction between tragedy and philosophy from antiquity until modern times, see Kaufmann .  Pace Most (,  – ) who rejects the notion that ‘tragedy should be tragic’ as a modern misconception, totally irrelevant to ancient theories about tragedy. Yet the inseparable duo ‘tragedy/the tragic’ has continuously haunted literary criticism from antiquity until today, see Silk ,  –  and Felski . Among the contemporary attempts to identify the tragic qualities of tragedy are Northrop Frye’s tripartite categorization of literature into tragic, comic and the-

Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

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tations posed by the historical mapping of the tragic, I will explore how Hellenistic poets, in particular those partaking in the formation of Alexandrian aesthetics, responded both to the classical tradition of tragedy and to the tragic as an idea vaguely felt but scarcely defined—if indeed it is definable at all. The affinities between Alexandrian poetics and tragedy are usually downplayed by contemporary scholarship. Unjustly so, because the propensity of Hellenistic poets for the most grand and elevated literary genre alongside the epic, namely tragedy, can be reconciled with Alexandrian aesthetics, as the present study aspires to demonstrate.²² The first half of the subtitle, Alexandrian Responses, lays stress on Alexandrianism not only as a recognition of the political and cultural hegemony of Alexandria as opposed to other Hellenistic cities. It is not just a tribute to the site where Theocritus, Callimachus and Apollonius undertook their artistic enterprise during the first half of the third century. Alexandria moreover represents the Zeitgeist of an entire era, a spiritual landscape that has become synonymous with the artistic avant-garde, the literary decadence, pure poetry, aestheticism and also modernism.²³ Even poets geographically or chronologically distant—Euphorion and Parthenius as well as the epigonal Roman neoterics are telling examples—prove Alexandrianism to be a literary trend rather than a historical attribute. In the context of Hellenistic tragedy, ‘Alexandrian’ has an added emphasis, since it denotes a tragic tradition that is both distinct from the one that flourished in Athens and other Greek cities during the same period and a genuine creation effected by the exceptional circumstances of the Ptolemaic kingdom.²⁴ The book at hand appears to be torn between tragedy and the tragic; in fact both interact and become, to some degree, indivisible. Hellenistic poetry evokes tragedy first and foremost as a genre—a term historically construed and em-

matic and their different modes (mythic, romantic, high mimetic, low mimetic and ironic) in the Anatomy of Criticism () and George Steiner’s celebrated theory of the decline of tragedy in the twentieth century as argued in The Death of Tragedy (). For a reviewing of the tragic in tragedy, also from a socio-political viewpoint, in the entire spectrum of Weltliteratur, see Eagleton .  The epic went through radical transformations in the hands of the Alexandrian poets too, see Sistakou . Cf. Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ) who recognize the positive reception, albeit limited as opposed to the one of epic and lyric, of both tragedy and comedy by Callimachus.  A brilliant overview of the semantic range of Alexandrianism as an aesthetic category in Pontani .  For a comprehensive study of Hellenistic tragedy, see the new monograph by Kotlińska-Toma .

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Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

ployed here only for its heuristic value in literary analysis.²⁵ Far from being a mere quest for sources, a pedantic Quellenforschung, the present study will draw eclectically on the canonical texts of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides to highlight meaningful intertextual bonds with Hellenistic poems. Moreover, it will specifically address the reworking of tragic heroines, such as Medea or Cassandra/Alexandra. Creative reception of tragedy will not be delimited by formal characteristics, viz the dramatic narrative mode: thus, apart from a survey of the obscure Alexandrian tragedians and idiosyncratic dramatic forms such as the monologue of Alexandra attributed to Lycophron or the dialogic Megara of the bucolic corpus, the permeability of other genres—epic, elegy, iamb, lyric, idyll—by tragedy will be axiomatically considered one of the possible generic crossings of Hellenistic poetics. Tragedy may also involve performability. Actual conditions of performance for Hellenistic poems are of minimal interest, but their intended theatricality, and metatheatrical emphasis for that matter, will be interpreted as an experimentation with drama.²⁶ Ancient theatre encompasses also comedies and satyr plays, and the affinity of Hellenistic poetry with these dramatic genres is yet another fascinating topic, if we consider the mimetic-comic background of much of Theocritus’ Idylls, of Herodas’ Mimiambi and the revival of satyr drama by the playwrights of the tragic Pleiad.²⁷ To conceive tragedy in contradistinction to them is to demarcate the tragic modality in opposition to the comic and the satyric one—and by modality a set of features are intended pertaining, on the one hand, to plot and character and, on the other, to thought, style and tone. The former are grounded on the Aristotelian notion of tragic muthos as an imitation of a praxis that has developed from the material of epic and is both serious (spoudaia) and complete (teleia),²⁸ whereas the latter evokes the combination of grandiloquence and dignity reflected in the figurative use of tragikos or the Roman term gravitas. ²⁹ Ulti-

 Fowler () reinforces the point that genres are historical constructions that are only intelligible in relation to a chronological frame of reference.  Similarly Curley () who views the transformation of the tragic into other genres in what he calls ‘theatre of epic’ and ‘theatre of elegy’ as a form of metatheatre in Ovid.  On the satyr plays Daphnis/Lityerses by Sositheus and Menedemus by Lycophron, see Xanthakis-Karamanos  and  respectively.  For Aristotle the tragic idea does not suffice in itself to make a tragedy, since it is essentially the plot that forms the ‘soul’ of the genre, whereas character is secondary (Poet. a μὲν οὖν καὶ οἷον ψυχὴ ὁ μῦθος τῆς τραγῳδίας, δεύτερον δὲ τὰ ἤθη): on this distinction, see Belfiore ,  – .  On tragikos, see above p.  and n. . Tragic gravitas in Rome is ascribed to Accius and Pacuvius, in Quint. Inst. .. Tragoediae scriptores veterum Accius atque Pacuvius clarissimi

Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

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mately, the tragic is inconceivable without reference to the desired audience response, the pity-and-fear complex: given, on the one hand, the unphilosophical, and hence untragic, stance de facto attributed to the scholar poets of Alexandria,³⁰ and, on the other, the avoidance of emotionalism in their literature,³¹ it is tempting to re-establish the impact of tragedy and the tragic in novel contexts. Tragedy is a historical literary entity, the tragic a transhistorical category of thought; classical tragedy constitutes a poetic past, the tragic idea is a blurred yet fascinating notion with philosophical, socio-political and aesthetic ramifications.³² The Alexandrians enter in a creative yet controversial dialogue with both of them. Tragic Failures explores how the Alexandrian poets instill tragedy into sophisticated poetry, how they use generic transformation as a means of incorporating the tragic, and whether they eventually succeed in reconciling tragic aesthetics with their own innovative conceptions of poetry and, in a broader sense, with the intellectual and cultural challenges of the Hellenistic epoch. Undoubtedly, Alexandrian poetry is highly diversified. Therefore, each chapter treats both the response to classical tragedy and the reaction to the tragic idea for every poet or work discussed—and will not eschew reference to tragedy models, notions of the tragic and authors of the modern era, when necessary. The study intends to pose questions that will remain open rather than give clear-cut answers, whereas variation in methodology and approach reflects the

gravitate sententiarum, verborum pondere, auctoritate personarum. That Ovid in writing his tragedy Medea pursued a similar gravitas is argued by Curley (,  – ).  Philosophy is in many respects a concomitant of tragedy, and therefore it comes as no surprise that the tragic has become a philosophical problem in the modern era, see de Beistegui/ Sparks . The paradigm of Seneca, the philosopher who transformed Stoicism into tragedy, is a critical case: see Staley . Philosophy as a whole, like tragedy, has been considered alien to Hellenistic poetics: notable exceptions are the Phaenomena of Aratus, written under the influence of Stoicism, and Cleanthes who directly expressed his Stoic beliefs through poetry. For philosophical discussions of Hellenistic poetry, see Cuypers () who argues that Callimachus in the Hymn to Zeus appears as a philosopher-poet and Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ) for a ‘Platonic’ reading of the Callimachean poetic program.  On emotions revisited and eventually transformed into sensations in Alexandrian aesthetics, see Sistakou .  Eagleton (,  – ) critically reviews the theories of the tragic in philosophy and literary criticism, even in the vernacular usage of ‘the tragic’ as denoting ‘the very sad’. Instead of the traditional dichotomies supposedly expressed by tragedy (fate and chance, free will and destiny, inner flaw and outer circumstance, the noble and the ignoble, blindness and insight, historical and universal, the alterable and the inevitable etc.), Eagleton argues for the ideological background of the tragic as a displacement of theology, a political preoccupation, a metaphysical humanism or a critique of the Enlightenment.

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Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic

complexity and inconclusiveness of the subject matter under scrutiny—both are due to the contradictory definitions of ‘tragedy/the tragic’ given diachronically and to the lack of textual evidence as regards Alexandrian tragedy in particular. The first chapter draws attention to Ptolemaic politics on drama against the background of Hellenistic theatrical practice as well as to the philological debate about tragedy and the tragic in the Museum. The second chapter explores the status of tragedy as a metaclassical problem of criticism and poetics. In the shadow of fourth-century drama and the philosophical debate between Plato and Aristotle on the tragic, critical changes in plot design, thematic preferences and style of tragedy are observed; several of them are reflected in Callimachean aesthetics. After this theoretical approach, attention focuses on third-century Alexandrian tragedy and the key role of the Pleiad in its development. Distinctive responses to the tragic are discussed in the next chapters: Callimachus’ recontextualization of the tragic into the Hymns, the elegiac narratives of the Aetia and the Hecale, in contradistinction with the comic, the absurd and the realistic; Theocritus’ philological response to the Bacchae and his new conception of the tragic in the song for Daphnis in Idyll 1 as well as the making of new tragic anti-heroes like Simaetha in Idyll 2; Apollonius’ reception of Attic tragedy in the Argonautica and the creative reshaping of tragic characters and ideas to fit into an epic poem; the metadramatic reading of the tragic tradition through the theatrical monologue Alexandra which offers an opportunity for a postmodern performance. The last chapter addresses the development of the tragic idea in late Hellenistic poetry. Moschus’ Megara and Eratosthenes’ Erigone are striking examples of how tragedy becomes domestic. Love poems, such as the female monologue known as the Fragmentum Grenfellianum and the pseudo-Theocritean Idyll 23 The Lover spotlight eros as a dominant aspect of tragic suffering, whereas Parthenius, the last of the Alexandrians, announces the emergence of melodrama through his Erotika Pathemata. These trends, albeit diverse, seem to converge to a novel, non-classical concept, characterized by a fusion of emotionalism and morbidity, which I have termed ‘the romantic tragic’. In the Conclusion, after having mapped tragic poetics in Alexandria, I will venture an opinion on whether tragedy was doomed to failure or rather subjected to radical transformations, once measured against the challenges of the new Hellenistic world.

1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria The contexts of Hellenistic tragedy Whereas the tragic is “a condition of existence and a process in art”¹ and therefore a universal, almost transcendental phenomenon of human society and culture, tragedy is the finest product of one city in a particular period of history. In a way similar to Renaissance Italy or Elizabethan England, icons of unprecedented achievements in art and literature, classical Athens was the necessary and sufficient condition for tragedy to exist and develop from its very beginnings until its maturity and inevitable ‘death’. It was during the subsequent fourth century that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were considered the canon, their tragedies became a standard repertoire in theatres across Greece and an official copy of their plays was preserved in the state archive of Athens, and it was then that Aristotle gave his own account of tragedy as a genre in completion and perfection in the Poetics: all manifestations of the end of an era—or perhaps not?² Considering the fact that during the next centuries a wealth of original tragic plays was written and performed alongside the classical ones,³ it is worth asking why ‘Hellenistic tragedy’ marks a gap in the history of literature, primarily as regards the textual transmission of the plays, until the revival of the genre in imperial Rome. An obvious explanation for the lack of records for Hellenistic tragedy, and drama in general, is the standardization of literature by later scholarship, chiefly of Atticistic orientation, as well as the performative habits and school practices in the ancient world. A different explanation should be sought in the direction of the new political, religious and social circumstances following the emergence of the Hellenistic empire.⁴  Storm , .  That the formation of a repertoire of classical plays suggests not the death of Athenian tragedy but its globalization is argued by Easterling (). On the reception of fifth-century tragedy by fourth-century stages, see the thorough study by Nervegna . For a fascinating account of the centrality of fifth-century tragedy in Lycurgus’ political and cultural agenda, as well as of the reception of tragedy in the Macedonian era, see Hanink a.  For a list of tragic writers, tragedies, satyr plays, and their actors, after the classical period, see Mette ,  – . On the new tragic production in the fourth century, see Hanink b.  Modern scholarship argues against the long-standing belief about the ‘decline’ of Hellenistic tragedy: see e. g. Le Guen (,  – ) who rejects the main arguments (lack of evidence for Hellenistic tragedy, reperformances of classical tragedies, growing influence of rhetoric on tragic style, tragedies intended for reading rather than performance onstage, superiority of actors against poets already by the time of Aristotle).

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1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria

The polis formed the core around which fifth-century tragedy revolved, while the complex matters of city and citizenship were addressed onstage by recourse to tragic myth. The obsession of Greek tragedy with politics in the broadest sense was a unique phenomenon in both the ancient and the modern world. Actually it was much more than this:⁵ It is possible to see the entertainment of the Great Dionysia as offering a single message to the citizens. First, we get the preplay ceremonials which display the positive image of Athens as a city, then there are the grim warnings of the tragedy which show what happens elsewhere to other people, a negative image of how things can go wrong. Together, the plays and the rituals teach the Athenians what the proper values of citizenship are…The whole occasion of the Great Dionysia, in this model, is a truly civic occasion, using the full range of spectacle and drama to celebrate and educate the city…The ‘pity and fear’ aroused by tragedy leads to a cleansed moral awareness of what it means to be a citizen. Aristotle, unlike Plato, thought tragedy made the citizens better men.

Tragedy was the occasion that glorified the city, while at the same time questioned its constitutions; it operated as an assembly and a court, and above all as a school for the citizens.⁶ The intensity of civic engagement in the Great Dionysia and of the political messages conveyed by tragic performances in Athens is unparalleled in postclassical times. After the death of Alexander older poleis with their democratic machinery continued to exist alongside newly founded cities, whereas the Hellenistic age saw the dawn of the cosmopoleis and their powerful kings. Greeks and non-Greeks, natives and foreigners, travelers and immigrants, merchants, soldiers and officials, wandering intellectuals and scientists, constituted a mosaic of cultures in the big cities, populations that could hardly integrate into a unified community. This inevitably resulted in a growing awareness of individuality sharply contrasting with the communal spirit presupposed by classical drama. As a consequence the theatre could no longer function as a locus where city affairs might be negotiated in public. On the other hand, monarchy, apart from patronizing the arts, became the defining factor of the novel political ethics; one of the side-effects of this development was the close interaction between kingship  Goldhill ,  – . For an understanding of the civic ideology of the Great Dionysia, cf. Goldhill . A contrasting view according to which tragedy had a limited social function in Athens and was rather performed for the aesthetic pleasure stemming from it is held by Griffin .  For a recent overview of the interrelationship between drama and democracy, see Henderson ; cf. Hesk  for the socio-political contexts of tragedy from fifth-century Athens until imperial Rome. It should be noted, however, that scholarship on the matter is far from unanimous, see e. g. Rhodes .

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and the production and/or performance of drama.⁷ If we add to these parameters the use of tragedy as a vehicle for propaganda or the dissemination of new ideas, then the gulf between classical and Hellenistic tragedy becomes evident. During this epoch of transition religion underwent even more dramatic changes, thus affecting the ritual context of drama. It is well-known that Athenian tragic festivals, and each performance, were introduced by rituals featuring sacrifices and that the beginnings of the dramatic genre can be traced back to Dionysiac cult, whereas religion was vital for the synthesis of many classical dramatic plots. No doubt Greek religion survived in Hellenistic times and the Olympian gods continued to be revered alongside their eastern counterparts and, of course, the Hellenistic rulers. Numerous hymns were still composed to be performed in local religious festivals, dedications were continually made, temples and sanctuaries systematically visited. Yet a transformation of the religious belief was felt, since gradually cult became a matter of personal choice, an affair of the individual, instead of a communal duty.⁸ Dramatic festivals, however, mushroomed across the entire Mediterranean. This trend may be attributed not only to the global appeal of Dionysus but also to the association of the dramatic contests with other gods or kings and the festivals honoring them.⁹ Although the degree of religiosity among Hellenistic audiences is a matter still debated and therefore the prevalence of the spectacle occasioned by the secularization of drama seems to provide a realistic basis for the understanding of Hellenistic tragedy, a subtler reading of epigraphical evidence suggests that dramatic performances were regarded with piety and respect by the citizens.¹⁰ Theatre formed an essential part of the Hellenistic lifestyle.¹¹ The building of stone theatres in the old centers and the new spaces created after the conquests of Alexander testify to the fact that the dramatic spectacle was high on the agen-

 The phenomenon of ‘court’ tragedy is not Hellenistic though: Aeschylus was active at the court of Hieron I, writing his Aetnaeae for a Sicilian public, and Euripides wrote and performed his Archelaus in honor of Archelaus I of Macedon. On Aeschylus in Sicily, cf. Herington . Euripides’ presence at the court of Archelaus has been taken for granted since antiquity: for a review of the evidence, see Ridgeway ; Scullion () doubts the sojourn of Euripides in Macedonia but not on a very sound basis.  Mikalson () vividly portrays the shift of the religious outlook in the Hellenistic world; Chamoux (,  – ) argues for the continuity of Greek religion into the Hellenistic age.  For a list of the numerous religious festivals featuring some kind of dramatic performances, see Mette ,  – ; for a systematic examination of the epigraphical evidence, see Csapo/ Slater ,  – .  Against the profane character of Hellenistic drama, see the persuasive arguments presented by Lightfoot .  See Chamoux ,  – .

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1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria

da of the Hellenistic monarchs. The proliferation of performances of old and new plays, with a preference for tragedy, goes hand in hand with innovations in theatrical practice, among which the formation of actors’ associations is the most prominent. Costs for producing and attending a performance were escalating rapidly already by the fourth century, a fact enhancing the prestige of theatregoing as a social activity. The tragic festival, mainly the Dionysia, preserved its role as the most ceremonial occasion for the announcement of honorific decrees, although gradually choral and gymnic festivals provided an equally important framework for the public acknowledgement of eminent citizens and foreigners.¹² The theatre was not only a source of high status but also a space maintaining Greekness in foreign environments. Indeed the theatre, alongside the gymnasium, functioned as a center for the preservation of the Greek identity. And although democracy was dying out, the values of competition between citizens and entire cities, even if only in the field of culture or athletics, did not. One should be wary of painting a black and white picture of Hellenistic theatre, since its political, religious and social contexts were highly diversified in the various places and historical phases of the Hellenistic era. A plethora of epigraphic and historical evidence speaks for a continuing tradition of festivals and dramatic performances with an emphasis on tragedy in the Greek cities during the last three centuries BC.¹³ But to suppose that Athens with its dazzling dramatic inheritance, or Italy and Sicily with its rich scenic tradition, or Delphi and Delos where theatre was closely related to religious practice, and Antioch or Seleucia in their oriental environment were equally engaged in tragic writing and performance would be a misconception of the idiosyncrasies inherent in the Hellenistic world. A striking case is Ptolemaic Alexandria: despite being an exception as regards its cosmopolitanism and cultural innovations, it has become the rule against which Hellenistic aesthetics is weighed and appreciated. Therefore, Hellenistic tragedy will be examined not in its local variety, from which parochialism and traditionalism were not absent, but mainly from the vantage point of Alexandria, because it was there that the avant-garde poetics of the era flourished and scholarship emerged. It is tragedy in, and because of, this cul-

 For a well-documented analysis on the civic importance of the tragic agones in the Hellenistic poleis based on the study of honorific decrees, see Ceccarelli .  See Le Guen (; ) who rejects the idea of the decline of the Hellenistic theatre by providing ample evidence for the dramatic production and performance in several postclassical cities; cf. the voluminous material provided by Le Guen  about the actors’ associations during the same period.

Ptolemaic cultural politics and tragedy

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tural metropolis that will be studied here as defining the fortunes of the tragic genre in antiquity.¹⁴

Ptolemaic cultural politics and tragedy As seen, the image of Hellenistic tragedy as a genre in decline is a distorted one, even in places where artistic novelty prevailed. And if Athens exported its legacy through the spread of its dramatic repertoire throughout mainland Greece and the theatrical scenes all over the Aegean and the Mediterranean,¹⁵ Hellenistic kings had to invent a role for tragedy and the tragic in their newly founded urban centers. Later biography and historiography saw a potential for theatricality with tragic undertones in the life of the Hellenistic monarchs themselves. In recording tragic episodes, or events fictionalized as such, historians portrayed the Hellenistic hegemones as tragic actors in the world’s stage. The legendary anecdote recounting King Philip’s assassination during a theatrical performance in 336 BC is perhaps the most illustrative paradigm of how history can be transformed into tragedy.¹⁶ Ancient and modern citizens are always attracted by the way life imitates art, as in the case of the tragic conception of Hellenistic politics; but the Realpolitik of the time dictated otherwise. In effect, the Hellenistic rulers were primarily concerned with their own ability to exercise political power through culture, and the Ptolemies were masterful at doing this. To this end, they founded the Library and the Museum; but they also exploited theatre, and tragedy in particular, to promote their cultural politics. Although scholarship has underestimated or at times neglected the significance of drama for the Ptolemaic regime, an alternative hypothesis argues the case. In what follows I will attempt to outline the performative and ideological contexts of theatre and tragedy as part of a broader cultural vision of the Ptolemies in Alexandria.

 Xanthakis-Karamanos () stresses the Alexandrian excellence in the tradition of Hellenistic drama. For an outline of the Greek cities that became centers of dramatic activity in the Hellenistic period and the spread of the theatre beyond Athens, see Csapo ,  –  and Csapo/Wilson . On theatre in Sicily and South Italy in particular, see Bosher ; on theatre in Delos and Delphi, see Sifakis .  Still indispensable for the anatomy of ancient dramatic festivals, in Athens and elsewhere, is Pickard-Cambridge . On the nature and structure of the festivities surrounding dramatic festivals from Athens to Rome, see the brilliant overview in Rehm .  The anecdote is recounted in Diodorus . – . On this emblematic story involving the tragic theme of the fall of the tyrant, see Easterling ,  – .

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1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria

Ptolemaic culture was a colonial one, developed in juxtaposition and interaction with non-Greek civilizations of Egyptians and also Jews; therefore the consolidation of a Greek identity, nostalgic, retrospective and self-sufficient, was an imperative for the new rulers in the Egyptian territory. The Hellenic side of this culture, including art and literature, is archaicizing in style:¹⁷ it is a central tenet of research that Hellenistic, viz Alexandrian, aesthetics draws inspiration primarily from archaic artistic and poetic models. It should be noted, moreover, that Alexandria was designed by Demetrius of Phaleron as the new Athens,¹⁸ and therefore must have adopted many traits of the culture and lifestyle of its model city. The reconnection with local traditions of the various city-states was achieved within a broader project of creating a universal metropolis for which Athens could, at least partly, provide an ideal. Among the large-scale monuments of Alexandria the urban planning of the Ptolemies must have featured a theatre adjacent to the ‘Palaces’ (the so-called βασίλεια), but its actual existence is still veiled in mystery.¹⁹ It is an irony of fate that this theatre, as opposed to other monumental sites such as the Library or the Pharos, not only lacks archaeological support but, most importantly, is scarcely evidenced by the ancient authors.²⁰ Yet, recent scholarship has put forward the hypothesis that Alexandria not only had a lively tradition of theatre culture, but moreover that it developed a distinct architectural style in the building

 This widely held, and principally justified, view is used as a working hypothesis by Hunter (a) in the exploration of the archaic models of Theocritus and by Acosta-Hughes () who has studied the reception of archaic lyric in Hellenistic poetry.  The idea of Alexandria as the new Athens is put forward but not fully developed as such by Beye (,  – ). For the Athenian profile of Demetrius and how this was transported to Alexandria, see Mossé .  The ancient theatre of Paphos may have been modelled on this lost theatre of Alexandria, as Green (,  – ) suggests. Obviously it is one of the lesser known theatres of the Hellenistic period, as compared with the ones of Athens, Southern Italy and Asia Minor (cf. Winter ,  – ).  Polybius in .. must refer to this site by the expression Διονυσιακὸν θέατρον. Strabo mentions the theatre only in passing (.. ὑπέρκειται δὲ τούτου [τοῦ νησίου τῆς ᾿Aντιρρόδου] τὸ θέατρον· εἶτα τὸ Ποσείδιον, ἀγκών τις ἀπὸ τοῦ ἐμπορίου καλουμένου προπεπτωκώς, ἔχων ἱερὸν Ποσειδῶνος), whereas Athenaeus explicitly acknowledges the existence of a ‘Great Theatre’, quoting the testimony of Jason (?), an author of uncertain date (Ath. Deipn. . Ἰάσων δ᾽ ἐν τρίτῳ περὶ τῶν ᾿Aλεξάνδρου Ἱερῶν ἐν ᾿Aλεξανδρείᾳ φησὶν ἐν τῷ μεγάλῳ θεάτρῳ ὑποκρίνασθαι Ἡγησίαν τὸν κωμῳδὸν τὰ Ἡσιόδου, Ἑρμόφαντον δὲ τὰ Ὁμήρου). The theatre (or theatres?) mentioned is of uncertain chronology, cf. Fraser , . – . McKenzie (, ) surmises that the ‘Great Theatre’ was probably built during the reign of Philadelphus, a view that is supported by the fact that the comedian Hegesias mentioned by Athenaeus was active during the mid third century BC. On its possible location, see Fraser , . n. .

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of theatres that in turn influenced theatre design in Rome.²¹ A hypothesis that is corroborated by the fact that the Ptolemies were patrons of the performing arts, as several projects on their cultural agenda demonstrate. First, they promoted Dionysiac cult; second, most of their public festivals involved some kind of performance; third, Egypt joined by Cyprus boasted one of the four most important actors’ associations (περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται) in Hellenistic Mediterranean.²² Dionysus was indeed worshipped in Alexandria, but not primarily as the god of theatre. Dionysus was regarded as the vitalizing force behind wine, orgies and mysteries, representing an icon of the emerging New Age. The Ptolemies claimed descent from Dionysus, so it was only natural that in the religious framework of the god’s cult drama could and should be performed regularly. However, the new festivals were fairly differentiated from the great City Dionysia of classical Athens. As will be shown below, performative habits changed radically, old repertoire and new plays were hardly performed in their entirety, and there was increased emphasis on song, music, dance and pantomime as opposed to dramatized speech or the very presence of a tragic Chorus, both vital for the staging of classical drama. Moreover, despite the religious basis on which performative arts and actors’ guilds were organized—the artists presented themselves as priests of Dionysus—,²³ entertainment had become a commercial enterprise and a tool of propaganda already from the last half of the fourth century. The idea of using a popular art form like drama to establish the sovereignty of the Hellenistic king is a plausible hypothesis, especially if we take into account that its twin genre, epic, served royal ideology too.²⁴ It appears, though, that tragedy was not the first thing to spring to mind, when Ptolemy Soter envisaged the making of his new metropolis. According to an anecdote circulating among late antiquity authors, the comic poet Menander, an acclaimed author

 For this hypothesis, see Green . On the Alexandrian architectural style in general, see Pensabene ; on Alexandrian monumental architecture under the Ptolemies, see McKenzie ,  – .  Bibliography on the technitae is huge, see e. g. Pickard-Cambridge ,  – , Stephanis  and the monumental two-volume study by Le Guen ; cf. the lengthy entry in Poland .  Lightfoot (,  – ) defends the sacred character of the Hellenistic artists and guilds by stressing their legendary piety and their involvement in ruler-cult in Ptolemais Hermiou and Cyprus (cf. the epigraphic material cited on p.  n. ).  Historical epic in particular, as Ziegler () has argued; for a modern approach to the praise of Ptolemaic politics through mythological epic too, see Mori , esp.  – . On the close interrelation between court and poetry under the reign of the first three Ptolemies, see Weber . An impressive collection of articles dealing with myth as a locus for dynastic propaganda in the Hellenistic era, see Cusset/Le Meur-Weissman/Levin .

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by the beginning of the third century, was invited to Alexandria by Soter himself offering him riches in return, but was dissuaded from accepting the invitation— or so we are told by the literary tradition—by his girlfriend Glykera.²⁵ Menander’s legendary refusal dramatizes the very fact of the cultural divide between old and new, namely Athens and Alexandria.²⁶ Menander’s New Comedies had won the hearts of the Athenian audience and become the latest fashion in entertainment; in addition, the poet belonged to the circle of Theophrastus and Demetrius, the architects of the Alexandrian metropolis. Both reasons suffice to explain why Soter wanted Menander to help him create the Greek cultural identity at his court.²⁷ The match was not a successful one and the idea of bringing New Comedy to Alexandria was soon abandoned.²⁸ Eventually the next king, Ptolemy Philadelphus, saw the potential of theatre to play a prominent role in the new capital. According to Theocritus, Philadelphus personally supervised and presented prizes in Dionysiac festivals held in Alexandria (Id. 17.112– 114): οὐδὲ Διωνύσου τις ἀνὴρ ἱεροὺς κατ᾽ ἀγῶνας ἵκετ᾽ ἐπιστάμενος λιγυρὰν ἀναμέλψαι ἀοιδάν, ᾧ οὐ δωτίναν ἀντάξιον ὤπασε τέχνας. And never comes there for the sacred contests of Dionysus one skilled to raise his clearvoiced song but he receives the gift his art deserves… (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

The passage hints at a broader conception of theatre that features not only dramatic agones that would include tragedy and comedy, but also other cultural events such as epic recitation and singing presented on stage as part of a public

 The ancient sources include Pliny (Nat. Hist. .) and the epistolographer Alciphron (. – ); cf. Suda s.v. Μένανδρος on the correspondence between the poet and Ptolemy I.  Cf. the dramatic apostrophe addressed by Glykera to Menander (Alciphr. ..): τί γὰρ ᾿Aθῆναι χωρὶς Μενάνδρου; She proceeds by highlighting the potential appeal of the Athenian poet to an Alexandrian audience (..): καὶ Αἴγυπτος καὶ Νεῖλος καὶ Πρωτέως ἀκρωτήρια καὶ αἱ Φάριαι σκοπιαὶ πάντα μετέωρα νῦν ἐστι, βουλόμενα ἰδεῖν Μένανδρον καὶ ἀκοῦσαι φιλαργύρων καὶ ἐρώντων καὶ δεισιδαιμόνων καὶ ἀπίστων [καὶ πατέρων καὶ υἱῶν καὶ θεραπόντων] καὶ παντὸς [ἐν]σκηνοβατουμένου.  Despite being a symbol of Athens, even as a city-state in crisis, Menander’s spirit is cosmopolitan and universalizing, and consistent with the new world order of his time, see Major . On how Menander and other poets responded to the identity crisis of the Hellenistic age, see Henrichs ,  – .  Although Menander’s epistle to Glykera (Alciphr. ..) mentions that Philemon too received an invitation to visit the court of Soter, which he probably accepted (Alciphr. .. Φιλήμων δὲ εὐτυχείτω καὶ τἀμὰ ἀγαθὰ γενόμενος ἐν Αἰγύπτῳ); for this uncertain story, see Fraser , . n. .

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competition.²⁹ But Philadelphus developed more specific plans to boost tragedy during his reign. It was probably his idea and part of his cultural vision to found a group of tragic playwrights in the heart of the Museum. In contrast to the invitation ‘declined’ by Menander during the reign of Soter, tragedians readily gathered from all over the known world lured by the vision of Philadelphus.³⁰ It is a rare, and perhaps a first-ever, occurrence that a circle of poets is remembered by its nickname: the Pleiad. ³¹ According to one explanation attested in Choeroboscus the tragedians of Alexandria owed their name to their brilliant artistry (Sch. B Hephaest. 236 οὓς Πλειάδα ἐκάλεσαν διὰ τὸ λαμπροὺς εἶναι ἐν τῇ τραγικῇ ὡς τὰ ἄστρα τῆς Πλειάδος), though most ancient commentators assume that the designation refers to the number of the participating poets—seven like the stars of the constellation of the Pleiad (e. g. Tzetzes Genus Lycophronis [Λυκόφρων] εἷς δὲ ἦν τῶν ἑπτὰ ποιητῶν, οἵτινες διὰ τὸ εἶναι ἑπτὰ τῆς Πλειάδος ἐλέγοντο). Their prominence in the history of literature is reflected in the mere fact that they were considered second only to the classical tragic poets of the canon (Suda s.v. Ὅμηρος…διὸ συνηριθμήθη τοῖς ἑπτά, οἳ τὰ δευτερεῖα τῶν τραγικῶν ἔχουσι). It appears that theatre flourished in Alexandria, whereas tragedy in particular formed an essential part of Philadelphus’ cultural program.³² We may also assume that tragedies served political purposes during his reign, especially when addressing a wider audience. Two arguments may further reinforce this point: first, the fact that the Hellenistic era witnessed the return of the historical tragedy dramatizing a contemporary event—Lycophron’s Cassandreians is a case in point; and second, that an emerging ethnic group of Alexandria, the Jewish community, chose to express its religious beliefs through the Exagoge by Ezekiel, a Greek tragedy on a Biblical theme. How exactly and by which means the influence of tragedy was felt in Alexandria is the question that I will address in the following chapters.

 According to Acosta-Hughes (,  – ) dramatic performance is contrasted with praise poetry in this passage.  The remark in Lowe , .  Strabo .. is the most ancient testimony of the name, which may or may not date to the third century BC.  Pace Fraser (, .) who argues that “there is little evidence for much activity in dramatic writing itself in Alexandria”, a fact owed primarily, in Fraser’s opinion, to the unrivalled dramas of Athens and secondly to the loss of the community feeling in the new metropolis.

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1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria

Performing, reciting or reading tragedy? Recent scholarship has shed light on the performative contexts of Hellenistic drama based on a wealth of material drawn from literary texts, inscriptions, historical accounts, objects d’art and archaeological finds.³³ In addition, treatments of the interaction between politics, culture and society in the old poleis and the new kingdoms that emerged after Alexander’s conquests, discussions of cultural issues such as the relationship between public and private, mass entertainment and elite culture, court and poetry, and theoretical insights into the reading habits of the era have contributed to our better understanding of the reception of drama during the Hellenistic age.³⁴ Research has also demonstrated that the dramatic production and theatrical practices of the last three centuries BC paved the way for Roman drama, thus marking not a decline but a critical stage in the development from classical to imperial tragedy.³⁵ In what follows I will give a broad outline of the available occasions for the representation of drama, namely performance or recitation, versus reading in Ptolemaic Alexandria, in order to demonstrate that it was through a variety of means and media that the Alexandrian public felt the impact of drama, and by extension also of tragedy. Urban life in third-century Alexandria, and the other capitals or lesser cities of the era, was unimaginable without the spectacle—any kind of spectacle ranging from dramatic to athletic contests, from exhibitions to musical vaudeville, from religious festivals to colorful pageants, as well as curious crossings between them.³⁶ We may even claim that hybrid spectacles were the rule for the Ptolemaic society. Theocritus recreates such a hybrid spectacle in Idyll 15, one that com-

 A sourcebook about the theatrical spectacles in antiquity is Csapo/Slater . On Hellenistic theatre in particular, see the somewhat limited in scope (at least from a geographical viewpoint) survey by Sifakis  and more recently the collective volume by Bosher ; a valuable guide on Hellenistic and Roman theatre is Gentili .  On the missing link, i. e. the performative contexts in the transitional period between the fifth and the third century, see Fantuzzi/Hunter ,  – .  It should be noted that tragedy of the Hellenistic and the Roman Republican period may be regarded as Alexandrian in taste: not only because the most innovative trend in tragedy written under the auspices of the Pleiad was inspired by Alexandrian aesthetics but also because writers and audiences in early Republican Rome were, to a certain degree, ‘Alexandrian’ in their cultural affiliations: cf. Hesk ,  – .  Goukowsky () who reviews in detail the public culture of the Ptolemies concludes by remarking that Alexandria, long before Rome, was a city-museum, a city-exhibition, a city-festival embracing the part of the population that was Greek-Macedonian in provenance or education.

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bines a gallery exhibition and a solo concert, vaguely revolving around Adonis.³⁷ On the other hand, the ‘theatricalization’ of the rulers’ processions and other royal occasions must have offered great spectacles to the massive audiences of Hellenistic cities. A telling example is Philadelphus’ legendary Grand Procession. In this majestic procession honoring Dionysus, but in effect celebrating the power and wealth of the Ptolemies, the troupes of actors and musicians paraded alongside groups of statues representing figures from tragedy, comedy and satyr play as well as the colossal statue of Dionysus that was decorated with wreaths, ribbons, thyrsoi and theatrical masks.³⁸ In this context theatre as an art form of mass entertainment must be accepted as a daily life reality for the Alexandrians.³⁹ Theatricality as reflected in architecture and the art of festival cultivated by the Ptolemies added a new dimension to the notion of theatregoing⁴⁰; indeed theatricality permeated all aspects of public life, whether cultural, political or other.⁴¹ Hellenistic theatre was highly diversified, in featuring mime and pantomime, music and dance, virtuoso monologues and songs, and probably involved spectacular staging. Here again hybridization—of artistic media, of genres, of styles, of plays—is the key to its understanding.⁴² Performing arts became the quintessence of this theatre, whose

 Notably both the works of art and the song lack a clear storyline by focusing on the aesthetic appeal of the visual and musical spectacle: on this, see Manakidou ,  –  and Hunter b,  – . Thus Theocritus highlights the sensational, as opposed to the intellectual, pleasure deriving from such spectacles; cf. Burton ,  –  on the viewing experience of the Syracusan women during the religious festival of the Adonia. On Theocritus and performance in Idyll , see the fine remarks by Acosta-Hughes ,  – .  According to the description by Callixenus of Rhodes as quoted by Athenaeus Deipn. . – . On whether the Grand Procession formed part of the Dionysia festival, see Weber ,  – .  On theatre and the dramatic representations after Alexander the Great, covering the scenic space, actors and performers, the dramatic repertoire and the theatrical idea of the era, see the collection of papers by Le Guen .  On the ‘theatrical mentality’ of Hellenistic architecture inspired by stage settings, see Pollitt ,  – ; cf.  –  on the taste for theatrical imagery and festival activity in Alexandria under the Ptolemies.  On the staging of public life as a feature of the Hellenistic epoch, see Chaniotis .  The idiosyncratic style of the Alexandrian theatre is evident in theatrical objects, terracotta figurines, masks and costumes related with comedy and mime in particular, as Green (, ) remarks: “[Alexandria] created a category of objects which combined the costume of contemporary actors with elements from earlier periods, notably the phallos attached to the front of the body-stocking, thus exploiting that taste for the grotesque and sexual that characterizes other aspects of Alexandrian art”.

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real stars were the actors, tragoidoi or komoidoi. However, the dominance of the actor over the author is not a Hellenistic phenomenon. Already Aristotle laments its emergence in the fourth century as a sign of the degeneration of drama (Rhet. 1403b): τὰ μὲν οὖν ἆθλα σχεδὸν ἐκ τῶν ἀγώνων οὗτοι λαμβάνουσιν, καὶ καθάπερ ἐκεῖ μεῖζον δύνανται νῦν τῶν ποιητῶν οἱ ὑποκριταί Generally speaking it is actors good at delivery who win prizes in the dramatic contests, and nowadays the actors have more influence there than the poets. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

On the other hand, there is no reason to suppose that staging and acting in the Hellenistic era did not tend, at least partially, towards stylistic sophistication and artistic perfection, resulting in high-quality performances. Nor that such developments in performativity restrained the writing of new dramas; on the contrary, they presented poets with fresh challenges. Yet one cannot help but wonder: what was the synthesis of the Alexandrian audiences attending this mélange of theatrical performances and, more importantly, what kind of dramatic texts could have been performed there? The answer to the former question has its beginnings in Aristotelian literary criticism. Tragedy in performance, argues Aristotle, addresses a vulgar audience, especially when it involves exaggerated mimetic acting (Poet. 1461b-1462a).⁴³ But Aristotle’s criticism is directed against flamboyant spectacles, which may, in antiquity as well as in modern times, exist alongside stylistically refined performances. In Hellenistic Alexandria, in particular, the tradition of mime, ranging from crude acting to the staging of low-culture playlets, was a widespread form of entertainment; an elitist reaction to its excessiveness and vulgarity plainly reflects the taste of the intellectuals.⁴⁴ We should not adhere to the idea, however, that there existed an actual dichotomy between an audience of bon goût juxtaposed to an audience of mauvais goût; nor there seems to have been a discrepancy between theatregoers as regards their education, social class, gender or even

 This interpretation in Hunter ,  – . However, Aristotle’s stance towards the tragic audience is rather ambivalent, since intellectualism is a prerequisite for the proper response to catharsis, cf. Golden .  Hunter () argues that the Hellenistic, specifically Alexandrian, elite drew attention to the difference between high and low performance forms by favoring ‘acting down’ as a theatrical style that promotes kosmos, i. e. order and decency.

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ethnicity.⁴⁵ Once more Theocritus’ Idyll 15 is illuminating in that it presents two low-class women of Syracusan provenance entering the Ptolemaic palace in order to attend a display of artworks and a gala concert. Eventually they enjoy the whole event and appreciate its artistic qualities, even if they do not fully comprehend them (Id. 15.81 ποῖοι ζωογράφοι τἀκριβέα γράμματ᾽ ἔγραψαν and 146 ὀλβία ὅσσα ἴσατι, πανολβία ὡς γλυκὺ φωνεῖ). Theatre attending would have caused similar audience reactions. A critical difference from Theocritus’ passage, where the visual and musical aspects of the spectacle are emphasized, is that theatre relies, by classical standards at least, on the communication of a dramatic text and its discourse. No doubt postclassical drama, or to be more accurate the dramatic script, was conditioned by performativity. Aristotle testifies to the fact that already in the fifth century the tragic poet Agathon had disconnected the choral songs from the tragic plot, thereby introducing the notion of the musical interludes (ἐμβόλιμα). This was an anathema to Aristotle, equal to the transference of a speech or an episode from one tragedy to the other (Poet. 1456a καίτοι τί διαφέρει ἢ ἐμβόλιμα ᾄδειν ἢ εἰ ῥῆσιν ἐξ ἄλλου εἰς ἄλλο ἁρμόττοι ἢ ἐπεισόδιον ὅλον;). Apart from this gradual change in the structure of tragedy, reperformances of ‘old’ plays did entail significant revisions of their texts. The implications of this strategy became more complex by the Hellenistic era.⁴⁶ Performing excerpts from one or more plays of classical tragedy went hand in hand with the selection of scenes with thematic coherence in anthologies, a practice that resulted in the mixing of plays (contaminatio) in Roman times. Another trend was to convert pieces intended for recitation into songs, thus transforming spoken drama into chanted theatre, which later developed into the cantica of Roman drama; again this was a Hellenistic practice, as extant dramatic texts in lyric meters from this period clearly demonstrate.⁴⁷ Presumably these developments reshaped the newly composed tragedies as well.⁴⁸

 An illuminating example is the Greek-speaking Jewish community as a potential audience of Ezekiel’s Exagoge, see Davies . However, a similar hypothesis about an Egyptian audience is not attested or implied anywhere.  Both the ‘contamination’ and the ‘solo lyric’ theories are introduced by Gentili (,  – ). Nervegna () modifies Gentili’s theoretical scheme by pointing out that anthologies of classical dramas were primarily intended for school practice or private presentations by singers or musicians but not for performance in the public theatre, whereas dramas, both old and new, continued to be presented in their entirety. On reperformances, the most recent and thorough study is the collective volume by Lamari .  Music and singing were an essential part of tragedy early on, but the singing actors became sought-after virtuoso from the fourth century and beyond: their fascinating story is reconstructed by Hall .

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But public theatre was just one of the options available to Hellenistic audiences of tragedy. Recitation or singing of showcase pieces was a typical entertainment for the social and/or intellectual elite of the era in private occasions. Their locus was probably the court and their performative context the symposium. This tradition was deeply rooted in Macedonian court life already from the fifth century when king Archelaus hosted Euripides and other celebrated poets and artists in his palace, but was eventually standardized by Philip and Alexander.⁴⁹ The successors extended the tradition by hiring actors and poets for their private festivals. By organizing these lavish entertainments which were characterized by high artistic quality the Hellenistic monarchs asserted their political power. The Ptolemies had a special taste for such events and the participation of the eminent poets of the Museum therein is now widely accepted.⁵⁰ It was not long before some of the kings, as their Roman counterparts later, became actively engaged as tragedians and tragic performers themselves.⁵¹ Recent scholarship has challenged the ‘Ivory Tower’ theory, according to which the learned poets of Alexandria communicated their esoteric, over-specialized works to a small group of fellow academics and intellectuals. Notably in the case of tragedy, the theatre must have been the venue where the unsophisticated and more refined strata of the audience could coexist. Yet reading of dramas, in private or in circles of connoisseurs, was always an alternative, and one which provided the ideal context for the reception of experimental works like the Alexandra. Ever since Aristotle some dramatic poets were considered more appropriate for being read than represented in the theatre—or so is a passage from the Rhetoric usually interpreted, where it is said that Chaeremon, a dramatic poet of the fourth century, wrote for the book and not for the stage, and is therefore classified as anagnostikos (Rhet. 1413b).⁵² Indeed Aristotle had a preference for the written drama

 For the developments in form and performance of Hellenistic drama, see Xanthakis-Karamanos .  A well-documented study of the privatization of theatre from Hellenistic to Roman times in Csapo ,  – .  Since the groundbreaking study of Cameron (,  – ) who was the first to reject the ‘Ivory Tower’ theory and shed light on the active involvement of the learned poets in the circles of the Ptolemaic court as well as in local festivals all over the Greek world.  Cf. Csapo , : “The Ptolemies were so closely linked with the actors’ union that some of them virtually joined their ranks, writing and performing for the theatre: Ptolemy IV Philopator wrote a tragedy called Adonis; Ptolemy XII, known as ‘the Auletes’, performed as choraules in private competitions held in the royal palace, and another Ptolemy, probably of the royal family, performed publicly as an actor”.  Chaeremon is mentioned alongside the dithyrambic poet Licymnius: both excelled in elaborate style and a taste for accuracy (ἀκρίβεια), on which see Crusius . Pfeiffer (,  –

Tragedy enters the Library

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over the spectacle deriving from its representation in the theatre, since it is through the inner logic of the plot that tragedy may only achieve its aesthetic telos and therefore opsis is supplementary and not indispensable to the genre.⁵³ Obviously readership of tragedy in the Hellenistic age had a different basis than that established by Aristotelian aesthetics, since it was occasioned by the complexities of scholarly literature. However, the question is not whether tragedy was also read but whether specific plays were composed exclusively for reading —not merely silent reading but also loud one involving some kind of recitation, as in the so-called ‘closet drama’—, but answers are only tentative.⁵⁴ All the above suggest that there were many different levels of tragic writing in circulation in Hellenistic Alexandria, ranging from the mere ‘scripts’ of the Dionysiac writers to the sophisticated, highbrow tragedies of the Pleiad poets. It is also true that tragedy could easily become a virtuoso display, because it was there that the acting and musical skills of the star performers were put in the spotlight to sensational effect.⁵⁵ Not only texts and theatrical vogues but also audiences were differentiated, and presumably some of the most educated citizens would scarcely, if ever, attend a live theatrical event; but, for the most part, various types of audiences coincided in the same performance contexts. The piece of the puzzle still missing to reconstruct the reception of tragedy in Alexandria is a critical parameter of its cultural heritage, namely scholarship, to which I will now turn my attention.

Tragedy enters the Library Alexandrian scholars were legendary for their engagement with Homer as editors, commentators and lexicographers.⁵⁶ Indeed the Homeric idea haunted Alex-

) rejects this widespread interpretation of the term anagnostikos as mistaken in arguing that plays in antiquity were always composed for acting.  See Poet. b, b and a.  The emphasis on reading in Alexandrian culture has been studied by Bing (); for the Hellenistic reading culture and the logic of the poetry book, see Hutchinson ,  – .  This explains why so many anecdotes about actors in antiquity revolve around the performances of the tragoidoi: a fascinating example is the legacy about Nero, the imperator scaenicus, who had an obsession for portraying characters from fifth-century tragedy in moments of extreme pathos. For an overview of the ancient sources and the modern discussion of Nero the tragic actor, see Nervegna ,  – .  Pfeiffer’s  monograph still remains the classical introduction to Hellenistic scholarship. Yet, the ideas expressed therein have been radically revised by recent scholars: for an updated, thorough overview of Hellenistic scholarship both in and out of Alexandria, see Montana .

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andrian philology throughout the third century. Yet, we may surmise that, after the Homeric epics in their numerous ekdoseis by different scholars and cities, the most sought-after books in Alexandria were the Attic tragedies.⁵⁷ Galen recounts how the Athenian copy of the text of the three tragedians found its way into the Library (Commentary on Hippocrates’ Epidemics iii 17a.607): ὅτι δ᾽ οὕτως ἐσπούδαζε περὶ τὴν τῶν παλαιῶν βιβλίων κτῆσιν ὁ Πτολεμαῖος ἐκεῖνος, οὐ μικρὸν εἶναι μαρτύριόν φασιν ὃ πρὸς ᾿Aθηναίους ἔπραξεν. δοὺς γὰρ αὐτοῖς ἐνέχυρα πεντεκαίδεκα τάλαντ᾽ ἀργυρίου καὶ λαβὼν τὰ Σοφοκλέους καὶ Εὐριπίδου καὶ Αἰσχύλου βιβλία χάριν τοῦ γράψαι μόνον ἐξ αὐτῶν, εἶτ᾽ εὐθέως ἀποδοῦναι σῶα, κατασκευάσας πολυτελῶς ἐν χάρταις καλλίστοις, ἃ μὲν ἔλαβε παρ᾽ ᾿Aθηναίων κατέσχεν, ἃ δ᾽ αὐτὸς κατεσκεύασεν ἔπεμψεν αὐτοῖς παρακαλῶν ἔχειν τε τὰ πεντεκαίδεκα τάλαντα καὶ λαβεῖν ἀνθ᾽ ὧν ἔδοσαν βιβλίων παλαιῶν τὰ καινά. That this Ptolemy was eager to acquire antique books is greatly reinforced by what he is said to have done to the Athenians. For he gave them fifteen talents as a guarantee and took the books by Sophocles and Euripides and Aeschylus just to copy them with the promise to return them safely immediately afterwards. But once he had made luxurious copies of them on high quality paper, he kept the books the Athenians had given him and sent them the ones he had prepared and requested that they keep the fifteen talents and accept the new copies in place of the antique ones.

The Ptolemy mentioned here is generally accepted to be Euergetes who ruled from 246 to 221 BC: if this assumption is true, then the anecdote argues for a relatively late arrival of the tragic text in the Library—at least the official one.⁵⁸ Whether this was the Lycurgan text of 330 BC or another state copy of classical tragedies is a matter unresolved because of lack of evidence, but the significance of the story lies in the dramatization of the Ptolemies’ zeal to acquire the best preserved tragic text of the ancient world.⁵⁹ Of course, the transmission of the tragic text is a far more complicated matter that such anecdotes suggest.⁶⁰

 It is asssumed that, alongside lyric, one of the first genres to have circulated in bookish form during the fifth century was tragedy, and the testimony usually quoted comes from Aristophanes who presents Dionysus, the god of theatre, reading Euripides’ Andromeda (Frogs  –  καὶ δῆτ᾽ ἐπὶ τῆς νεὼς ἀναγιγνώσκοντί μοι / τὴν ᾿Aνδρομέδαν πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν): however, this is only speculative, see Pfeiffer , .  No doubt copies of various provenance and use (e. g. Lesebücher as well as Bühnen- and Schauspielerexemplare) were readily available to the Alexandrian scholars, see Prauscello ,  –  and n. .  A well-argued discussion of whether the Lycurgan Staatsexemplar of tragedy reached or not Alexandria in Prauscello ,  – .  For the adventure of the tragic texts on their way from Athens to Alexandria, see Battezzato (), who, however, notes that we should be sceptical about ancient anecdotes like the one by

Tragedy enters the Library

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In fact the Alexandrian story of the tragic text begins early on, and should be dated back to the days of the first librarian, Zenodotus of Ephesos.⁶¹ A valuable, albeit late, testimony concerning the initial stages of the editorial work on Attic drama originates from the Byzantine scholar Ioannes Tzetzes (1110 – 1180/5). Tzetzes famously opens his prologue to the Aristophanes edition with the following statement (Prolegomena de comoedia Aristophanis 1.1– 3): ᾿Aλέξανδρος ὁ Αἰτωλὸς καὶ Λυκόφρων ὁ Χαλκιδεὺς μεγαλοδωρίαις βασιλικαῖς προτραπέντες Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ Φιλαδέλφῳ τὰς σκηνικὰς διωρθώσαντο βίβλους, τὰς τῆς κωμῳδίας καὶ τραγῳδίας καὶ τὰς τῶν σατύρων φημί… Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron of Chalcis were persuaded by royal munificence to edit (?) the scenic books for Ptolemy Philadelphus—by these I mean those of comedy and tragedy and satyr play…

The passage continues for long by giving a wealth of information: that Alexander and Lycophron were younger contemporaries of Zenodotus,⁶² whereas Callimachus and Eratosthenes were still very young (νεανίαι ἦσαν Καλλίμαχος καὶ Ἐρατοσθένης); that the scholars were actually compelled by the king to undertake the editorial work in the Library (συνωθηθέντες βασιλικῶς); that Callimachus registered all the books in a bibliographical list (ὧν βίβλων τοὺς πίνακας Καλλίμαχος ἀπεγράψατο), only after they had been collected and corrected (ἀλλὰ τὰ Καλλιμάχου καὶ τὰ Ἐρατοσθένους μετὰ βραχύν τινα γέγονε χρόνον…τῆς συναγωγῆς τῶν βίβλων καὶ διορθώσεως); and, more importantly, that Alexander Aetolus was the editor of tragedy and satyr play, and Lycophron of comedy (᾿Aλέξανδρος ὤρθου τὰ τραγικά, Λυκόφρων τὰ κωμικά).⁶³ The repeated use of the term διορθόω/διόρθωσις poses difficulties as regards the nature of the editorial work appointed to these scholars.⁶⁴ All the above provide a basis for reconstructing the editing process as regards tragedy too. But the critical point lies elsewhere, namely in the distinction between the so-called ‘scenic books’ (τὰς σκηνικὰς διωρθώσαντο βίβλους) and the ‘poetic books’ proper (τὰς τῶν ποιητῶν ἐπεσκέψαντο, τὰς ὁμηρείους καὶ τῶν λοιπῶν ποιητῶν). As if Alexandrian scholars classified poetry into two rough categories, Galen as well as the one by Athenaeus, according to which Ptolemy Philadelphus had bought Aristotle’s and Theophrastus’ libraries (Ath. Deipn. .).  For a recent overview of tragic scholarship in Alexandria, see Hanink forthcoming.  Actually they reached Alexandria by the mid ’s, see Pfeiffer ,  – .  For Lycophron’s lost treatise On Comedy, see now Lowe ,  – .  On this peculiar philological διόρθωσις that preceded the actual registration of the books into bibliographical catalogues, see Pfeiffer ,  –  and more recently Montana ,  – .

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one intended for scenic representation and one encompassing all other poetic genres.⁶⁵ Supporting evidence comes from Callimachus who, apart from listing the dramatic writers in his bibliographical work Pinakes, compiled a separate list of the classical playwrights and their works arranged in chronological order (Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν κατὰ χρόνους καὶ ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς γενομένων διδασκάλων). This was, in fact, the first ever bibliography to be dedicated to one specific literary genre. Following the tradition set by Aristotle’s Didaskaliae,⁶⁶ Callimachus used the same term to refer to the dramatic poets themselves as didaskaloi in the title of his own record of dramatic victories (fr. 454– 456 Pf.). The criteria for inclusion in this list are revealing: only plays that were performed exclusively in Athens were of interest to Callimachus.⁶⁷ Sometimes performativity provided the basis upon which Alexandrian scholars interpreted drama.⁶⁸ Recent research corroborates the view that the Alexandrians were not ill-disposed towards the theatrical aspects of drama; they may have reviewed the texts of the Attic playwrights in the light of their representation onstage.⁶⁹ Sporadic scholia—although it is not always certain that these can be safely attributed to the Alexandrians—show an interest in performative practice, i. e. the role of the director, costumes and masks, machinery and props, stage-directions and casting. Musical scores for metrical and verbal revisions of the tragic text may also have been used occasionally by Alexandrian philologists.⁷⁰ In addition, some of the scenic details included in the scholia

 Despite recalling the Platonic distinction between the mimetic and the diegetic mode in poetry (e. g. Rep. b-c), or its modern equivalent of ‘showing’ or ‘telling’ in literature (on the topic see Kirby ), we should not overlook the added emphasis placed not simply on the means by which a poet represents his story but primarily on the performativity of poetry in the theatre. On this meaning of σκηνικός note its juxtaposition with other types of mass spectacle (e. g. in Philo Legatio ad Gaium  ὅταν παρατυγχάνῃς σκηνικοῖς ἀγῶσιν ἢ γυμνικοῖς ἢ τοῖς κατὰ τὰς ἱπποδρομίας or Athen. . γυμνικοὺς δὲ ἀγῶνας, ἔφη, διατιθέτωσαν Ἠλεῖοι, Κορίνθιοι δὲ θυμελικούς, ᾿Aθηναῖοι δὲ σκηνικούς). On σκηνή as a synonym for tragedy, cf. Suda s.v. Τραγικὴ σκηνή…λέγεται δὲ καὶ ἡ τραγικὴ τέχνη σκηνή.  On the features of this work, see Blum ,  – .  A full exploration of Callimachus’ bibliographical record of performed Attic drama, which must also have included tragedy, in Blum ,  – .  Scholarship on tragedy developed on the basis not only of its ‘archived’ textual tradition but inevitably also of its contemporary historical and performative context: on this line of argument, see Hanink forthcoming.  The relatively slight traces of this practice in the tragic scholia is attributed by Falkner (,  – ) to the bookish attitude adopted by the Byzantine scholars who were responsible for selecting the Alexandrian scholia.  For a meticulous study of this editorial technique in Alexandria, see Prauscello ,  – .

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may reflect theatrical practice, classical or contemporary.⁷¹ On the other hand, though, the authority of the written text against the one adapted as a script during a stage production of the play was a controversial issue, one that prompted the severe criticism of scholars against the actors.⁷² Even so, the emphasis placed by Alexandrian scholars on the theatrical aspects of tragedy should not be overstated. Philological work in the Library was governed by scholastic rules and high standards, so inevitably most of the editorial work on tragedy was strictly academic. Apart from restoring the original text, the philological activity involved the writing of commentaries, even if, as it appears, tragic scholia were not of the uppermost class as opposed to the Homeric scholia. After the first generation of the editors of drama, namely Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron, who mysteriously are not mentioned by name in the corpus of the surviving scholia,⁷³ it took more than half a century for the engagement of Aristophanes of Byzantium, and later on of Aristarchus, with the recension of, and commenting on, tragedy; the former is better known for providing the dramatic texts with the hypotheses, the latter for writing hypomnemata on scenic poetry.⁷⁴ That said it should be stressed that Alexandrian scholarship was oriented towards the study of Old Comedy and Aristophanes rather than tragedy, a fact for which no ready explanation can be given.⁷⁵ To sum up. Among the inferences to be drawn is that the political and religious context of Athenian drama gave its place to a court reality that fostered

 Falkner (,  – ) illustrates this point by examining the scholia to Euripides’ Orestes.  Sometimes scholars express their understanding for actors’ interpolations, e. g. in the scholion in Or. : τούτους δὲ τοὺς τρεῖς στίχους οὐκ ἄν τις ἐξ ἑτοίμου συγχωρήσειεν Εὐριπίδου εἶναι, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῶν ὑποκριτῶν…ὅπως οὖν διὰ τῆς θύρας εὐλόγως ἐξιόντες φαίνωνται, τούτους προσενέταξαν. As a rule though they adopt a critical stance, see Falkner ,  – . On the impact of reperformances and actors’ interpolations on the tragic text, see now Finglass .  On this basis a part of scholarship has questioned the editorial work done by Alexander and Lycophron, a hypothesis Pfeiffer (,  – ) rejects.  Pfeiffer ,  –  and  – . Moreover, Aristarchus put literary theory as articulated in the Poetics into philological practice by applying Aristotle’s views on plot and character to his scholarly exegesis: see Schironi .  That the tragic Pleiad shaped the literary canon by drawing on Old rather than on New Comedy and thus gave birth to comic scholarship in antiquity is argued by Lowe (). Lowe (,  – ) gives two main reasons for the prevalence of Old Comedy in Alexandrian scholarship and culture: first, that Old Comedy, more than any other dramatic genre, called for extensive glossographical, historical and encyclopedic exegesis, and, second, that Old Comedy, in being bound to the democratic polis of the past, was a politically ‘neutral’ genre in an age of the rise of kingship and royal ideology.

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tragedy in third-century Alexandria; that the Ptolemies attempted to introduce first comedy (presumably) and then tragedy as an official genre to their multicultural metropolis; that the Alexandrians were devoted theatregoers with a special taste for the spectacle; that the scholars of the Library were seriously involved in the preservation of tragic texts; that performance was a revered activity both in and out of the Museum; that alongside revivals of classical works, a continuous production of new tragedies should be taken for granted. Seen against this background the Alexandrian responses to tragedy and the tragic are of vital importance.

2. The Metaclassical Tragic Tragedy as philosophy and its Hellenistic reworking The philosophical reading of the tragic as reflected in German idealism and Romanticism of the modern era has its roots in Plato.¹ It was the Athenian philosopher who first recognized with such intensity the potential of tragedy to address ontological, political or ethical issues. It may be that Plato in the tenth book of the Republic banishes tragedy from the visionary city of Good and Justice because it might threaten the moral integrity of its citizens. In contrast to the negative stance adopted there, the Laws presents another idealized city in which tragedy holds an exceptional place.² When the tragedians, the authors of common scenic poetry, ask permission to enter this city, its inhabitants claim to possess another, superior type of tragedy; in effect, the city itself appears as a personification of the most beautiful and noble tragedy ever conceived (817b-c): “Ὦ ἄριστοι,” φάναι, “τῶν ξένων, ἡμεῖς ἐσμὲν τραγῳδίας αὐτοὶ ποιηταὶ κατὰ δύναμιν ὅτι καλλίστης ἅμα καὶ ἀρίστης· πᾶσα οὖν ἡμῖν ἡ πολιτεία συνέστηκε μίμησις τοῦ καλλίστου καὶ ἀρίστου βίου, ὃ δή φαμεν ἡμεῖς γε ὄντως εἶναι τραγῳδίαν τὴν ἀληθεστάτην. ποιηταὶ μὲν οὖν ὑμεῖς, ποιηταὶ δὲ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐσμὲν τῶν αὐτῶν, ὑμῖν ἀντίτεχνοί τε καὶ ἀνταγωνισταὶ τοῦ καλλίστου δράματος, ὃ δὴ νόμος ἀληθὴς μόνος ἀποτελεῖν πέφυκεν, ὡς ἡ παρ᾽ ἡμῶν ἐστιν ἐλπίς.” ‘Most honored guests, we’re tragedians ourselves, and our tragedy is the finest and best we can create. At any rate, our entire state has been constructed so as to be a ‘representation’ of the finest and noblest life—the very thing we maintain is most genuinely a tragedy. So we are poets like yourselves, composing in the same genre and your competitors as artists and actors in the finest drama, which true law alone has the natural powers to ‘produce’ to perfection (of that we’re quite confident)’. (Transl. T. J. Saunders)

The passage acknowledges that the truest tragedy is the imitation of a perfect life accomplished in a state governed by law. Despite Plato’s strictures against the truthfulness of art qua mimesis expressed elsewhere, the compelling image of the city as tragedy makes a statement about the essence and function of poetry

 In Halliwell’s words (,  – ) Plato and post-Enlightenment philosophy view the tragic as an ‘existential-cum-metaphysical category’.  A brilliant analysis of the Laws passage in Laks , cf. Patterson ,  – ; for a systematic comparison between the views on the tragic expressed in the Republic and other Platonic works in Halliwell ,  – .

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in general and of tragedy in particular. Plato ‘de-theatricalizes’ tragedy³ by addressing its quintessence, the concept of the tragic in human life. As for the role of poetry, of which tragedy appears to be the ultimate paradigm, Plato does not doubt its value: tragedy, understood in existential terms, becomes eventually a condition of living.⁴ In this respect, tragedy is an alternative to, and hence a possible rival of, philosophy. The conflicting responses given by philosophy and tragedy on typical duos of the human condition, such as the relation between crime and punishment, virtue and happiness or freedom and necessity, present a challenge to Platonic thought.⁵ The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and Philosophy has begun.⁶ Aristotle adds another critical parameter by defending the philosophical character of poetry as opposed to history: not particulars (τὰ καθ᾽ ἕκαστον) but universals (τὰ καθόλου) are its subject matter, according to the famous aphorism in the Poetics (1451b). What surfaces in Aristotle’s reading is the educational function he attaches to poetry—to the dramatic genre in particular, as the context of the passage implies.⁷ An illuminating example is the importance of hamartia in the Aristotelian tragic that illustrates the philosopher’s preoccupation with ethical matters in poetry, even if ethos is primarily associated with the actions of the tragic characters. For Aristotle the cognitive experience provided by mimetic po-

 The apposite term is used by Laks (, ) to show that in the context of the perfect regime tragedy may involve dramatic actions (praxeis) but not any kind of performance. For Plato tragedy and the tragic acquire existential dimensions, whereas Aristotle investigates tragedy as a literary category; there are, however, points of contact between the concept of tragedy in the Platonic Laws and Aristotle’s theory, on which see Laks ,  – .  Whether a pessimistic or an optimistic one, this deliberately remains ambivalent in the Laws passage, as Laks (, ) argues; however, the ‘tragic sense of life’ in Plato mainly involves human suffering, see Halliwell ,  – .  The affinity between tragedy and philosophy in Plato is a theory advanced by Kuhn ( and ). Patterson (, ) goes so far as to argue that since Plato represents the best and noblest life of individuals and cities in the Republic and the Laws he is, as an author, a true tragedian.  For a recent overview of the Quarrel, see Barfield ; mainly focused on Plato is Levin . Gould () offers a fascinating, yet somewhat dogmatic, discussion of the clash between philosophy and tragedy as regards the conception of human suffering.  The passage concerns the law of probability and necessity that governs the praxeis (Poet. a οὐ τὸ τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, τοῦτο ποιητοῦ ἔργον ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾽ οἷα ἂν γένοιτο καὶ τὰ δυνατὰ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον) and thus results in the universal human types that are represented in tragedy and comedy; whereas other types of poetry, such as the iambic, are, like history, concerned with real persons (Poet. b οὐχ ὥσπερ οἱ ἰαμβοποιοὶ περὶ τὸν καθ᾽ ἕκαστον ποιοῦσιν).

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etry promotes mathesis, and in this way he replaces Plato’s metaphysical conception of poetry.⁸ Against the backdrop of Platonic and Aristotelian thought, the question of the ontology and function of poetry motivates an ongoing dialogue both in Athens and in Alexandria, and, as anticipated, later in Rome. In the following sections I will detect critical observations expressed about and around tragedy in Hellenistic times by critics and poets. I will also address the fortunes of fundamental prerequisites to the tragic, the emphasis on both plot and character and stylistic principles underlying grand poetry, as well as the educational purpose of serious poetry and its emotional impact on the audience. The idea looming on the horizon is that the eventual failure of the Hellenistic tragic is due to the very separation of poetry and philosophy in its metaphysical, theological and ethical dimension as expressed by the most influential figure of the era, namely Callimachus of Cyrene. As the fourth century draws to a close and until the end of the Hellenistic era the views on poetry expressed by the philosophical schools are variegated and even conflicting. To chart the different tendencies, especially those related to tragedy, is a daunting task, not least because evidence is scant and information can be mostly gleaned from later writers.⁹ Beginning with Aristotle’s successors, the Peripatetics, a main trend becomes evident: aesthetics stemming from the philosophical outlook on life and art yields to an idiosyncratic type of philological criticism.¹⁰ Alongside the dominance of biography in the writing of literary history¹¹ and the prevalent interest in Homeric textual and exegetical problems, the Peripatetics were the first to approach dramatic poetry and its subgenres in  For Plato philosophy and the theological poets share common ground which lies in the domain of metaphysics (the nature of god or the idea of good and justice); Aristotle, by contrast, acknowledges the educational power of tragedy in the sense that, as a highly intellectual experience, it can lead ordinary people towards virtuous actions: see Barfield ,  – .  Gutzwiller () gives an updated account of Hellenistic literary criticism, at the same time remarking that its history still remains to be written.  On Peripatetic literary criticism, see Podlecki . That the literary/aesthetic criteria introduced by the Poetics surface in the works of the Peripatetics on tragedy (Dicaearchus, Heracleides, Chamaeleon and Glaucus) is convincingly argued by Montanari (). Differently Brink (,  – ), Pfeiffer (,  – ) and Kyriakou (,  – ) who claim that Peripatetic criticism early on lost its affiliations with Aristotelian philosophy and is only suggestive of a certain type of literary criticism, whose opposite could be the ‘Callimachean’ one. For the philosophical foundations of Aristotle’s Poetics, see Kyriakou .  Not least focused on the lives of the tragic poets (allegedly written by Heracleides (?), Aristoxenus, Hieronymus of Rhodes, Hermippus, Satyrus) whose biographical data were interspersed with exegetical or aesthetic comments. An overview of the ancient Vitae of the tragic poets that go back to Satyrus and other Peripatetics in Podlecki ,  – .

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monographs, and to treat technical subjects like the tragic and comic style, music or stagecraft. Especially attracted by the matters pertaining to the scenic side of tragedy was Aristoxenus of Tarentum. In his in-depth treatise On Music the analysis of the harmonic modes used by the tragedians is interrupted by perceptive observations on the nature of tragic style, as when he acknowledges (fr. 81 Wehrli) that the admixture of Mixolydian and Dorian mode is the most appropriate to tragedy because the latter reflects grandeur (τὸ μεγαλοπρεπὲς) and dignity (τὸ ἀξιωματικὸν), and the former passion (τὸ παθητικόν). What the case of Aristoxenus and other Peripatetics demonstrates is a shift of emphasis to extrinsic features, pertaining to melos, and also to lexis and opsis; in the passage just quoted, the formation of stylistic categories anticipates Callimachean criticism of epic/tragic grandeur against leptotes beyond the confines of specific genres and also the emergence of abstract aesthetic terms, such as the notion of the sublime attributed to ‘Longinus’. One distinct category of Peripatetic writings are the collections of tragic plots by Heracleides of Pontus (probably in his treatise Περὶ τῶν παρ᾽ Εὐριπίδῃ καὶ Σοφοκλεῖ), the summaries of which developed into the philological hypotheses prefacing Greek dramas which were attributed in antiquity to Dicaearchus of Messana (fr. 112 Mirhady Δικαιάρχου τινὰς ὑποθέσεις τῶν Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους μύθων, οὐκ ἄλλο τι καλοῦντες ὑπόθεσιν ἢ τὴν τοῦ δράματος περιπέτειαν).¹² Another scholar, Asclepiades of Tragilos, mentioned as a pupil of Isocrates, also compiled a collection of stories drawn from tragedy in his Τragoidoumena extending to the impressive length of at least 11 books.¹³ Not only did such compilations contribute to the philological classification of tragedies in the Museum and the writing of the prefaces to dramas by Aristophanes of Byzantium, but moreover provided the raw material for literature—the ultimate such collection being the epitome of tragic and sentimental stories known under the title Erotika Pathemata by Parthenius.

 Dicaearchus’ collection of hypotheses presupposes Aristotle’s theory on the primary importance of the muthos as expressed in the Poetics, as Montanari (,  – ) clearly demonstrates. On the philological debate concerning the identity of this ‘Dicaearchus’ and the attribution of the hypotheses of the tragedies not to the Peripatetic philosopher but to the grammarian Dicaearchus of Sparta, see Verhasselt .  This compilation was not just a summary of tragic plots but also drew on the mythographical tradition, e. g. Pherecydes, for tragic stories: for an account of Asclepiades’ treatise, see Wentzel .

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The philological angle from which Peripatetics approached tragedy was just one thread connecting Aristotle’s School with Alexandria.¹⁴ Alexandrian scholarship developed its methods of textual criticism and literary interpretation under the spirit of Aristotle; moreover, it is now generally accepted that the Alexandrians were familiar with his esoteric works, to which the Poetics also belonged,¹⁵ whereas some of their aesthetic principles were not necessarily at odds with the ones introduced in Aristotle’s treatises.¹⁶ One personality that illustrated the creative synthesis of Aristotelian poetics with Alexandrian literary standards was Neoptolemus of Parium.¹⁷ Neoptolemus, a scholar and a poet, though not necessarily a poeta doctus, is usually dated in the late third century.¹⁸ His criticism is known primarily e negativo, through the polemic exercized against him by the Epicurean poet and critic Philodemus of Gadara; he is also recognized as the most prominent source for Horace’s Ars Poetica. ¹⁹ Neoptolemus marks a return to the classical function of poetry in its social and moral utility, which he, however, viewed as harmoniously co-existent with aesthetic pleasure (Philod. col. xiii.18 – 19 Jensen [τ]έρπειν [τε καὶ ὠφελεῖν] τὸ [πλεῖ]ον); it is on this premise

 The Peripatetic forerunners of Alexandrian philology and literary criticism are listed with their works in Blum ,  – . Focused specifically on the reception of Aristotelian literary criticism by Aristarchus is Schironi .  On the connections between the Poetics and Hellenistic scholarly theory and practice, see Richardson ,  – ; cf. Montanari (,  – ) who asserts that Aristotelian literary criticism played a decisive role in Alexandrian scholarship and that the Poetics was known and used in the Museum. For the contrasting view, see Kyriakou (,  – ) who argues that Aristotle’s Poetics was isolated from Hellenistic literary criticism.  Older views have denied the Aristotelian connection both of the Museum and Alexandrian poetics. Brink (, ) concludes that “the Museum is not a specialized form of the Peripatos. Despite close personal contact in the early years, despite likeness in organization and method, one cannot say that the younger school is a product of the older. Once the Museum was fully established its anti-Aristotelian features became apparent”. Pfeiffer () is the main supporter of the view that the Alexandrians, and especially Callimachus, mark a break with Aristotle’s literary theory. However, the strong influence of Aristotle on the making of Alexandrian scholarship and poetry has now been broadly recognized, see Montanari ,  –  and Richardson ; on the ‘Aristotelian imprint’ on the Museum, see Montana ,  – .  This is the view put forward by Brink (,  – ) to whom we owe the first in-depth treatment of Neoptolemus’ literary theory. Our understanding of Neoptolemus’ poetics has been substantially improved by the more recent study by Porter .  Brink (, ) makes the bold hypothesis that Neoptolemus’ classical taste, especially as regards the writing of drama, suits the time of the Alexandrian Pleiad, whereas his affiliation with the Lyceum might well place him during the reign of the first two Ptolemies: both would make him an older contemporary of Callimachus and his possible rival as such.  According to the famous comment by Porphyrio on Horace A.P.  In quem librum congessit praecepta Neoptolemi τοῦ Παριανοῦ de arte poetica, non quidem omnia, sed eminentissima.

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that Horace formulated the axiom that poetry should be dulce et utile. With Neoptolemus we move to the realm of aesthetic theory, and one substantiated by philosophy too. By introducing the tripartite division of poema, poesis and poet into literary theory, Neoptolemus elaborates on theoretical approaches that are rooted in Aristotle’s writings, not only the Poetics but also the Rhetoric and On Poets. According to a plausible interpretation of Neoptolemus’ scheme, poema encompasses the composition of the poem (σύνθεσις τῆς λέξεως), whereas poesis focuses on theme and plot (ὑπόθεσις);²⁰ some even assume that by the latter term he denotes any major poem based on the development of a central plot, that is an epic poem or a tragedy.²¹ What can be inferred from the meagre evidence of Philodemus’ On Poems, is that tragedy, as a generic category, does not seem to have been directly treated by Neoptolemus; the only possible reference to previous poetry might have been that Homer was the best poet of all times (Philod. col. xiii.19 – 20 Jensen μέ[γιστος] ἦν ποιητὴς [ὁ Ὅμηρος]). Nevertheless, if we attempt to reconstruct his poetics on the grounds of its reception by Horace, and given the latter’s insistence on the anatomy of tragedy, the hypothesis that Neoptolemus considered tragedy the ultimate poetic genre is highly probable. It is not possible to detect precisely which of the precepts of the perfectly-wrought tragedy analyzed in the Ars Poetica (179 – 294)—among others unity and wholeness of action, appropriateness of speech to character, avoidance of the onstage representation of horrific or violent acts, the convention of the five-act play, the three actors rule—go back to Neoptolemus. Yet it seems that this Hellenistic grammarian is the missing link between the Aristotelian treatises on poetics and rhetoric and the Horatian handbook on tragedy,²² the critical figure which helped develop the rules that were incorporated into all ancient and modern ‘neoclassical’ conceptions of tragedy.²³

 For a thorough analysis of this scheme, see Asmis  and Porter ,  – .  Asmis ,  – . Already in antiquity the duo poema-poiesis was interpreted as a contrasting of short (or small parts of) poems and long poems (or entire poetic compositions): thus the Roman satirist Lucilius Sat. . pars est parua poema… illa poesis opus totum.  Horace’s insistence on the intermediate genre between tragedy and comedy, i. e. the satyr play, cannot be irrelevant to the fact that the Alexandrian Pleiad revived and renewed satyr plays in particular: it could be that Neoptolemus was the literary critic who theoretically substantiated the possibility of drama in third-century Alexandria. On Alexandrian drama, see below  – .  For an overview of the enormous influence exerted by the Ars Poetica on literary theory of the tragic, whose prominent examples include Sidney’s Defence of Poesy (), Boileau’s L’art poétique () and Pope’s Essay on Criticism (), see Golden .

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We may surmise then that, like classical literary theory, Hellenistic criticism was still oriented, even if not expressly stated, towards epic and tragedy—it is Homer and the tragedians that are severely criticized by Plato, it is these which are treated in their organic continuity as manifestations of the poetic art in Aristotle, it is against the background of the grand genres that Callimachus and his followers introduced their refined, small-scale poetry, it is the serious genres of the past that Neoptolemus held in great esteem and attempted to adapt to Hellenistic aesthetics.²⁴ However, dividing lines should be drawn between them. If Plato regarded epic and tragedy as a potential threat to philosophy, Callimachus dismissed the ethical role of the ‘serious’ literary genres. On the other hand, if Aristotle subsumed the characteristics of poetry under the exemplary examination of tragedy, Neoptolemus took the opposite direction by abstracting the Aristotelian features of good tragedy, with an added emphasis on style, and transposed them to the broader category of poesis. The picture that has emerged may be further complicated by considering the views of the major philosophical schools of the Hellenistic era, namely Stoicism and Epicureanism. The hostility towards poetry as a serious occupation, or even worse as a vehicle for philosophical reflection, is the staple of Epicurus’ thought; one of his followers, Philodemus, corrected the Epicurean anathema by adding that poetry is tolerable exclusively in its function as pure enjoyment. Reflection about tragedy could not have developed against such a background.²⁵ The Stoics represent the opposite end of the spectrum as regards poetry.²⁶ By situating philosophy at the core of poetics, they clearly state that a good poem represents moral truths to the audience and thereby becomes a vehicle for its education, especially for the young. Yet there is a stumbling block to the unequivocal contention of the Stoics that poetry is morally beneficial: it arouses the passions of the audience, particularly pity and fear, an objection that strongly recalls Plato’s own reasoning for the necessity of censorship of tragedy. Therein lies the paradox of Stoic poetry, a contradiction in terms, as it has to reconcile the philosophical tenet concerning the extirpation of passions and emotions with the fondness  On Neoptolemus’ nostalgic return to classical poetry and his ambivalent attitude towards the Alexandrian poetic style, see Brink ,  – . Brink (, ) summarizes this duality as follows: “It seems no small matter that a poet who produced learned poems of the Alexandrian type and professed Alexandrian scholarship should yet have maintained that the function of poetry had not changed, that poets should be the teachers of their cities, and that the classical forms of drama and epic should not only be admired but were the ποίησις still worth attempting”. According to the same scholar, the same contradiction underlied the plays of the tragic Pleiad.  On Epicurean poetics, see Asmis  and Sider ,  – .  DeLacy  is the reference article on the Stoic views on poetry.

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for empathetic poetry.²⁷ As expected, tragedy takes center stage in Stoic criticism and poetic practice, although we are not aware of any ‘Stoic’ tragedy from the Hellenistic era.²⁸ Which, nevertheless, was a real possibility, as the case of Seneca proves.

The impossibility of Aristotelian tragedy What seems to have been least possible from an Alexandrian viewpoint was the writing of Aristotelian tragedy. The philosopher’s scientific method of analyzing poetics results in the tenet that tragedy consists of six vital parts, namely plot, character, thought, diction, music and spectacle. A rigid hierarchy between them renders plot, namely the arrangement of the actions represented in tragedy, the pillar of the genre, to which first character, and then the others (with music and spectacle being dispensable) are subordinate and secondary. By making plot the quintessence of tragedy, Aristotle introduces the combination of thematic with structural criteria as essential to the composition of a good tragedy. Indeed, the primacy of characterization in terms of psychological depiction is no more than a post-Romantic prejudice;²⁹ for Aristotle it is the praxeis, the human actions, that produce the most exquisite tragic effect.³⁰ This premise has serious consequences for the writing of Aristotelian tragedy (probably also of Aristotelian epic): since the actions and their agents become central, storylines focused primarily on passive sufferings or episodic series of events constituting incomplete actions without a beginning or an end would be perceived as non tragic by Aristotle. How did the Hellenistic poets respond to this? The orientation to-

 Nussbaum () gives a nuanced and convincing analysis of this paradox. In her view, the Stoics, in order to prevent the harmful effects of poetry and secure its maximum moralistic impact, promoted either the allegorical reading of archaic epic or the idea of critical spectatorship of tragedy, denoting the detachment of the spectator from the passions experienced by the tragic hero.  Stoicism underlies other genres of Hellenistic poetry, especially the astronomical poetry as exemplified by Aratus’ Phaenomena or hymns (the classical paradigm is the Hymn to Zeus written by the Stoic Cleanthes). It is also known that there existed a Hellenistic subspecies of philosophical tragedy, namely ‘Cynic tragedy’, attributed to Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes: for a fine interpretation of this genre, see Noussia .  In fact Aristotle was not very keen on psychologically inconsistent characters, which he describes as irregular (ἀνώμαλος) and whose illustrating example is Iphigenia from Iphigenia in Aulis (Poet. a).  See Halliwell ,  – ; cf. also the critical distinction, and correlation, between praxis, pragmata and muthos in Aristotle ( – ).

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wards non mimetic content (the bulk of encyclopedic data poeticized by scholar poets like Callimachus) becomes an idée fixe for Hellenistic poets, who thereby prove that a poem not revolving around human actions may perfectly well be a good one. This is one way of refuting the possibility of the tragic—the other is by radically modifying the thematics of mimetic plots according to the trends dominating Euripidean tragedy and its influence on comedy.³¹ Once the two converge, new possibilities arise for redesigning the tragic plot in an Alexandrian fashion. Yet content is not that essential per se. Aristotle vaguely states that tragedy is about heroes that belong to a handful of noble families (Poet. 1453a): πρῶτον μὲν γὰρ οἱ ποιηταὶ τοὺς τυχόντας μύθους ἀπηρίθμουν, νῦν δὲ περὶ ὀλίγας οἰκίας αἱ κάλλισται τραγῳδίαι συντίθενται, οἷον περὶ ᾿Aλκμέωνα καὶ Οἰδίπουν καὶ Ὀρέστην καὶ Μελέαγρον καὶ Θυέστην καὶ Τήλεφον καὶ ὅσοις ἄλλοις συμβέβηκεν ἢ παθεῖν δεινὰ ἢ ποιῆσαι. At first the poets recounted any story that came to hand, but nowadays the best tragedies are about a few families only, for example, Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, Telephus, and others whose lot it was to suffer or commit fearful acts. (Transl. D. A. RussellM. Winterbottom)

The passage implies a development from the random stories treated in the early tragedies towards the ones found in the classical plays by asserting that the latter were superior albeit drawing on a limited repertoire. Originality and variety of stories represented were obviously not of primary importance to Aristotelian poetics;³² one is tempted to contrast the huge demand for novel, obscure or unheard-of stories both in Hellenistic poetry in general as well as in Alexandrian tragedy in particular.³³ But Aristotelian and Hellenistic poetics may share common ground on one critical point: the focusing on the affairs of the oikos, as fleetingly suggested by the passage under discussion.³⁴ Yet, if for Aristotle recourse to oikos is a way of secularizing tragedy by making the individual—and

 On the comic and humorous elements in Euripides, see Seidensticker ,  – .  It seems that in the fourth century there is a tendency to theorize about tragedy by referring to stock types and plots in a way that resembles the typicality of comedy; on this theorization in Middle Comedy and Aristotle, see Hanink b,  – .  Ziegler (,  – ) remarks that the Hellenistic tragedians, especially those of the Pleiad, did not content themselves with remolding old subjects into the new forms of drama, but, like the epic and elegiac poets of the era, turned to unknown mythographical material, and contemporary history, to draw inspiration for their tragic plots.  Indeed for Aristotle Poet. b the tragic effect is heightened when the destructive and painful actions occur between individuals related by family ties.

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not the community or the divine—the real protagonist of grand poetry,³⁵ for the Hellenistic poets the increased emphasis on the private sphere is conversely a more complicated matter, because it suggests the debunking of heroes, an impulse towards realism, a preference for the lesser poetic genres and a growing influence of comedy.³⁶ Although Aristotle does not explicitly identify tragic character with heroic stature, nevertheless he implicitly concedes that, since a character of a tragedy should be ‘better than us’, his status would be elevated in comparison to that of ordinary humans.³⁷ It is likely that Aristotle is thinking in Aeschylean and Sophoclean terms mainly, since Euripides, albeit dramatizing heroic myths, was notorious—at least on the comic stage—for adapting them to everyday domestic realities. Aristophanes in the Frogs (948 – 1003) satirizes the debasement of the heroic in Euripidean tragedy, which consists of the stress on the essentials of domesticity, namely women, slaves, children and the elderly, the introduction of everyday speech and colloquial expression into tragic diction and the realistic stagecraft (characters dressed in rags or extensive use of everyday props).³⁸ Euripides’ domesticization (Frogs 959 οἰκεῖα πράγματ᾽ εἰσάγων) posed a threat against the opposition between the two trademark genres of tragedy and comedy. That the former was dedicated to heroic grandeur and the latter to everyday humbleness was a truth widely acknowledged; hence the mixing of the two was not readily acceptable by classical standards.³⁹ The critical point is that Euripides diverged from both theatrical practice of ‘old’ tragedy and literary reflection regarding the distinction of the dramatic modalities into tragic and comic. Euripides was, in many respects, the forerunner of the Menandrian turn, i. e. the re-

 Cf. Halliwell (,  – ) who carefully distinguishes between the idealized approach to life as it might or should be and the depiction of the realities of ordinary life; the same tendency towards secularization explains Aristotle’s neglect of the gods in tragedy (,  n. ).  For the debunking of heroes as a means of deconstructing epic ideology, see Sistakou ,  – .  Halliwell (,  – ) subtly argues that Aristotle, despite stressing likeness in the depiction of character as a prerequisite for the sympathy of the audience, considers heroic stature to be an ideal condition of an effective tragic plot.  Cf. Zanker ,  – .  The notion is suggested by Aristotle Poet. a ἐν αὐτῇ δὲ τῇ διαφορᾷ καὶ ἡ τραγῳδία πρὸς τὴν κωμῳδίαν διέστηκεν· ἡ μὲν γὰρ χείρους ἡ δὲ βελτίους μιμεῖσθαι βούλεται τῶν νῦν. On the division of tragedy and comedy in the ancient theory of drama, see Seidensticker ,  – .

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newal of New Comedy in the light of his less ‘tragic’ tragedies.⁴⁰ Bourgeois dramas, melodramas and tragicomedies in vogue during the fourth and later centuries were irreconcilable with the Aristotelian tragic standards.⁴¹ Needless to say that this evolution is omnipresent in the Alexandrian obsession with the contamination of the tragic and the comic too, especially when the domestic and the everyday are involved.⁴² But literary criticism did not develop in the direction of Euripidean generic innovations.⁴³ Theophrastus still articulated the difference of tragedy and comedy in terms of social heterogeneity. According to the testimony of the Latin grammarian Diomedes, Theophrastus is said to have defined the contrasting dramatic genres as follows (fr. 708 FHSG): τραγῳδία ἐστὶν ἡρωϊκῆς τύχης περίστασις and κωμῳδία ἐστὶν ἰδιωτικῶν πραγμάτων ἀκίνδυνος περιοχή.⁴⁴ Theophrastus not only opposes the heroic to the private—in Diomedes’ words heroes duces reges against humiles atque privatae personae—, but furthermore demarcates the tragic from the comic on the grounds of their thematic emphasis and plot development. Diomedes gives a detailed account of what Theophrastus might have included in a list of common motifs. Lamentations, exiles, slaughters (luctus exilia caedes) in tragedy and love affairs and rapes (amores, virginum raptus) in comedy; narrative patterns like recognitions turn adversely for the tragic char The ancient biographer of Euripides, the Peripatetic Satyrus, was conscious that plot twists were common between Euripides and New Comedy (Vita Euripidis .): ἀναγνωρισμοὺς διά τε δακτυλίων καὶ διὰ δεραίων, ταῦτα γάρ ἐστι δήπου τὰ συνέχοντα τὴν νεωτέραν κωμωιδίαν, ἃ πρὸς ἄκρον ἤ̣γα[γ]εν Εὐριπίδης. The Euripidean connection of Menandrian comedy is a point reinforced already by Quintilian ..: Hunc [sc. Euripiden] et admiratus maxime est, ut saepe testatur, et secutus, quamquam in opere diverso, Menander. The mixing of tragic and comic in several Euripidean tragedies (Alcestis, Orestes, Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen), the exploitation of black humor and the influence of Old Comedy on Euripides’ dramas, the prominence of marriage and the preference for happy endings therein prove Euripides to be “if not the father, certainly the grandfather of modern comedy”, according to an illuminating analysis by Segal ,  – .  On the thematic development of fourth-century tragedy in the direction of the pathetic and the melodramatic, see Xanthakis-Karamanos ,  – .  This trend also left its traces in the Hellenistic tragic scholia, some of which can be attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium, which point out the ‘excessively comic’ character of tragedies, mainly by Euripides, that have a happy ending; these ‘comic’ tragedies were incompatible with the Aristotelian notion of the perfect tragedy: for an in-depth analysis, see Fantuzzi .  Zanker (, ) remarks that “the separateness of the genres was a remarkably tenacious idea” and that “the ‘standard’ literary critics considered that material from everyday and low life should not be depicted in the sublime genres like epic and tragedy but in the low genres like comedy”.  It seems that for Theophrastus the epic encompasses both, as well as the recounting of divine actions (ἔπος ἐστὶν περιοχὴ θείων τε καὶ ἡρωϊκῶν καὶ ἀνθρωπίνων πραγμάτων).

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acters and even joyful situations have an unhappy ending in tragedies which generally revolve around human misery (nihil aliud esse tragoediam quam miseriarum conprehensionem). Such utterances on tragic content resonate with modern preoccupations with the agonizing or pessimistic impulses that are the sine qua non of tragedy.⁴⁵ Now the question arising is to what extent Alexandrian poetics, not only pertinent to tragedy for which we know next to nothing, but also to the various manifestations of the tragic in the mixed Hellenistic genres, evolved under or against the Aristotelian/Theophrastean scheme. The answer to the question will remain open in the course of this study. Meanwhile, a new parameter has to be introduced, namely the division of characters in tragedy and comedy. According to Aristotle’s ranking there are three categories of character that may be imitated, those ‘better than us’, those ‘worse than us’ and those ‘just like us’ (Poet. 1448a). The first two are alternatively referred to as the spoudaioi and the phauloi, thus labeled to imply both ethical and social status, and correspond to the tragic plot and the pity-and-fear effect, and the comic plot that rouses laughter, respectively.⁴⁶ However, Aristotle neglects the third category, which does not seem to have been practiced in any genre or by any poet—until his time at least;⁴⁷ for it is unanimously accepted that in Menander and New Comedy the next door character becomes centerpiece. The emergence of the everyday, first in character and by consequence in plot, may be the key to the modern turn in the Alexandrian tragic too.⁴⁸ In fact in destabilizing the primacy of the heroic in the production of the tragic, and, by extension, in demonstrating that the representation of the phauloi does not axiomatically suggest comedy, the Alexandrian poets blur the boundaries within Aristotelian taxonomies. Callimachus’ Hecale and Theocritus’ Simaetha from The Sorceress are bold experiments in this direction, as I intend to show. Character is mainly denoted by ethos in Aristotle, a term which in other contexts of the Poetics acquires a different connotation as a contrasting notion to

 A graphic (and ironic) account of what tragedy means is given by Eagleton (, ): “Is it not a matter of fate and catastrophe, of calamitous reversals of fortunes, flawed, high-born heroes and vindictive gods, pollution and purgation, deplorable endings, cosmic order and its transgression, a suffering which chastens and transfigures? In any case, isn’t this to mistake the tragic for the pathetic?”  For a well-argued discussion of character in connection to plot in Aristotle, see Belfiore ,  – .  With the obscure exception of the fourth-century tragedian Cleophon (a. Κλεοφῶν δὲ ὁμοίους) and the painter Dionysus (a. Διονύσιος δὲ ὁμοίους εἴκαζεν).  For this line of argument Zanker ,  –  is essential.

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pathos. ⁴⁹ Pathos/ethos are used to demarcate plot types that either focus on the representation of extreme conditions, involving violence and suffering (and here the Iliad is quoted as the outstanding example), or on the illustration of human morals (the Odyssey is the most striking paradigm). Certain passages in the Poetics suggest that pathos-acts in epic and tragedy generate intense emotional responses in the audience as opposed to those triggered by the depiction of good and bad characters.⁵⁰ And since characters involved in such acts suffer undeservedly by an unwilling fault (hamartia), pathos-centered plots are perceived as more tragic than plots based on the success of the ‘good’ and the punishment of the ‘bad’, which are more akin to comedy.⁵¹ However, later sources, including Cicero, Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Quintilian, testify to the fact that a significant semantic change has taken place. Pathos/ethos came to denote primarily stylistic qualities, the emotional and ethical style of speech respectively, which are appropriate to specific thematic and generic categories. Centuries after Aristotle, ‘Longinus’ in On the Sublime opposes the two Homeric epics using the same terminology. ‘Longinus’, moreover, associates pathos with the enthusiastic origins of poetic inspiration and considers it to be one of the sources of the sublime (8.1.1– 6): πηγαί τινές εἰσιν αἱ τῆς ὑψηγορίας γονιμώταται…δεύτερον δὲ τὸ σφοδρὸν καὶ ἐνθουσιαστικὸν πάθος ‘there are five most productive sources of sublimity…the second is strong and inspired emotion’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom). For ‘Longinus’ the poet’s pathos—or ethos, for that matter—depends on the intensity of the emotions represented and conveyed to the audience: in his understanding the communication of the pathos of the Iliad (as well as of Demosthenes and tragedy) is achieved when the author articulates violence and suffering in a powerful sublime verbal expression, whereas in ethical poems situations, characters and

 In my brief analysis I follow the conclusions of Gill’s () in-depth analysis of the duo pathos/ethos in ancient literary and rhetorical criticism.  It is exactly the connection between pathos and uncontrollable emotion that makes Plato condemn pathetic poetry by Homer or the tragedians (Rep. c-d). For tragic pathos construed as the expression of emotion in tragedy and the reception of emotion by its audience, examined in ancient philosophy of the tragic as well as in the internal emotional experience of the characters of classical tragedy, see Munteanu . Pathos as denoting human suffering, especially when experienced by a heroic figure, with all its philosophical and metaphysical connotations in Plato and Greek tragedy is thoroughly discussed by Gould ().  Rees (, ) believes that pathos ‘an action causing destruction or pain’ is an indispensable part of the tragic plot for Aristotle, which, however, in later traditions (Senecan tragedy, Renaissance drama etc.) came to overshadow all other characteristics of tragedy and was also misinterpreted as the presentation of intense emotional or violent incidents on stage rather than as the idea that such incidents might occur to the dramatic characters.

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emotions portrayed are milder and hence they are appropriately reflected in a sweet and slender poetic style.⁵² We cannot overlook the significance of pathos for the interpretation of classical tragedy in Hellenistic literary criticism, a notion that is omnipresent in the scholiastic tradition.⁵³ It is a plausible hypothesis that during the postclassical era tragedy, under the growing influence of rhetoric, degenerates into the expression of the pathetic;⁵⁴ thence pathetic content articulated in a highbrow style and aiming at eliciting a maximum emotional response from the audience becomes a trend that explains why so often until the modern day the pathetic is (mis)construed as the tragic.⁵⁵ Alexandrian literary practice of the pathetic type of tragedy is virtually unknown as a result of the total loss of dramatic evidence. However, the highly pathetic Alexandra proves that such a generic development of tragedy was a possibility, albeit recherché and extreme. And Parthenius in thematizing pathos into a collection of love stories under the title of Erotika Pathemata opens up new possibilities for an Alexandrian experimentation with the pathetic as it gradually dissolves into melodrama.

Callimachus on (not) writing tragedy Callimachus obviously disliked pathos both as a stylistic and as a thematic category, as his sophisticated, carefully balanced poems show, and rejected the idea that the poet or the audience should become too emotionally involved in poetry. He is inclined towards the comic and the ironic, his stylistic principles aim at refinement and not bombast, his narratives are fragmentary rather than complete, and it is on these grounds that his untragic stance as a poet on the whole is often

 But ‘Longinus’ carefully distinguishes between the sublime/pathetic and the mere bombastic style which may easily be confused in tragedy (. – ): ὅπου δ᾽ ἐν τραγῳδίᾳ, πράγματι ὀγκηρῷ φύσει καὶ ἐπιδεχομένῳ στόμφον, ὅμως τὸ παρὰ μέλος οἰδεῖν ἀσύγγνωστον ‘untimely turgidity is unpardonable in tragedy, a genre which is naturally magniloquent and tolerant of bombast’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom).  See the thorough analysis in Meijering ,  – .  The introduction of pathetic motifs in fourth-century tragedy, where significant deviations from the classical models may be observed, can be traced in Carcinus’ Medea and Alope, Theodectes’ Philoctetes, Astydamas’ Alcmaeon and Antiphon’s Andromache: see Xanthakis-Karamanos ,  – .  Various attempts have been made to distinguish between the tragic—a sorrowful event that happens to noble characters and is morally or philosophically ‘interesting’—from the merely pathetic in our colloquial understanding of the everyday calamities: see Kaufmann ,  – .

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taken for granted.⁵⁶ Yet, as is always the case with Callimachus, evidence from his poems may be ambiguously interpreted and should not be oversimplified against the background of his principles. Additional complications ensue from our ignorance of whether the theatre was a venue acceptable or too public for Callimachean taste, as well as of the identity of Callimachus’ alleged literary opponents and especially his attitude towards the members of the Alexandrian Pleiad; his implicit dialectic with Platonic and Aristotelian criticism of the tragic is another controversial issue.⁵⁷ My aim here is not to offer definitive answers but rather to attempt a reconstruction of Callimachus’ credo about tragedy and the tragic—which represents only one line of Alexandrian tragic aesthetics—as reflected in some of his poetologically significant passages from the Aetia-Prologue and the Iambi. The Aetia-Prologue (fr. 1 Pf.) is notorious for not explicitly referring to any poetic genre in particular, least of all drama—with the exception of elegy, which seems to be the focus of interest in the much-debated lines 9 – 12. Usually read as a manifesto of literary criticism delivered in poetic discourse through a series of striking metaphors,⁵⁸ the Aetia-Prologue encompasses the entire spectrum of Greek literature beyond limitations posed by genre or period.⁵⁹ Curiously, and despite Callimachean variety, drama has not been regarded as an important component of this literary panorama; an argument supporting its absence is that drama belongs to the classical genres, which were of minimal interest to the Alexandrian poets as opposed to the archaic epic, lyric and elegy, another that Callimachus and his contemporaries hardly separated drama from other

 See e. g. Thomas ,  –  who argues that Callimachus rejected drama, and especially tragedy, for being trivial, commonplace and the ποίημα δημόσιον par excellence.  Scholarship is divided between those who argue that Callimachus was hostile towards tragedy and drama in general (a good example is Schwinge ,  – ) and others who suggest that he embraced drama as a result of the public performative habits of the Alexandrians and his own inclination towards mimetic poetry (Cameron ,  – ). Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ) take into account the inconclusive evidence of the Callimachean passages and adopt a moderate position according to which Callimachus did not disdain classical drama but had a distinct preference for Euripides, yet on the whole, as poet and critic, was more focused on lyric, elegy and hexameter poetry rather than tragedy and comedy.  Asper () argues that Callimachus treats poetics exclusively in metaphoric discourse and rejects previous abstract terminology found in the scholarly treatises of Aristotle and the Peripatos; Callimachus became thus the predecessor of long-standing literary metaphors such as the ὕψος term introduced by ‘Longinus’.  Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (, ) list the following authors/texts with which Callimachus enters into a vivid metatextual dialogue in the Aetia-Prologue: Mimnermus, Philitas, Antimachus, Aristophanes, Homer, Euripides, Choerilus, Hesiod, Pindar, Aesop, Plato and the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.

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performative arts that understandably fell outside the scope of their poetics. And yet there are cogent reasons to suppose that the Aetia-Prologue was also meant as a metaliterary comment on drama, especially in its manifestation as tragedy. The fragmentary Prologue begins with a cryptic reference to the ‘inappropriate’ combination of composition and content: the Telchines accuse the New Age poet of not having composed ἕν ἄεισμα διηνεκές narrating the deeds of βασιλῆας ἢ ἥρωας (fr. 1.3 – 5 Pf.). If the passage is read against an Aristotelian background, in particular as an allusion to the golden rule of the Poetics according to which a well-designed plot must include a mimesis of just one praxis in its entirety (1451a),⁶⁰ and then its content is seen as corresponding to the spoudaios material of tragedy, then Callimachus is making a case against grand poetry as monumentalized by Aristotle and his followers.⁶¹ Scholarship does not unanimously accept the Aristotelian resonance here, although the use of ἕν, a key word in the definition of the Homeric/tragic plot in the Poetics,⁶² should not be underestimated within this dense critical passage as meaning ‘one single poem’.⁶³ There is a third parameter in this polemical Prologue, namely the many thousand verses (fr. 1.4 Pf. [οὐκ] ἐν πολλαῖς ἤνυσα χιλιάσιν ‘it’s not a poem…in thousands of verses that I’ve produced’ transl. F. Nisetich) that are part of the recipe for the composition of a Telchinian poem. Callimachus’ responds that the criterion for judging a poem should not be quantitative but qualitative and dependent on the artistic skill of the poet (fr. 1.17– 18 Pf. αὖθι δὲ τέχνῃ/ κρίνετε,][μὴ σχοίν]ῳ Περσίδι τὴ[ν] σοφίην ‘from now on we’ll judge poetry by the art, not by the mile’ transl. F. Nisetich). The connection with Aristotle cannot

 Διηνεκής poses some difficulties if attached Aristotle’s principles, because it may be taken to denote the complete cycle of adventures of one hero, i. e. the compositional error of the Cyclic epics that was an anathema to the philosopher (Poet. a μῦθος δ᾽ ἐστὶν εἷς οὐχ ὥσπερ τινὲς οἴονται ἐὰν περὶ ἕνα ᾖ· πολλὰ γὰρ καὶ ἄπειρα τῷ ἑνὶ συμβαίνει, ἐξ ὧν ἐνίων οὐδέν ἐστιν ἕν). But this interpretation is not obligatory, as a Homeric/tragic praxis, or even a monologue in Homer/tragedy, is διηνεκής=continuous, unbroken, (for speech) from beginning to end (LSJ s.v.) in itself, because wholeness is defined as ὅλον δέ ἐστιν τὸ ἔχον ἀρχὴν καὶ μέσον καὶ τελευτήν (Poet. b). Διηνεκής could therefore be construed as Callimachus’ negative take on the Aristotelian ὅλον. Cf. the comments and bibliography on this topic in Harder , . – .  That Callimachus and the Alexandrians were familiar with the Poetics and generally with the literary theories of Aristotle as expressed in his treatise On Poets is argued by Richardson (,  – , cf. the discussion in  – ).  The constant repetition of ἕν in Aristotle adds to the word the special weight of a critical term (e. g. Poet. a. περὶ μίαν πρᾶξιν, a. ἡ μία μίμησις ἑνός ἐστιν).  For both views and the supporting arguments, and the slight preference for interpreting ἕν as ‘one single’, see Harder , . – .

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be overlooked here, as reflected in the abstract term megethos ‘magnitude’, a standard by which a perfect composition is evaluated in the Poetics. The proper magnitude of a poem—which is either an epic or a tragedy, for it is these genres that require magnitude⁶⁴—cannot be measured by objective, scientifically exact, means. For Aristotle magnitude is a relative not an absolute concept and should not be defined in terms of length for it primarily denotes grandeur and seriousness.⁶⁵ Like Callimachus, Aristotle conjures up images to make his theoretical thought more transparent. The most impressive is that of the animal by which the poem is likened to a living organism—an analogy for the poem’s organic unity and ideal magnitude, which is denoted by the terms εὐσύνοπτος and εὐμνημόνευτος (Poet. 1450b-1451a). On this particular point drama is, on the grounds of its generic nature, more successful than most (Cyclic) epic, because it comprises a limited number of episodes (Poet. 1455b): ἐν μὲν οὖν τοῖς δράμασιν τὰ ἐπεισόδια σύντομα, ἡ δ᾽ ἐποποιία τούτοις μηκύνεται ‘in plays episodes are brief, but epic uses them to increase its length’ (transl. D.A. Russell-M. Winterbottom).⁶⁶ Callimachus would not have much to object to this. Uncontrollable length (μάκρος) was an anathema to him, as illustrated by the image of the Massagetae and their long-distance arching, a metaphor for a poem neither εὐσύνοπτος nor εὐμνημόνευτος (fr. 1.15 Pf. Μασσα]γέται [κ]αὶ μακ[ρὸν ὀϊστεύ]οιεν ἐπ᾽ ἄνδρα).⁶⁷ What brings Callimachus even closer to the Poetics is the demand for the right criteria by which magnitude should be evaluated. Aristotle argues that the limits of a poem are set by its own nature (a version of ἐντελέχεια) and should not be imposed by exterior conditions (Poet. 1451a): τοῦ δὲ μήκους ὅρος μὲν πρὸς τοὺς ἀγῶνας καὶ τὴν αἴσθησιν οὐ τῆς τέχνης ἐστίν· εἰ γὰρ ἔδει ἑκατὸν τραγῳδίας ἀγωνίζεσθαι, πρὸς κλεψύδρας ἂν ἠγωνίζοντο…ὁ δὲ κατ᾽ αὐτὴν τὴν

 As opposed to comedy and early tragedy, where magnitude is optional, see Janko ,  s.v. ‘Magnitude, megethos’.  See Janko ,  s.v. ‘Grand, Grandeur, semnos, semnotes’ who points out that grandeur of epic and tragedy is opposed to the ‘ordinary, small, trivial and laughable’ of the other poetic genres.  Homer, despite being an epic poet, composed his poems like a dramatist: his instinct kept him from dramatizing the entire Trojan war, a subject both ‘large’ and ‘not easy to see as a whole’ (Poet. a λίαν γὰρ ἂν μέγας καὶ οὐκ εὐσύνοπτος ἔμελλεν ἔσεσθαι ὁ μῦθος).  Μακρολογία in ancient rhetorical theory is connected to length of speech (opp. βραχυλογία); a μακρά ῥῆσις may specifically refer to a long monologue in tragedy (e. g. Aristoph. Ach.  δεῖ γάρ με λέξαι τῷ χορῷ ῥῆσιν μακράν by which Dikaiopolis satirizes Euripides’ use of long speeches in tragedy, cf. Sch. Aristoph. Ach. b τοῦτο λέγει διὰ τὸ εἰσάγειν τὸν Εὐριπίδην μακρηγοροῦντα τὰ πρόσωπα). As a rule μακρός is a stylistic term in Callimachus (Ep. ./ . HE, Aet. fr. . Pf., Ia. fr. . Pf., Hec. . Pf., H. Del. ).

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φύσιν τοῦ πράγματος ὅρος, ἀεὶ μὲν ὁ μείζων μέχρι τοῦ σύνδηλος εἶναι καλλίων ἐστὶ κατὰ τὸ μέγεθος… What is, for the poetic art, the limit of its extension? Certainly not that imposed by the contests and by perception—if a hundred plays had to be performed during the festival, they would time the performances by the hour glass…As the limit imposed by the actual nature of the thing, one may suggest ‘the ampler the better, provided it remains clear as a whole’. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

There is a striking analogy between Aristotle’s measuring poetry by the κλεψύδρα and Callimachus’ by the σχοῖνος Περσίς, since both refer wittily to how one could, but should not, judge poetry by its length. But the resemblance of the two passages stops here. For Aristotle writing poetry big,⁶⁸ as long as it is regulated by the law of probability and necessity in the structuring of its plot, is an ideal in itself, and it is therein that the superiority of (tragic) epic and tragedy proper lies. Moreover, his insistence on Homer and tragedy stems from the belief that such poetry can convey universal truths to its audience. Callimachus, however, argues otherwise in introducing his modern poetics.⁶⁹ As the Prologue progresses it becomes evident that it does not deal with structure or content but primarily with style. It is widely accepted that the core term of Callimachean aesthetics, leptotes, and some of the most graphic images such as the weighing of poetry are reminiscences of the notorious synkrisis between Aeschylus and Euripides from Aristophanes’ Frogs. ⁷⁰ In essence, the standards set by Callimachus are measured on the scale of classical tragic style. One may speculate about the reasons behind this choice, especially given the communis opinio that the polemic of the Prologue focuses on elegy,

 Cf. Poet. b where ὄγκος is considered an advantage of epic over tragedy, a feature that contributes to the magnificence of a poem: ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐποποιίᾳ διὰ τὸ διήγησιν εἶναι ἔστι πολλὰ μέρη ἅμα ποιεῖν περαινόμενα, ὑφ᾽ ὧν οἰκείων ὄντων αὔξεται ὁ τοῦ ποιήματος ὄγκος. ὥστε τοῦτ᾽ ἔχει τὸ ἀγαθὸν εἰς μεγαλοπρέπειαν ‘in epic, because it is narrative, one can tell of many things as at the moment of their accomplishment, and these if they are relevant make the poem more impressive. So it has this advantage in the direction of grandeur…’ (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom). Cf. Janko (, ) who appositely translates ὄγκος as ‘weight’ and μεγαλοπρέπεια as ‘splendor’.  Callimachus’ poetics are essentially unphilosophical, since unity and universality are not its ideals, whereas the Prologue advocates the impossibility of writing on the grand scale: therefore, Callimachus was considered in the past to be anti-Aristotelian and anti-Peripatetic, at least in his poetic principles, see Brink  and Pfeiffer ,  – . However, this strict anti-Aristotelian viewing of Callimachus the poet is now rejected by Richardson (,  – ).  The exact parallels (metaphors, imagery, terminology) between the Prologue and the Frogs are pointed out by Wimmel (,  n.); cf. Clayman .

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conceived as a counter-genre to epic, and its appropriate style.⁷¹ Oddly, the phantoms of Aeschylus and Euripides, as caricatured by Aristophanes, haunt the Prologue through a dense web of allusions. The bombastic song (fr. 1.19 Pf. μέγα ψοφέουσαν ἀοιδήν) and the thundering of Zeus (fr. 1.20 Pf. βροντᾶ]ν οὐκ ἐμόν, [ἀλλὰ] Διός) attributed to the Telchines evoke the vivid depiction of Aeschylus by Aristophanes in the Frogs (814 ἐριβρεμέτας [sc. Αἰσχύλος]) and in the Clouds (1366 – 1367 ἐγὼ γὰρ Αἰσχύλον νομίζω πρῶτον ἐν ποιηταῖς—/ψόφου πλέων).⁷² By contrast, the Callimachean persona adopts the profile of the Aristophanic Euripides, noted for his strict dietary habits in literary matters. Thus, when Callimachus declares his calorie-free feeding on dew (fr. 1.33 – 34 Pf. ἵνα δρόσον…πρώκιο]ν ἐκ δίης ἠέρος εἶδαρ ἔδων) he recalls the ethereal diet of Euripides (according to his own apostrophe in Frogs 892 αἰθήρ, ἐμὸν βόσκημα), a habit that in both cases results in a drastic thinning of poetic style (fr. 1.23 – 24 Pf. τὸ μὲν θύος ὅττι πάχιστον/θρέψαι, τὴ]ν̣ Μοῦσαν δ᾽ ὠγαθὲ λεπταλέην~Frogs 940 – 941 οἰδοῦσαν ὑπὸ κομπασμάτων καὶ ῥημάτων ἐπαχθῶν,/ ἴσχνανα μὲν πρώτιστον αὐτὴν [sc. τὴν τέχνην] καὶ τὸ βάρος ἀφεῖλον). These tightly interwoven parallels invite a comparison between Callimachus and Euripides, and suggest that he might have served as a stylistic standard for the Cyrenean.⁷³ More importantly, Callimachus brings the analogies between his own poetic enterprise and tragic aesthetic classifications into sharp focus, by tracing the origins of his refinement back to Euripides and not to Aeschylus’ weighty archaicizing style.⁷⁴ In addition to style Euripides, and more broadly the tragedians, may have served as models for encoding poetry in musical terms in Callimachean aesthetics. Indeed, another facet of the Prologue imagery is the obsession with the euphonic qualities of poetry; the antithesis between the cicada and the ass in the Prologue illustrates the timbre and tonality of various generic categories, yet it has a particular relevance to lyric and drama.⁷⁵ The study of lyric apart, music

 Cameron , cf. Klein  for the concept of elegy as a counter-genre of epic.  For a different approach to Zeus as the deification of Homer, another symbol of grandeur, see Petrovic .  That Callimachus expresses a special preference for Euripides, a tragedian who was extremely popular among Alexandrian readers, as attested by the numerous copies of his works in Ptolemaic papyri, is argued by Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ). On Euripides’ afterlife in the Hellenistic world, see Bing .  Although, on a verbal level, many lexical borrowings from Aeschylus are to be found in Callimachus’ oeuvre, see Cusset ,  – .  Ambühl (,  – ) argues that the cicada is a symbol of Apollonian poetry, whereas the ass stands for the Dionysiac genres, namely drama and dithyramb, which Callimachus rejects.

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in drama was a literary as well as a philological issue for the Alexandrians.⁷⁶ The debate over drama music has also left its traces in Callimachus’ Iambi. In Iamb 2 the voice of the tragedians is curiously likened to ‘the voice of those who live in the sea’ (fr. 192.12– 13 Pf. οἱ δὲ τραγῳδοὶ τῶν θάλασσαν οἰ[κεύντων ἔχο[υ]σι φωνήν). Various interpretations have been proposed regarding the identity of the tragoidoi—does Callimachus imply the playwrights themselves or the virtuosos of tragic acting?—and the nature of their voice.⁷⁷ It is generally agreed that Callimachus’ point in using the metaphor of the fishes is to express negative criticism against tragedy, either for its bombast or merely its cacophony, but it is not clear whether he is attacking the tragic genre per se or just contemporary tragedians. Equally enigmatic, also with an emphasis on the musical aspects of tragedy, is fragment 215 Pf. τραγῳδὸς μοῦσα ληκυθίζουσα, which is unfortunately cited out of context.⁷⁸ Tragedy and the tragedians are hinted at in Iamb 13 from a different perspective. Here the poetic persona defends his own polyeideia by evoking Ion of Chios, a celebrated dramatist and lyric poet of the fifth century. By calling attention to the paradigm of a poet, who was conspicuously known as a tragedian,⁷⁹ Callimachus reinforces his point that the gods could not have allotted a sole genre to each poet (fr. 203.30 – 33 Pf.): τίς εἶπεν αυτ̣[…]λε..ρ.[….]. σὺ πεντάμετρα συντίθει, σὺ δ̣᾽ ἡ[ρῷο]ν, σὺ δὲ τραγῳδε̣[ῖν] ἐκ θεῶν ἐκληρώσω; δοκέω μὲν οὐδείς… Tell me who decreed…’You there, compose elegiacs! Epic’s for you, and as for you, the gods want you to be a tragedian!’ No one, in my opinion… (Transl. F. Nisetich)

 For musical notation as part of the philological activity at the Museum, with a special emphasis on Euripidean drama, see Prauscello ,  – .  On the various interpretations, see Lelli ,  – . Acosta-Hughes (,  – ) rejects the idea that Callimachus laments the decline of contemporary tragedy here and instead emphasizes the exploration of sound imagery with aesthetic undertones.  Apart from denoting the lekythion clausula used by Euripides and mocked by Aristophanes (Frogs  – ), it may also have the meaning of ‘speaking in a hollow voice’ (LSJ s.v. ληκυθίζω) to refer to the bombastic style characteristic of tragic actors; see the semantic approach to the term and its humorous connotations by Sider , cf. also Thomas ,  – . Cf. Callimachus’ claim in his lost Hypomnemata that tragedy in the old days was called μελῳδία (fr.  Pf.), obviously because it originated from song.  Dieg. to Iambus  (. – ): ἐν τούτῳ πρὸς τοὺς καταμεμφομένους αὐτὸν ἐπὶ τῇ πολυειδείᾳ ὧν γράφει ποιημάτων ἀπαντῶν φησιν ὅτι Ἴωνα μιμεῖται τὸν τραγικόν. Ion of Chios is frequently called a tragedian in the Scholia, see Acosta-Hughes ,  n. . A comprehensive analysis of Ion the tragedian in Jennings/Katsaros ,  – .

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These lines allude to the Platonic Ion, to a passage where Socrates urges another Ion, a rhapsode from Ephesos, to limit himself to one and only poetic genre in accordance with his personal inclination (Ion 534b-c).⁸⁰ That Callimachus rejects Platonic metaphysical poetics by arguing that poetry is the result of art and not divine inspiration is of minor relevance to the present study. More important is the claim of the poetic ‘I’ that he is versatile enough to compose elegy, epic or tragedy. If there is an autobiographical resonance here, then Callimachus may be pointing at his multifaceted work that embraces all the major generic classes of poetry (epic, lyric and drama). It is worth viewing this passage in the light of the Suda (s.v. Καλλίμαχος), where it is stated that Callimachus wrote, alongside numerous other poems in all meters and styles, also tragedies, satyr plays and comedies. Apart from the fact that the Suda does not provide specific titles of other evidence to support this statement, the very idea that Callimachus might have been an active dramatist is in itself surprising but cannot not be rejected altogether as improbable or impossible.⁸¹ Callimachus’ attitude towards tragedy appears to be rather ambivalent.⁸² In the Aetia-Prologue he develops his aesthetic theory in the light of, perhaps, the two most important texts of classical literary criticism, namely Aristotle’s Poetics and Aristophanes’ Frogs, both of which focus on the art of tragedy. The former becomes a basis for theoretical reflection on grand poetry, of the type established by scholars such as Neoptolemus; the latter offers standards of a stylistic classification that Callimachus sought to re-establish. Two tragedians, Euripides and Ion of Chios, set the standards for the notions of leptotes and polyeideia, whereas Aeschylus stands out as an anti-model for the refined poetic style. Callimachus’ orientation towards these particular tragic traditions may lead to the conclusion that he also exploited drama music to add verbal quality to his poetry. We may even surmise that by evoking New Music, which was inextricably interwoven with tragedy after Euripides and the new dithyramb, he articulated his preference for pure aesthetics versus philosophical poetics.⁸³ At the same time,  Acosta-Hughes (,  – ) gives an in-depth analysis of the poetological implications of Iambus .  Epigram  HE on the dire consequences of writing tragedy has also been interpreted autobiographically as a confession on part of Callimachus of his own failure as a tragedian. Thomas (,  n. ) makes a guess in noting that Callimachus “experimented with drama at an early stage, but, with an evolution of his poetic theory, subsequently found such forms unacceptable”, cf. Fantuzzi a,  – .  On Callimachus’ reception of tragedy, cf. also Acosta-Hughes ,  – .  Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ) argue that Callimachus drew on New Music to jettison the logocentric interpretations of poetry by Plato and Aristotle and develop a new aesthetics based on euphonics not on word and structure.

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though, he seems to have disdained certain types of drama music (whether traditional or contemporary, Aeschylean or other is not known) in the Iambi, thus asserting his dislike for performative vogues in the theatre. Under these preconditions the hypothesis that Callimachus was a playwright active in the entire range of dramatic poetry appears unlikely, but not entirely impossible, if his dramatic enterprise is dissociated from actual performance. Yet, whether Callimachus was a dramatist in his own idiosyncratic way, one who would not pander to public taste or align himself with the official dramaturgy boosted by the Ptolemies, will remain another unsolved mystery of Hellenistic scholarship.

Establishing tragedy and the tragic in Alexandria Literary criticism of tragedy and the tragic took different directions against a post-Platonic and post-Aristotelian background. The ability of tragedy to promote universal truths became a less vital issue, whereas classical standards of tragedy were debated in the light of the new aesthetics and stylistic innovations of the era. The central role of tragedy in the cultural life of third-century Alexandria is also evident in everyday practice: the proliferation of performances, of both old and new tragedy, the recitation of tragic selections by skilled actors, the development of drama music and singing, the compilation of tragic anthologies, the introduction of tragedy into school practice. The present overview will allow glimpses into this multifaceted reception, which was to a certain extent independent from the theoretical, sometimes philosophical, approaches to tragic poetics. Evidence will be drawn, with utmost selectivity, from two main sources, namely contemporary epigram and the scholiastic tradition. Epigram as a source for the reception of drama and the theatrical practice has been extensively studied, therefore my aim is not put forward novel interpretations but rather to highlight some interesting passages.⁸⁴ That tragedy is a living tradition in Alexandria is attested in various epigrams, since it is this genre that resonates with the mundane realities of Hellenistic society. Callimachus’

 Apart from the now outdated study by Gabathuler () on Hellenistic epigrams concerning poets, the first to gather and examine the main epigrammatic sources on Hellenistic theatre, with an emphasis on Dioscorides, is Webster . A systematic survey in recent times is owed particularly to Fantuzzi (, a, b) who has drawn broader conclusions regarding the reception of classical drama, the contemporary theatre and the satirical stance of Asclepiades and Callimachus towards tragedy. The epigrams on dramatists are seen from a poetological perspective by Klooster (,  – ). For a thorough and insightful analysis of all epigrams on drama/theatre, see Mamata .

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epigram 26 HE is set in a classroom on whose wall a mask of Dionysus κεχηνώς (‘open-mouthed’ or ‘gapping’) is hanging. The boredom of the god of theatre, humorously implied through a speaking object typical of Callimachean rhetoric, is caused by the tiresome repetition of the phrase ἱερὸς ὁ πλόκαμος from Euripides’ Bacchae. As the setting indicates, this repetition evokes a school exercise according to which the pupils had to memorize entire passages from tragedy.⁸⁵ In a similar vein, Asclepiades 27 HE dramatizes the dedication of a mask by a pupil who won a school competition for his excellence in copying comic texts (1 καλὰ γράμματ’ ἔγραψεν).⁸⁶ The obvious interpretation of the two companion epigrams points towards the direction of the postclassical education system which was largely based on the mechanical study of literature, chiefly drama;⁸⁷ against this backdrop, the epigrams, supported by historical sources, seem to confirm the fact that Euripides and the comic poets, most prominently Menander, were a must for school study.⁸⁸ Yet in both epigrams we sense an undercurrent of irony, a humorous point. Both Callimachus and Asclepiades subtly subvert the official image of the poet entering dramatic competitions by introducing his miniature, a pupil sweating over dramatic texts in the dull atmosphere of a classroom (Callimachus 26.1 HE εὐμαθίην ᾐτεῖτο~Asclepiades 27.1 HE νικήσας τοὺς παῖδας); in this context the reproduction of drama is a counterpoint to the original writing of theatrical plays.⁸⁹ In a cluster of epigrams Callimachus wittily criticizes the victors of dramatic competitions whose plays may appeal to public taste but do not qualify as refined poetry nor do they secure poetic immortality.⁹⁰ In 58 HE the poetic ‘I’ invokes Dionysus by declaring that only brevity can render a poet successful in a

 Cf. the complaints of Metrotime that her son Kottalos, a disruptive pupil, is unable to memorize a monologue (ῥῆσις) from tragedy in Herodas Mimiambus . – .  The comic mask represents the otherwise unknown Chares (. –  HE τὸν κωμικὸν ὧδε Χάρητα,/ πρεσβύτην), probably a stock character of New Comedy: see Mamata ,  – .  See Fantuzzi a,  –  and Mamata ,  –  and  – .  After Homer, Euripides and Menander were the most read and taught in schools, as attested by the school papyri of Ptolemaic Egypt, see Cribiore ,  – ; cf. Sextus Empiricus Math. . ἃ ὁ γραμματικὸς ἑρμηνεύειν φαίνεται, καθάπερ Ὁμήρῳ τε καὶ Ἡσιόδῳ Πινδάρῳ τε καὶ Εὐριπίδῃ καὶ Μενάνδρῳ καὶ τοῖς ἄλλοις.  Cf. Fantuzzi a, : “The masks are dedications made with the typical youthful ingenuousness of boys, emphatically not the famous tragedians of the past, who were often remembered in conjunction with their glorious competitive victories…nor the victorious tragedians of contemporary dramatic competitions”.  Schwinge (,  – ) reads these Callimachean epigrams as a rejection of drama qua big poetry; for a reading of these epigrams from the viewpoint of poetic immortality, see Klooster ,  – .

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competition, since the victorious cry ‘I win’ (2 νικῶ) is much shorter than the bitter acceptance of failure (4 σκληρὰ τα γιγνόμενα). Apart from the autobiographical undertones of such an utterance,⁹¹ the epigram implicitly refers to Callimachus’ preference for brevity (6 βραχυσυλλαβίη) that may specifically be adapted to playwriting as reflected in the paradox of the brief dramatic speech (1– 2 μικρὴ ῥῆσις).⁹² Alongside brevity also purity seems to be inconsistent with the mainstream dramatic writing of the era. As a consequence, Theaetetus, a poet distinguished for his σοφίη and καθαρότης, lacks the chance to score a victory in a dramatic competition (57 HE).⁹³ In effect he follows the side street of purity (1 καθαρὴν ὁδόν) which does not cross the road of Dionysus, an image recalling the untrodden paths of the Aetia Prologue and the boulevard despised in the Lysanias epigram (2 HE).⁹⁴ What all these epigrams have at their core is the notion that drama is not to be rejected per se, but may be clearly bifurcated into drama satisfying vulgar taste and hence winning public renown and drama written in the Callimachean way—if such dramas actually existed. These epigrams, dating from the first half of the third century, vividly reconstruct the theatrical reality of Ptolemaic Alexandria. Theatre, a widespread activity in the communities of the Hellenized Greeks, has left its mark on a genre noted for its engagement with the real world; contemporary theatre is seen in a less favorable light, probably because clichéd restagings and uninspired new plays were soon wearing thin for the sophisticated audience of Alexandria— at least in their form as spectacle or recitation. Textual drama, on the other hand, seems to have attracted not only the educated elite of the Hellenistic society but notably the poets and scholars who immersed themselves in the study of the canonical authors of the past. This scholarly engagement with tragedy is reflected in another group of epigrams dedicated to the dead poets’ society, and Dioscorides seems to have excelled in this category. A younger contemporary of Callimachus, Dioscorides distances himself from the ‘live’ theatrical experience of his epoch and shifts the focus from topical satire to monumentalization. In five epitaphs he covers the entire spectrum of dramatic poetry by highlighting the emblematic figure for each subgenre: Thespis

 Especially if seen in the light of Callimachus’ supposed dramatic output (see Fantuzzi a,  – ), in combination with epigram  HE, cf. above p.  and n. .  That a rhesis contradicts the notion of brevity by indicating a very long speech, see above  – .  Fantuzzi a,  – , cf. Asper ,  –  on the poetological metaphor of the road also in the Theaetetus epigram.  According to the interpretation by Thomas () rather than being an attack (only) on Cyclic epic, the epigram is a rejection of dramatic poetry, and more specifically of New Comedy.

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(20 HE), Aeschylus (21 HE) and Sophocles (22 HE) for archaic and classical tragedy, Sositheus (23 HE) for Hellenistic satyr play and Machon (24 HE) for contemporary comedy.⁹⁵ If these epigrams were intended as a cycle and the selection of poets is not an accident of textual tradition but a conscious decision on part of Dioscorides, they pose some challenging questions. What is the common thread connecting these dramatists? Why are Sositheus and Machon juxtaposed with the canonical poets of drama? Why are Euripides and Menander, the most popular playwrights of the era, ignored?⁹⁶ It has been persuasively argued that the criterion for including these dramatists into a new canon was their archaic, classical or archaicizing style, of which Dioscorides was fond. The hypothesis is corroborated by the frequent use of ἀρχαῖος, curiously denoting the means by which dramatic poetry can be renewed.⁹⁷ From this perspective, Sositheus and Machon are extolled for breathing new life—through archaicizing—into satyr play (22.6 HE ἀναρχαΐσας) and Old Comedy (24.3 – 4 HE τέχνης/ ἄξιον ἀρχαίης λείψανον ἠμφίεσας) respectively.⁹⁸ Eventually, the whole hypothesis makes sense, if we recall that both Euripides and Menander were the archetypes for the refined style à la Callimachus; Dioscorides would hence clearly sympathize with the cacophonous Telchines.⁹⁹ But Dioscorides does not confine himself to the judgement of style.¹⁰⁰ The epitaphs on dramatists are primarily a miniature literary history from an Alexan-

 A concise but perceptive analysis of this epigrammatic cycle in Fantuzzi a,  – , cf. Gow/Page , . – ; more extensively in Mamata ,  – ; for the older bibliography, see Webster ,  n. . Dioscorides may indirectly hint at theatrical practice yet evidence is inconclusive: in  HE the chanteuse named Athenion is taken to suggest a female tragoidos singing of the fall of Troy (on which see Webster ,  –  and Plastira-Valkanou ), whereas  HE concerns a dancer of the pantomimos, a kind of subdramatic performance (Gow/Page , . – ).  According to evidence on Hellenistic readership of drama (Cribiore , ): “The papyri generally show that members of the cultivated public were very fond of Euripides; they read Aeschylus rarely, and Sophocles even more infrequently”. Bing () argues that the circulation of Euripidean plot-summaries in an independent collection ordered alphabetically, known as ‘Tales from Euripides’, from the second century BC onwards proves “the public’s avid consumption and keen enjoyment of Euripidean tragedy” ().  The paradox of defining the avant-garde on the basis of the old, archaic or classical, is finely argued by Klooster (,  – ).  For their stylistic and theatrical innovations, see Webster ,  – .  Cf. the conclusive remark by Fantuzzi (a, ): “But what space can there be for the ‘bourgeois’ language of the theatre of Euripides or Menander, or for the ‘modern’ Hellenistic theatre in general, within the ideal framework evident in Dioscorides? Little, I believe”.  It should be noted that Dioscorides appears to be the forerunner of the ‘Longinean’ ὕψος, in introducing the word ἐξύψωσεν (. –  HE παίγνια καὶ κώμους τούσδε τελειοτέρους/ Αἰσχύλος

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drian viewpoint, as they offer a panorama of the development of tragedy from its very beginnings until its perfection. Thespis is called the first to have introduced tragic song (20.1 HE τραγικὴν ὃς ἀνέπλασα πρῶτος ἀοιδήν), an innovator (20.2 HE καινοτομῶν), indeed the εὑρετής of tragedy (21.1 HE Θέσπιδος εὕρεμα τοῦτο); Aeschylus is evoked as a reformist of the primitive dramatic form (21.2– 3 HE παίγνια καὶ κώμους τούσδε τελειοτέρους/ Αἰσχύλος ἐξύψωσεν) and a pioneer in the field of stage production (21.5 HE τὰ κατὰ σκηνὴν μετεκαίνισεν); finally Sophocles is praised for leading tragedy to ultimate perfection, since Antigone and Electra are both characterized as the ἄκρον of tragic art (cf. 22.9 – 10 HE).¹⁰¹ Linguistically and conceptually the epigrams are under the influence of the scholarly tradition of Alexandria. The vocabulary is carefully chosen to evoke the technical discourse used in the scholia: 20 HE ἀνέπλασα, τραγικὴν ἀοιδήν, καινοτομῶν, μεταπλάσσουσι, προσευρήσει; 21 HE εὕρεμα, ἐξύψωσεν, κατὰ σκηνήν, μετεκαίνισεν; 22 HE διδασκαλίης, ἄκρον; 23 HE χορούς, Σατύρων, ἐν καινοῖς ἤθεσιν, ἀναρχαΐσας, τὸν ἄρσενα ῥυθμόν, καινοτομηθείς; 24 HE τῷ κωμῳδογράφῳ, τέχνης ἀρχαίης.¹⁰² More importantly Dioscorides follows a trend prevalent in Alexandrian scholarship, namely the search for the origins of the various dramatic genres; the epigram dedicated to the ‘inventor’ of tragedy Thespis echoes the Hellenistic theories on the aition of tragoidia/tragikos. ¹⁰³ By a strange coincidence the exact views expressed in Dioscorides’ epigrams on the development of drama, in addition to the remarkable omission of Euripides from the canon of the tragedians, are found only once in the Vita prefacing Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound (Sch. vetera ‘Aesch.’ Prom. Suppl. vit. 16):

ἐξύψωσεν) as a technical term for Aeschylus’ loftiness (cf. Aristoph. Frogs  πυργώσας ῥήματα of Aeschylean elevated style). Cf. Fantuzzi a, .  The evolutionary scheme from satyr play towards tragedy is a reminiscence of Aristotle (Poet. a διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικοῦ μεταβαλεῖν ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνύνθη), who, however, only mentions the innovations of Aeschylus and Sophocles, while the achievements of Thespis are passed over in silence (Poet. a).  Webster (,  – ) points out that three more words, namely τρυγικόν (an emendation for τραγικόν), πρίνινον and δριμὺ θύμον, are reminiscences of Aristophanic criticism and prove that Dioscorides was familiar with third-century theories of drama that have been taken over by Horace.  It seems that the Alexandrians put forward alternative theories regarding the origins of tragedy; some scholars have attributed such a theory to Eratosthenes on the basis of fr.  CA Ἰκαριοῖ, τόθι πρῶτα περὶ τράγον ὠρχήσαντο. On the ancient evidence and the scholarly discussion of the origins Pickard-Cambridge ,  –  remains indispensable. See also below p. .

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λογιζέσθω δὲ ὅτι πολλῷ χαλεπώτερον ἦν ἐπὶ Θέσπιδι, Φρυνίχῳ τε καὶ Χοιρίλῳ ἐς τοσόνδε μεγέθους τὴν τραγῳδίαν προσαγαγεῖν ἢ †ἐπὶ Αἰσχύλου εἰπόντος† ἐς τὴν τοῦ Σοφοκλέους ἐλθεῖν τελειότητα. One should take into account that it was much more difficult to add such magnitude to tragedy in the era of Thespis, Phrynichus and Choerilus than…in the time of Aeschylus… in order to rise to Sophoclean perfection.

Dioscorides not only poeticizes literary history but moreover enters in a dialogue with the scholars active in Alexandria in the mid-third century, especially with personalities such as Aristophanes of Byzantium, a scholar who excelled in the commenting of drama.¹⁰⁴ Since the work of his predecessors, Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron, is not retraceable in the scholiastic corpora, and the next generation focused almost exclusively on comedy,¹⁰⁵ Aristophanes is perhaps the key figure for the literary criticism on tragedy found in the older scholia.¹⁰⁶ Obviously the second half of the third century marks only the beginning of this tradition, one that was meant to develop throughout Late antiquity and Byzantium, and hence it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to date the various theories on the tragic attested in the scholia. Given the bulk of evidence and the in-depth studies of the tragic scholia from the viewpoint of literary criticism, I will confine my analysis to the bare essentials.¹⁰⁷ Therefore I will sum up some of the critical innovations introduced by the scholiasts of tragedy, working on the conjecture that a great deal of them can be attributed to third-century Alexandrian philologists, although in their majority they are filtered by later grammarians such as Didymus. It should be noted that tragic scholia are methodologically of greater interest,

 According to Athenaeus, Machon, the comic playwright praised by Dioscorides, taught Aristophanes the parts of comedy (. Μάχων ὁ κωμῳδιοποιὸς…διδάσκαλος γενόμενος τῶν κατὰ κωμῳδίαν μερῶν ᾿Aριστοφάνους τοῦ γραμματικοῦ, cf. . Μάχων δ᾽ ὁ Σικυώνιος…διόπερ ὁ γραμματικὸς ᾿Aριστοφάνης ἐσπούδασε συσχολάσαι αὐτῷ νέος ὤν): on this basis, Webster (, ) assumes that Dioscorides was acquainted with the work done on Old Comedy by Eratosthenes and Aristophanes of Byzantium.  Comedy, especially Old, was the subject of scholarly work for Lycophron, Euphronius, Dionysiades and Eratosthenes, see Pfeiffer ,  – .  This is the view introduced by Gudeman (,  – ) who argues that he can trace the style of Aristophanes in the aesthetic judgements found in the scholia. Less important for tragic literary criticism was Aristarchus who was rather known for his lexicographical and grammatical scholia, see Pfeiffer ,  – .  Systematic treatment of the literary, rhetorical and aesthetic theories that are latent in Greek scholia, with critical distinctions between the Homeric and the tragic ones, in the detailed study by Meijering  and the perceptive updated analysis by Nünlist .

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but significant references on tragedy and the tragic in Ptolemaic Alexandria can also be found in the corpus of the Homeric and Aristophanes scholia. Like modern scholars, Hellenistic and later philologists generally refer to a play, either tragic or comic, as drama and anything related to it as dramatikos. ¹⁰⁸ The term evokes the tripartite division of the narrative modes into the diegetic, the mimetic and the mixed introduced by Plato (Rep. 393d-394d), yet it is worth noting that Hellenistic scholars have a strong preference for ‘dramatic’ over the Platonic ‘mimetic’, possibly under the influence of Aristotelian terminology.¹⁰⁹ Drama and its derivatives, on the other hand, suggest that such plays were designed to be performed onstage (e. g. in recurrent expressions like ἡ σκηνὴ τοῦ δράματος, τὰ ἐπί τῆς σκηνῆς καὶ τοῦ δράματος πρόσωπα). In this case, the usage corresponds to the Alexandrian categorization of poetry into scenic and other, and is consistent with the widespread trend in the scholia to include comments on matters of staging.¹¹⁰ Tragikos is a more complex term and its frequent use in the scholia merits special attention. In most cases tragikos is the result of the proper application of the τραγικὴ λέξις (Sch. Aesch. Eum. 181a τραγικώτερον ὄφιν εἶπεν τὸ βέλος and Th. 219d τραγικώτερον πανήγυριν εἴρηκεν τὴν εἰς ταὐτὸ τῶν θεῶν συναγωγήν); appropriate wording was probably deemed as the essential prerequisite of tragedy, and Aristophanes would rely on this to create a paratragic effect (Sch. Aristoph. Ach. 418a τρύχη δὲ τὰ ῥάκη, τραγικῶς and Plut. 9 ὃς θεσπιῳδεῖ] ἐτραγικεύσατο τῇ φράσει).¹¹¹ In other cases it may denote scenic effectiveness (Sch. Aesch. Eum. 64b καὶ γίνεται ὄψις τραγική) or a costume that may visualize a tragic character (Sch. Aristoph. Nub. 70a λέγεται δὲ καὶ ἡ πορφυρίς, ἣν φοροῦσιν οἱ τραγικοὶ βασιλεῖς). A subtler reading of certain occurrences of tragikos in the scholia reveals a gradual development of the term which, far from being merely a generic marker, becomes a complex notion of emotional effectiveness and aesthetic evaluation,

 Curiously, the first occurrence of δρᾶμα with the meaning of ‘tragic event’ (LSJ) in a nontheatrical context is Hellenistic: Polybius Hist. .. –  ἡ τύχη δρᾶμα κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν καιρὸν ἐπεισήγαγεν τὸ κατὰ τοὺς υἱούς.  For the distinction between mimetic/dramatic in Plato, Aristotle and the Hellenistic scholia, see Nünlist ,  – .  Nünlist (,  – ) gives a thorough account of staging and dramaturgy in the extant dramatic scholia by arguing that these comments helped readers visualize the actual performance of a play. See also Falkner  for the interdependence between textual tradition, interpretation and performance in the Alexandrian scholia.  On paratragic expression in Aristophanes cf. Sch. Aristoph. Ach. b ἀτταταῖ] θρηνῶν παρατραγῳδεῖ. Paratragedy through stylistic means as highlighted in the scholia is examined by Nünlist (,  – ).

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strikingly illustrated in the use of the adjective in the comparative and the superlative. The roots of this usage go back to Aristophanes (only in Peace 136 ὅπως ἐφαίνου τοῖς θεοῖς τραγικώτερος) and are taken over by Aristotle (Poet. 1453a Εὐριπίδης…τραγικώτατός γε τῶν ποιητῶν φαίνεται), yet in the Hellenistic scholia it is established as a measure of tragic intensity as perceived by the audience.¹¹² The gradation of the tragic underlies utterances such as ‘the uncanny nature of the Eumenides makes them seem more tragic’ (Sch. Aesch. Eum. 69a τὸ ἀλλόκοτον δὲ τῆς φύσεως…τραγικώτερον διασύρει) or ‘the scene is again transferred…to the anxiety of Phaedra and the compassion of the Chorus, thus the poet turns, in a most tragic manner, to another sad scene’ (Sch. Eur. Hipp. 672 μετάγεται πάλιν ἡ σκηνή…ἐπὶ τὴν τῆς Φαίδρας ἀγωνίαν καὶ τοῦ χοροῦ συμπάθειαν, τραγικώτατα εἰς ἄλλον οἶκτον μετιόντος πάλιν τοῦ ποιητοῦ). Finally, the term acquires a clear aesthetic resonance when coupled with the abstract notions of πάθος, for example in the expression τραγικὸν πάθος in the Sophoclean scholia, and ὕψος, especially in the formula ὑψηλῶς καὶ τραγικῶς.¹¹³ Another aspect of tragedy that has attracted the attention of Hellenistic scholiastic criticism is the nature, structure and function of the tragic plot. This is, of course, an old problem stemming from the core of the Poetics, but the Alexandrian scholars made significant progress in theorizing about it. The first question addressed was whether poetry should rely on truth or fiction, the second, particularly centered on the tragedians, what were the limits of poetic license in the handling of myth.¹¹⁴ Both matters are closely intertwined in the Aristotelian view according to which the tragedians should not deviate from the traditional or well-known version of a myth (Poet. 1453b):

 Similarly pathos intensifies the tragic effectiveness according to the scholia either on a purely stylistic basis (on the beginning of Medea, Sch. Eur. Med.  ἐπαινεῖται δὲ ἡ εἰσβολὴ διὰ τὸ παθητικῶς ἄγαν ἔχειν) and a theatrical level (Sch. Soph. Aias a οὕτω γὰρ μεῖζον γίνεται τὸ πάθος τῆς τραγῳδίας, τῶν θεατῶν νῦν μὲν παραφρονοῦντα ὀλίγῳ δ᾽ ὕστερον ἔμφρονα θεωμένων) or as a consequence of the antithesis between a good character and his undeserved sufferings (Sch. Soph. OT  ἐκ τούτου δὲ παθητικωτέραν τὴν τραγῳδίαν ποιεῖ ὅταν ὁ τοιοῦτος εἶναι νομιζόμενος φανῇ καινοῖς μύσεσιν ἔνοχος). See the thorough analysis in Meijering ,  – .  The latter is attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium by Gudeman (, ).  For both I rely on the critical analysis by Papadopoulou  and . Meijering () thoroughly reviews the problem of fact and fiction in poetry from Aristotle to ‘Longinus’ with a detailed presentation of the views of Eratosthenes and Aristarchus; on the notion of poetic license in the Homeric scholia, see Nünlist ,  – .

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τοὺς μὲν οὖν παρειλημμένους μύθους λύειν οὐκ ἔστιν, λέγω δὲ οἷον τὴν Κλυταιμήστραν ἀποθανοῦσαν ὑπὸ τοῦ Ὀρέστου καὶ τὴν Ἐριφύλην ὑπὸ τοῦ ᾿Aλκμέωνος, αὐτὸν δὲ εὑρίσκειν δεῖ καὶ τοῖς παραδεδομένοις χρῆσθαι καλῶς. Well, one cannot interfere with the traditional stories, cannot, for instance, say that Clytemnestra was not killed by Orestes or Eriphyle by Alcmaeon; what one should do is invent for oneself and use the traditional material well. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

The traditional material implied by Aristotle is thought to be, in general terms, true, i. e. of historical provenance and/or part of the cultural heritage, and not the result of artistic creativity.¹¹⁵ Hellenistic scholars developed this idea into a distinctive feature of tragedy and comedy. Fiction qua poetic invention (πλάσμα) was unwelcome for tragedy, whereas, conversely, comedy relied almost exclusively on invented stories giving the impression of realism. Gradually, however, scholars started to acknowledge that tragedy also included realistic inventions or true-to-life modifications—perhaps suggested by the term βιωτικά found primarily in the Homeric scholia—on part of the poet, especially when he strove to heighten the credibility of heroic characters or mythical events.¹¹⁶ As for the tragedians’ faithfulness towards the mythical tradition and the limits of poetic license, Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are frequently credited with inventions opposed to the tradition (παρὰ τὴν ἱστορίαν);¹¹⁷ especially the latter is notorious for his predilection for innovations (Sch. Eur. Hec. 3 πολλάκις δὲ ὁ Εὐριπίδης αὐτοσχεδιάζει and Ph. 159 ὡς αὐτοσχεδιάζειν νῦν ἔοικεν ὁ Εὐριπίδης).¹¹⁸ Despite the restrictions posed by traditional material, ancient scholars recognize the liberty of the tragic poets to be flexible in the design of their plots (Sch. Eur. Ph. 1710 ὡς βούλονται γὰρ οἰκονομοῦσι τὰ δράματα).¹¹⁹ The selection, arrangement and motivation of events¹²⁰ in the narrative (οἰκονομία) are frequently discussed in the scholia.¹²¹ Yet, in commenting on plot arrangement, narrative  Other Aristotelian notions, such as the law of probability and necessity in the devising of a plot, seem to contradict the historicity of tragic myth, see e. g. Poet. a φανερὸν δὲ ἐκ τῶν εἰρημένων καὶ ὅτι οὐ τὸ τὰ γενόμενα λέγειν, τοῦτο ποιητοῦ ἔργον ἐστίν, ἀλλ᾽ οἷα ἂν γένοιτο καὶ τὰ δυνατὰ κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον.  On the realistic turn of tragedy as may be traced in ancient scholarship, see Meijering ,  – .  See Papadopoulou ,  –  for πλάττειν/πλάσμα in the tragic scholia.  Papadopoulou ,  – .  On the flexibility of myth which allowed the tragedians to introduce mythical innovations in their plays and thus create or even frustrate audience expectations, see Sommerstein .  In the tragic scholia the motivation behind events and characters seems to be of utmost importance: the evidence is collected by Nünlist ,  n. .  Meticulous discussions of economy in Meijering ,  –  and Nünlist ,  – .

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time, digression and episode, the Alexandrian scholars are alert to the generic particularities inherent to epic as opposed to dramatic plots, or, more accurately, between those found in the Homeric epics against those typical of tragedy. An illustrative example is the use of digressions: whereas they are consistent with the notion of length and may be used abundantly in epic narratives, the density and teleology of tragic plot has no room for superfluous details or secondary narratives.¹²² To the idiosyncratic plot of tragedy belong also the avoidance of retardation or acceleration of narrative time and the impossibility of representing simultaneous events on stage; indeed, story time and narrative time coincide in drama, a fact that renders any disruption in the flow of time impossible.¹²³ Last but definitely not least is a major problem of tragic poetics and Hellenistic scholarship: how poems end, and especially how tragedy ought to end in order to be deemed ‘tragic’. For Aristotle a sad ending was preferable but not indispensable to the making of a good tragedy, provided that a significant change of fortune takes place by the middle of the play. The main quality of tragedy is undoubtedly pathos, the sorrowful events that befall the tragic characters (cf. Suda s.v. τραγικὸν πάθος: συμφορᾶς μεστόν). As a rule, distinction is sharp between tragedy and comedy (Sch. Eur. Or. 1691): ἡ κατάληξις τῆς τραγῳδίας ἢ εἰς θρῆνον ἢ εἰς πάθος καταλύει, ἡ δὲ τῆς κωμῳδίας εἰς σπονδὰς καὶ διαλλαγάς ‘the denouement of tragedy consists either of lament or of a sorrowful event, whereas that of tragedy ends in truce and reconciliation’. In practice, though, playwrights decide otherwise, as the same scholion on the ending of Orestes continues: ὅθεν ὁρᾶται τόδε τὸ δρᾶμα κωμικῇ καταλήξει χρησάμενον· διαλλαγαὶ γὰρ πρὸς Μενέλαον καὶ Ὀρέστην ‘therefore this drama appears to have a comic ending, because Menelaus and Orestes are reconciled’. And it concludes by saying that the same is the case in Euripides’ Alcestis and Sophocles’ Tyro, because ‘in a word many such endings can be found in tragedy’ (ἁπλῶς εἰπεῖν πολλὰ τοιαῦτα ἐν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ εὑρίσκεται).¹²⁴ Undoubtedly the locus classicus for such a statement is the end of the hypothesis to Alcestis, attributed to Aristophanes of Byzantium (Sch. Eur. arg. Alc. 1.17– 18): τὸ δὲ δρᾶμα κωμικωτέραν ἔχει τὴν καταστροφήν ‘the

 Cf. Nünlist , : “The generally positive treatment of digressions in the Homeric scholia points to a broad acceptance of epische Breite (‘epic breadth/scope’). Conversely, the scholia on tragedy show considerable predilection for a densely woven plot, which must be kept free of too much dilatory material. They either criticize the poet for the inclusion of such material or they write with palpable praise that ‘the story advances’ towards its denouement”.  Nünlist ,  – .  Tragic pathos as coexistent with comic catastrophe is studied by Meijering (,  – ).

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drama has a more comic denouement’.¹²⁵ Lack of catastrophe at the end of a tragedy was indeed perceived as comic, and seems to have been typical of Euripides. The Euripidean happy-ending tragedies were definitely read in the light of New Comedy and Menander by the third-century scholiasts. At this moment in the history of scholarship a contamination between tragic and comic not only appeared possible but also plausible.¹²⁶ This view was perhaps theoretically articulated by Aristophanes of Byzantium, but had been a poetic practice since Euripides.

 Some manuscripts add the comment τὸ δὲ δρᾶμά ἐστι σατυρικώτερον, ὅτι εἰς χαρὰν καὶ ἡδονὴν καταστρέφει παρὰ τὸ τραγικόν, which refers to a satyr play ending, but it is generally thought to be a later addition, see Meijering ,  – .  For comic twists in tragedy as perceived by Aristotle and Hellenistic scholars, not always in a favorable light, see the excellent discussion in Fantuzzi .

3. Alexandrian Tragedy The star system of the Alexandrian tragedians In his astoundingly learned Deipnosophists Athenaeus quotes several times an early Hellenistic satyr play under the title of Agen. ¹ Athenaeus is undecided whether the play was authored by Python of Catana (or Byzantium), a dramatist following Alexander in his Eastern campaign, or by the Macedonian king himself, in which case he would be introducing a tendency that became fashionable for Hellenistic and Roman rulers of later centuries, such as Ptolemy Philopator and Nero. Notable is the information provided on the performance of the play. Agen, we learn from Athenaeus, was actually performed during the celebration of the Dionysia at the bank of the river Hydaspes (13.68 ὁ τὸν ᾿Aγῆνα τὸ σατυρικὸν δραμάτιον γεγραφώς, ὅπερ ἐδίδαξεν Διονυσίων ὄντων ἐπὶ τοῦ Ὑδάσπου [τοῦ] ποταμοῦ). Although not expressly stated, it may well have been composed ad hoc to entertain Alexander’s soldiers. Leaving aside the thorny problem of the chronology of the play, which dealt with real events dating to 324 BC, i. e. two years after Alexander’s battle at the Hydaspes,² the point made by Athenaeus is impressive: drama and the Dionysiac festival were a dominant form of mass entertainment under any circumstances and in every possible setting from Alexander’s era onwards. Yet the role of theatre in the years of the Diadochi was radically upgraded. As Plutarch ironically observes, the lavish lifestyle established at their courts was diametrically opposed to the hardships experienced by Alexander, a fact that is reflected in the function of theatre too (On the Fortune of Alexander 341.A): ἄπιθι πρὸς ᾿Aντίοχον τὸν Σελεύκου, πρὸς ᾿Aρτοξέρξην τὸν Κύρου ἀδελφόν· ἄπελθε πρὸς Πτολεμαῖον τὸν Φιλάδελφον. ἐκείνους ζῶντες οἱ πατέρες βασιλεῖς ἀνηγόρευσαν, ἐκεῖνοι μάχας ἀδακρύτους ἐνίκων, ἐκεῖνοι πανηγυρίζοντες ἐν πομπαῖς καὶ θεάτροις διετέλεσαν, ἐκείνων ἕκαστος δι᾽ εὐτυχίαν βασιλεύων ἐγήρασεν. (addressing Tyche) Go to Antiochus the son of Seleucus, to Artaxerxes the brother of Cyrus; go to Ptolemy Philadelphus. They were proclaimed kings by their fathers while still alive, they won tearless battles, they spent their lives celebrating in processions and theatres, each one of them grew old reigning in prosperity and good luck.

 Ath. Deipn. ., . and ..  The testimony of Athenaeus and the various philological hypotheses on Agen are collected by Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

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Ptolemy Philadelphus is mentioned here as a prominent example of eastern extravagance. In this novel context theatre becomes a royal institution. In effect, in Alexandria, theatre, apart from being a form of popular entertainment, as it had been in Athens and in several cultural and religious centers of the Mediterranean, became a status symbol of Ptolemaic kingship, thus establishing, alongside the foundation of the Museum, the king’s cultural authority.³ Ptolemaic politics, the Museum and the prestige of the theatre in court and urban life explain the emergence of the tragic Pleiad in Alexandria. In accordance with its title, the Pleiad suggests a group of seven poets, but ancient sources vary as to their actual number and identity.⁴ The standard quintet consists of Alexander Aetolus, Lycophron of Chalcis, Homerus of Byzantium, Phili(s)cus of Corcyra (or Aegina) and Sositheus of Alexandria in Troas; Sosiphanes of Syracuse, Aeantides, Dionysiades of Tarsos and Euphronius are occasionally associated with the starry company.⁵ All must have been active (except for the younger Euphronius) during the reign of Philadelphus (283 – 246 BC).⁶ The number of tragedies attributed to each one of them is no less than impressive: 73 to Sosiphanes (Suda s.v. Σωσιφάνης provides this number for the general category ‘drama’), 64 (or 46) to Lycophron, 45 (or 57 ‘dramas’ according to Tzetzes) to Homerus, 42 to Phili(s)cus, numbers almost equaling those of the classical tragedians. And these were only the tragedians who wrote plays as members of the Pleiad; other scholars name more than sixty tragedians and assume that several thousands of tragedies were written during the three centuries of Hellenistic civilization.⁷ The numbers are staggering, and even if these estimates are exaggerated, the disappearance of the texts of these playwrights comes as a mystery and a surprise, if we take into consideration their productivity and posthumous fame.

 Blum (,  – ) observes that the Ptolemies were not plainly patrons of the arts and sciences, but used Greek culture as a tool of propaganda; as he rightly concludes () “the foundation and support of the Alexandrian Museum was an act of cultural policy in the true sense of the word”.  The main sources are the articles of the Suda on the individual poets and the various scholiastic traditions on Hephaestion (Sch. A, B and Choeroboscus): Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ) has collected and compared the sources.  An alternative catalogue attested in the Scholia Theocritea (Anecd. Estense ) and Tzetzes’ Genus Lycophronis identifies the Pleiad as the group of the seven most celebrated Alexandrian poets which includes besides the tragedians Theocritus, Aratus, Nicander and even Apollonius of Rhodes. Cf. Stoessl .  For the chronological problems associated with the poets of the Pleiad, see Fraser , . n. .  Ziegler , esp.  – .

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The total lack of primary sources, i. e. the body of texts or extensive fragments of the Pleiad dramas (tragedies and apparently a good amount of satyr plays also), has left scholars bewildered as regards the thematics and aesthetics of these plays; questions about form, style and performative contexts still remain unanswered.⁸ The aim of this chapter is to tentatively sketch out the tendencies developed in Alexandrian tragedy. Thus, it will inevitably deal with the artistic profile of these dramatists, so as to provide a basis for developing general hypotheses about the trends of tragedy and the tragic in Hellenistic Alexandria. But first a ‘Who’s Who’ of the Pleiad tragedians is necessary. The Pleiad tragedians were probably contemporaries.⁹ It is not attested whether they were all active in Alexandria and/or specifically at the Ptolemaic court, or merely aesthetically affiliated with Alexandrianism. Some definitely coexisted in Alexandria, however. Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron of Chalcis were, according to the testimony of Tzetzes, appointed as co-editors of the scenic books by Philadelphus himself. The Suda provides for both the same description and, curiously, the identical phrasing applies to Homerus of Byzantium too (it is nevertheless obscure whether Homerus’ philological activity took place in the Museum or elsewhere). They were scholars and tragedians (γραμματικὸς καὶ τραγῳδιῶν ποιητής), and therefore ranked as members of the Pleiad ([Alexander] ὡς καὶ τῶν ἑπτὰ τραγικῶν ἕνα κριθῆναι, [Lycophron] ἔστι γοῦν εἷς τῶν ἑπτὰ οἵτινες Πλειὰς ὠνομάσθησαν, [Homerus] διὸ συνηριθμήθη τοῖς ἑπτά).¹⁰ One is tempted to view here a causal connection between the scholarly research (on drama?) and the writing of tragedies, a combination that seems to have been a prerequisite for including these poets to the highly regarded Pleiad group.¹¹ Building on this assumption, one may further elaborate on the criteria applying to the poets of the Pleiad. A pertinent question would be whether the Pleiad tragedies were ‘closet’—I would rather call them ‘academic’—dramas or performed in the theatre. Reading again between the lines of the Suda entries

 The only comprehensive survey entirely dedicated to the obscure literary phenomenon of Hellenistic tragedy, with a meticulous examination of testimonies and the surviving fragments arranged separately for each poet and accompanied by English translations, is the monograph by Kotlińska-Toma .  The standard phrase found in the sources for the poets of the Pleiad is ἐπὶ τῶν χρόνων Πτολεμαίου τοῦ Φιλαδέλφου ἑπτὰ ἄριστοι γεγόνασι τραγικοί.  It is unusual for the Suda to set the philological identity in conjunction with the poetic one, a stylistic device confined to the category of the poetae docti (s.vv. ᾿Aντίμαχος, Ζηνόδοτος, Νίκανδρος, Ὀππιανός, Τρυφιόδωρος).  The younger poet ascribed to the Pleiad by the Scholia to Hephaestion was also a grammarian doing research on comedy and the teacher of Aristophanes of Byzantium, the Alexandrian drama scholar par excellence: see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

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about the seven tragedians that are associated with the Pleiad by the Byzantine encyclopedia, we can make an interesting observation: only Sosiphanes is explicitly said to have participated in tragic agones through the use of the terms ἐδίδαξε and ἐνίκησε, whereas Sositheus is indirectly referred to as a ‘competitor’ (ἀνταγωνιστής) of Homerus of Byzantium.¹² These terms are typical for playwrights in the Suda and are consistently used for the three classical tragedians. On the other hand, the fact that for the other playwrights, not only the minor Homerus and Dionysiades, but also the leading tragedian Alexander of Aetolus, the term used by the lemmatist is a plain ἔγραψεν can hardly be a coincidence;¹³ for Lycophron and Philiscus the neutral expression αἱ δὲ τραγῳδίαι αὐτοῦ εἰσι is used instead but with no hint to the theatrical presentation of these plays.¹⁴ That the Pleiad tragedies were not primarily intended for presentation in dramatic contests, i. e. did not in principle have the same social and cultural function as classical tragedies, is further reinforced by the following arguments. First, Phili(s)cus too had a double identity in the court of Philadelphus: he was a tragedian and a priest of Dionysus (Suda s.v. Φιλίσκος…τραγικὸς καὶ ἱερεὺς τοῦ Διονύσου ἐπὶ τοῦ Φιλαδέλφου Πτολεμαίου γεγονώς). If there is an interconnectedness between his two capacities, then his tragedies would have been conceived as part of the religious agenda of the Ptolemies. The testimony of Callixenus of Rhodes confirms this hypothesis (in Ath. Deipn. 5.27): Phili(s)cus paraded as head of the Dionysus’ technitae during Philadelphus’ Grand Procession, and, if there was space there for any type of dramatic representation, he might have written ‘religious’ tragedies designed especially for this occasion.¹⁵ At the opposite end of the spectrum, one may also suppose that ‘academic’ tragedies could have been written by the Pleiad tragedians. There is a fascinating, albeit enigmatic, statement in the Suda article on Lycophron according to which his tragedy Nauplius was a διασκευή (διασκευὴ δ᾽ ἐστὶν ἐκ τούτων ὁ Ναύπλιος). The term is variously used by later scholars to denote either (a) the new

 Cf. the epigram  HE by Dioscorides and especially ll.  –  ἐκισσοφόρησε γὰρ ὡνὴρ/ ἄξια Φλιασίων, ναὶ μὰ χορούς, Σατύρων which imply the participation in agones.  Cf. the same term used for Lycophron by Tzetzes (Sch. Lyc. ἀλλαχοῦ γὰρ οὗτος ὁ Λυκόφρων τραγικός ἐστι  ἢ  δράματα τραγωδιῶν γεγραφώς).  A notable parallel can be found in the article for Chaeremon, a dramatist classified as anagnostikos by Aristotle (Rhet. b), where the lemmatist avoids any reference to performance (Suda s.v. Χαιρήμων, κωμικός. τῶν δραμάτων αὐτοῦ ἐστι ταῦτα).  Phili(s)cus of Corcyra is identified by scholars with another Philiscus quoted in a separate lemma in the Suda as a writer of comedies, to whom the plays with religious connotations are attributed. If these plays were authored by the Dionysiac priest, then this would explain their emphasis on religious themes. For the identification of the two playwrights and the discussion of the ancient sources, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

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edition or recension of a work, or (b) a theatrical performance (LSJ s.v. διασκευή). In the first case, Lycophron, following the habit of his contemporary scholar poets, would have revised the first edition of his tragedy Nauplius. ¹⁶ On this basis, one may also propose a similar solution for the obscure fact noted in the Suda article that Lycophron wrote an Oedipus I and an Oedipus II: could it be that some of his academic tragedies were revised before they were published as second editions? If, however, the term διασκευή implies a staging for the theatre, the hypothesis that most of Lycophron’s dramas were intended for publication and reading rather than performance is further corroborated.¹⁷ In this latter case, Nauplius as performed tragedy would be the exception and not the rule in Lycophron’s tragic production. From the aforementioned facts emerges a clearer picture of the tragic Pleiad. A plausible assumption would be that the Pleiad was conceived as a club of leading personalities who at the same time excelled in the composition of tragic poetry. The exclusivity of this club is not only reflected in the public position held by most of them—they were scholars in the Museum and priests—but also in the carefully selected terminology: the sources describe the Pleiad as a τάξις meticulously ranked (οἳ τὰ δευτερεῖα τῶν τραγικῶν ἔχουσι, τῆς δευτέρας τάξεως τῶν τραγικῶν) which only the ἄριστοι could join after a process of extreme selectivity (κριθῆναι, συνηριθμήθη).¹⁸ It may be assumed that the Pleiad did primarily describe a canonical list of tragedians,¹⁹ but since, in contrast to other canons, it included contemporary, living poets, it could additionally implicate a title awarded by the king, comparable to that of the Head of the Library and the

 The most famous parallel is the προέκδοσις of the Argonautica allegedly compiled by Apollonius of Rhodes before the final, corrected edition of his epic: cf. Pfeiffer ,  – .  Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ) makes an excellent point in identifying Lycophron’s Nauplius with the tragedy Nauplius adapted by his contemporary, Philo of Byzantium, for representation on a mechanical puppet stage in Alexandria (Heron, De automatis . – ). Older views, like the one expressed by Geffcken (, ), interpret διασκευὴ as an alternative story in comparison to the one recounted by the classical tragedians or Lycophron himself in the first version of this tragedy.  The obscure Dionysi(a)des, who is characterized by Strabo as the best of all the Pleiad tragedians (.. ποιητὴς δὲ τραγῳδίας ἄριστος τῶν τῆς Πλειάδος καταριθμουμένων Διονυσίδης), was a prominent personality of Tarsos and was perhaps on account of this that he was awarded the title of the Pleiad poet. It is perhaps not irrelevant that, according to an ambiguous testimony, there existed a special group of Tarsian poets, probably dramatists, of great renown (Diog. Laert. . [Βίων] ποιητὴς τραγῳδίας τῶν Ταρσικῶν λεγομένων, cf. . Ταρσικὸς σατυρογράφος).  Both τάξις and (ἐγ)κρίνειν are termini technici denoting the selection of authors by the Museum scholars, see Pfeiffer ,  – .

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Royal Tutor. And as in the case of the latter, the Pleiad and its achievement in tragedy was not aimed at the people but at a sophisticated audience.²⁰ This scenario may explain another peculiarity associated with the Pleiad, namely the exclusion from the company of other illustrious poets of the era aspiring to write tragedy. A case in point is Timon of Phlius, the sceptic philosopher and satirical poet, to whom 60 tragedies, 30 comedies and an unknown number of satyr dramas are ascribed (Diog. Laert. 9.110).²¹ Timon spent some time in Alexandria where he was acquainted with Philadelphus;²² an iambic fragment from his satirical Silloi mocking the scholars of the Museum attests to his close affinity with the Alexandrian intelligentsia (Ath. Deipn. 1.41). According to the equivocal testimony of his biographer, Diogenes Laertius (9.113), Timon ‘cooperated’ with two of the Pleiad dramatists, Alexander and Homerus, in the writing of tragedy: φιλογράμματός τε καὶ τοῖς ποιηταῖς μύθους γράψαι ἱκανὸς καὶ δράματα συνδιατιθέναι. μετεδίδου δὲ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ᾿Aλεξάνδρῳ καὶ Ὁμήρῳ. Timon was a lover of books and was competent to write plots for the poets and helped them compose plays. He shared tragedies with Alexander and Homerus.

Although Timon is not enumerated as a member of the Pleiad, this peculiar testimony states that he was unofficially involved in the writing of the Pleiad tragedies either by providing raw material and helping the poets arrange them into actual plays²³ or by co-authoring tragedies (perhaps trilogies?) with the Pleiad playwrights.²⁴ What this testimony demonstrates is that not all the tragedians in Alexandria were deemed suitable for inclusion in the Pleiad;²⁵ the title of the Pleiad

 Could it be that another title, that of the Dionysiac technitae, called οἱ περὶ τοῦ Διονύσου καὶ θεοὺς ᾿Aδελφοὺς τεχνῖται, was connected to another group of tragedians and comedians in Alexandria who produced exclusively staged drama? On their doubtful position in connection to the Ptolemaic court, see Weber ,  n. .  Probably not intended for the stage but like the ones ascribed to Diogenes the Cynic philosopher (Diog. Laert. .), as Wachsmuth (,  – ) argues.  Diog. Laert. . ἐγνώσθη δὲ καὶ ᾿Aντιγόνῳ τῷ βασιλεῖ καὶ Πτολεμαίῳ τῷ Φιλαδέλφῳ, ὡς αὐτὸς ἐν τοῖς ἰάμβοις αὑτῷ μαρτυρεῖ.  This would make him an assistant writer of the kind Parthenius was for the Roman elegist Cornelius Gallus in the sense that he collected abstruse and obscure stories on their behalf, according to the interpretation of the passage by Wachsmuth (,  – ).  For this hypothesis, that has no other parallel in ancient literature, see Kotlińska-Toma , .  Conversely, not all members of the Pleiad were necessarily residents of Alexandria—they could be members of the Museum, but also guests at the Ptolemaic court or poets whose

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poet may have resembled that of the Librarian, which was by analogy denied to many scholars active in the Museum. Another court poet failing to be awarded both titles could be Callimachus, if the report that he was a writer of tragedies, comedies and satyr plays is accurate.²⁶ Tragedy was definitely written and performed also outside the selective club of the courtly tragedians, as poets like Ezekiel prove; and the abundance of plays modelled on Alexandrian poetics is richly attested through numerous titles and fragments.²⁷ In the following chapters, I will explore the thematics of Hellenistic tragedy, which drew upon myth as well as history, and the innovations introduced to the genre by poets who adopted the Alexandrian aesthetic principles in their plays, both in and outside the Pleiad.

Rupture and revival of tragic myth Hellenistic scholarship is faced with numerous challenges, the most daunting of which is the study of tragedy. The only research tool available are the biographical testimonies about the tragedians, some of which mention titles of their plays in passing, and the impressively scant fragments, primarily cited out of context in thematic anthologies of Late Antiquity and Byzantium. As a consequence, scholars may only formulate speculations that cannot be confirmed by evidence. The following attempt to map the thematics of Alexandrian tragedy takes place in this methodological vacuum.

plays were staged and/or published for an Alexandrian audience; cf. Weber ,  n.  for previous scholarly hypotheses on the matter. One cannot overlook, however, that all sources emphasize their connection to the reign (or the court?) of Ptolemy Philadelphus.  Cf. Suda s.v. Καλλίμαχος…τῶν δὲ αὐτοῦ βιβλίων ἐστὶ καὶ ταῦτα…σατυρικὰ δράματα, τραγῳδίαι, κωμῳδίαι: the term βιβλία denoting Callimachus’ dramatic works may further reinforce the assumption that the plays ascribed to Alexandrian grammarians, like Lycophron and Alexander, were bookish rather than scenic. That Callimachus may have lacked the dramatic flair of other tragedians and was therefore less popular with Alexandrian public and his dramatic work was soon forgotten is argued by Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ). However, the Suda-entry should not be immediately dismissed, as Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (, ) observe: “Whether or not Callimachus composed dramatic works. the Suda does suggest that given the highly mimetic quality of Callimachus’ poetry, it would be in any event easy to assume that he wrote for the stage”.  For a list of more than sixty tragedians of the Hellenistic period, see Ziegler ,  – . The testimonies and fragments of the tragedians not belonging to the Pleiad are collected and discussed by Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ).

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Of the seven entries dedicated to the poets of the Pleiad by the Suda, only one includes an alphabetical list with 20 titles of tragedies.²⁸ It is that about Lycophron of Chalcis, and will be my starting point for exploring the thematics of Alexandrian tragedy (s.v. Λυκόφρων): εἰσὶ δὲ αἱ τραγῳδίαι αὐτοῦ Αἴολος, ᾿Aνδρομέδα, ᾿Aλήτης, Αἰολίδης, Ἐλεφήνωρ, Ἡρακλῆς, Ἱκέται, Ἱππόλυτος, Κασσανδρεῖς, Λάϊος, Μαραθώνιοι, Ναύπλιος, Οἰδίπους α, β, Ὀρφανός, Πενθεύς, Πελοπίδαι, Σύμμαχοι, Τηλέγονος, Χρύσιππος. His tragedies are Aeolus, Andromeda, Aletes, Aeolides, Elephenor, Heracles, The Suppliants, Hippolytus, The Cassandreians, Laius, The Marathonians, Nauplius, Oedipus I (and) II, The Orphan, Pentheus, Pelopids, The Allies, Telegonus, Chrysippus.

What does this paradigm—which includes less than a half or the one third of Lycophron’s alleged tragic production—demonstrate? Two titles indicate historical plays (The Cassandreians, The Marathonians); one, The Allies, seems to allude to a political subject matter; The Orphan is puzzling, as it would rather fit a New Comedy plot; finally, The Suppliants, is a general title that implicates a mythical subject if seen in the light of the homonymous tragedies by Aeschylus and Euripides. All four, except for The Orphan, reinforce the dominant role assigned to the Chorus. Yet the majority of titles shows a preference for mythical subjects. In the past scholars have attempted an arrangement of the extant titles in dilogies, a method that presupposes a thematic coherence between tragedies written and/or performed together.²⁹ Since, however, this practice is not confirmed for Hellenistic tragedy, the value of such an arrangement is questionable. Several titles indicate a link to classical tragedy: Aeolus (it is unknown whether Lycophron treated the myth about the son of Hellen or the son of Poseidon or the son of Hippotes), Aletes (a title attributed to Sophocles, spelled ᾿Aλείτης there, but without any clue as to the mythical character dramatized), The Suppliants (in connection to the Danaids in Aeschylus, to the Theban war in Euripides), Laius (written also by Aeschylus), Nauplius (twice? dramatized by Sophocles as Ναύπλιος καταπλέων and Ναύπλιος πυρκαεύς) and Chrysippus (also written by Euripides). Others evoke the most popular tragic stories and heroes: Andromeda (written by  Another list of plays that is attributed to Diogenes of Sinope is by some scholars ascribed to Philiscus of Aegina, who, if identified with the member of the Pleiad, would have written the following: Helena, Thyestes, Heracles, Achilles, Medea, Chrysippus, Oedipus (Diog. Laert. .).  The dilogies, according to R.J. Walker’s  study Addenda scenica, are the following (as cited and adopted by Kotlińska-Toma [,  – ]): Aeolus/Aeolides, Aletes/Telegonus, Andromeda/Heracles, Chrysippus/Pelopids, Elephenor/Nauplius, Hippolytus/The Marathonians, Laius/ Oedipus I, Oedipus II/The Orphan(s), Pentheus/The Suppliants, The Cassandreians/The Allies.

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Phrynichus, Sophocles and Euripides), Heracles (dramatized by Euripides, but also by Sophocles in satyr plays), Hippolytus (twice dramatized by Euripides), Oedipus (dramatized both by Aeschylus and twice by Sophocles)³⁰ and Pentheus (treated by Aeschylus and Euripides in the Bacchae). However, given the developments in fourth-century tragedy and the aesthetic principles of Alexandrian poetics, the affinity between Lycophron’s tragedies and those of his predecessors would be limited to the level of titles or their common mythical basis: in effect, it is plausible to suppose that the Hellenistic tragedians modified their classical models according to the sensitivity and taste of their age.³¹ One should bear in mind another trend, that of poeticizing alternative versions and obscure episodes of well-known myths or reconstructing the past of a popular hero or upgrading minor characters into protagonists, which may have defined the thematics of Alexandrian tragedy. Seen from this perspective, not only do the associations between Lycophron’s tragedies and the possible classical models become loose and superficial, but the class of unique titles assumes key importance. The Aeolides, not attested as a title for any other drama of antiquity, ambiguously evokes various characters. In archaic poetry Aeolides designates Sisyphus, yet in mythology the patronymic may apply to multiple heroes, some of whom are scarcely treated in literature: Aeolus the son of Hellen fathered Athamas, Cretheus, Salmoneus, Perieres, Deioneus and Magnes (Hesiod Catalogue of Women fr. 10 M.-W., Apollod. 1.50); of the six sons of Aeolus, the son of Poseidon or Hippotes, Macareus is the most prominent (Euripides Aeolus);³² moreover, the son of Hippotes bore Agathyrnus, Astyochus, Androcles, Iocastus, Phaeremon and Xuthus, all of which are enumerated as kings of Italy and Sicily (Diod. Sic. 5.8). The latter heroes aside, who stand on the brink of history and

 It is not easy to see why Oedipus I and II should correspond to two different storylines from the Oedipus myth (as R. J. Walker and F. Schramm have supposed, on whose views see Kotlińska-Toma , ), and not, as assumed above (cf. pp.  – ), to different versions or editions of the same play; it should be stressed that in the former case, ancient poets and scholars usually add a designator to distinguish between two different stories concerning the same character (examples abound, such as Οἰδίπους τύραννος and Οἰδίπους ἐπὶ Κολωνῷ or Ἱππόλυτος καλυπτόμενος and Ἱππόλυτος στεφανίας). The problem remains unresolved for some classical plays too, e. g. Tyro I and II or Phineus I and II by Sophocles, which may also indicate a tragedy and a satyr play.  Radical modifications of plotlines, endings and character depiction have been the rule for postclassical tragedies in general: the deviations from fifth-century homonymous tragedies are explored e. g. in the Medea and Alope of Carcinus, the Philoctetes of Theodectes and the Alcmaeon of Astydamas by Xanthakis-Karamanos ().  For the confusion between the two characters named Aeolus, the one of the Odyssey and the one of the homonymous tragedy by Euripides, see Gantz , ..

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therefore would present an aitiological interest for Lycophron, there are some likely candidates to star in an Alexandrian tragedy. Apart from Athamas who was also dramatized by Sophocles,³³ Macareus and his Alexandrian sibling, another unknown Aeolides, Diores, found only in Parthenius’ Erotika Pathemata, were both involved in love affairs with their sisters, Canace and Polymela respectively, and were therefore protagonists suitable for a Hellenistic tragic plot.³⁴ Of the extant unique titles, the Pelopids would have dealt with Atreus and Thyestes, whose story involved savage murders and pedophagy. Both heroes were popular with the classical tragedians—Sophocles wrote an Atreus, whereas he and Euripides both composed a Thyestes—and also with the later ones, Greek and Romans.³⁵ The remaining titles indicate the dramatization of marginal characters from the broader Trojan war cycle. Elephenor, the leader of the Abantes of Euboea, was one of Helen’s suitors and an ally of the Greeks in the Trojan expedition. According to the Iliad (4.463 – 472), he was killed on the battlefield by Agenor. Yet the recondite version of the Alexandrians focused on his dark past, since Elephenor had murdered his grandfather, Abas, and was therefore doomed to exile and haunted by the Erinyes: this would offer an appropriate subject matter for a Lycophronian tragedy. The last para-Trojan story treated by the tragedian Lycophron was that of Telegonus, the son of Odysseus who commits patricide without knowing the identity of his father. The story was narrated in a Cyclic epic, the Telegoneia by Eugammon of Cyrene; Aeschylus, and especially Sophocles in Odysseus Acanthoplex, narrated alternative versions of the mysterious death of Odysseus by an acantha (perhaps of a stingray?), in which Telegonus was also involved.

 On the contrary Sisyphus was a common satyrical subject for Euripides and Aeschylus, whereas Salmoneus gave the title to a satyr play by Sophocles.  A brilliant comparison of the story pattern of both Aeolid incest plots in Lightfoot ,  – . If the Polymela-Diores story was present in Philitas’ Hermes, then paying tribute to the master of Alexandrianism would be an added reason for Lycophron to treat the story. On the other hand, the Canace-Macareus love story was notorious for its exaggeration and emotionalism already in antiquity (as parodied by Aristophanes in the Frogs  and the Clouds  – , cf. Lightfoot ,  n. ) and this would also reinforce the presence of this celebrated story in an Alexandrian tragedy.  Fourth-century tragedians to whom a Thyestes is ascribed are: Apollodorus, Chaeremon, Carcinus, Cleophon and Diogenes of Sinope. Aristotle Poet. a too viewed Thyestes as the ideal tragic hero. Thyestes was also turned into pathetic tragedies by Ennius and Seneca, because the thematics of intrigue and blood, perfectly incorporated in Roman literature, have already attracted the attention of postclassical writers. On the Thyestes as a tragic and horrifying subject matter, see Poe  and Sideri-Tolia .

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Thus far Ι have traced the outline of the mythical tragedies attributed to Lycophron, and observed the superficial convergences with classical tragedy as well as the experimentation with new material. In addition, the Alexandra, a work that the Suda clearly distinguishes from the genuine dramas (s.v. Λυκόφρων…ἔγραψε καὶ τὴν καλουμένην ᾿Aλεξάνδραν, τὸ σκοτεινὸν ποίημα), shows significant parallels with the thematics of Lycophron’s tragedies. Notable is the marginal figure of Elephenor and the rarely dramatized story of Nauplius which are given a prominent place in the iambic Alexandra too (in lines 1034 – 1046 and 1090 – 1098 respectively).³⁶ Other common stories include that of Aeolus and Aeolides (~Alex. 738), Andromeda (~Alex. 836), Laius and Oedipus (~Alex. 433), Telegonus (~Alex. 793) and of course Heracles and the Pelopids (~Alex. passim).³⁷ Such ‘repetitions’ of the same story suggest that either both the tragedies and the Alexandra belong to the same third-century poet of the Alexandrian Pleiad or that the poet of the Alexandra was a younger imitator of the celebrated tragedian with a deep knowledge of his predecessor’s tragedies. Yet a definite answer to the controversial problem of the authorship of the Alexandra cannot be given.³⁸ Be that as it may, Lycophron was an affective and imposing tragic dramatist as the expression coturnatus Lycophron implies (Ov. Ibis 531).³⁹ Nevertheless the paradigm of Lycophron has demonstrated the duo ‘rupture and revival’ of tragic myth as expressed by Alexandrian tragedy. A handful of titles and fragments from other third-century tragedians points to the same direction. It is critical to note here that the fourth century had seen both the theorization and the parodying of tragic myth; moreover, subjects such as Medea or Oedipus had grown into smash hits with postclassical audiences. From this viewpoint, and given the scarcity of the surviving evidence, we may observe third-

 An attempt of reconstructing the plot of these two tragedies which were divergent from traditional renderings of the respective myths is made by Geffcken ().  Ziegler , .  As argued by Geffcken (); for the opposing view, see Ziegler ,  – , who offers a series of objections to demonstrate that the identification of the tragedian Lycophron and the Alexandra-‘Lycophron’ cannot be proved on the basis of their common mythological material. Hornblower (,  – ) rules out the identification of the two poets and claims that the Alexandra is a pseudonymous poem. Moreover, he rejects another fascinating hypothesis, namely that the Alexandra was written by a female poet.  However, it is debatable whether his tragedies survived after the decline of his era. For example, Ziegler (, ) rejects the theory put forward by previous scholars, according to which Ovid was directly influenced by Lycophron’s Andromeda for the composition of the Perseus myth in the Metamorphoses, on the basis that these tragedies (in their written form obviously) had perished with the Museum.

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century mythical tragedy as exemplifying (a) the rupture with traditional thematics through the introduction of new, typically Alexandrian, characters, and (b) the revival of the popular mythological cycles, especially the Trojan, with emphasis on marginal personages or minor stories. Beginning from the latter, we observe that the Trojan war cycle seems to have been present and alive in the tragic repertoire of third-century tragedy, albeit not in its widespread Homeric version. Obviously this was a traditional choice, since classical tragedians systematically drew upon the non-Homeric, Cyclic stories of the Trojan war to find suitable tragic material.⁴⁰ Lycophron with his Nauplius and Elephenor was not the only Pleiad poet to bring in new blood to old epic material —although in their majority his tragedies are interestingly non-Trojan in subject. Homerus of Byzantium wrote an obscure Eurypyleia for whose plot only conjectures can be made. There are several candidates for the identification of Eurypylus, but it is likely that the hero dramatized by Homerus is the son of the Mysian king Telephus who is murdered by the hand of Neoptolemus on the battlefield of Troy (cf. Od. 11.519 – 521). An argument in favor of this identification would be a passage from the Poetics, where Aristotle states that the story of Eurypylus as recounted in the Little Iliad would have made an excellent subject for an individual tragedy (Poet. 1459b), probably with Sophocles’ homonymous drama in mind.⁴¹ However, an enigmatic point is made by the peculiar typology of the title which only indirectly alludes to the hero. Eurypyleia may either refer to a work (an epic?) treating the story of Eurypylus or to a female character, about which almost nothing is known⁴² —unless this name designates the fatal mother of Eurypylus, Astyoche, who, urged by her brother Priam, sent her son to die in the Trojan war.⁴³ Even more difficult to define thematically is The Dice Players attributed

 Jouan () has extensively studied the reception of the Cypria by Euripides; his “Introduction” ( – ) is dedicated to how the three major tragedians drew on the Cyclic epics around Troy and, to a lesser degree, on Homer for inspiration.  In fact, it is due to the Aristotelian passage that such a title is attributed to the lost dramas of Sophocles; the tragedy of Eurypylus may have been recounted in the Mysians or may have formed part of a broader Telepheia, see Radt ,  – .  In the former case, a cycle of stories evolving around Eurypylus rather than a single narrative would be implied, at least in Aristotelian terms (cf. Poet. a οὕτως δὲ καὶ πράξεις ἑνὸς πολλαί εἰσιν, ἐξ ὧν μία οὐδεμία γίνεται πρᾶξις. διὸ πάντες ἐοίκασιν ἁμαρτάνειν ὅσοι τῶν ποιητῶν Ἡρακληίδα Θησηίδα καὶ τὰ τοιαῦτα ποιήματα πεποιήκασιν). And as the Iliad and the Odyssey clearly suggest, such a title would fit an epic rather than a tragedy, unless it refers to a tragic trilogy/tetralogy (cf. Aeschylus’ Oresteia and Lycurgeia). On the other hand, Eurypyle is attested in mythology, especially in the context of heroic genealogies: see Tümpel .  A nice parallel here would be Sophocles’ Eurypylus, where Astyoche is one of the main dramatis personae alongside Eurypylus and Neoptolemus (TrGF  fr.  and ).

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to Alexander Aetolus. A plausible hypothesis would be that it captured a story from the youth of Patroclus, according to which a game of dice between him and Amphidamas’ son ended in bloodshed. This would make Homer (Il. 23.85 – 91) the closest parallel, but the question whether this was an appropriate subject for tragedy remains open.⁴⁴ Leaving the poets of the Pleiad aside, there is a plethora of tragedies produced with a Trojan war theme. Moschion wrote a Telephus and Nicomachus was very prolific in Trojan tragedies, as the Suda attributes to him a Neoptolemus, the Mysians, the Sack (of Troy?), Polyxena and Teucer; tragedians of the second and first century revived Trojan themes, such as an uncertain Z]enodorus with Phoenix and Polemaeus with Clytemnestra. Two anonymous tragedies preserved in fragments and attributed to the Hellenistic period promote secondary agents of the Trojan war to real protagonists. The first appears to consist of a messenger speech in which an unknown person reports to Deidamia an epiphany of dead heroes, first and foremost of Achilles, and of a scene set in Lemnos, probably suggesting the story of Philoctetes (TrGF 1 fr. 680a-b); both have in common the character of Neoptolemus. The second fragmentary tragedy revolves around a vision of Cassandra during which the prophetess narrates the duel between Hector and Achilles to Priam and Deiphobus (TrGF 1 fr. 649); the affinity both with the prophetic discourse from Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and the Hellenistic iambic poem Alexandra hardly needs any documentation.⁴⁵ Both pieces, as can be inferred from the fragments, indicate a musical framing that would suit a new type of theatre based on the performance of short, virtuoso singing pieces.⁴⁶ Another peculiarity of the Hellenistic epoch is the rewriting of tragic myth as satyr plays: Polemaeus’ Aias, Harmodius’ Protesilaus and Theudotus’ Palamedes attest to this trend. A typical feature of Alexandrianism is the emphasis on rarely-heard-of-before stories and heroes. In exhuming personages and events from the immense corpus of old poetry and mythography, Alexandrian poets call attention to their originality. Not least the tragedians of the Museum—the Elephenor by Lycophron is a case in point. Sositheus—a member of the Pleiad who was definitely involved in scenic representations of tragedy—dedicated two of his plays to minor myth-

 On whether this was a tragedy or a satyr play, see the overview in Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .  In the Kannicht-Snell edition () the former is published untitled, whereas for the latter the editors propose the title Hector; Kotlińska-Toma () gives the titles Neoptolemus and Cassandra respectively.  Fantuzzi/Hunter (, ) think that the Cassandra may have been a brief Singspiel or a bookish reconstruction of a Homeric episode in the tragic manner.

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ical heroes. Aethlius is always mentioned in genealogical contexts in Greek literature as the son of Zeus and Protogeneia or as the husband of Calyce and father of Endymion (Hes. fr. 10(a).58 – 60 M.-W., Paus. 5.1.3). His more or less tragic story, unless it was linked to the fate of Endymion, remains utterly in the dark; yet it would be tempting to imagine that he was exploited as a miserable father figure by Sositheus. We are much better informed about the underlying story of his Crotus, the mythological equivalent of the star Sagittarius. Crotus, in effect, was a demon or satyr who spent his time in the company of the Muses and other rustic deities; he was transformed into a star for being skilled in archery and considered the inventor of clapping (Hygin. Astron. 2.27). The aitiological point inherent in Crotus’ story as well as its classification as a catasterism myth explains why Sositheus chose this hero as a subject of his play—which, however, was in all probability a satyr play rather than a tragedy.⁴⁷ Also the adespoton fragment of an Atlas (TrGF 1 fr. 655), consisting of a scene between Atlas and Heracles during the labor of the Apples of the Hesperides, evokes a satyr drama.⁴⁸ The thematics of Hellenistic tragedy on the basis of these titles leads to some preliminary conclusions. By and large, tragic plots of Alexandrian drama were still based on the stories about a few noble families, a feature of classical and postclassical tragedy established by Aristotle (Poet. 1453a νῦν δὲ περὶ ὀλίγας οἰκίας αἱ κάλλισται τραγῳδίαι συντίθενται).⁴⁹ Sosiphanes’ Meleager demonstrates the preference for epic legends and heroes that were very popular among tragedians, since Meleager was treated several times in plays by Sophocles, Euripides and Antiphon, all of which must have been set against the backdrop of the Calydonian hunt.⁵⁰ In Aristotle’s view Meleager, alongside Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Thyestes and Telephus, were the characters around which the best or most beautiful tragedies evolved (Poet. 1453a). Yet, alongside these traditional myths and characters, the Alexandrian quest for thematic innovation is present in the writing of tragedy too, especially in the works of the Pleiad tragedians who

 Eratosthenes in the Catasterisms (.) summarized this story quoting Sositheus; as Kotlińska-Toma (, ) appositely remarks “a copy of Sositheus’ drama would have certainly be kept in the Library of Alexandria, since its later chief librarian, Eratosthenes, so scrupulously referred to the play’s plot in his own work.”  For an analysis of the Atlas fragment, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .  The popularity of the plots of the classical tragedians in Hellenistic tragedy is an indisputable fact, see Kotlińska-Toma , .  On the myth of Meleager and the Calydonian hunt in tragedy and comedy, see Grosshardt ,  – ; cf. also  –  for its Hellenistic reception by Antimachus, Lycophron, Callimachus, Apollonius and Nicander.

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tended to experiment with previously non dramatized stories. The features introduced in Alexandrian learned poetry probably influenced some of the contemporary and later tragedians too: the dramatization of obscure heroes and the lighter approach to solemn subjects through generic mobility are two of these. May this be a further indication that specific tragedies and/or tragedians were more ‘academic’ in their scope and aesthetics, and hence adopted the new principles of poetry, as opposed to the mere ‘scenic’ ones, who were expected to continue the longstanding tradition of Attic drama only adapted to the needs of modern audiences? ⁵¹

Historical tragedy makes a comeback A striking development of Hellenistic poetics is the return of history as tragedy. Although historical tragedy bears the mark of archaism—since it had evolved during the early years of the genre and flourished in the lifetime of Phrynichus and Aeschylus—, or perhaps because of its archaicizing ring, the dramatization of history made a dynamic comeback in Hellenistic times. Transforming the tradition created by Aeschylus’ patriotic Persians or by later tragedies revolving around Theseus and Heracles which sought to affirm Athenian civic identity, postclassical playwrights exploited the dramatic genre to address historical events with a special political significance. Despite the plethora of mythical tragedies written during the fourth century, and the emphasis placed on archetypal heroes like Medea, Heracles and Oedipus, a few historical plays, both tragedies and satyr plays, can be traced back even to this period. The celebrated orator and tragedian Theodectes is said to have written a tragedy on Mausolus, the famous satrap of Persia. Mausolus’ widow, Artemisia, organized a competition of epitaphian speeches in his honor, in which Theodectes participated; it seems that following this occasion Theodectes wrote a tragedy under the title Mausolus: if this interpretation of the ancient testimonies is correct,⁵² then Theodectes would be the first poet who crossed the encomium for a ruler with the tragic genre. The Middle Comedy poet Mnesimachus composed a comedy apparently on king Philip of Macedon; a fragment suggests parody of the military style of the Macedo-

 Hereupon lies the subtle distinction between the revisionist poets adopting Alexandrian aesthetics and the mere imitators of the genres and thematics of the past: the paradigm of the Trojan war myth is illuminating in this respect, see Sistakou .  The testimonies include the Suda (s.v. Θεοδέκτης, ᾿Aριστάνδρου) and Aulus Gellius (N.A. .. – ): Snell (,  on test. ) remarks that the tragedy Mausolus must be distinguished from the encomiastic speeches in his honor.

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nian phalanx. Contemporary history was also the subject of the Agen, the satyr play of Python parodying the infamous ‘Harpalus affair’, a financial scandal involving the treasurer of Alexander the Great. Yet these were marginal attempts. New impulses after Alexander’s death caused by the development of the Hellenistic kingdoms prompted the tragedians to incorporate anew history into their plays. This comeback was corroborated by the official role assigned to the poets in the Hellenistic cities and courts. A decree issued in Samothrace in the second century BC attests to the fact that the tragic playwright Dymas was honored by the inhabitants of the island for praising their mythical ancestor, Dardanus, in one of his tragedies.⁵³ Similar dramatic production is ascribed to Nicomachus of Troas who ‘historicized’ the Trojan myth and heroes in an attempt to capture the historical past of his city in tragedies.⁵⁴ Moreover, it may be assumed that dramatists, alongside epic and lyric poets, were invited to compose dramas under the auspices of Hellenistic monarchs, like the poets of the Pleiad, or became ambassadors of the theatre at court. The latter is the case of the second-century tragedian Menelaus who represented the Dionysiac technitae of Athens at the court of the Cappadocian king Ariarathes where he worked Cappadocian history into drama.⁵⁵ The scant evidence we have about Hellenistic historical dramas indicates that the fabula praetexta was not an entirely Roman trend, but may have had its starting point, or at least been represented in a parallel development, during the Hellenistic era.⁵⁶ That a monarch may have starred in a tragedy is an innovation introduced already by Euripides, when the tragedian, a guest to the court of Archelaus, wrote tragedies on the history of the Macedonian royal dynasty from Temenus until Archelaus. It is likely that historical tragedies after Euripides and in Hellenistic as well as in Roman times focused, as a rule, on a great historical personage, i. e. a city founder, a king or a general. This trend probably originated from the preoccupation of Hellenistic historiographers

 For the Samothracian decree about Dymas, see Snell ,  – .  For Hellenistic poets praising their cities in tragedies, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – . The case of Nicomachus, as well as the revival of the Trojan myth in Lycophron’s tragedy, is a clear indication that this particular myth had an exceptional historical-political significance both for Hellenistic Greeks as well as for the Romans; on Trojan war tragedies in Rome, cf. Manuwald ,  – .  Cf. Snell ,  and Ziegler , .  Although such a dependence of the fabula praetexta from Greek models is not supported by Horace who in the Ars Poetica  –  claims that it was a genuine Roman invention; cf. the overview of the problem in Manuwald ,  – . But the originality observed by Horace may have more to do with the Roman thematics that became the subject of tragedy for the first time rather than with the subgenre of historical drama per se.

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with the depiction of the distinguished personality, the individual leader who plays a central role in history. Indeed, biography is more susceptible to tragic rendition than the mere narration of historical events in an era that collective responsibility in politics is minimized, whereas the rise and fall of the individual becomes a theme attractive per se. It is no coincidence therefore that there existed two Hellenistic tragedies under the title Themistocles, one attributed to Philiscus and one to Moschion. Obviously, the ‘Themistocles tragedies’ did not deal with recent or contemporary history nor with events related to the Hellenistic kingdoms. Nor was the urge to praise a monarch or to combine tragedy with the encomium that played a dominant role. The choice of subject matter seems to have been determined by one and only parameter: the fascinating personality of the Athenian general Themistocles whose life provided ample material for the making of a tragic narrative.⁵⁷ Philiscus’ work is only known by its title and from Moschion’s Themistocles only two and a half verses survive. Interestingly, this fragment, which depicts the clash between two armies, directly evokes Aeschylus’ Persians, and it is assumed that the play may have recounted the battle of Salamis. Yet the numerous adventures of Themistocles, culminating in his ostracism and supposed suicide, would make him an ideal tragic hero for Hellenistic playwrights.⁵⁸ In addition, his settlement at the court of Artaxerxes would have added the necessary eastern aura to the plot; this type of eastern exoticism was not confined to the ‘Themistocles tragedies’, as the Hellenistic plays on Mausolus and Gyges also demonstrate. Alexandrian tragedy entails a different approach to history, as the paradigm of Lycophron shows.⁵⁹ Two of the titles ascribed to Lycophron’s tragedies evoke history rather than myth: The Cassandreians and The Allies. The Cassandreians was in all probability inspired by contemporary historical events—a terminus post quem is definitely 316 BC when the city of Cassandreia was founded by Cassander, but its plot may have revolved around events taking place in the 280’s during the reign of the tyrant Apollodorus—, a feature that would give to

 Therefore the attribution of the drama Themistocles to a comic poet Philiscus by the Suda (s.v. Φιλίσκος, κωμικός) cannot be accurate; cf. Snell (, ) who stresses that “Themistocles vix comoedia fuisse posset” and therefore could only qualify as a tragedy.  Cf. Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .  In a brief comment on Lycophron’s The Cassandreians, Lowe (, ) claims that tragedy through its mythical archetypes of kingship served as a model for the making of new conceptions of power and authority; in this context Philadelphus assigned to the Pleiad the role of strengthening the royal ideology of the Ptolemies through the writing of historical tragedies.

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this work a unique political significance in a Macedonian/Ptolemaic context.⁶⁰ With The Allies we are in complete darkness, since the only association of the title is military; but in an era of unceasing strife, war and political intrigue, a tragedy with a military subject would have had a propagandistic role to play.⁶¹ For a third one, The Marathonians, scholarship is divided as to whether it treated some local myths of Marathon, even the Labor of Theseus killing the Marathonian bull, or if, on other hand, it dramatized the Battle of Marathon and thus provided a prequel to Aeschylus’ Persians. Although the historical basis of these works is a matter of pure conjecture, one is tempted to see a common thread uniting all three of them, namely their title. Apparently the plural of the title designates the constitution of the tragic Chorus. From a literary viewpoint though, what is implied here is an intertextual tribute to Aeschylean tragedy. Through these plurals, and the emphasis on collective identity, Lycophron would be adopting an Aeschylean stance towards historical tragedy. In other words, he would be monumentalizing history in the Aeschylean manner to evoke his great predecessor. Moreover, he would thereby lend a recognizable archaicizing ring to his composition, a stylistic choice all too common in Alexandrian poetics. It should be noted, however, that it was not only the Persians that may have served as an archetype for Lycophronian historical tragedy. A late fourth-century drama by Moschion, The Pheraeans, may have also played a role in the formation of a tragedy based on recent history. The events dramatized by Moschion in this tragedy most probably revolved around the bloodthirsty tyrant Alexander of Pherae (reign 369 – 358 BC); his murdering by his own wife followed by the defilement of his body after death, as recounted by Plutarch (Pelopidas 35.6 – 12), definitely qualified for a pathetic tragedy.⁶² That these events bear a striking resemblance with one of the darkest dramas of Greek theatre, the Agamemnon, reinforces the affinities between Aeschylean and Alexandrian tragedy. A unique paradigm of tragedy written against the background of historiography is a play by an unknown author under the title Gyges. The play is set in

 However, apart from their dating to the early or middle third century, the nature and protagonists of these events cannot be further specified: hypotheses about Apollodorus being the protagonist of the play or about some highly sensational stories concerning Demetrius Poliorcetes or the execution of the children of Arsinoe II set against the background of Cassandreia cannot be confirmed nor rejected; for a short overview, see Kotlińska-Toma , .  It is noteworthy that a similar title, Alliance(s) (Συμμαχία(ι)), is ascribed to Cantharus and Plato, two fifth-century poets of Old Comedy, from whom Lycophron may have borrowed the title and adapted it to the solemn context of tragedy.  For a hypothetical reconstruction of the play’s plot, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

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Sardes, in front of Candaules’ palace, and its plot revolves around Gyges’ moral dilemma, who urged by the queen, eventually murders the legitimate king.⁶³ Scholarship is divided between an early chronology, perhaps in the age of Aeschylus, and a Hellenistic one. According to the latter scenario, Herodotus’ Book 1, where the story about the romance triangle of the Lydian king Candaules, his wife and Gyges is recounted, would be the historical account upon which the unknown playwright drew for inspiration.⁶⁴ The recherché vocabulary of the surviving fragment (TrGF 1 fr. 664), if not owed to a fifth-century imitator of Aeschylus, points towards the stylistic extravagance of the Alexandrian learned poets.⁶⁵ The eastern coloring of the play, a feature evoking also the early ‘Persian tragedies’ by Phrynichus and Aeschylus, may express the amalgam of exoticism and archaism so idiosyncratic for Hellenistic poetics too. What can be inferred from this chain of conjectures on historical tragedy as revived in the Hellenistic age? Historical tragedy is a nebulous concept in ancient Greek literature, since it is a constant matter of philological debate whether it is primarily factual accuracy or literary reworking of events that is sought after by the tragedians.⁶⁶ The issue is blurred by the generally accepted view that myth and history differ only as regards their distance from the present and not their authenticity according to the ancients; the dichotomy between the two is a modern preconception based on a different epistemological approach to pastness. If we add to the above the actual scarcity of tragedies dramatizing historical events and the aphorism of Aristotle that poetry is more philosophical than history, since the former deals with universals whereas the latter with particulars (Poet. 1451b),⁶⁷ matters become further complicated. A series of additional parameters should be taken into account before sketching out the standards that define Alexandrian historical tragedy—first

 A reconstruction of the play in Kakridis .  Whether Herodotus was the source for the tragedy or vice versa is a philological matter still open to dispute; for example, Snell () has argued that the tragedy on Gyges may well have been written in the fifth century in par with another tragedy on Croesus, by emphasizing at the same time the thematic and stylistic affinities with Aeschylus. Other scholars, especially Lesky (), opt for a Hellenistic dating.  Lesky (, ), following Kakridis (), thinks specifically of a Pleiad dramatist.  For a fresh insight into this old problem in the study of Aeschylus’ Persians, see Harrison . Cf. also Sider () who questions the existence of ‘historical elegy’ as a distinct generic category.  Aristotle seems to contradict his own argument when he emphasizes that the credibility of poetry lies within the area of what is possible to happen and hence what has actually happened, i. e. a historical event, would provide plots appropriate for the writing of tragedy (Poet. b – ).

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and foremost the academic character of playwriting and the antiquarian interests of the Pleiad tragedians. Despite our total ignorance about the plays themselves, some general features emerge: the increased production of historical dramas in comparison to both that of the classical and the postclassical era; the thematic emphasis on the historical personality as a potentially tragic character; the dramatization not only of distant events, such as the Persian wars, but also of recent ones politically related to the present; the archaicizing stance towards the Aeschylean beginnings of historical drama; the metaliterary dialogue with historiographical discourse itself. Judging, however, from other crossings of historiographical subgenres with the learned poetry of the era (aitiology, foundation stories and local chronicles) and from the long-standing hypothesis about the existence of historical epic in Hellenistic times, we may surmise that the generic encounter between tragedy and history was another sophisticated experiment of the learned Alexandrians. If this generic transgression gave birth to tragic historiography, or vice versa, we will never know.⁶⁸ Yet one cannot resist believing that the development of historical tragedy was at the same time based on a growing awareness that ‘the world’s a stage’ on the one hand and that tragedy had a key role to play in both politics and aesthetics in the new Hellenistic kingdoms on the other.⁶⁹

Generic divergences and tragic crossovers Even though relying on flimsy evidence consisting of a few titles and information mostly drawn from later sources like the Suda, it is reasonable to suppose that Hellenistic tragedy marks a turning point in the history of the genre. It seems that even changes that were beginning to take shape during the fourth century, for example the revival of the historical drama, were fully developed in Hellenistic times. Alongside the retrospective turn towards the masters of the classical age, the experimentation with literary themes and genre made its presence felt also in the art of drama. Alexandria was once more of crucial significance. The Pleiad had a threefold role to fulfil, as the body of dramatists in the service

 On the sensational and pathetic historiography as well as on the distortions of ‘tragic history’, see Walbank ; the interconnectedness of tragedy and history is recently discussed by Rutherford ().  The theatricality of public life and the theatricalization of politics in the Hellenistic era reinforced the tragic potential of history: on this phenomenon, see Chaniotis () who detects this theatricality (a) in the importance of delivery (ὑπόκρισις) in political rhetoric and (b) in the perception of the statesman as an actor and of his life as drama.

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of Ptolemy Philadelphus, as the star company of tragedians that would participate in the official ceremonies of the palace—Phili(s)cus is a case in point— and as a closed circle of tragedians that would academically reform tragedy in the Museum. Dramaturgy and repertoire, myth and history, politics and religion were the ingredients from which Alexandrian drama was made. In fact, religion became a critical parameter of dramatic innovation in Hellenistic Alexandria. Religion was the necessary context for the performance of classical tragedy. But to integrate religion into the subject matter and generic molding of tragedy was a novel idea initiated in Alexandria, although Euripides may be considered its forerunner with the Bacchae. ⁷⁰ A blending of prophetic and apocalyptic literature with the form of the tragic monologue may be observed in the metatheatrical tragedy Alexandra. ⁷¹ Yet nowhere is the blending of tragic form and scriptural material more evident than in the Exagoge by Ezekiel, which dramatizes the Exodus of Moses from Egypt.⁷² In both cases, a tragedy with ritual and mystical associations presupposes the multicultural profile of Ptolemaic Alexandria;⁷³ moreover, it reflects the notion that drama could easily convey and disseminate a propagandistic message to an elite or even broader audience. The ideal of Aristotle that the core of tragedy is its well-balanced plot was probably outdated by the Hellenistic age. Not only was tragedy subdued to religion or politics, but it was exactly the thematization of such contexts that attracted the creative impulses of the tragedians. Phili(s)cus, a member of the Pleiad, appears to have been an extraordinary case of a religious leader, a priest appointed by the king to acquire a ritual role in the Grand Procession. The Suda article on Phili(s)cus—the reference to the comic poet may be erroneous—contains the titles of some plays (s.v. Φιλίσκος, κωμικός):

 The Letter of Aristeas, however, reports of a failed attempt by the fourth-century rhetorician and tragedian Theodectes to write a tragedy on a Biblical story (Aristeae epistula ad Philocratem ): Καὶ παρὰ Θεοδέκτου δὲ τοῦ τῶν τραγῳδιῶν ποιητοῦ μετέλαβον ἐγὼ διότι παραφέρειν μέλλοντός τι τῶν ἀναγεγραμμένων ἐν τῇ βίβλῳ πρός τι δρᾶμα τὰς ὄψεις ἀπεγλαυκώθη.  The Near Eastern influences on the Alexandra are stressed by S. West () who proposes as a model for the work the book of Daniel and the so-called Oracle of the Potter.  For a thorough analysis of the Exagoge, see Jacobson . That the Exagoge borrows the dramatic structure of Greek tragedy to offer a liturgical replacement for Jewish cult and sacrificial practice in the Diaspora is argued by Davies (), a hypothesis suggesting that the religious commitments of tragedy were still very much alive in Hellenistic Alexandria.  On the intended audience of this Jewish tragedy, see Jacobson ,  – . For the multicultural composition of the population of Alexandria, see Fraser , . – .

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τῶν δραμάτων αὐτοῦ ἐστιν Ἄδωνις, Διὸς γοναί, Θεμιστοκλῆς, Ὄλυμπος, Πανὸς γοναί, Ἑρμοῦ καὶ ᾿Aφροδίτης γοναί, ᾿Aρτεμίδος καὶ ᾿Aπόλλωνος. Among his dramas are an Adonis, The Birth of Zeus, Themistocles, Olympus, The Birth of Pan, The Birth of Hermes and Aphrodite, (The Birth) of Artemis and Apollo.

Some have attributed these titles to Phili(s)cus of Corcyra, the Pleiad tragedian, probably because Themistocles was a tragic play.⁷⁴ It is true that the γοναί-titles would better suit mimes or comedies,⁷⁵ yet if the rest were also tragedies, they would point towards a curious hybrid of hymn and drama. The fact that Phili(s)cus not only was a priest representing the Dionysiac technitae but moreover composed lyric poems on gods (a Hymn to Demeter is recorded as fr. 676 – 680 SH) and on Dionysiac cult (the satyric play Donkeys starring Priapus and Dionysus is a case in point), makes this hypothesis quite plausible.⁷⁶ In my view, religion is a significant context for the interpretation of Alexandrian drama, a hypothesis further reinforced by another title of this peculiar list of plays by Phili(s)cus, namely Adonis. The elevation of Adonis to an aesthetic hero par excellence results from his ubiquitous presence in Alexandrian poetry. In particular, his heroization by the so-called bucolic poets—among which Theocritus (Id. 3 and 15) and Bion in his Lament for Adonis are prominent—must be seen against the ritual and religious background of bucolic poetry as a whole. The broader picture definitely points towards Dionysiac religion. It is not without significance that Plutarch, upon commenting on a fragment by Phanocles (fr. 3 CA) that describes Adonis as the young eromenos of Dionysus, suggests the identification of the two figures in the collective consciousness (Sympotic Questions 671b.7– 10): τὸν δ᾽ Ἄδωνιν οὐχ ἕτερον ἀλλὰ Διόνυσον εἶναι νομίζουσιν, καὶ πολλὰ τῶν τελουμένων ἑκατέρῳ περὶ τὰς ἑορτὰς βεβαιοῖ τὸν λόγον· οἱ δὲ παιδικὰ τοῦ Διονύσου γεγονέναι. They think that Adonis is no other than Dionysus, and many of the rituals performed during their celebrations confirm this saying; whereas others believe that he was the young lover of Dionysus.

 For the confusion between Philiscus of Aegina and Phili(s)cus of Corcyra, see Snell  on the minor tragedians edited as nr.  and  TrGF  respectively. For the identity and works of the Pleiad Phili(s)cus, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .  Cf. the comedy The Birth of Athena by Hermippus (fl.  BC); however, a tragedy The Birth of Zeus is attributed by the Suda to the otherwise unknown tragedian Timesitheus.  Wojaczek (,  – ) depicts Phili(s)cus the Pleiad poet as initiated into Dionysiac mysteries and proves this based on his poems; however, he excludes the aforementioned titles of tragic plays from Phili(s)cus work.

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Adonis as a modern version of the personality in crisis enters tragedy in postclassical times: apart from Phili(s)cus, the fourth-century tragedian Dionysus (76 TrGF 1 fr. 1) and surprisingly the Hellenistic king Ptolemaeus IV Philopator (119 TrGF 1) all wrote a tragedy on him. The story of the handsome young lover of Aphrodite who is mortally wounded by a boar is pathetic enough to become the plot of an Alexandrian tragedy.⁷⁷ Other stories surrounding this typically Alexandrian hero may have contributed to his tragic aura:⁷⁸ his origination from the incestuous relationship between Theias and his daughter Smyrna (or Kinyras and Myrrha in the Ovidian version of the myth); the connection of his birth with the metamorphosis of his mother into the myrrh tree; the conflict between Aphrodite and Persephone over his custody which eventually leads to his shared time between the earth and the Underworld; the motivation of his violent death by the jealousy of some god, Persephone, Artemis or Ares, because of his affair with Aphrodite; and finally, the lamentation of Aphrodite over his dead body and her efforts to raise him from the dead. The duo of dying in love and the tragic ending of a handsome hero who falls victim to a vengeful god is not new in tragedy, since it forms the core of Euripides’ Hippolytus. ⁷⁹ Yet the incorporation of Adonis into Alexandrian tragedy suggests that the thematic innovations so characteristic of Alexandrianism, especially the emphasis on erotic passion and its sufferings, found their way also into the genus grande of tragedy.⁸⁰ As with religion, philosophy is another key to understanding Greek tragedy. What differentiates the philosophical context of postclassical drama is the explicit reference to moral beliefs and values; one should always bear in mind, however, that the plethora of tragic philosophical passages which have survived from the fourth century and the Hellenistic era are mostly attested in Stobaeus, an anthology with gnomological and philosophical emphasis. Therefore conclu-

 Although rarely found in earlier poetry with the exception of Sappho, Adonis is a sexual symbol already parodied in fourth-century comedy, e. g. by Eubulus in his Impotent Men (Ath. Deipn. .).  On Adonis’ myth and the ancient sources, which are characteristically Hellenistic or later, see Gantz , . –  and . – .  Gantz (, .) emphasizes that the final speech of Artemis in Euripides’ Hippolytus indirectly alludes to the mortal wounding of Adonis, thus foreshadowing the next episode in the conflict between the two goddesses.  The inspiration for such a thematic innovation may have been Euripides’ lost tragedy Andromeda, the first tragedy of antiquity to have represented the ‘falling-in-love’ act onstage: on this widely spread impression first parodied by Aristophanes and shared by many ancient authors, see Gibert  – . Hence, it comes as no surprise that the ancient scholia on Aristophanes (Sch. Aristoph. Thesm. ) expressly state that Euripides’ Andromeda was the model for the composition of the ‘love-tragedy’ Adonis by Ptolemaeus Philopator.

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sions on the quality and quantity of philosophical reflection in non classical tragedy are only tentative.⁸¹ A striking case of how philosophical discourse can be incorporated into tragedy is a celebrated passage from Moschion, a poet dated to the fourth or third century. The fragment by Moschion extends over 30 verses (97 TrGF 1 fr. 6) and comprises an account of human progress from primitive cultures towards civilized society. Similar views are expressed in classical tragedy (especially in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound) as well as by philosophers such as Democritus and Plato in the Protagoras and are consistent with the rationalizing tendencies prevalent in non archaic societies. But Moschion’s fragment does not necessarily demonstrate the primary role of philosophy in Hellenistic tragedy. A systematic integration of philosophy into tragic discourse is a likely possibility in the case of the philosophers-tragedians. Indeed, the Cynics Diogenes of Sinope and Crates of Thebes, both living on the verge of the third century, are considered already in antiquity as the inventors of a specific subgenre of drama, the so-called ‘Cynic tragedy’.⁸² It is not the gnomic aspects found in most surviving fragments that betray an affinity with philosophical thought—especially if we consider the conspicuous gnomological flair of Euripides. But it must have been the rewriting of famous tragic myths, like that of Thyestes, Oedipus and Medea, from the viewpoint of Cynicism that made the difference. Indeed these Cynic tragedies must have been designed with the idea of power of poetry as instruction and were probably intended to promote Cynic ideology.⁸³ Perhaps such attempts constitute the starting point for later developments in philosophical tragedy, whose most fascinating example were the tragedies of the Stoic Seneca, themselves constituting studies on extreme, violent human passions, the ones that should be eliminated from life according to the Stoics.⁸⁴ Another type of crossover between drama and philosophy is a peculiar one: it concerns the satyr play Menedemus attributed to Lycophron. Verging on biography, this satyr play portrays the Greek philosopher of the fourth/third century  For a thorough analysis of the so-called ‘philosophic motifs’ in fourth-century tragedy, see Xanthakis-Karamanos ,  – . Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ) points out the philosophical issues raised by the extant fragments of Hellenistic tragedy.  For a comprehensive survey of problems and issues of Cynic tragedy, see Noussia . The term τραγῳδάρια used by Diogenes Laertius (Vit. .) in respect to the works of Diogenes may refer to short dramas (perhaps the tragic equivalent of the comic mimes?) rather than fully-fledged tragedies, see Noussia ,  – .  On this point, see Noussia ,  – .  On how the Stoic idea of the tragic was incorporated into Seneca’s dramas, see the argumentation in Staley ; along the same lines, with some subtle observations as regards the contradiction between the Stoic and the tragic ideals, see Young ,  – .

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who is known as the founder of the Eretrian School of philosophy. Menedemus not only was a historical figure, but also a contemporary of Lycophron’s, two facts that render his satyrization a unique occurrence in Hellenistic drama.⁸⁵ That a contemporary personality could become a character in drama is a habit as old as Old Comedy, but not really popular after classical times. Lycophron with Menedemus may not have been the only playwright to revive this stance in satyr plays. His fellow poet in the Pleiad, Sositheus, may also have satirized another third-century philosopher, the Stoic Cleanthes, this time for his proverbial stupidity (99 TrGF 1 fr. 4). The attack on Cleanthes, though, was made en passant, in effect during a theatrical performance,⁸⁶ whereas Lycophron introduced a thematic innovation into satyr drama by dramatizing a philosopher. Lycophron’s innovation should be seen in the broader context of a characteristically Hellenistic revival: that of the satyr drama. In this major experiment of Alexandrian playwriting, the members of the Pleiad, who were renowned also for their philological work on drama, acquired a key role. Against the cutting-edge ideas of Lycophron expressed in mythical and historical tragedy as well as satyr drama, Alexander Aetolus proposed a return to classical norms by setting a celebrated mythical story into a satyr play (?). His Dice Players (the dubious Greek title is ᾿Aστραγαλισταί) presumably treated an episode narrated in a flashback in Iliad 23: how Patroclus, outraged over a game of dice, killed the son of Amphidamas (Il. 23.85 – 91). The obvious question would be whether this tragic incident from the youth of Patroclus, evoking the disastrous consequences of rage, would not have looked out of place in the light-hearted context of satyr drama. As a result of this incongruity, scholars are divided as to whether this was a satyr play or a tragedy (the epyllion has also been proposed).⁸⁷ But if it belonged to the former category, the play would have brought to the fore the blending of tragic and comic that became a commonplace in post-Euripidean drama.

 For a thorough analysis of the surviving fragments, see Xanthakis-Karamanos . Xanthakis-Karamanos (, ) concisely summarizes the originality of Lycophron’s play as follows: “Lycophron’s Menedemus provides the most characteristic and indisputable instance of Hellenistic satyric drama. The play, amusingly dealing with the modest living and high thinking of the Eretrian philosopher, appears to combine the personal attack on contemporary personalities, which was not treated in fifth-century satyric drama, with the subtle irony and the mild satirical treatment, the ὑπόνοια or allusion of Middle Comedy as opposed to the αἰσχρολογία or abuse of Old, especially the Aristophanic Comedy.”  Cf. Diog. Laert. . Σωσιθέου τοῦ ποιητοῦ ἐν θεάτρῳ εἰπόντος πρὸς αὐτὸν παρόντα ‘οὓς ἡ Κλεάνθους μωρία βοηλατεῖ’ ἔμεινεν ἐπὶ ταὐτοῦ σχήματος. This is the reason why some have identified this Sositheus with his namesake third-century actor, cf. Snell , .  For the different views, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

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Generic experimentation is at issue in Sositheus’ case too. As already noted, Sositheus had a reputation for renewing the satyr play through archaicization (Dioscorides 23 HE). The claim may seem paradoxical at first, but entails a contradiction that is essential for the interpretation of Hellenistic poetics as a whole, namely the integration of the archaic mode into novel forms and themes. Yet Sositheus’ most remarkable innovation, as far as we can judge, consists in the crossing of drama with bucolic thematics. His Daphnis or Lityerses is indeed a bucolic drama as may be inferred from the surviving fragments (99 TrGF 1 fr. 1a-3), based on a plot replete with love, adventure and villains. The protagonist Daphnis is featured in two Idylls of Theocritus, the leading figure of the bucolic universe. The other characters of the play, Lityerses, Menalcas, Heracles and the nymph Thalia, evoke folklore and popular tradition; although the plot is set in Phrygia, the bucolic atmosphere must have been palpable throughout the play. Though it is generally considered to be a satyr drama, its affiliations with tragedy, markedly Euripidean, are more than obvious.⁸⁸ The possibility that Sositheus may have drawn on Euripides’ satyr play The Reapers (Θερισταί) for inspiration does not diminish the value of his achievement.⁸⁹ That is the introduction of novelistic motifs and exoticism into the heart of drama—a reworking of Euripides’ romantic tragedies, such as Alcestis, Helen, Iphigenia in Tauris and Ion, in the learned and sophisticated circles of the Alexandrian Museum.

 A staunch supporter of the view that Daphnis or Lityerses was actually a tragedy is Xanthakis-Karamanos, who summarizes her argumentation as follows (, ): “Regarding the conjunction of satyric and romantic features, the case of the Alcestis adapting satyric themes to a melodramatic play may have provided a model to the play of Sositheus. Both plays have no satyrs but display a number of common satyric stereotypes: hospitality, gluttony, Heracles as the benevolent savior, discomfiture of the ogre in a contest, rescue from bondage, reunion of the happy couple. The boundaries between satyric drama and light tragedy are clearly transgressed and thus literary genres overlap to some extent.”  For an overview of the philological issues concerning Sositheus’ play, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – .

4. Callimachus Displaces the Tragic Transcending the tragic in the Hymns The testimony of the Suda according to which Callimachus was active across the full range of drama, namely tragedy and satyr play and comedy, is unlikely and credible at the same time. It is credible because if Callimachus had written drama, he would have explored all the dramatic modes available—and mixed them to achieve surprising effects. Yet it is unlikely since drama and tragedy in particular, as an art form and a consolidated literary tradition, seem to have left his poetic oeuvre largely untouched. Intertextual allusions to the classical tragedians are scarce when seen against the ones to Homer, Pindar and the historiographers.¹ Callimachus’ literary dialogue with tragedy is kept to a minimum, as opposed to the rich tragic texture of Apollonius’ Argonautica and of the iambic Alexandra. ² The Cyrenaean was not keen to explore the literary potential of the dramatic form either; his poetry is monopolized by a protean narrator, whereas his characters rarely evolve into genuine dramatis personae, as memorably do those of the Theocritean Idylls. These observations suggest a distance between Callimachus and the tragic tradition, i. e. the corpus of tragedies produced by the classical Attic playwrights; it is on this basis, on the exemplary King Oedipus and a great deal of Euripides, that Aristotle also defined the features of tragedy in the Poetics. Yet what is already sensed in the philosophical approach to tragedy by Plato and even in the formalistic analysis of the tragic plot and its effects of pity and fear by Aristotle is a growing awareness of the tragic. Alexandrian philology and learned poetry in its self-reflexivity intensified this awareness. And if tragedy as a dramatic genre became an object of experimentation for the Pleiad, the tragic mode, alongside the comic, followed alternative paths of expression in the highly diversified Callimachean poetry. The tragic mode, a concept that is broader than a specific generic category, subsumes features of style and tone, narrative

 A notable exception would be Euripides (and his recasting by Aristophanes in the Frogs), whose poetic principles may have largely contributed to the shaping of Callimachean leptotes as articulated in the Aetia-Prologue: see Acosta-Hughes/Stephens ,  –  and Harder , . –  and  – .  The allusions to classical tragedy in Callimachus consist mainly of verbal reminiscences, cf. Pfeiffer , Index rerum notabilium s.vv. ‘Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles’. Cusset (,  – ) discusses the reception of the tragic voice, especially of Aeschylus and Euripides, by Callimachus. Differently Giannini () has argued that Callimachus’ style is diametrically opposed to tragic style and hence the Suda testimony is rather improbable.

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patterns, thematics, sets of characters, even ideas and values which transhistorically are idiosyncratic to tragedy.³ But, as cannot be emphasized strongly enough, there exist from antiquity onwards so many tragic modes as there are philosophers and thinkers about the tragic. Sometimes it is sufficient to state that the tragic mode includes any sorrowful and solemn subject that engenders pity and fear to its audience, whereas the tragic paradox consists of the pleasure experienced by the representation of human agonizing and suffering that ends in death and calamity.⁴ The question to be explored in the present chapter is whether Callimachus had a taste for this roughly outlined tragic mode and, if yes, how he integrated it into genres other than tragedy; moreover, if and how he displaced the tragic to fit into the untragic vision prevalent in his poetry.⁵ Callimachus’ Hymns will be first reviewed from the viewpoint of the tragic. Classified as epic, the hymn qualifies as an elevated and solemn genre. In this context one should also be reminded that, according to Aristotle’s scheme at least, tragedy genetically evolved from epic, and hence the affinities between them, despite structural and contextual differences, are indisputable. Epic and its hymnic manifestations appear therefore to be receptive to experimentation with the tragic mode and Callimachus’ Hymn to Delos is a case reinforcing the point. Set against the background of an animated universe in a state of flux and metamorphosis, the hymn monitors the agonizing wanderings of Leto who has to confront both the wrath of the gods and the hostility of the cosmos, and overcome them to give birth to Apollo. Despite the epic proportions of the setting, which verges on the fantastic and the surrealistic, the hymn thematically and stylistically gestures towards tragedy, especially in the scene between Leto

 Specifically for Callimachus one may also use the term tragic tone, following Hutchinson’s () interpretive line according to which Hellenistic poetry should not be primarily judged in terms of the ideas communicated by it but of the tones in which these ideas are articulated.  A panorama of the most important views on the tragic from Plato to the twentieth century is found in Young .  For the classical view, suffering has to be philosophically relevant in order to be labeled as genuinely tragic—in the sense that e. g. Walter Kaufmann (,  – ) reads Sophocles’ King Oedipus as a philosophical play. However, it may be that the philosophical tragic was impossible for the Hellenistic man, in analogy to what Steiner () diagnosed as the death of the tragic spirit in modern Western societies. Conversely, was this not the reason for which New Comedy flourished and Callimachus turned away from grandiloquent poetics purporting to convey universal truths to the readers? One should be wary, though, of straightforwardly connecting the decline of tragic art with the lack of a tragic Weltanschauung during a historical period, as Eagleton (,  – ) rightly observes.

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and Peneius.⁶ On a rhetorical level, this becomes evident in the tragic vocabulary and modes of expression that thicken as the hymn advances.⁷ The hymn is replete with dramatic apostrophes recurrent in tragedy; the exclamation ὦ ἐμὸν ἄχθος,/ ποῖ σε φέρω; (116 – 117), the desperate pleading of Leto to Pelion ἀλλὰ σὺ μεῖνον,/ μεῖνον (118 – 119) and the resolution of Peneius ἴτω πεπρωμένον ἦμαρ (128) and τλήσομαι εἵνεκα σεῖο (129) are only some striking instances of tragic discourse. Key scenes, such as the heroic monologue of Peneius which comes as a response to the desperate supplication of Leto (105 – 152) or the pathetic description of the dying Gauls (171– 187), are straightforwardly tragic; seen from a generic perspective, the former is a reminiscence of the rheseis of classical tragedy, whereas the latter evokes the discourse of Hellenistic tragic historiography.⁸ On the whole, the central section of the hymn reflects the flamboyant style and ostentatious theatricality of postclassical tragedy. So far, the Hymn to Delos appears to display Callimachus’ ability to overdo the effectiveness in his poetry through manipulation of language and conventions drawn from tragedy. Yet the tragic is more than a by-product of scholarly virtuosity and the reader response called for is rather intellectual than merely emotional. The Hymn to Delos, and on a grander scale the fifth and sixth hymns, are variations on a common theme that lies at the core of a significant part of tragedy: the agonizing individual facing the indomitable will of god. Here the dramatic characters are the suffering Leto, the anthropomorphic sites and the Olympian gods. Leto exemplifies the individual that becomes isolated from the community—spaces fleeing en masse symbolize this isolation (68 – 105)—, while at the same time is subjected to divine punishment (55 – 67) to which she reacts with perseverance (150 – 152). The plot, including its rendering on a cosmic scale, strongly evokes the tragic pattern underlying the Aeschylean Prometheus Bound. At the moment of ultimate crisis, when Leto arrives as a suppliant in Thessaly (109 – 120), Peneius strikes a tragic chord by heroically promising to defend her (121– 133) and defy the wrath of Hera and Ares (133 – 149). Cal As Stephens (, ) remarks “the whole is suffused with tragic language, with Leto and Peneius constructed as characters ensnared in a tragic web. But the effect of the landscape running away from the pregnant woman is necessarily humorous, and the address to Peneius seems to invoke both tragic and comic traditions”.  Specific cases of tragic style and vocabulary, evoking especially Euripides, are pointed out by Stephens (,  – ).  Cf. Mineur (, ) who notes on the speeches exchanged between Leto and Peneius: “In the Homeric hymns, one will look in vain for speeches like these, which are substantially tragic in content”. Or, when remarking about the burning of the Gauls (, ): “Callimachus in this passage is presenting high drama, and a funeral pyre is certainly a less interesting item than a fire which actually annihilates a whole body of troops”.

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limachus draws upon time-honored protector figures from classical tragedy, like Pelasgus from Aeschylus’ The Suppliants and Theseus from Euripides’ same title drama. That such a tragic scenario may have a happy ending, that salvation is granted to the heroine in need, is not Callimachus’ invention: Attic tragedy, and, in a most direct fashion, The Suppliants by Aeschylus provide the model for such an outcome. The final solution, however, is not owed to the heroic Peneius, an archaic paradigm of courage and resolution, but, against readers’ expectations, to the neoteric protagonist, the animated island of Delos (55 οὐδ᾿ Ἥρην κοτέουσαν ὑπέτρεσας, 201 θαρσαλέη τάδ᾿ ἔλεξας, cf. 203 – 204).⁹ Obviously we should not infer from the previous remarks that the Hymn to Delos aims solely at creating tragic pathos nor that Callimachus intends to arouse pity and fear to his audience for the sufferings of his protagonists. The tragic coloring is omnipresent, but the poet’s palette includes all possible shades and hues from the dramatic to the absurd.¹⁰ Leaving aside the subtle tonality of Callimachus’ poetry, a matter too vague and complicated to receive definite answers, what should be addressed is the tragic idea per se as materialized in a great part of Callimachus’ Hymns. ¹¹ It is hardly a coincidence that in the mythical section of the fourth, fifth and sixth hymns the focus shifts from the aretalogy or the adventures of the praised deity to a tragic diptych par excellence, the confrontation between a god and a human and its fatal consequences. Thus, instead of narrating a lighter story from the god’s youth or an aitiological myth explaining his virtues or cult, Callimachus opts for the handling of a tragic dialectic. Idealist philosophy and Romantic literature have dubbed this dialectic the conflict between freedom and necessity, consciousness and fate, subjective and objective world, human will and external compulsion. The struggle of man against god, nature or simply ‘fate’ and the limits of his freedom came to be considered the quintessence of tragedy by a plethora of eighteenth- and nine-

 The poetological resonances of Delos in the hymn may have prompted her replacement for Peneius in the tragic scenario put forward by Callimachus (besides being an imperative of the myth): on Delos as a metaphor for the poetic principles of Callimachus, see Bing ,  – .  Scholars have variously interpreted the tragic in the fourth hymn. To name only two notable examples: in criticizing Wilamowitz and Cahen for crediting Callimachus with sincere emotionality, McKay (b,  – ) argues that irony and mock seriousness, not pathos, is at play in the fourth hymn; by contrast, Hutchinson (,  – ) believes that the dramatic adventures of Delos and Leto appeal to the sympathy of the reader and hence are genuinely tragic.  McKay (b, ) rightly associates these hymns to Callimachus as a dramatist: “Hymns ,  and  show that Callimachus has a good grasp of the principles of composition in both moods [i. e. the tragic and the comic], and the possibility that he did try his hand as a playwright must be admitted”.

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teenth-century philosophers from Schiller, Schelling and Hölderlin to Hegel and Schopenhauer.¹² This philosophical approach to the tragic, albeit fashioned by modern schools of thought, may retrospectively be deployed as a heuristic tool for the interpretation of a tragic theme in progress in Callimachus’ Hymns: the representation of a conflict between man and god, patterned as a ‘crime and punishment’ story following the violation of a divine law, which poses questions about ethics and guilt of the tragic hero.¹³ And since the duo Leto/Hera (and Peneius/Ares) has been already touched upon as an early, less elaborate, manifestation of this theme,¹⁴ I will next trace its evolution into the Tiresias/Athena and Erysichthon/Demeter plots to demonstrate not only the reception of the tragic idea in Callimachus but also its transcendence by recourse to modes other than the tragic. My analysis will focus on the following parameters: the motivation and nature of conflict; the dramatic characters and their ethics; the filtering of the tragic effect through manipulation of mode. The plotline of the mythical section of the Bath of Pallas is quite plain. The young Tiresias accidentally views the naked Athena bathing in the waters of Hippocrene, whereupon the goddess punishes the unfortunate mortal with blindness, while endowing him with the gift of prophecy in compensation (57– 130). The core of the story revolves around the motif of a cruel god punishing a mortal for a crime committed unwillingly; the embedded narrative about Actaeon who was condemned to violent death by Artemis for a similar transgression functions as an exemplum of the same story pattern (107– 118). In the Bath of Pallas, Callimachus engages in a dialogue with the tragic tradition: the parallels for this story pattern from Attic tragedy are numerous (the madness sent by Athena to Aias in Sophocles’ tragedy and the vengeance taken by Aphrodite in Euripides’ Hippolytus are two cases in point), but the most conspicuous is found in the Bacchae when Dionysus severely punishes Pentheus for denying the god’s powers and cult.¹⁵ But whereas in the Bacchae neither the wilfulness of king Pentheus nor the vengefulness of Dionysus are ever questioned, the nature of the conflict  In viewing tragedy as the ultimate metaphor for philosophy, these thinkers have deeply influenced our modern concept of the tragic: for a critical analysis of their views on the tragic, see Lambropoulos ,  –  and Young ,  – .  The question posed in the Callimachean renditions of the tragic idea in both hymns results in a modern concern, i. e. the isolation of man from god in a secularized world, cf. Bulloch ,  – .  Sier () argues that Callimachus in the fourth hymn dramatizes an agon between a heroic figure and a violent deity by alluding to its epic and tragic subtexts.  On the tragic subtexts of Callimachus’ fifth hymn, especially Euripides’ Bacchae, see Hunter ,  – ; for a subtle and persuasive comparative reading of both texts, see Ambühl ,  – .

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between Tiresias and Athena diverges at a critical point. Both Tiresias’ misfortune as well as Athena’s cruelty are governed by superior powers. The latter is obliged by the laws of Cronus and the Fates to blind Tiresias (100 Κρόνιοι δ᾽ ὧδε λέγοντι νόμοι and 104 Μοιρᾶν ὧδ᾽ ἐπένησε λίνα), the former is driven to his crime by chance, beyond the limits of knowledge and control (78 οὐκ ἐθέλων δ᾽ εἶδε τὰ μὴ θεμιτά). What might be called ‘fate’ sets the scene for the conflict between Tiresias and Athena to unfold. In terms of Idealism and Romanticism, Callimachus asserts the centrality of fate to the tragic experience; the basic features that allow one to recognize fate as a driving force behind a dramatic plot are the passivity and powerlessness of the character involved as well as the unfortunate outcome of his actions against his own will.¹⁶ Thus the tragic hero becomes the victim of his own ‘error’, an hamartia that is devoid of moral fallibility. Obviously the idea of fate and the lack of responsibility in one’s suffering are controversial concepts as regards their association with the tragic experience.¹⁷ Their instability is best reflected in the multiple interpretations proposed for the emblematic tragedy of fate, namely Sophocles’ King Oedipus, from Aristotle until modern day.¹⁸ Tiresias is in many respects a double of Oedipus. In both characters the unwilling violation of a sacred law is at play (signified by the term οὐ θεμιτόν) and it is their fate that drives them to physical blindness; but Tiresias displays an ignorance owed to his youth (75 – 76 ἄρτι γένεια/ περκάζων) and his naiveté is evident in his passivity in the face of divine cruelty (83 – 84 ἑστάκη δ᾽ ἄφθογγος, ἐκόλλασαν γὰρ ἀνῖαι/ γώνατα καὶ φωνὰν ἔσχεν ἀμαχανία), whereas for Oedipus blindness comes as a self-mutilation resulting from his infinite thirst for knowledge (cf. Soph. OT 1268 – 1279).¹⁹

 For this analysis of fate as the essential ingredient of tragedy, see Young ,  – .  It is sufficient to mention that Schelling explains the inferiority of modern tragedy on the basis that it does not represent a noble hero suffering under the power of fate, as Greek tragedy and especially that of Oedipus did, whereas Hegel denies the importance of fate in the conception of ancient tragedy in the sense that the Greek worldview of the tragic is inconsistent with the dominance of irrational, blind powers over the individual: for these opposing views, see Young ,  –  and  –  respectively.  E. g. Hegel argues that King Oedipus, like Antigone, follows the typical pattern of tragedy representing an ethical collision: in the case of Oedipus, this collision consists on the one hand of the quest for knowledge and on the other on the principle, ignored by the hero, that human knowledge is finite (cf. Young ,  – ).  Cf. the excellent comparison of Tiresias with the Sophoclean Oedipus in Ambühl (,  – ), who also emphasizes the motif of sexual transgression in both myths. For the allusions to Sophoclean tragedy, especially Oedipus plays, see also Stephens ,  – .

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To counterbalance the pathetic but naive Tiresias, Callimachus puts another character on stage: Chariklo, a maternal archetype, who, like Agave in the Bacchae, is divided between her devotion to the offended divinity and the love towards her son. Indeed, Chariklo appears to be the real tragic protagonist in Callimachus’ hymn, and not only because of her ambivalent feelings towards Athena—although the moment of the realization of truth on her part resonates with genuine tragic grandeur (85 – 86 τί μοι τὸν κῶρον ἔρεξας/ πότνια; τοιαῦται, δαίμονες, ἐστὲ φίλαι;). From a generic viewpoint the dialogue between Chariklo and Athena is a small-scale version of a tragic agon (85 – 130), and the mother’s wailing for Tiresias (93 – 95) evokes a threnos that typically provides closure to tragedy.²⁰ Callimachus casts the mythical section of his hymn not only as a tragedy, a Hellenistic ‘Tiresias play’ drawing on a celebrated figure of Thebanthemed classical tragedies from Sophocles’ King Oedipus and Antigone to Euripides’ Phoenissae and Bacchae, but in effect as a miniature theatrical play. The drama forming the core of the Bath of Pallas has all the principal ingredients. There is a setting (the idyllic landscape of Boeotia) and three dramatic characters, a turning point at the plot (the viewing of the naked Athena) that is inevitable followed by a reversal of situation (the peripeteia is signified by the change of luck from happiness to unhappiness for Tiresias), a rhetorical agon and a threnodic closure, even a goddess who through her dynamic intervention functions as a deus ex machina. ²¹ What has a major tragic impact, however, is the idea dramatized per se. The juxtaposition of man and god that turns into a family drama, a pattern permeating classical tragedy from Sophocles King Oedipus to Euripides’ Hippolytus, Heracles and Bacchae, provides the benchmark for measuring the tragic for subsequent playwrights. Tragedy, at least as regards the Bath of Pallas, appears to be still alive; the only formal divergence is the fact that this tragedy is staged as a liturgical drama addressed to an implied audience, the men and women of Argos.²² In effect, the Tiresias-drama is a ‘play within a play’, and the much awaited epiphany of the goddess a theatrical trick played by Callimachus on his readers.²³

 Hunter (,  – ) makes a strong point in connecting the elegiac meter of the hymn with the funeral lament of the type found in tragedy.  It is with this identity that Athena offers compensation to Tiresias: on a similar intervention by Artemis at the end of Euripides’ Hippolytus, see Bulloch ,  – .  Bulloch (,  – ) rightly classifies Callimachus’ mimetic Hymns, alongside the dialogic Idylls of Theocritus and Herodas’ Mimiambi, as literary dramas recreating the atmosphere of an actual religious performance.  The ‘play within a play’ accounts for the analogies between the ritual frame of the hymn and the mythological inset which functions as a cautionary tale: on how the framing reflects the cen-

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The seriousness in tone and treatment of the tragic idea in the fifth hymn can hardly be denied; the opposite is true of the Hymn to Demeter, where the conception of the human tragedy in the hands of a merciless god is bathed in a comic light. The plot is even more simple and straightforward than that of the fifth hymn. A young prince, Erysichthon, the son of king Triopas of Thessaly, chops down the sacred grove of Demeter (33 – 55), upon whom the offended goddess imposes the severe penalty of insatiable hunger (56 – 71). If the Tiresias story reads as a tragedy of fate, one questioning the confines of mortality, Erysichthon’s drama explores hubris answered by divine justice. Seen against the backdrop of archaic morality, human arrogance and the cold-blooded committing of sin will be relentlessly answered by god and nature.²⁴ But Erysichthon’s drama deals also with the concept of hamartia. Erysichthon, despite his audacious obstinacy, qualifies as a tragic hero too. His failure does not only result from a flaw of his character (32 τουτάκις ἁ χείρων Ἐρυσίχθονος ἅψατο βωλά, cf. 50 – 55) but is activated by a demon taking the form of a tragic ate (31 ὁ δεξιὸς ἄχθετο δαίμων).²⁵ The response of Demeter is consequently raised to the status of nemesis, a retribution well-deserved (56 Νέμεσις δὲ κακὰν ἐγράψατο φωνάν).²⁶ Yet Erysichthon is, in the words of the narrator, worth of our sympathy: like Tiresias, he is called σχέτλιος (68), a tragic hero able to arouse the pity and fear of the audience.²⁷ Up to this point the Erysichthon muthos tells itself like a self-contained tragedy, dramatizing an ate which is articulated as an hamartia and is met with theodicy until catharsis is attained. However, there is a second act to Erysichthon’s little drama and this is replete with surrealist humor. Comedy intrudes into the tragic plot through the dramatization of the family. In contrast to the third protagonist of Tiresias’ tragedy, the suffering mother figure of Chariklo, Erysichthon’s parents are comically depicted as petty bourgeois. Note, in particular, the hilarious tones engendered by the mother’s excuses for Erysichthon’s ab-

tral myth, see Ambühl ,  – . That the myth is a warning against the dangerous divinity is argued by McKay (a,  – ).  The Hesiodic moral frame of Erysichthon’s tale is emphasized by Hunter (,  – ).  This δαίμων impersonates good or bad luck, a power inhabiting Triopas’ home, which, as Hopkinson (, ) observes, “implants a disastrous idea in the mind of one family-member”.  The writing of the unjust acts of men until the Day of Judgment is the concept implied here, see Hopkinson ,  – .  Σχέτλιος, like τλήμων, is common in both epic and tragedy; yet it is only in tragedy and never in Homer that it has the connotation of ‘miserable, wretched’ thereby suggesting the suffering of the hero (as for example in Eur. Hec. ὦ σχετλία σὺ τῶν ἀμετρήτων πόνων; see LSJ s.v. σχέτλιος).

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sence from social gatherings (72– 86). Or, the paradox confession of the father that his ‘baby’ son—humorously called a δείλαιον βρέφος—has devoured all the domestic and farm animals of the house (98 – 110). The parents’ embarrassment at their son’s godsent disease, the motif of hunger against the background of banquets and symposia, ultimately the wrecking of the household goods evoke the everyday realism of comedy.²⁸ In these terms, can Erysichthon, for all his misfortunes and conflict with gods, be measured against the grand tragic heroes of the past? On the other hand, does not his isolation from the laws and ethics of family, society and the divine reflect his tragic positioning in the theatre of the world? Moreover, although the protagonist is doomed to eternal hunger and thirst and his fortune is decided from the very start, Callimachus develops his plot into a comedy. Is this a generic reminder that tragedy, as already stated by Aristotle, is inconceivable outside the realm of the noblest of characters, the ‘kings and heroes’ populating highbrow poetry? Or, conversely, should this be interpreted as an experiment in the recomposition of the tragic plot as a comedy of errors? Handling an essentially tragic plot comically does not result in a mere mixing of the genres, a species of tragicomedy avant la lettre;²⁹ besides, the ending of the Erysichthon plot, although passed in silence by Callimachus, is by no means ‘happy’. It is much more than a sum of its parts, for it reflects the notion that in a changed world reigned by irrational forces comedy is the only feasible expression of the tragic idea. What makes Erysichthon’s depiction so attractive to us is not the caricature of a mischievous child but the sheer modernity of a hero in confusion and isolation. The ambivalent behavior of the parents who are torn between affection and awkwardness reinforces the idea that human existence is absurd.³⁰ In this sense, Callimachus appears to anticipate contemporary con-

 The classical treatment of the sixth hymn as comedy is McKay b; against this view argues Benvenuti Falciai () who sees the story as a family tragedy. McKay (b,  – ) and recently Ambühl (,  – ) draw specific parallels between the hunger-motif in Callimachus’ hymn and the satyr play Aethon attributed to Achaeus, a dramatist of the classical age.  On tragicomedy in literary theory and practice from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century, see Seidensticker ,  – .  I am tempted to see Erysichthon as a Hellenistic version of Gregor Samsa from Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis in that both are forced to live in physically impossible situations (the doom to eternal hunger and the metamorphosis into an insect respectively), are faced with both the sympathy and the repulsion from their parents and are eventually alienated from family and social environment.

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cerns about the impossibility of writing tragedy in an age when humor, farce or simply the grotesque have substituted the purely tragic.³¹

Tragic fragmentariness in the Aetia One of the central premises in the interpretation of Callimachus’ Aetia, largely based on the standard of leptotes as depicted in the Prologue, is that it introduces an alternative to traditional genres of high poetry. As recent readings of the Prologue have demonstrated, Callimachus sides with Euripides in renouncing archaicizing magnitude and grandeur in favor of a more refined poetic style. On the other hand, and if the Prologue was designed as a response to Aristotle’s Poetics, the Cyrenean appears to be denying also the quintessence of Homeric epic and Attic tragedy, namely the unity of plot (fr. 1.3 Pf. οὐχ ἕν ἄεισμα διηνεκές).³² Thus fragmentariness, as a structuring and narrative principle, dominates the Aetia, which consists of small-scale narratives, without opening and closure, plots without beginning, middle or end.³³ Fragmentariness is not a mere formal feature, for it highlights the irrelevance of wholeness to Callimachean poetics;³⁴ hence the fragmented narratives of the Aetia, indeed the programmatic negation to mastering a complete plot, may hardly be associated with epic or tragic modalities. However, an overview of the Aetia reveals its inherent contradictions as regards the handling of the tragic mode. The presence of an omniscient narrator who controls his stories through multiple frames creates less immediate effects on the reader.³⁵ Therefore emotions aroused by grand poetry, such as the pityand-fear complex, are not to be expected. Although the Aetia lacks the prerequisites of tragedy, namely the dramatic form, the comprehensive plot and the emotional affect, nevertheless it engages in a dialogue with tragedy in a threefold

 Søren Kierkegaard maintains that the comic is the only mode that can express modern despair (cf. Young ,  – ); continuing Kierkegaard’s view of the tragic, the twentiethcentury theatrical author Friedrich Dürrenmatt in his essay Theaterprobleme () argues that the comic best captures the problems of contemporary mankind.  On the anti-grandeur aesthetics expressed in the Aetia-Prologue, see above pp.  – .  On the fragment as a narrative device reflecting the unwillingness of Hellenistic poets to recreate epic wholeness, see Sistakou b.  From a different viewpoint though, not that of plot-structuring but of thematics, scholars emphasize that the Aetia encompasses the entire cosmos, cf. e. g. the analysis by Hutchinson .  Cf. Hutchinson (, ) who observes: “The most significant strand is the opposition between the strong emotion and vigorous action of the characters in the stories and, in the frame, the preoccupation with mere learning, and the static, unflurried dialogue.”

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manner. Its most obvious manifestation is intertextuality: allusions ranging from verbal reminiscences to formal devices and motifs drawn from Attic tragedy— though not myths as such, since the plots treated by classical playwrights, like those found in epic, are systematically avoided by Callimachus—occur, albeit sporadically, in the Aetia. ³⁶ Tragedy is also relevant to the Aetia from an academic viewpoint. Philological problems about the religious and social contexts of Athenian tragedy concerning ancient scholars from Aristotle to the Alexandrians are implied by certain aitiological narratives. The story of Erigone, the daughter of Icarius, which is loosely connected to the origins of Attic tragedy, may echo such scholarly discussions (cf. fr. 178.1– 5 Pf.).³⁷ On a deeper level of analysis, the Aetia incorporates a wide scope of themes that are inherent in tragedy, such as the relationship of man to god, the family in crisis, the alienated citizen. In effect, it highlights the essential tragic diptych: the position of the individual in a world torn between divine authority and social necessity, a world of conflict and confusion. Although Callimachus’ take on the human condition is untragic, the background against which he places many of his narratives resembles that of tragedy. The city-state, with its obscure customs and primitive ethics, as well as the establishment of hero cult and ritual therein, in effect the genesis of the polis from a primitive, dark heroic past, provides the foil for understanding both Attic tragedy and Callimachus’ Aetia. Most importantly, the very concept of aitiology as the ‘final solution’ to any domestic, political or religious conflict, indeed a pseudo-solution resembling the deus ex machina intervention, evokes in a most straightforward way the influence of tragedy on the ideology behind the Aetia. ³⁸ It is such metamorphoses of the tragic mode in the Aetia that I will address in the present chapter. So, even if the tone of the Aetia is not tragic (it is rather the comic and the ironic that are prevalent throughout the poem), specific stories and thematic threads running through the work qualify as such. The human condition in the face of destiny or god or necessity is seen against the backdrop of a new cosmic order; situations that in tragedy would be beyond repair acquire a positive

 Despite the generic complexity of the Aetia, tragedy is rarely considered as one of its ‘guest’ genres, in contrast to epic, elegy, the hymns and epigram: see Harder , . – . However, a closer look at the parallels collected by Pfeiffer () hardly justifies such a view. Subtle remarks about the reception of tragedy, especially in Book  of the Aetia, are made by AcostaHughes/Stephens (, ).  That the myth of Erigone was used by Callimachus’ contemporary, Eratosthenes, to explain the genesis of tragedy is convincingly argued by Merkelbach ().  Codrignani  is essential for the origins of aitiology in Greek poetry. On aitiology as a reminiscence of tragedy, especially Euripidean, see e. g. Dunn .

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perspective through recourse to aitiology.³⁹ Despite conveying a picture of history and society heading towards progress and hence reviewing human civilization in an optimistic light, the Aetia explores the dark side of humanity until it is firmly established as a well-organized cosmos.⁴⁰ The cultural context of the Aetia itself makes it susceptible to tragic readings, whereas generic idiosyncrasies—the distanced narrator, the lack of dramatic closure to the stories, the mixing of tonality —warn against it. But this general line of the Aetia does not exclude tragic reception. On the contrary, plots, characters and motifs recurrent in tragedy are weaved into this multifaceted narrative. The only way to deal with them is to follow the structuring of the poems into four books: each book, although not thematically coherent, revolves around specific major themes, which are more or less relevant to the tragic idea.⁴¹ After Prologue and Dream, Book 1 begins with the aition of the Charites in Paros (fr. 3 – 7.14 Pf.). Minos, it is said, while sacrificing to the Charites on the island of Paros, was informed about the death of his son Androgeos. Upon learning the grim news, the king proceeded with the sacrifice only without music and garlands out of grief for his son’s death. This short story, in involving death and lament and evoking a threnos, appears to be plainly lugubrious, yet has a tragic flavor too. Minos appears in the story as a king and father who faces a dilemma: whether to perform his religious duty or to mourn for his son, whereupon he decides for both. Callimachus probably did not dramatize Minos’ inner struggle between his religious duty and his personal grief. It may be that character and emotion are constantly downplayed in the Aetia, yet the stories informing the poem are susceptible to tragic readings, and this tragic quality is evident in various tales aitiologized. The father emerging as a tragic figure, or at least as a potential character of tragedy involved in highly dramatic situations, is omnipresent in Book 1. A similar father-king figure is Aeëtes, one of the protagonists in the dramatic episode of Medea and Jason’s escape from Colchis (fr. 7.19 – 21 Pf.). In contrast to the morally and politically correct Minos, Aeëtes is evil.⁴² As a tyrannical father he takes

 Along the same lines is the definition of the tragic given by Storm (, ): “The tragic, in short, is not simply that which is mournful, lamentable, or even catastrophic; it is that which is unmendable. As such, its core meaning is not grievous but rather divisive.”  According to the interpretation of the Aetia proposed by Hutchinson () and followed by Harder (, . – ).  Thematic structuring of the Aetia books is proposed e. g. by Pulbrook ().  Undoubtedly, this Aetia passage engages in an intertextual dialogue with Book  of Apollonius’ Argonautica, where Aeëtes is likewise depicted as a dark lord and a tyrannical father starring in a family drama: see Sistakou ,  – .

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an oath of revenge against his daughter—that family drama is at play here is emphasized by fr. 7.27 Pf. ὡς ἴδεν ἔργα θυγατρ[ός. Luckily a small fragment of this oath survives, reflecting the heightened drama of this speech in Callimachus: the apostrophe to Helios and ‘king’ Phasis (fr. 7.33 – 34 Pf. ῞Ηλιος ἴστω/ καὶ Φᾶσις [ποταμῶν ἡμε]τέρων βασιλεύς) as well as the threat of burning the Argo with its men (fr. 7.32– 33 νήιο]ν̣ ὅ σφε φέρει/ αὔταν[δρον) not only recalls pathetic moments from grand poetry⁴³ but also recasts a tragic plot device into the context of a small-scale aition narrative.⁴⁴ In other words, through this dramatic oath he lends a tragic coloring to the subsequent narrative about the Argonautic nostos, which, however, ends with an anti-tragic climax, the salvation miraculously granted by Apollo at the island of Anaphe. Two paternal figures must have been contrasted in the aition about Heracles and Theiodamas (fr. 24– 25 Pf.), which builds a diptych with the Argonautic aition: could it be that this tale cast the role of the father, dramatized in the face of the affectionate Heracles, into a more positive light? On the other hand, the dark father seems to have loomed in other narratives of Book 1 as well. The aition about Linus may have included a digression on his mother Psamathe who was killed by the hand of her own father Crotopus for having intercourse with Apollo (fr. 26 – 31 Pf.);⁴⁵ in the story Crotopus must have been depicted as an oppressive and tyrannical paternal figure (a hint at this hero through a patronymic is found in fr. 28 Pf. τόν σε Κροτωπιάδην).⁴⁶ Last but not least, Nisus, the father of the Megarian Scylla, who pursued her daughter to death for falling in love with his country’s enemy, the Cretan king Minos, was perhaps one of the Callimachean protagonists (although his presence in the Aetia is doubted, cf. fr. 113 Pf.).⁴⁷

 For parallels, see Harder , . – .  A similar oath of revenge against the son is addressed by Theseus to Poseidon concerning the terrible punishment to be imposed upon Hippolytus (Eur. Hipp.  – ). It is worth noting that whereas the corresponding oath scene in Apollonius is given as a reported speech (Arg. . – ), Callimachus senses the dramatic intensity of the scene and delivers it in direct speech.  For a summary of the story, see Conon FGrH  fr. .. A comparison of the ancient sources in Harder , . – .  Cf. Harder , .: “The choice for the patronymic may have added a note of pathos because the baby, as well as its mother, in fact died because of its grandfather and no mortal father was available to protect it and give it his name.”  Some indication in this direction is provided by Apollodorus (.), who, in reporting about king Minos, connects the Parian sacrifice with the war against the Megareans and their king Nisus in direct chronological sequence; cf. Harder , . – . That Scylla was a

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After these evergreen pieces underlining the role of the father in the disintegration of the tragic family alongside a few positive models of moral paternal behavior, another key theme emerges: conflict. Conflict forms the core of grand literature from the Iliad to dramatic poetry, and of course a fascinating topic in historiography. It would be exaggerated to claim that ‘conflict’ is an exclusively tragic subject,⁴⁸ and therefore Callimachus draws upon all these models, especially in Books 1 and 2 of the Aetia, to sketch out its impact on myth and history. A striking example of how the pivotal theme of the Iliad is fragmented into an aition is the quarrel between Teuthis and Agamemnon which leads to hubristic behavior towards Athena in Book 1 (fr. 276 SH).⁴⁹ The aition of Zancle, which probably opened Book 2, draws upon local historiography for narrative models of civic strife with dire consequences for the community (fr. 43 Pf.). The third paradigm is the story of the barbarous tyrant Busiris of Egypt who relentlessly slaughtered strangers, but was eventually killed by Heracles (fr. 44– 47 Pf.). This latter story is said to have been dramatized by Euripides in a satyr play (TrGF 5 fr. 312– 315).⁵⁰ It may be that the grotesqueness of Busiris’ behavior and the intervention of Heracles as a rescuer-avenger was more susceptible to comic exaggeration than tragic elaboration. Another gory aition recounted the annual sacrifice of the Locrian maidens as a consequence of the raping of Cassandra by Aias (fr. 35 Pf.). The rape itself was treated by Sophocles in his lost Aias Locrus and the transgression of human boundaries that was first met with Athena’s and then Poseidon’s wrath qualify as highly tragic—even if its unclear which part of the story was narrated by Callimachus, who obviously emphasized the sensational aftermath of the mass sacrifice.⁵¹ Pathos stemming from such stories which involve not only strife and hubris but also carnage and human sacrifice suggest tragedy, if only in its sensational versions.⁵²

title of a tragedy or a ‘tragic’ dithyramb (cf. Ovid Trist. . – ) is cogently argued by Kannicht-Snell (, ).  Although it seems that transhistorically conflict is regarded as the dominant tragic subject: for a short but illuminating analysis, see Burian ,  – .  See Sistakou ,  – . For the ascription of the aition to Book , cf. Hollis .  The story of the bloodthirsty Busiris is richly attested in ancient Greek and Latin literature: for the sources, see Harder , . – .  Cf. Harder , . – .  Despite the idea that tragedy must have a moral underpinning of human suffering to merit the title of being genuinely ‘tragic’, a great deal of tragedy (for example the gory plays of Seneca) does not fulfil this criterion. Because, as Eagleton (, ) explains, “‘normative’ or ‘moral’ tragedy often betrays a certain sensationalist subtext, an aura of violence or exoticism, of sweetly heightened sensations and covert erotic pleasures, which links it reluctantly to its melodramatic sibling.”

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Books 1 and 2 of the Aetia were definitely based on stories with rich tragic undertones. From the scant fragments and our knowledge about the narrative frame of the dialogue with the Muses we may assume that these stories formed only a background for the display of scholarly wisdom. Hence their emotional impact qua tragic narratives would have been limited, despite their pathetic or sensational flavor. Owing to the absence of a commenting voice in Books 3 and 4, effects may have been more direct on the reader there. Thematics in these later books appear to be quite diversified. Book 3 focuses on love stories, marriage and childbirth mainly; we may consider this a book of novelistic quality, moralizing tone and happy endings which has no obvious links to the tragic idea—New Comedy appears to be a more likely model. By contrast, Book 4 foregrounds the darkest side of human excess in all its manifestations from which the most appalling rituals emerge. First there is intense family drama. The cruel father figure returns in an Attic legend of revenge, torture and murder (fr. 94 – 95 Pf.). Hippomenes, king of Athens, violently kills his daughter Leimonis by imprisoning her in a room with a horse which stamps her to death; thereupon he also murders her seducer and defiles his body by bounding it to a horse and dragging it throughout the town. The latter incident evokes the defilement of Hector’s corpse by the enraged Achilles in the Iliad,⁵³ whereas the former is inscribed in a series of bloody tales building around the punishment of sexual transgression by a vengeful father. The archetype for this story pattern in tragedy is Theseus in Euripides’ Hippolytus, in which death by horse is also the penalty imposed on the supposedly adulterous son.⁵⁴ Despite the scholarly emphasis of the narrative—the story was hinted at to explain the peculiar place-name Ἵππου καὶ Κόρης—, emotional effect is not eschewed by Callimachus, who probably dramatized the story through a pathetic speech of the (dead?) Leimonis.⁵⁵ A different family plot from Attic tragedy, that of Antigone deciding to bury her brother Polyneices, looms up in the explanation of yet another place-name,  That this motif could create a powerful emotional effect in the generic context of a tragedy is suggested by Moschion’s play The Pheraeans, on whose plot see above p. . However, the motif of corpse dragging was treated in less dramatic tones by Callimachus in the aition for a similar Thessalian custom (fr.  Pf.), which was perhaps linked to the story of Leimonis, cf. Sistakou ,  –  and Harder , . – .  The terror represented by the father as punisher is four times evoked in Book  of Apollonius’ Argonautica, in the central figure of king Aeëtes and in the related mythological exempla of Nycteus, Acrisius and Echetos (. – ): for an analysis, see Sistakou ,  – .  Cf. Harder (, .) who commenting on the tragic ring of fr.  Pf. remarks that “alternatively one could even think of Leimonis as the narrator of the whole aition, speaking from the grave or wherever she is, like Simonides in fr. ”.

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the Σύρμα ᾿Aντιγόνης (fr. 105 Pf.). Callimachus obviously deviated from the Sophoclean version of the plot, according to which Antigone buries Polyneices by covering him with dust (the double burial of Polyneices is recounted in Antigone 245 – 247 and 429 – 431). The aition deals with the dragging of Polyneices’ body to the pyre of Eteocles and the subsequent splitting of the flame as a signal of the eternal strife between the two brothers.⁵⁶ The text of the Diegesis is corrupt, but we may infer that behind the aitiological pointe the narrative would have focused on the pivotal moment when Antigone drags the corpse into the pyre only to be faced with the miraculous division of the flame. Here tragic myth, namely the story of the inherited hatred between the two descendants of Oedipus, theatrical dramatization and ritualistic reenactment are united into one single narrative. Family plots of this sort are a generic marker of tragedy, ones that give a rich tragic texture to the Aetia. But Callimachus does not content himself with this. Book 4 explores also polarities inherent in human society and culture, such as order/disorder, conflict/reconciliation, crime/punishment, freedom/necessity, primitiveness/civilization, guilt/catharsis. These are prominently tragic dualities and are incorporated as such into the Aetia. Many narratives attested in the dark Book 4 correspond to the design of tragedy as ritual recreating these dualities. To put it differently, unless we consider the ritualistic interpretation of tragedy an obsession of twentieth-century scholarship, Callimachus seems to anticipate anthropological readings and to recontextualize them into the most ritual-sensitive mode, namely aitiology.⁵⁷ This academic filtering should be widely applied to explain the basic setting and story patterns of several aitiological narratives. More precisely, the typical scenario consists of an individual facing a community governed by primitive laws; the transgression of the individual, usually taking the form of a bloody crime, or in other cases his innocence are answered by apotropaic and cathartic rituals of extreme violence performed by the community. In this context it is only natural to expect plots centering either on retribution (punishment imposed on the individual by men or gods for his past hamartiae) or on sacrifice (an individual is victimized and sacrificed for the sake of the community), both of which underlie some of the most powerful classical tragedies from

 The motif of hatred continuing beyond the grave has fascinated with its dark sensationalism other major Alexandrians; Harder (, .) rightly points out a similar duo, that of the seers Mopsus and Amphilochus, as a Hellenistic parallel for Polyneices/Eteocles, as treated in the Alexandra (ll.  – ) and Euphorion fr.  Lightfoot, perhaps also in Callimachus’ Aetia fr.  Pf.  For an overview of structuralist and anthropological theories of classical tragedy in contemporary scholarship, see Goldhill ,  – .

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Aeschylus’ Persians, to Sophocles’ King Oedipus and Aias up to Euripides’ Alcestis and Iphigenia in Aulis. ⁵⁸ The cathartic ritual par excellence is to cast out of the city and stone to death a common man so that the community be purged from its sins: this notorious rite involving human sacrifice is thematized in the story of the pharmakos of Abdera (fr. 90 Pf.). Human sacrifice is again the core around which the story of Theudotus revolves, the bravest of the inhabitants of Lipara who was sacrificed to Apollo as a thanksgiving offer for their victory in the war against the Etruscans (fr. 93 Pf.). A reversal of the theme of sacrifice, in this case imposed by a cruel individual upon the community, is found in the story of the anonymous hero of Temessa who establishes the tribute of young virgins to him (fr. 98 – 99 Pf.). Sacrifice of a newborn baby and the blinding of his mother is a custom explained by recourse to tragic myth too: that of Ino who, fleeing the madness of her husband Athamas, threw herself into the sea with her son Melicertes whereupon both drowned (fr. 91– 92 Pf.). Here classical tragedy proper would be the intertext upon which Callimachus drew (Aeschylus wrote an Athamas, Euripides an Ino), although in his narrative he must have shifted the emphasis from the tragic couple to their victimized child Melicertes to highlight a ritual of infanticide. In the light of these dark narratives, the closure of the Aetia comes as a Hellenistic, in essence Ptolemaic, response to archaic takes on the tragic.⁵⁹ Through the light-hearted lament of the lock of queen Berenice for her own ‘sacrifice’, expressed in a paratragic manner, the reader becomes aware of the civilized morals dominating the Alexandrian society where primitive customs and their tragic negotiation is simply out of place.

Hecale, a mundane tragedy One of the most thorny issues concerning the interpretation of Callimachus’ Hecale is its generic identity. In a fashion similar to what happened with the short but multilayered poems of Theocritus for which the enigmatic term idyll was invented already in antiquity, contemporary scholars have expressed their own bewilderment towards the Hecale and other non classifiable narrative poems by coining the term epyllion to designate them. A vague category presupposing the hexametric form as developed into small-scale poems that treat obscure

 For these story patterns, see Burian ,  – .  Harder (, .) observes to the point that “the attentive reader of the Aetia might have contrasted the civilized hair-offering of Ptolemaic times with the cruel rituals of an earlier date”.

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mythical episodes and marginal or purely fictional characters which could by no means be accommodated to conventional epic.⁶⁰ The generic essence of the Hecale was a mystery already for the ancient commentators of Callimachus. According to an anonymous scholion preserved at the end of his Hymn to Apollo, the Hecale was intended as a response to the accusations made against the poet by his contemporaries that he was not capable of composing a ‘grand poem’ (Sch. Hymn. Apoll. 106 ἐγκαλεῖ διὰ τούτων τοὺς σκώπτοντας αὐτὸν μὴ δύνασθαι ποιῆσαι μέγα ποίημα, ὅθεν ἠναγκάσθη ποιῆσαι τὴν Ἑκάλην). All possible interpretations have been proposed for the μέγα ποίημα, ranging from external criteria of length to more sophisticated conceptions of ‘grandeur’ in subject matter or style.⁶¹ Without wishing to oversimplify a complex question, what seems to be at issue here is Callimachus’ willingness to give his own version of the ‘grand poem’. In this line of reasoning, to claim that the Hecale has generic affiliations with tragedy or that it was conceived as a literary experiment with the tragic mode is at least paradoxical; a tragic Hecale, like a heroic or epic Hecale, would therefore be a contradiction in terms. Yet a considerable part of the relevant scholarship argues for the tragic character of the Hecale. ⁶² The aim of this chapter is to resolve this apparent contradiction by calling attention to the tragic potential inherent in the poem. To do so, I will first examine the reception of tragedy, both as a literary and theatrical genre as well as an established classical tradition in the Hecale; I will then venture an opinion on how Callimachus incorporates a new sense of the tragic into his little epic poem. On the basis of its formal features, such as meter and the third-person omniscient narrator, the Hecale is an epic. However, a series of conventions and narrative devices exploited here by Callimachus point towards drama and tragedy in particular. An obvious starting point for comparing the Hecale with a drama is its length—estimated somewhere between 1000 and 1500 verses.⁶³ Size is not important in itself for drama but should be considered in combination with the structuring of plot and the demands for its representation in the theatre. According to Aristotelian poetics, a drama consists of a single plot represented in its  The origins of the modern term epyllion and the related evidence from the late eighteenth century onwards are explored by Tilg (). For the generic features of the epyllion and an overview of the definitions put forward by scholars, see Bär/Baumbach , ix-xvi.  For a comprehensive analysis, see Gutzwiller ,  – .  Tragic readings of the Hecale are a trend of recent scholarship. The first systematic approach of the Hecale as tragedy is attempted by Ambühl (), whereas the tragic features of the poem are explored in detail by Gutzwiller (,  – ). That the Hecale is a re-formation of Attic drama as epic is argued by Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (,  – ).  For the various hypotheses on the length of the Hecale, see Hollis (,  – ), who is inclined to accept a much greater length than the  lines normally estimated.

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entirety, so as to be perceived as a whole and hence remain in the audience’s memory (cf. Poet. 1451a for the terms εὐσύνοπτον and εὐμνημόνευτον). Does the Hecale fulfill this criterion? The answer is positive and negative at the same time. The Hecale is based on two plots carried out by two distinct characters—the hospitality offered by Hecale to strangers and the heroic feat accomplished by Theseus at Marathon—which are brilliantly blended as the poem develops. The blending of the two plots, on a dramatic level the crossing between two fates, results in a single, memorable storyline.⁶⁴ In other words, unity of plot seems to be respected in Callimachus’ epyllion, despite the sporadic presence of flashbacks, para-narratives and digressions.⁶⁵ But does this unified plot actually qualify as a dramatic action? Callimachus selects an obscure and insignificant chapter from a broader narrative on ‘the capturing of the Marathonian bull’ instead of attempting to write a golden book about Theseus’ early heroic achievements.⁶⁶ This selectivity in terms of plot design not only sets the Hecale apart from the Cyclic epics but more importantly lends dramatic intensity to its storyline. By thus centering on the Hecale-Theseus encounter, Callimachus transforms a static story, with no real potential for the unfolding of dynamic actions, into a convincing and powerful character drama. Dramatization in the Hecale is achieved by other means too. Constantly at play with the expectations of the reader, Callimachus deconstructs the epic form to reinforce drama and theatre. One may recall here a striking example of the narrative technique of the Hecale. The narration of simultaneous actions, like the independent actions of Hecale and Theseus running parallel until their accidental meeting due to the breaking of a storm, is a device typical of epic but incompatible with the conventions of drama. Aristotle acknowledges the inability of drama to represent simultaneity as a crucial difference from epic narrative (Poet. 1459b):

 Suffice to quote here how later epigrammatists summarize the plot of the Hecale: ἀείδει δ᾽ Ἑκάλης τε φιλοξείνοιο καλιὴν/ καί, Θησεῖ Μαραθὼν οὓς ἐπέθηκε πόνους (Crinagoras AP .. – ) and μέλπω δὲ γραὸς τῆς φιλοξένου τρόπους/ καὶ τὴν τελευτήν, Θησέως τε τὴν ἄγραν (epigr. adesp. ll.  –  edited as test.  Pf.).  The digressive character of the Hecale is associated with the narration of the raven about the legend of Erichthonius and the story of Apollo and Coronis (fr.  –  H.) and also with the flashbacks concerning the past events in the life of Theseus and Hecale respectively (fr.  –  H., and  –  and  –  H.).  Hollis (, ) summarizes the contents of such a Theseid as follows: “the hero’s growth to manhood, his perilous journey from Troezen to Athens (in the course of which he overcame several bandits), escape from his stepmother’s plot, victorious combat with the Marathonian bull, and triumphant homecoming”.

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τὸ ἐν μὲν τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ μὴ ἐνδέχεσθαι ἅμα πραττόμενα πολλὰ μέρη μιμεῖσθαι ἀλλὰ τὸ ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς καὶ τῶν ὑποκριτῶν μέρος μόνον· ἐν δὲ τῇ ἐποποιίᾳ διὰ τὸ διήγησιν εἶναι ἔστι πολλὰ μέρη ἅμα ποιεῖν περαινόμενα. For though in tragedy it is impossible to represent many parts as at the moment of their occurrence, since one can only represent the part on the stage and involving the actors, in epic, because it is narrative, one can tell of many things as at the moment of their accomplishment. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

Callimachus makes us aware of this distinction in the Hecale. The epic-like beginning gives its place to an emphatically dramatic representation of events: the focusing on the hic et nunc of the narrative, the convergence of two distinct actions into one as may be represented in front of a theatrical audience.⁶⁷ Inevitably this leads to the analysis of the other unities, namely those of place and time. Even though Aristotle eschews from imposing requirements for the unity of a dramatic play (since the concept of the ‘three unities’ is a neoclassical imperative), nevertheless the choice of one setting as the background for a dramatic action to unfold combined with the limited narrated time covered by this action involves some kind of dramaturgy. Aristotle is obviously sensitive to the limitations posed by staging, and Callimachus observes these limitations too when setting the ‘stage’ for his Hecale. For Aristotle the dramatic plot should not exceed one revolution of the sun, as opposed to the limitless plot time covered by an epic (Poet. 1449b), and the Hecale conforms with this principle. Not only does the episode of Theseus’ labor develop in a time span of less than a day, but its narrative core, the hospitality scene, extends over a few nocturnal hours.⁶⁸ The latter may be perceived as an irony towards the Aristotelian tenet of the ‘single revolution of the sun’; what Callimachus demonstrates by choosing night as a foil to his praxis is that drama may occur at any point of human time.⁶⁹ Theatricality dominates space as well. Callimachus announces the setting of his drama upon the opening: it is the mountainous area surrounding Attica (fr. 1 H. ᾿Aκταίη τις ἔναιεν Ἐρεχθέος ἔν ποτε γουνῷ). The landscape is broad, since it covers the Attic country from Aigaleos and Parnes to Hymettus up to the plain of

 The tempest is the major turning point, which allows the two actions to blend, if indeed their narrative threads were independently treated at the beginning of the poem: to the point, see Sistakou a,  –  and n. .  I have elsewhere termed this reduction of the plot the centering on a ‘snapshot’; for the snapshot of Theseus’ entertainment in Hecale’s hut as a retardation device blocking the major epic praxis, see Sistakou a,  – .  That Callimachus emphasized night as the crucial timeline for his narrative to unfold is attested by the summaries introducing the Hecale: Argumentum Hecalae  νυκτὸς ἐπιλαμβανούσης, cf. Dieg. X. περὶ ἑσπέραν.

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Marathon (fr. 18.8 – 12, 40.1 and 69.9 – 10 H.). Although vital episodes of the Hecale play in these regions, namely the breaking of the storm and the killing of the bull by Theseus respectively, the spotlight is turned on Hecale’s home during the unfolding of the core action of the poem. The choice of this scenery is by definition not suitable for a tragedy. If tragedy, as a rule, plays in front of a palace, a temple, a battlefield or a public area of political significance, the Hecale takes place in a secluded space suggesting both privacy and humbleness, the hut of the old Attic woman (cf. Crinagoras AP 9.545.3 ἀείδει δ᾽ Ἑκάλης τε φιλοξείνοιο καλιὴν). Having thus sketched out time, the night hour, and space, the little cottage, in the most accurate manner, Callimachus then directs the reader’s—or, for that matter, the spectator’s—eyes on the core setting of his short play: the interior of the hut. The dinner scene between Hecale and Theseus, which probably took center stage at the poem, is visualized in minute detail through a set (a couch covered with a blanket, perhaps also a table, close to a burning fireplace), costumes (Theseus’ wet cloak, Hecale’s shepherd’s hat) and a plethora of props (the lamp, the wood, the boiling pot, the bread bin)—as if intended for representation on an actual stage.⁷⁰ Up to this point, I have demonstrated which traits of the Hecale render the poem theatrical in essence. This, however, does not explain its affiliations with tragedy and the tragic in particular. Callimachus not only builds performative features into his poem, but moreover weaves conventions idiosyncratic to tragedy into his narrative. The opening of the Hecale is articulated in an epic manner, in the sense that a third person narrator introduces the reader to the plot; nevertheless, its continuation is not shaped into a proper epic proem. The voice of the narrator may sound detached and impersonal, but this opening is akin to a tragic prologue in that it is both enlightening (introduction of main character and immediate spatio-temporal setting) and engaging (emphasis on the key theme of the play and partial prediction of the aftermath without disclosure of dramatic details): once upon a time an Attic woman who lived on the hills of Erechtheus kept her house open to strangers so that eventually she was honored by all travelers for her kindness… (fr. 1– 2 H.). The mixture of suspense and prediction, the providing

 Hecale’s props obviously lack the glamor of the traditional tragic props, such as epic weapons (the sword of Aias, the bow of Philoctetes), textiles (the purple tapestry in Agamemnon) and symbols of recognition between family members: on their function in classical tragedy, see Mueller ,  – . Accurate staging of the dominant scene, the ‘snapshot’, is a standard feature of the epyllion: cf. the bed-chamber that forms the background of Theocritus’ Little Heracles (Id. ) and the flowery meadow in Moschus’ Europa where the abduction of the heroine by Zeus-the-bull takes place: cf. Sistakou a,  – .

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of details that capture the attention of the reader and the rapid plunging into the imminent events found in these verses point towards tragedy.⁷¹ Other formal features of tragedy are latent in the Hecale. First of all, the core episode, the dinner scene, is structured as a mutual exchange of long first-person speeches; it seems that a flashback about the events haunting the past of the two dramatic characters was the subject of this dialogue which consists of many-versed rheseis. ⁷² Towards the end of the poem, Theseus would be informed about the death of Hecale in a messenger speech articulated by the two prophetic birds (fr. 74 H.).⁷³ The plot would be completed with Theseus’ wailing (cf. Dieg. XI.1– 2 αἰφνίδιον δὲ ταύτην εὑρὼν τεθνηκυῖαν ἐπιστε[νάξ]ας ὡς ἐψευσμένος τῆς προσδοκίας) and the aitiological ‘solution’ provided by the establishment of rites commemorating the death of the old woman. The Hecale may hence be divided into a beginning, a middle and a denouement, a division which, according to Aristotle, corresponds to the basic structure of a prologue, an episode and an exodos (Poet. 1452b μέρη δὲ τραγῳδίας…κατὰ δὲ τὸ ποσὸν καὶ εἰς ἃ διαιρεῖται κεχωρισμένα τάδε ἐστίν, πρόλογος ἐπεισόδιον ἔξοδος). Apart from the structure, the development of the central plot closely imitates tragedy too. The basic parts of the Aristotelian plot, namely pathos, anagnorisis and peripeteia can be detected here. The unexpected death of Hecale, albeit neither premature nor violent so as to be deemed outright ‘tragic’, may be literally a pathos with no particular tragic quality. It is rather the psychological suffering of the old woman who has lost her family and wealth, the contrast between past happiness and present frustration, that generate genuine tragic pathos in the poem. Then, there is also the anagnorisis, the revelation of the unknown identity of the characters and the critical consequences of such a recognition. During dinner Hecale and Theseus become acquainted with each other: in this rare crossing of the high and the low genre, a spoudaios and a phaulos exchange their life stories and personal experiences. More controversial is the point at which peripeteia

 Segal (,  – ) brilliantly calls these the ‘curiosity and sympathy’ prologues; he also observes ( – ) that, whereas in epic and lyric the proem is constituted by a call to a divine authority, tragedy begins with a philosophical aporia which the ensuing action tries to resolve.  Although the past adventures of Theseus, especially the ones related to Aegeus and Medea (fr.  –  H.), may have also been situated at the beginning of the epyllion, at least some early events, such as the killing of Cercyon and Sciron, were recounted by the young hero over dinner: cf. Hollis ,  and Sistakou a,  –  and n. .  That the birds were to report the death of Hecale to Theseus is purely conjectural; if this hypothesis is correct, though, then the word κακάγγελον in line  would make sense as a metadramatic allusion to the messenger speeches of tragedy. However, the Diegesis does not favor such a conjecture, since it is Theseus himself who discovers Hecale dead upon returning to the hut (Dieg. XI. αἰφνίδιον δὲ ταύτην εὑρὼν τεθνηκυῖαν).

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occurs.⁷⁴ It is plausible to suppose that the thunderstorm, the fortuitous event that brings the two characters together, marks the turning point in the plot. The subsequent encounter of the two characters as it develops into a philia evolves into a life-changing experience for both. The dramatic intensity of the encounter scene may be appreciated as peripeteia, if seen as a prelude to the ensuing reversal of fortune, namely the glorification of Hecale and the heroization of Theseus. But there is more tragedy in the Hecale than meets the eye. Callimachus dramatizes Attica as a primeval space still inhabited by Poseidon, Hephaestus and Athena and recasts it as the seat of archaic myths evoking the dark fortunes of its kings, Erechtheus and Erichthonius.⁷⁵ The world of the Hecale captures the atmosphere, the spaces and times of classical Attic tragedy. It is probable that Callimachus alluded to Euripides’ lost tragedy Erechtheus in his celebrated digression on the story of the legendary first king of Attica and his mythological double, Erichthonius (fr. 70 H.); the plot of the Euripidean tragedy revolved around the conflict between Poseidon and Athena for the possession of Athens, an episode hinted at by Callimachus too (fr. 70 – 73 H.).⁷⁶ Yet it is the main character, Theseus, who holds a special place in the tradition of Attic tragedy.⁷⁷ His early adventures in the royal house of Aegeus (involving his anagnorismos by his father) were dramatized in a series of lost plays, especially the two Aegeus attributed to Sophocles and Euripides. In these plays the capturing of the Marathonian bull was the challenge faced by the young hero, a terrible ordeal set against him by his stepmother Medea; in a different version, Medea attempted to poison the hero but at the last moment Aegeus recognized his son by the

 Scholars usually place peripeteia at the end of the Hecale. Ambühl (, ) believes that the μεταβολή occurs when Theseus’ joyful triumph turns into sudden grief, whereas for Gutzwiller (, ) there is double peripeteia at the point when Theseus conquers the Marathonian bull while at the same time Hecale meets her death.  The Attic coloring has attracted the attention of all scholars studying the Hecale: see Hollis (,  – ) who stresses the influence of Atthidographers and comedy on its Attic flavor, and Acosta-Hughes/Stephens ,  – . Especially on the reception of the Atthides in the Hecale, see Benedetto ,  – .  Cf. Kannicht (, ): “Summa res fabulae contentio inter Neptunum et Minervam de possessione Athenarum fuisse videtur…scaena Athenis in arce ante aedes regias sita est”.  Mills () surveys the four extant tragedies (Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides’ The Suppliants, Heracles and Hippolytus) and the fragmentary plays to investigate the key role assigned to Theseus by Athenian culture and politics.

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sign of his sword and rescued him from death.⁷⁸ That these events were recounted in the Hecale—probably by Theseus himself over dinner—is a clear gesture towards the tragic tradition. The rich tragic texture of this narration is evident in an extant passage attributed to this part of the poem (fr. 145 H.): εἰ δὲ Δίκη σε πὰρ πόδα μὴ τιμωρὸς ἐτείσατο, δὶς τόσον αὖτις ἔσσεται, ἐν πλεόνεσσι παλίντροπος If Justice the Avenger does not punish you immediately, she will double her punishment returning among the dead…

These words may have been addressed to Medea after failing to poison Theseus. What immediately captures our attention is the personification of Justice, a motif omnipresent in the works of all three tragedians, and the tragic vocabulary (τιμωρός, παλίντροπος) that enhance the tragedy effect here. Even the representation of Hecale conjures up images of classical tragedy. The calamity that has befallen her household and family long ago and the death of her children motivate the transformation of this simple, common woman into the tragic mother par excellence, namely Hecabe (fr. 49.14– 15 H.+fr. 161 H.):⁷⁹ αυτη[ ] ζώοντος ἀναιδέσιν ἐμπήξαιμι σκώλους ὀφθαλμοῖσι καί, εἰ θέμις, ὠμὰ πασαίμην… τεθναίην ὅτ’ ἐκεῖνον ἀποπνεύσαντα πυθοίμην… May I stick thorns in his shameless eyes and him alive to feel it, then eat him raw myself if it is permitted… ‘Gladly would I die, knowing that he’s dead!’ (Transl. F. Nisetich)

Hecale’s violent outburst against the villain Cercyon who killed her younger child rightly reads as a tribute to the Euripidean depiction of the vengeful figure of Hecabe. The extreme emotion expressed here, acquiring the form of uncontrollable, blind rage, is a moment of true tragic pathos. Overwhelming emotions are triggered several times during this scene: scattered fragments imply tears and lamentation (fr. 57 H. ἀλυκὸν δέ οἱ ἔκπεσε δάκρυ, fr.158 Η. τί δάκρυον εὖδον ἐγείρεις; cf. fr. 128 H. γοεροῖο γόοιο).⁸⁰ On the whole, the ‘tragic’ narrations of The-

 For both versions see Apollodorus .. Cf. the enlightening reconstruction of Euripides’ Aegeus, also in comparison to the Sophoclean drama, which may have been a satyr play, by Kannicht (,  – ).  The similarities between Hecale/Hecabe are pointed out by Hutchinson (,  – ).  Among these only fr.  H. can be securely placed at the beginning of Hecale’s flashback as a reaction against renewing past griefs, whereas fr.  H. may be linked either to Hecale’s tearful

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seus and Hecale, functioning as a theatre within the theatre, succeed to evoke the emotions of pity and fear, which are experienced only by the immediate audience of these narrations, namely the dramatic characters themselves as they relive their painful memories.⁸¹ By calling attention to the hic et nunc of the philoxenia episode, Callimachus emphasizes that the glory of Attic tragedy, a genre based on the recognition between lost family members, the change of good fortune into misery and the generation of terrifying passions in the human heart, has become a thing of the past. Tragedy replays always as memory, never as present, or represented, action in the Hecale. ⁸² Callimachus eradicates any features of plot, character or reasoning that may have been regarded ‘tragic’ by ancient and modern standards alike. Whereas for Aristotle a praxis is the centerpiece of a tragedy, the Hecale lacks one; if to produce the tragic emotions a spoudaios, a king or hero, must suffer, here emphatically a woman of low material and social status is dramatized.⁸³ Idealist and Romantic criticism would not have traced any philosophically interesting tragic in the Hecale either: no political or moral conflict to be resolved, no freedom vs. necessity dilemma for the protagonist, no flaw of character leading to the downfall of the innocent, no individual struggling against the force of destiny or God. In essence, the Hecale is a drama on the power of chance in human life. The Diegesis thrice uses the word αἰφνίδιος ‘unforeseen, sudden’ to designate dynamic shifts in the plot: when Theseus is haphazardly identified by his father, when the storm incidentally breaks over the mountains of Attica, when Theseus unexpectedly finds Hecale dead at home… The changes of fortune experienced by Theseus, contrary to the reasoning of tragedy, occur accidentally. In this context he comes across the world of men. His conversation with Hecale marks the only real action in the poem—one pertaining to the development of his ethos in a

appeal to Theseus to liberate the Attic people from the Marathonian bull or to her last farewell to Theseus: see Hollis ,  and .  According to Gutzwiller (, ) pity is a reaction to past events, whereas fear is linked to the future adventures of Theseus: “The conversation during the night when Theseus was entertained in Hecale’s hut involved the tragic emotions of pity and fear, since her poverty and personal losses, perhaps of a husband and two sons, stirred the young hero’s compassion (fr.  H.), while his impending danger caused Hecale great anxiety for his safety (fr. . –  H.)”.  Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (, ) observe that by eliminating the direct speeches of the actors, by ‘epicizing’ a set of traditional Athenian tragic stories, Callimachus returns these tragedies to the staff of legend, thereby alienating them from contemporary life.  Cf. Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (, ) who recognize here a trend introduced to the Attic stage by New Comedy, namely the democratization of heroes, the recasting of the tragic emotions to fit the lives of ordinary citizens.

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coming-of-age story. It is because of the sufferings revealed to the young man by the old lady that he becomes aware of his mission in the world; it is in this context that he acquires the status of a liberator from the evil forces and a savior of common people. On the other hand, the death of Hecale, albeit a sorrowful event, does not qualify as tragic per se. ⁸⁴ In surviving the extermination of her family and attaining old age, Hecale fails to measure up to tragic heroines who suffer violent deaths or commit suicide; eventually she meets a peaceful, natural death in her bed. Callimachus wrote the Hecale as a metatragic comment, literally as a poem coming after tragedy. It downplays action in being character-oriented. Comparable to a modern Bildungsroman, it depicts the moral and psychological maturing of a young man into an established tragic hero because of a fortuitous, everyday encounter with a humble woman. In thus highlighting worldliness, the Hecale challenges tragedy in bringing the mundane into play.⁸⁵ To use a modern metaphor, the Hecale was one of the first works of world literature to have destroyed the aura of the classical genres by resorting to realistic drama.⁸⁶

 As Eagleton (,  – ) stresses, death, ‘the most banally predictable of biological events’ and ‘a democratic business’, is a subject matter that does not sit well with the tragic sense of life.  In dramatizing the transition from the heroic to the pragmatic, the Hecale resembles modern novel whose rise in literature has signaled the end of high tragedy: see Eagleton ,  – .  I freely borrow the term aura from Walter Benjamin to suggest the idea of uniqueness and authenticity that distances the audience from the elevated, idealist work of art. That realism is perceived as seriousness in the representation of everyday life in literature, a trend that has triumphed over ancient rhetorical genres such as epic and tragedy, has been forcefully argued by Erich Auerbach in his legendary treatise Mimesis (published in ): on Auerbach’s conception of tragic realism, see Eagleton ,  – .

5. Redefining the Tragic in the Idylls of Theocritus A messenger speech without a messenger Theocritus’ Bacchae is, alongside the Alexandra, a demonstrable proof that tragedy was creatively rewritten in the Hellenistic age—albeit not in theatrical form. The fact that both poems, composed in response to the great masters of classical tragedy, Euripides and Aeschylus respectively, neither make use of the principal medium of the dramatic genre, namely dialogue, nor explicitly reproduce the theatrical features that suggest performativity, should not come as a surprise. For both Theocritus, otherwise the most theatrical of all Hellenistic poets, and the poet of the Alexandra have adopted, and adapted, the sole epic part of tragedy, namely the messenger speech, to give their own versions of tragedy. Nevertheless, Theocritus’ technique diverges markedly from the one used in the Alexandra: whereas Theocritus enlarges upon a single episode from one tragedy, the Alexandra is an incatenation of snapshots taken from the entire range of Greek drama. And whereas the Alexandra is a long monologue with conspicuous performative markers, Theocritus chooses to epicize the messenger speech. In what follows I will discuss the reasons behind this choice, as well as the aesthetic effects of such a choice with regard to Theocritus’ Idyll 26. At first glance this idyll belongs, side by side with other epicizing narratives of the short form treating a mythical subject matter such as Idyll 13 (Hylas) and Idyll 24 (Little Heracles), to the vague category of the epyllion. The Bacchae is not clearly an epyllion though—and if it were, it would be by far the shortest of its kind with only 38 lines. It may begin in medias res (albeit lacking the fairytale opening of ποτε) as an epic narrative, but it concludes with a hymnic coda. In effect, its structure is twofold: lines 1– 26 are written in an epic three-person, impersonal narrative style; in lines 27– 38 a first-person voice directly addresses the god, a device that is reminiscent of a real or fictive hymnic performance.¹ This poetic voice, divided as it is between epic and lyric hymn, has puzzled scholars. The central question is whether the Bacchae recreates an actual religious ceremony by imitating the ritual followed by the worshippers of Dionysus or whether

 The abrupt transition between the two sections of the idyll creates a rift in the composition: cf. e. g. Fantuzzi/Hunter (, ) who note that “the hymnic character of Idyll …emerges with almost shocking suddenness only after a marked narrative closure”. The same technique, i. e. an epic opening followed by a hymnic envoi is not unusual in the Theocritean corpus, as is the case with Idyll , whereas explicit hymnic framing is exploited in Idyll .

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the intertextual dialogue with Euripides’ tragedy is the prevalent feature of this enigmatic idyll.² Although the former case cannot be rejected outright, it is the latter premise that conforms with the scholarly standards of Alexandrian poetry and the intertextual character of Theocritean poetry. Therefore, the tragic tradition—including not only Euripides’ last play but also other Dionysiac tragedies— as well as the generic conventions of tragedy provide the background for reading Theocritus’ Bacchae. The tale of a victim that is violently killed by the Maenads has its roots in an obscure past, connected with the orgiastic cult of Dionysus with its savage rituals.³ In effect, the fact that the myth of Pentheus has originated from such a cultic background and the related mysteries is reflected in all literary renditions of the story.⁴ It should be noted that this myth is not attested before the fifth century: although the absence of the Pentheus myth from Homer, Hesiod and the other literary tradition may be owed to pure chance, it is fair to assume that its recurrent reworking by the fifth-century tragedians is not a mere coincidence.⁵ Tragedy dramatizes the story of the Theban king Pentheus on whom Dionysus imposes the severest punishment for his impiety, his paradig-

 The Bacchae is one of the most debated Idylls of Theocritus. Gow (, . – ) is inclined to connect the idyll with some orgiastic or mystic cult of Dionysus because of its “final mysterious lines”. For Griffiths (a,  – ) it should be read in the light of the Ptolemaic cult of Dionysus; the cultic background of the idyll is analyzed in detail by Cairns () who entertains the idea that it was intended for performance, perhaps by the Dionysiac technitae themselves. At the opposite extreme, van der Valk () denies the cultural interpretation and stresses the artificiality of the idyll, by suggesting an ironic twisting of the Euripidean prototype by Theocritus. A systematic approach to the intertextual dialogue of Idyll  with Euripides’ Bacchae in Cusset  and ,  – .  It is on this Dionysiac basis that the most celebrated interpretation of Euripides’ Bacchae and Dionysiac drama in general relies, from the Cambridge ritualists and E.R. Dodds’ monumental edition of the play until the recent contextualizations of tragedy into Dionysiac cult, e. g. by Seaford .  Seaford () assumes that Euripides’ Bacchae derives from an ἱερὸς λόγος of the mysteries of Dionysus by analogy to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter which stems from the Eleusinian mysteries, while at the same time claims that Euripides alludes to the mysteries and ritualistic details to achieve primarily a dramatic effect. That Theocritus was a member of a mystical community, and his bacchic idyll was intended for the initiation of a nine-year-old child to the Dionysiac mysteries is argued by Wojaczek (,  – ).  A possible exception to this rule that may be independent from tragedy is a red-figured psykter (ca.  BC) by Euphronius representing women tearing apart a figure named Pentheus: for the artistic and literary sources of the Pentheus myth, see Gantz , . – . However, the motif of dismemberment is also found in the story of Actaeon, the son of Agave’s sister, Autonoe, and hence cousin of Pentheus, which was treated in Hesiod’s Ehoiae and by Stesichorus and was dramatized by Aeschylus in his Toxotides.

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matic dismemberment by a thiasos of Maenads including his own mother Agave and her sisters Ino and Autonoe, to highlight a symbolic link between the dramatic genre and Dionysiac cult. Scholarship has long searched for this missing link, stemming from Aristotle’s theory that tragedy originated from the dithyramb honoring Dionysus, but is not vital per se for the interpretation of Theocritus’ idyll. The key for interpreting the Theocritean Bacchae is to be found in the dense tragic tradition revolving around the Pentheus myth. Whatever the programmatic intention of dramatizing Dionysiac myths in the fifth century, the integration of the Dionysiac into the tragic is essential for viewing the Theocritean Bacchae as a philological tribute to the entire range of tragedy, from its origins until its official ending with Euripides.⁶ The ancient biographical and scholarly tradition ascribes a play with the title Pentheus to the first inventor of tragedy—or tragic performance—, the enigmatic Thespis (Suda s.v. Θέσπις). Thespis figures as a prominent personality in the literary history of the genre, a representative of the archaic phase of tragedy, who is monumentalized by the academic cycles of Alexandria.⁷ A Pentheus was probably also composed by Aeschylus, alongside other Dionysiac plays.⁸ Other dramatists that may have served as models for the Euripidean version of Pentheus’ sparagmos by the Maenads are Xenocles and Sophocles’ son, Iophon. There were also imitators in the fourth century: Cleophon and Chaeremon at least. The list is long and demonstrates a remarkable persistence of the Pentheus plot in classical tragedy. Such was the popularity of the Bacchae myth as established especially by Euripides that a tragic Pentheus is even attributed to Lycophron.⁹ By choosing to translate a tragic myth par excellence into an idyll, Theocritus opts for an epicized rendition of Pentheus’ violent death as recounted in the second messenger speech from Euripides’ Bacchae (1043 – 1152).¹⁰ If the idyll should be read as a report, then it is not a report filtered through the eyes of one of the dramatis personae, the messenger, but of the poet himself. Consequently, it only  On how Dionysus asserts his divinity through his power to control theatrical representation and on his shifting identity between god and director/actor of the play in Euripides’ Bacchae, see Foley .  For his prominent place in the literary history of tragedy as established by the Alexandrian scholars (especially Aristophanes of Byzantium) and Dioscorides, see above pp.  – .  The other two tragedies constituting the Dionysiac trilogy of Aeschylus are Semele and Xantriae, and the latter may have dramatized maenadism and Pentheus’ sparagmos as well.  The central role of the Euripidean version in the reception of the Pentheus story is echoed in Callimachus’ epigram  HE, see above pp.  – ; on the Hellenistic popularity of this myth, see Cusset a,  – .  For a narratological commentary of the Bacchae messenger scene, see de Jong .

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partially holds to the principles of a standard messenger scene. The dramatic effectiveness of a messenger scene hinges upon the immediacy of the eyewitness who acquires the role of the narrator. His existence both within and outside the story universe marks him as a hybrid figure of tragedy, since he is a character and a narrator at the same time.¹¹ This double identity is reflected in the alternation between two distinct diegetic modes, the displaced and the immediate. ¹² Theocritus deliberately eliminates the latter from his narrative (there is not a single historical present in the narration of Pentheus’ death), thus marking a divergence from the tragic prototypes; his third-person, past-tense narration highlights the distance in time and place between the level of the narrator and that of the story. In other words, Theocritus eschews narration according to the experiencing focalization inherent to such scenes, thus diminishing its intensity.¹³ Hence, both the narrator and his readers become uninvolved, distanced observers of the narrated events. Idyll 26 begins with the introduction of the three Maenads, Ino, Autonoe and Agave, as they march as a thiasos to the mountain (1– 2). A first divergence from the Euripidean model is the lack of geographical precision: neither Thebes nor Asopus nor Cithaeron are mentioned as is the case in the Bacchae, only a general designation ἐς ὄρος is found in the Theocritean poem. The unnamed ‘mountain’ symbolizes here the transition in the wild, while the reference to Thebes just before the end, in line 25, marks the return to civilization.¹⁴ What follows is a detailed description of the setting in which the narrated events have taken place (3 – 6). Theocritus describes the scenery, that will become a scene of crime, in terms of a locus amoenus; and although the setting is a mountain, the focus turns to an idyllic flowery meadow (5 ἐν καθαρῷ λειμῶνι, cf. 4 κισσόν τε ζώοντα καὶ ἀσφόδελον τὸν ὑπὲρ γᾶς), a space that bears a symbolic significance in the bucolic tradition (10 – 11).¹⁵ Undoubtedly this is an ominous place. It is moreover a literary space that evokes a theatrical setting, especially in lines 10 – 11:

 Obviously not a central character, since, as de Jong (, ) observes, “his incospicuous nature makes him well suited to observe what happens without being noticed or becoming too involved in the action, and hence able to escape and report what he has seen”.  These devices, typical of Euripidean tragedy, are defined and analyzed in terms of their rhetoric by Allan (,  – ).  De Jong (,  – ) terms the divided viewpoint of the messenger, the narrating and the experiencing focalization.  The remark belongs to Cusset (a,  – ).  A similar, but not essentially ‘bucolic’, peacefulness dominates the beginning of the Euripidean scene too (Bacch.  – ), see de Jong ,  – . That nature has a formidable force that dominates human life and bears a strong tragic symbolism is also reflected in another

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Πενθεὺς δ᾽ ἀλιβάτω πέτρας ἄπο πάντ᾽ ἐθεώρει, σχῖνον ἐς ἀρχαίαν καταδύς, ἐπιχώριον ἔρνος. But from a high rock, hidden in an ancient mastich-bush that grew near by, Pentheus watched all they did. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

The Euripidean messenger speech revolves around Pentheus as a voyeur of the maenadic rites; it is explicable then why so many lines are devoted to the staging of his theoria (Bacch. 1063 – 1075).¹⁶ Theocritus, on the other hand, condenses Pentheus’ voyeuristic act into a single phrase: he watched it all (10 πάντ᾽ ἐθεώρει). Theocritus does not restrict the point of view through which the events are seen and experienced. The reader, alongside the narrator, has a panoramic view of all the dramatic characters as they approach the fatal mountain. As one would expect from a poet like Theocritus, the climax of the episode, the bloody encounter with the Maenads, becomes gradually more theatrical and icastic. Action thickens once the women, overcome with bacchic frenzy (15), become aware of Pentheus and utter a dreadful cry (12), whereupon the intruder flees in terror and they chase him away (16). Theatricality is further reinforced by one of the most striking devices of the messenger speech, the direct speech that is embedded in the third-person narrative.¹⁷ A concise dialogue between Pentheus and Autonoe evokes this device (18 – 19): Πενθεὺς μὲν τόδ᾽ ἔειπε· “τίνος κέχρησθε, γυναῖκες;” Αὐτονόα τόδ᾽ ἔειπε· “τάχα γνώσῃ πρὶν ἀκοῦσαι.” Pentheus cried, ‘Women, what would ye?’ and Autonoa, ‘You shall swiftly know before you hear it’. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

One has the impression of viewing a miniature play here. But, in contrast to the Euripidean tragedy, where the bloody act is filtered through the eyes of the cowherd and also by Pentheus and the Maenads, who function as spectators built-in the text,¹⁸ Theocritus clearly poses the spectator outside the text and identifies him with the reader. Theocritus’ stage is minimal, but it is still a stage. Euripidean drama, namely Hippolytus: on the tragic effect of the ocean and the meadow in this play, see Segal .  For a brilliant analysis of Pentheus as a spectator within the tragic text and his metatheatrical symbolism, see Barrett ,  – .  According to de Jong (, ), the ‘speech in speech’ allows the narrattees to ‘hear’ the characters speak, and thus the narrative is turned momentarily into drama.  Cf. de Jong (, ) who notes that there is a critical reversal of roles between Pentheus and the Maenads as spectators of each other.

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The subsequent murder of Pentheus acquires the quality of a tableau that stirs the visual imagination of the reader/spectator.¹⁹ The ritual dismemberment occurs in three stages that correspond to the three Maenads. Agave takes the head of Pentheus and roars like a lioness (20 – 21); Ino is described more accurately, as she stamps on the victim’s stomach and tears off his shoulder with the shoulder blade (22– 23); Autonoe’s similar actions of violence are only referred to in vague terms (23). The scene concludes with the reaction of the anonymous Bacchants who share among them the remaining flesh and return to the city of Thebes covered in blood (24– 25). Once more Theocritus reduces the intensity of the scene in contrast to that of the Bacchae. His description presupposes visuality, yet it clearly lacks the graphic detail and grand-guignol effect so common in Euripidean messenger scenes that depict exceptionally violent deaths in terms of naturalistic horror.²⁰ Theocritus in Idyll 26 aims at moderate drama and moderate effectiveness on the reader; in this respect, it deconstructs rather than reproduces tragedy and the tragic emotion.²¹ This is evident in a series of narrative strategies exploited in the Hellenistic idyll: elimination of the messenger, absence of subjectivity and emotive focalization, preference for displaced rather than immediate narration, reduction of epithets and hence of enargeia in the description. Moreover, the Theocritean narrative lacks an essential feature, namely the divine and supernatural element, incorporated in the omnipresence of Dionysus and his power, without which the idyll only remotely recalls the thaumatic tones of the Bacchae. Dionysus is not dramatized; instead, he becomes the honored deity of the religious/ hymnic envoi of the idyll (27– 38).²² The general impression of Idyll 26 is that it is a distanced, cold, even monotonous rewriting of the Euripidean messenger

 Along the same lines, McKay () links Theocritus’ tableau with artistic representations of the death of Pentheus in paintings, as for example the one Philostratus has in mind (Imag. .). Cusset (a,  – ) emphasizes the symmetrical positioning of Ino and Autonoe on each side of Pentheus’ body, a device reinforcing the visual aspects of the scene.  De Jong (, ) remarks that “Euripides has a certain penchant for gruesome and bloody scenes in his messenger speeches” and draws similar examples of pictorial horror from Medea  –  and Heracles  – .  Van der Valk (, ) rightly points out that Theocritus is “as sober as could be” and that “unlike Euripides he avoids pathos as much as possible” in the sense that “he apparently abhorred the horrible facts”.  Cusset (a,  –  and  – ) proposes a metaliterary reading of the idyll, in the sense that Dionysus is invoked as a god who protects ‘good’ poets and conversely punishes ‘bad’ ones.

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speech.²³ In other words, it fails to trigger ‘the wonder and shock’ reaction to the reader, that was definitely one of the aims of the Euripidean Bacchae. ²⁴ The comparison is limited to Euripides because of the lack of other evidence and does not necessarily imply that this was the exclusive source known to Theocritus; yet, verbal and thematic reminiscences demonstrate the importance of this particular intertext for the composition of Idyll 26.²⁵ But instead of attempting a rewriting of an obscure episode or a revision of the central horror scene of the sparagmos, Theocritus experiments with the tragic form per se. By exploiting the fragmentation technique, Theocritus isolates the climactic episode of tragedy, the messenger scene which always involves a bloody death taking place offstage, and brings it before the eyes of the reader without the intervention of the messenger. An aggelia without an aggelos thus proves to be less effective, less emotionally charged. Moreover, the etymological wordplay between Πενθεύς and πένθημα (26 ἐξ ὄρεος πένθημα καὶ οὐ Πενθῆα φέροισαι ‘carrying with them from the mountain lamentation and not Pentheus’) comes as an anticlimactic closure to a highly dramatic plot;²⁶ it appears as if a scholarly pun takes the place of tragic pathos here, as if the dead hero Pentheus is nothing more than a dead letter for the Hellenistic poet and his audience.²⁷ Idyll 26 appears to be a philological exercise in commemoration of the Dionysiac origins of tragedy, the form and rhetoric of the genre, a widely treated tragic plot and Euripides’ last tragedy—still it is a poem that does not yield a felicitous artistic effect as a whole.²⁸

 In this respect I totally disagree with van Groningen () who takes the sincerity of the sentiments articulated in the idyll for granted and maintains that the Bacchae was written as a reaction to the horrors represented onstage by Euripides.  This double effect on the audience of the Euripidean tragedy is produced by the thematization of violence, a subject that is downplayed in Theocritus; on the centrality of violence in the Bacchae, see Perris .  For a detailed comparison, see especially Cusset . Cairns (,  – ) draws a different parallel with Pindar Pythian , which, however, does not explain Theocritus’ intertextual dialogue with tragedy.  This is probably a response to Eur. Bacch.  –  Πενθεὺς δ᾽ ὅπως μὴ πένθος εἰσοίσει δόμοις/ τοῖς σοῖσι, Κάδμε.  In effect, Pentheus, the tragic agent, is at the end transformed into an empty word in Theocritus: see Cusset a,  – .  Already Gow (, .) acknowledges that the idyll, although authentic, is “a poor and unattractive poem which does not enhance the author’s credit”. Cf. van der Valk (, ): “The poem is a clever one, but it is not imposing, nor can it be reckoned among Theocritus’ best compositions”.

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The bucolic world’s a stage As argued above, the Bacchae represents a philological response to tragedy and not an attempt to redefine tragedy and the tragic in the new Hellenistic contexts. Theocritus appears to be more creative than this, as I intend to show in the following chapters. In being the most theatrical of the Alexandrian poets, he is most inventive in composing idylls in dramatic form. Like many of his contemporaries, Theocritus has a penchant for showing rather than telling, for vividness achieved by means of representation, for presentifying actions and characters through dramatic deixis.²⁹ An explicit manifestation of this narrative choice is when he adapts a dramatic subgenre, the mime, to his own artistic aims. But Theocritus’ relation to drama is not merely formal. In his idylls he develops original conceptions of the tragic and the comic with which he is boldly experimenting. In particular, the experimentation with the tragic becomes evident in the redefinition of pathos in terms of new poetics which include a turn towards human passion resulting from frustrated desire, an ironic distancing from the suffering characters, a blunting of the tragic effect and an increase in the experience of pleasure on part of the audience. The first category I will study under this perspective are the bucolic idylls.³⁰ The common feature that underlies the idylls labeled as such is the multifaceted literary space designated as the ‘bucolic world’. Scholarship abounds with theoretical approaches to this world since antiquity and not even a brief presentation is possible here. I will only sketch out the main components of the bucolic world, so as to highlight its function as a theatrical space. The fundamental tenet of Theocritean scholarship may be summarized as follows: beneath the surface of a realistically depicted pastoral society lies an idealized cosmos given over to love and song.³¹ However, modern scholars downplay the dimension of realism

 Direct speech or dialogue form is a prominent feature of the ‘Hellenistic literary dramas’, a term introduced by Bulloch (,  – ) to describe conspicuously dramatic poems creating the illusion of reality but not intended for actual performance, such as the mimetic Hymns of Callimachus, the dialogic Idylls of Theocritus and the Mimiambi of Herodas. Payne (,  – ) elaborates on this theory in distinguishing between Theocritus’ mimetic idylls that mirror contemporary life and the bucolic idylls which are dramatic in their form but not representative of any actuality.  On the controversial term ‘bucolic’ and the much-debated question about the existence and the features of a supposed ‘bucolic genre’ invented by Theocritus, see the excellent survey by Gutzwiller ().  Fantuzzi/Hunter (,  – ) stress the loose but existent link of this poetry to reality, e. g. when they point out () that Theocritus has created an organic, coherent structure, a ‘possible world’, whose characters and settings stand halfway between the ‘imitation of the real’ and

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by viewing the bucolic world as an alternative to reality and therefore describing it as the first ‘fictional world’ in literature.³² Its sophistication and artificiality render it a stylized world, a closed, self-contained space that can only exist within the confines of textuality. One may see in this timeless, unchanging universe a field open to literary experimentation. In effect, the bucolic idylls not only construct their own literary past but engage in an imaginary dialogue with the whole range of poetry.³³ Hence they emphasize their own metaliterary nature. Against the backdrop of these considerations, a series of questions with respect to Theocritus’ stance towards drama arises: can this textual world be viewed as a theatrical stage where human passions are reenacted by a troupe of poets, singers and actors disguised as boukoloi? Are vital features of drama theory and practice incorporated into this world? Would a theatrical interpretation of the bucolic universe enhance our understanding of the Theocritean Idylls and their aesthetics? And, ultimately, is the bucolic world metatheatrical, in the sense that it foregrounds self-reflexivity though its palpable theatricality? A ‘yes’ answer is not unequivocal here. I do not claim that this should be the exclusive or even the prevalent reading of Theocritean bucolic;³⁴ yet I hope that recourse to its affinity with drama—and not primarily with lyric and epic as has been the dominant trend in scholarship—will yield some penetrating insights into this complex literary enterprise. Before arguing for the dramatic background of the bucolic idylls, one should clarify which sort of drama is taken as their subtext. Sicilian mime and some popular subtheatrical forms are the obvious model; on a deeper level, though, the Greek dramatic tradition is alluded to by Theocritus not primarily in its classical consolidation, as is the case of the Bacchae, but in its early stages, when the various literary modes were part of a unified poetic evolution.³⁵ On this basis, the ‘imagination based on the real world’. For the balance between realism and idealization, see e. g. Kegel-Brinkgreve ,  – .  This is the core idea put forward by Payne () who argues that Theocritus is the inventor of fiction in literature.  On how Theocritus creates the literary tradition of the bucolic by linking it to archaic and classical poetry essential is Fantuzzi . For the mise en abyme effect and the dramatization of the bucolic tradition, see Klooster ,  – .  A theatrical interpretation of the bucolic does not contradict the prevalent view of the boukoloi as singers and their poems as songs (see e. g. Acosta-Hughes ), it only enriches the hermeneutic tools available to scholars; on the lyric pre-stages of drama evoked by Theocritus’ poetics, see also below pp.  – .  The theory put forward by Herington () about the existence of ‘a single song culture’ in pre-fifth-century Greece from which Athenian drama developed provides theoretical support to

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dramatic frame of most bucolic idylls evokes theatre in the broadest sense of performance addressed to a live audience, which may apply to epic, lyric and drama alike. Therefore bucolic performances may include dialogue (the amoebaea exchanged between Comatas and Lacon in Idyll 5), lyric monodies (the serenade to Amaryllis in Idyll 3) and epic-like recitations (the ekphrasis of the kissubion in Idyll 1). The competitive nature of such a performance is fully dramatized in the bucolic agon which takes place between the different classes of herdsmen, whereas the place, time and circumstances are strictly defined before the forthcoming performance as eutopia, mesembria and hesychia respectively. A clear-cut, albeit oversimplified, approach to the bucolic idylls demonstrates that they unfold in a microcosm inhabited by characters with multiple identities. On a first level, these characters act within a bucolic scenario, which has the status of a mime and lacks even a rough plot. Since Theocritean bucolic evolves during a pause from the usual activities of the herdsmen, it features no real action.³⁶ Being in essence timeless and plotless, it nevertheless retains certain dramatic properties, such as the deictic representation of a whole community of named and nameless figures involved in recurrent situations and relations—the pause and resumption of pastoral occupations, the invitation to poetic competition, the expression through art. The bucolic scenario is nothing more than a dramatized encounter. This framing scenario leads to the second level of this world, where the herdsmen reveal their other identity, that of the poet, musician or singer. Basically, the hierarchy of the pastoral community reflects various classes of idealized or even historical poetic figures,³⁷ while herdsmen, the characters of the bucolic scenario, present themselves as artists who in turn portray other characters.³⁸ More interestingly, herdsmen alternate between performing and perceiving a performance, between the role of the artist and

this point; and obviously Aristotle’s view of tragedy as developing from the dithyrambic tradition reflects a similar unified conception of early poetry.  This lack of activity is usually termed as otium, e. g. by Rosenmeyer () who illustrates all the facets of the bucolic scenario in detail. A notable exception is the probably spurious Idyll  Oaristys, which features dramatic action between two lovers: on the plot of this bucolic mime, see Sider .  Since the nineteenth century Hellenistic scholarship has passionately searched for the historical poets and intellectuals behind the masks of the boukoloi: along the same lines, Reitzenstein (,  – ) famously formulated the ‘masquerade’ theory according to which Theocritus and his poetic circle on Cos belonged to the religious/cultural club of boukoloi dedicated to Artemis.  The multiplicity of voices and complexity of perspectives in Theocritus has been termed polyphony by Goldhill (,  – ).

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that of the audience. The bucolic cosmos with its stylized theatricality thus becomes a distinct aesthetic space akin to a stage. Nevertheless, to view the bucolic world as a theatrical stage presents challenges. Theocritus builds his idylls around successive frames of reference, through layers that are situated between the mimesis of reality and the artificiality of the work of art. To make things even more complicated, Theocritus experiments with varying degrees of reenactment and presentification: his characters either represent themselves or give voice to other characters, they act, narrate or sing their own or alien stories, they mediate between the present world and an illusionary universe. On this stage the boundaries separating the mimetic from the theatrical are constantly blurred. Three idylls suffice to illustrate how the realistic and the fictional world are merged through different degrees of role-playing.³⁹ In Idyll 5 Comatas and Lacon enter in a singing match in person, i. e. they are herdsmen who, qua actors, dramatize their own story. In Idyll 6, on the contrary, role-playing is made explicit once Daphnis addresses the mythical Polyphemus incorporating a character who remains unknown (perhaps a counselling friend of the Cyclops?), whereas Damoetas speaks in persona Polyphemi. ⁴⁰ And in the sophisticated Idyll 7, Lykidas and Simichidas are bucolic figures that do not reenact stock mythical roles, such as Polyphemus or Daphnis, but personify poets. The common thread running through these idylls is that they point towards and reflect on their own theatricalism. Theatricalism describes a modernist reaction against the very idea of the illusion of reality that is supposed to be represented by the actors on a stage, by breaking the convention according to which the audience can identify with the characters and sympathize with them as if they were actual human beings. Instead the artificiality of the theatrical experience is highlighted and the performative moment is brought into sharp focus.⁴¹ This concept is as old as the ‘playwithin-a-play’ technique, which is not only dramatically interesting but also

 For a brilliant analysis of how performance and impersonation are bound up with the bucolic identity, see Payne ,  – .  This is a kind of ‘dramatic impersonation’, since the herdsmen seem to play roles from an established bucolic repertoire: on this subtle reading of theatricality in Theocritean bucolic, see Payne ,  – .  At the extreme end of the modernist experimentation with self-referential dramaturgy is both the ‘epic theatre’ introduced by Bertolt Brecht as well as avant-garde plays such as Luigi Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author. For this trend of twentieth-century theatre, for which usually the term metatheatre coined by Lionel Abel in  is used, see Egginton .

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metatheatrically significant.⁴² In what follows, I will show that ‘The Sufferings of Daphnis’ was intended by Theocritus as a play embedded into the greater bucolic frame of Idyll 1. The bucolic frame, if not typically a drama, has certain of its prominent features and therefore may be regarded as a miniature play which hosts a performance of another play. Taking this premise as a point of departure, I will argue that the embedded play functions as a metatheatrical comment on tragedy and the tragic in particular. Idyll 1 is set up as a typical bucolic mime beginning with the encounter of an anonymous goatherd and the shepherd Thyrsis. The two herdsmen move towards a marked space of the broader idealized landscape (21– 23) which might conjure up the image of a theatre that consists of an auditorium (suggested by 21 δεῦρ᾽ ὑπὸ τὰν πτελέαν ἑσδώμεθα) and a stage facing it (21– 22 τῶ τε Πριήπω/ καὶ τᾶν κρανίδων κατεναντίον). In this improvised theatrical space, they soon take on the identity of the artist and the audience in turn. First the goatherd presents a work of art, the finely wrought kissubion, and Thyrsis embodies the viewer (56 αἰπολικὸν θάημα), then Thyrsis becomes the actor and the goatherd the listener and spectator.⁴³ In both cases, the mediation by the voice of the narrator alerts us to the fact that these aesthetic experiences are meant to be perceived as virtual, not authentic.⁴⁴ Literally Thyrsis is invited to sing a song (19 ἀείδες, 61 τὸν ἐφίμερον ὕμνον ἀείσῃς); not just any song but a smash-hit of the bucolic repertoire (20 τᾶς βουκολικᾶς ἐπὶ τὸ πλέον ἵκεο μοίσας). The performative context and the concept of repetitive presentation in front of different audiences (23 – 24 αἰ δέ κ᾽ ἀείσῃς/ ὡς ὅκα τὸν Λιβύαθε ποτὶ Χρόμιν ᾆσας ἐρίσδων) evokes both the epic rhapsodic tradition and the archaic performative practice of lyric song. However, ‘The Sufferings of Daphnis’, in terms of its dramatic structure, scenic design and intricate plot, qualifies as a play too—more precisely, as a drama combining recitation, music and theatrical setting.⁴⁵ But what substantiates the claim that the song of Thyrsis unfolds like a theatrical play? Despite the fact that a first reading conveys nothing more than a strophic monody, a worthwhile undertaking would be to translate its structure  For the ‘play within a play’, whose most well-known example is the staging of The Murder of Gonzago in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, which for some scholars signifies the break between traditional and modern metatragedy, see Fischer/Greiner .  The incorporation of the audience into the reception of Thyrsis’ song is a commonplace of scholarship on Idyll , see e. g. Payne ,  – .  The theatricality of the song of Thyrsis should be seen within the wider perspective of the bucolic universe as a fictional world and the works of arts represented therein as imaginary: for this approach, see Payne ,  – .  The blending of the oral performance of Thyrsis’ song and the staged drama as represented in the imagination of the listeners is discussed by Payne (,  – ).

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into that of a drama. Following this line of reasoning, we may see Daphnis’ introductory remarks as a kind of prologue to the scenic action that is about to unfold (65 – 75); then, in three consecutive episodes, three divinities—Hermes, Priapus and Aphrodite—feature a scene with the main character of the play, Daphnis; in effect, whereas the first two are met with the tacit disapproval of Daphnis, reflected in his proverbial tragic silence (77– 93), Aphrodite engages in a debate with the bucolic hero, remotely resembling an agon logon (95 – 113); finally Daphnis recites a long farewell monologue (115 – 136) before committing suicide (138 – 141); the incident is reported as if occurring offstage by the narrator who acquires the persona of a messenger (a fact reflected in the chain of reported events ἀπεπαύσατο, ἤθελ’ ἀνορθῶσαι, λίνα πάντα λελοίπει, ἔβα ῥόον, ἔκλυσε δίνα). The analogy of Thyrsis’ ode with a play, more precisely a tragedy, is not confined to this. Other dramatic devices reinforce it: the choral voice reverberating through the returning refrain; the direct speeches of the characters; the existence of an imaginary Chorus, made up by the mourning animals. The crucial factor, however, is reenactment, the illusion of presentification akin to a theatrical performance. Indeed, the wasting away of Daphnis until his appointed end unfolds in dramatic present (132 νῦν) and heightened deixis (120 Δάφνις ἐγὼν ὅδε τῆνος); in effect, death—or the suggestion thereof—occurs before the eyes of the virtual spectator (130 ἦ γὰρ ἐγὼν ὑπ᾽ Ἔρωτος ἐς Ἅιδαν ἕλκομαι ἤδη, 135 Δάφνις ἐπεὶ θνάσκει).⁴⁶ Although the play is miniaturized, this does not imply that the plot of ‘The Sufferings of Daphnis’ is sketchy or rough. The exact details of the Daphnis drama may elude the modern reader, especially the cause behind his mysterious death, but in the fictional universe of the boukoloi the story is too well-known to call for further explanation.⁴⁷ In a manner similar to the vogue of reperforming excerpts from acclaimed dramas, Thyrsis presents an elliptical plot in front of an audience acquainted with the dramatized myth. Now, and because of its deliberate vagueness, this little drama has puzzled scholars as regards its generic categorization.⁴⁸ Without denying the lyric affinities inherent in the song of Daphnis, in particular the connection to a ritual threnos, the overall impression is that of a tragedy.⁴⁹ ‘A destructive or painful event’ lies at the core of tragedy

 The theatricality of Daphnis is an idea put forward already by Walsh ().  For the different versions the Daphnis myth in Greek and Roman literature, see Gow , . – .  Cf. Payne (, ): “This song is a stylistic medley. It incorporates tragedy, comedy, epitaph, and hymn in a rhetorical bricolage held together by the performance itself”.  By reason of its unhappy ending, the story of Daphnis cannot be labeled a tragicomedy; however, there are comic elements built in it, as for example the presence of Priapus with his

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according to Aristotle’s definition of tragic pathos: ⁵⁰ such an event occurs when Daphnis, resisting the intervention of the protecting gods, finally dies from erotic frustration, whereas prior to this his painful ‘melting away’ is enacted onstage (78 τίς τυ κατατρύχει; 81 ἀνηρώτευν τί πάθοι κακόν, 82 τί τὺ τάκεαι;).⁵¹ Ἄλγος and its derivatives as well as a wide range of synonyms denoting physical and mental suffering form the core of tragic rhetoric, as can be inferred from their recurrent use in Attic tragedy; consequently, the ἄλγεα Δάφνιδος, the title of the play, programmatically alludes to the tragic genre.⁵² Before everything else, Daphnis qualifies as a tragic hero, who suffers undeservedly on account of a tragic fault, an hamartia, as reflected in the qualities of τάλας, δύσερως and ἀμήχανος attributed to him. He is a character who is led to self-destruction as portrayed specifically in classical tragedy.⁵³ Time-honored heroes converge into the personality of Daphnis, who embodies a series of standard tragic behaviors and ethics; in this literary syncretism lies the special metatragic quality of the Daphnis drama. The clash of the isolated and outcast Daphnis with the vengeful Aphrodite is modelled upon Prometheus who, chained to Caucasus, confronts Zeus. The doomed Daphnis maintains his heroic silence, another compelling motif of tragedy, especially akin to Aeschylus (92 τὼς δ᾽ οὐδὲν ποτελέξαθ᾽ ὁ βουκόλος ‘to these the cowherd did not say a word’).⁵⁴ Theocritus must have written with the Sophoclean tragic in mind too. Philoctetes’ suffering represented onstage and Aias’ highly dramatic suicide are both incorporated into the climactic suffering of the dying Daphnis and so are their last words with which they bid farewell to the world (cf. the long monologue delivered by Daph-

low-life profile and vulgar paraenetic, who likens Daphnis’ bitter eros to the sexual jealousy of the goatherd towards his goats ( – ).  In Aristotle’s view (Poet. a), pathetic tragedy is exemplified by the story of Aias and Ixion where human suffering is brought to the fore; the focusing on suffering is also what makes the Iliadic plot pathetic, and hence tragic (Poet. b).  In Aristotle’s theoretical scheme, the act of pathos should be represented on stage so as to arouse the pity and fear to the audience through visualization (Poet. b): πάθος δέ ἐστι πρᾶξις φθαρτικὴ ἢ ὀδυνηρά, οἷον οἵ τε ἐν τῷ φανερῷ θάνατοι καὶ αἱ περιωδυνίαι καὶ τρώσεις καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα.  Suffering is the key to understanding the essence of tragedy, as convincingly argued by Hall (,  – ). Likewise, ἄλγεα as a thematic designation in the proem of the Iliad has tragic undertones in suggesting the sufferings caused by the outburst of incontrollable anger (Il.  –  Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω ᾿Aχιλῆος/ οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ ᾿Aχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε).  What Thyrsis chooses to represent is the heroic ethos of Daphnis, thus following the models of the classical tradition: Walsh ,  – .  Aeschylus was notorious for the silence of his characters already in antiquity; prominent paradigms include Achilles in the Myrmidons, the namesake heroine of Niobe, Cassandra in the Agamemnon and probably Prometheus, on which see Taplin .

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nis in lines 115 – 136). Even Euripides serves as a model, most prominently his Hippolytus, the chaste and pious hunter, who falls victim to Aphrodite for refusing to yield to the power of love. The theme is too obvious in the Daphnis play to need any documentation, since it is expressly stated that the cowherd dies in an open confrontation with the god Eros (97– 98): τύ θην τὸν Ἔρωτα κατεύχεο, Δάφνι, λυγιξεῖν·/ ἦ ῥ᾽ οὐκ αὐτὸς Ἔρωτος ὑπ᾽ ἀργαλέω ἐλυγίχθης; ‘Did you not swear to bend Eros? But have you not been thrown by vexing Eros himself?’. The Theocritean Daphnis is more than the mere pastiche of these tragic characters, he is not just the epitome of literary characters of classical Attic drama.⁵⁵ He represents the quintessence of the tragic, both ancient and modern, in being a human who against all odds follows his solitary path towards annihilation. His heroic willingness to resist all divine and earthly powers becomes the destiny from which he can no longer escape (93 ἐς τέλος ἄνυε μοίρας). Tragedy focuses on a mortal, who, having run out of human time, confronts the abyss.⁵⁶ This abyss becomes the cornerstone of Daphnis’ awe-inspiring end, evoking the coming of an apocalypse (138 – 141):⁵⁷ χὢ μὲν τόσσ᾽ εἰπὼν ἀπεπαύσατο· τὸν δ᾽ ᾿Aφροδίτα ἤθελ᾽ ἀνορθῶσαι· τά γε μὰν λίνα πάντα λελοίπει ἐκ Μοιρᾶν, χὠ Δάφνις ἔβα ῥόον. ἔκλυσε δίνα τὸν Μοίσαις φίλον ἄνδρα, τὸν οὐ Νύμφαισιν ἀπεχθῆ. So much he said, and ended; and Aphrodite would have raised him up again, but all the thread the Fates assigned was run, and Daphnis went to the stream. The waters closed over him whom the Muses loved, nor did the Nymphs dislike him. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

Under the typical performative conditions of a play presented in the theatre, Daphnis immersing himself in the dark abyss of non-existence would produce the ultimate effect of the tragic upon the audience: the emotions of pity and fear. This effect is only felt in the emotional involvement of the bucolic universe in Daphnis’ last agonizing moments. First the animals (71– 72, 74– 75), then the

 Other tragic heroes that have been compared to Daphnis are Achilles, Cassandra, Antigone, Electra and Pentheus, cf. Segal () who explores the motivation of Daphnis’ death. For his comparison to these classical personages as well as to Eastern figures such as Gilgamesh, Dumuzi, Tamnuz, Attis and Adonis, see Halperin . An identification with Narcissus is argued by Zimmerman () who gives an overview of all scholarship relating to the personae of Daphnis.  The idea that the abyss, the descending into the dark depths of the human existence, forms the core of the tragic is brilliantly argued by Cowan ().  The apocalyptic dimension inherent in the moment of Daphnis’ death is also reflected in the adunata marking the reversal of natural order ( – ).

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various classes of herdsmen (80 – 81) participate in a ritual lament. Thereupon follow the sympathizing divinities, Hermes, Priapus and eventually Aphrodite (38 – 39 τὸν δ᾽ ᾿Aφροδίτα ἤθελ᾽ ἀνορθῶσαι). The pathetic fallacy of nature reflects the profound emotionality resulting from watching the passions of Daphnis unfold. By the end of the performance, illusions dissolve into the carefree reality of the bucolic cosmos, as Thyrsis, being a true actor, remains virtually unaffected by all this tragic emotion (143 – 145).⁵⁸ Yet the real audience of this ‘play within the play’ is the goatherd, who, in remaining anonymous, is emblematic of the common spectator, listener or reader. His reaction to this miniature tragic performance is far from pitiful or fearful (146 – 148): πλῆρές τοι μέλιτος τὸ καλὸν στόμα, Θύρσι, γένοιτο, πλῆρες δὲ σχαδόνων, καὶ ἀπ᾽ Αἰγίλω ἰσχάδα τρώγοις ἁδεῖαν, τέττιγος ἐπεὶ τύγα φέρτερον ᾄδεις. Filled may your fair mouth be with honey, Thyrsis, and with the honeycomb; and may you eat the sweet figs of Aegilus, for your singing outdoes the cicada. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

Audience response may be subsumed under one term: hedonism. The epitome of tragic repertoire triggers an explosion of sweet sensations to the boukoloi. Theocritus unmakes the tragic cosmos and its extreme passions by establishing the eternal hesychia of the bucolic cosmos. Moreover, he transcends the Aristotelian concept of the tragic according to which the distinct pleasure of tragedy arises from the pity-and-fear effect (Poet. 1453b): οὐ γὰρ πᾶσαν δεῖ ζητεῖν ἡδονὴν ἀπὸ τραγῳδίας ἀλλὰ τὴν οἰκείαν…τὴν ἀπὸ ἐλέου καὶ φόβου διὰ μιμήσεως δεῖ ἡδονὴν παρασκευάζειν τὸν ποιητήν For one should look to tragedy for its own pleasure, not just any pleasure…the poet’s job is to produce the pleasure springing from pity and fear via mimesis. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

Thyrsis and the goatherd are the first audience released from these emotions as they are immersed in a world of freedom, joy and eroticism; this causes, in turn, a dichotomy between the pity-and-fear complex and the hedone in the programmatic Idyll 1. Aestheticism overshadows the ethical dilemmas and sufferings the-

 Detachment of the actor of ‘a play within a play’ is one of the reminders of theatricalism; cf. the celebrated exclamation of Hamlet when describing the feelings of the wandering actors who enact the drama of Hecabe (Hamlet II.. – ): What’s Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba,/ that he should weep for her?

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matized by tragedy. The transition from the tragic to the aesthetic moment has occurred for the first time in a single masterful poem.⁵⁹

Simaetha’s tragic failures Idyll 1, like the entire bucolic corpus, thematizes eros. ⁶⁰ Although eros, heteroand homoerotic, has its dark sides and may manifest itself as a destructive power in Theocritus’ poetry, the dominant effect of this poetry is a blending of sensuality and sweetness. The hedonism pervading the poetics of eros, the paradox between experiencing the tragedy of love and the pleasures of representing it to an audience, is dramatized in several Theocritean Idylls. In the tragedy portraying ‘The Sufferings of Daphnis’ the effect of pity and fear is transcended by the ‘play-within-the-play’ technique. Idyll 1 foregrounds its artificiality in dealing with a potentially tragic theme in hedonistic tones. Less tragic but extremely sentimental in the representation of unrequited love are the idylls focusing on the erotic subject itself. Sexual and emotional frustration are brought to the fore in a series of soliloquies; striking cases are those of the goatherd singing his love for Amaryllis in Idyll 3, Polyphemus addressing Galateia in Idyll 11 and Simaetha recounting her love affair to Selene in Idyll 2. Notwithstanding differences (especially the gap dividing the fictional bucolic world inhabited by males from the female perspective dominating the urban mimes), these confessional monologues promote the healing of the wounds inflicted by ill-starred love affairs.⁶¹ Healing erotic frustration through speech—this is the premise on which Idyll 2 is based. The theatrical medium explored here is the dramatic monologue.⁶²

 Eagleton (,  – ) examines the anatomy of tragic pleasure, of the sweetness experienced as a response to tragic violence. Aestheticism, however, seems to be the polar opposite of tragedy: for the liberation through artistic beauty vs. the ethico-political engagement provided by tragedy Walter Pater’s writings form a firm basis for investigation: see Iser .  Erotic longing lies at the heart of the bucolic experience, whereas the bucolic song is intended as a therapy of desire: for the erotic aspects of bucolic poetry, see Gutzwiller .  Idyll  deals with the healing power of poetry which is expressly called a φάρμακον; in Idyll  the term is repeated in the designation of the protagonist as φαρμακεύτρια, though here it is used with its magical rather than its medical connotations. On the interconnectedness of magic, medicine and eros in Theocritus, see Faraone . On poetry as φάρμακον in Idyll , see Griffiths b; differently Petrovic (,  – ) who argues that in contrast to the Cyclops, Simaetha is not a poet and hence does not find healing for her pathos in poetry.  ‘Dramatic monologue’ is the term used by Payne (,  – ) to denote the coinciding of story time and dramatic time in Idyll .

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The protagonist of the idyll, a woman named Simaetha, delivers a lengthy speech. Theatricality is further reinforced by the presence of a second silent character, her servant Thestylis,⁶³ and an imaginary addressee, Selene; by the domestic setting that could be represented on a theatrical stage;⁶⁴ by the reenactment of a magic ritual in the dramatic present, a scene that involves onstage action such as the turning of the magic wheel and, on a rhetorical level, by the persistent use of deictic language and the so-called ‘performative future’.⁶⁵ Theocritus skillfully combines different subtypes of dramatic monologue: the ‘dialogic’ in which only one speaker presents his viewpoint to a mute addressee, the ‘interior’ in which the intimate feelings and thoughts of a character are expressed and the ‘narration’ monologue comprising the telling of a character’s personal experience, probably taking the form of a confession.⁶⁶ In this monologue, Simaetha dramatizes a love story gone wrong by revealing, at the same time, her inner self to the reader. In other words, the dramatic monologue throws light primarily on character rather than on its actions; the scheme seems to contradict the basic tenet of Aristotle that tragedy aims chiefly at imitating actions. The subject and its consciousness emerges as the focal point of the play performed by Simaetha. Theocritus introduces ‘mental drama’ avant la lettre with Idyll 2—another theatre of the mind in Hellenistic poetry is the enigmatic Alexandra. In general terms, a mental drama, which should not be confused with the notion of the non-performable closet drama, can be sketched out as follows:⁶⁷ Both poets [sc. Shelley and Byron] worked at reviving the English ‘serious’ drama from its long slumber by radically transforming it, fusing the objective portrayal of action with the subjective lyrical voice. Dramatic action would not function to portray or set off character; rather, character becomes plot as the dramatic interest centers on the history of a protagonist’s consciousness.

Although this description concerns Romantic poets, there is a striking resemblance between their experimentation with mental drama and what Theocritus  Cf. Payne (, ) who notes on the non-speaking addressee: “While one might imagine him [the boy in Idyll ] as a silent listener, like Simaetha’s servant Thestylis in Idyll , or Tityrus in Idyll , the presence of these non-speaking characters is signaled by the speaker, and they offer opportunities for increased dramatization of the monologue.”  Cf. Gow (, .): “The scene is probably in the open air (, ); it is within sound of the sea () but in, or near, Simaetha’s house () and a town () large enough to possess a gymnasium (); perhaps the courtyard of the house or an open upper room.”  ‘Performative future’ suggests an on-going, non-verbal action on stage and in ritual, see Faraone .  For this categorization, see RENT s.v. ‘Dramatic Monologue’.  Richardson , .

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achieves through the dramatic monologue of Simaetha. It is through the lyric voice of Simaetha that her character is portrayed and it is through her discourse that the reader is able to reconstruct the action—both the one unfolding onstage during the deictic present as well as the one that has already unfolded on another spatiotemporal level, in the past and in the various urban spaces where Simaetha’s love affair developed.⁶⁸ What should be underlined is the theatricality of Idyll 2, which is significantly different from the one employed in Idyll 1. Whereas in the latter the play of Daphnis is set in an ironic distance thanks to the mediation of the idealized audience of the bucolic world, in the former Theocritus dramatizes consciousness and invites the reader to become the unmediated audience of a psychological play. There is theatre and there is drama in Simaetha’ monologue—but wherein lies its affinity to tragedy? My aim is to demonstrate that Theocritus in Idyll 2 experiments with classical conceptions of tragedy to gradually deconstruct them and propose a modern notion of the tragic. Tragedy provides the plot pattern that underlies the mimetic drama of Simaetha. Love may be a commonplace theme of all literature, but its depiction in tragedy has certain idiosyncratic features. In a plot evolving around tragic love—the tyranny of eros in tragedy ends in catastrophe and involves violence and death—,⁶⁹ the female takes center stage. This truth is acknowledged (and parodied) already in antiquity, not only when Aristophanes directs his satire against Euripidean females but also by later authors.⁷⁰ Here is an enlightening passage from Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon on the dire consequences of female passion as portrayed on the Attic stage (1.8.4– 1.8.7): νῦν δὲ κἂν ἄλλοις λέγοις, ὅσων ἐνέπλησαν μύθων γυναῖκες τὴν σκηνήν· ὅρμος Ἐριφύλης, Φιλομήλας ἡ τράπεζα, Σθενεβοίας ἡ διαβολή, ᾿Aερόπης ἡ κλοπή, Πρόκνης ἡ σφαγή. ἂν τὸ Χρυσηΐδος κάλλος ᾿Aγαμέμνων ποθῇ, λοιμὸν τοῖς Ἕλλησι ποιεῖ· ἂν τὸ Βρισηΐδος κάλλος ᾿Aχιλλεὺς ποθῇ, πένθος αὑτῷ προξενεῖ· ἐὰν ἔχῃ γυναῖκα Κανδαύλης καλήν, φονεύει Κανδαύλην ἡ γυνή. τὸ μὲν γὰρ Ἑλένης τῶν γάμων πῦρ ἀνῆψε κατὰ τῆς Τροίας ἄλλο πῦρ·

 Instead of the onstage/offstage antithesis suggested by the performative context of Idyll , Segal (,  – ) has rightly pointed out the spatial dynamics of the idyll, the contrast between house and city, the imaginative and psychological spaces of the poem, the ‘interior’ and ‘exterior’ that dramatically interact with each other.  The notion that Eros and Aphrodite exercise a fateful tyranny on tragic heroines is drawn from Calame (,  – ): in his short but penetrating analysis he emphasizes the centrality of marriage (unaccomplished or failed) as opposed to destructive female desire in Attic tragedy. Cf. Zeitlin (,  – ) who studies the wrath of Aphrodite in tragedy as exemplified by Euripides’ Hippolytus.  The negative portrayal of females in the male-authored literature of classical Greece has been a matter of intense study: see Rabinowitz (), Zeitlin () and Foley () who place special emphasis on the poetics of gender in Greek tragedy.

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ὁ δὲ Πηνελόπης γάμος τῆς σώφρονος πόσους νυμφίους ἀπώλεσεν; ἀπέκτεινεν Ἱππόλυτον φιλοῦσα Φαίδρα, Κλυταιμήστρα δὲ ᾿Aγαμέμνονα μὴ φιλοῦσα. ὦ πάντα τολμῶσαι γυναῖκες· κἂν φιλῶσι, φονεύουσι· κἂν μὴ φιλῶσι, φονεύουσιν. But, as it is, you know enough even to teach others the kind of stories with which women have filled the stage—Eriphyle’s necklace, Philomela’s feast, Stheneboea’s false accusation, Aërope’s wicked stratagem, Procne’s murder. When Agamemnon desires the beauty of Chryseis, he brings destruction upon the Greek army; when Achilles desires Briseis’ beauty, he makes sorrow for himself. If Candaules has a fair wife, his wife murders Candaules. The fire of Helen’s marriage-torches lit another fire for Troy. But Penelope’s marriage, chaste creature, how many suitors did that destroy? Phaedra destroyed Hippolytus by loving him, Clytemnestra Agamemnon because she loved him not. O women, women, that stay at nothing! If they love, they kill: and if they do not love, they kill all the same. (Transl. S. Gaselee)

The topos of women’s wickedness in love is a tragic one and it is against this backdrop that Theocritus introduces the little drama of Simaetha. Simaetha, abandoned by her young lover Delphis, resorts to magic in revenge for his unfaithfulness. By means of her pathetic rhetoric, Simaetha declares her decision to confront her former lover and present enemy adhering to ‘an eye for an eye’ principle (3 ὡς τὸν ἐμὸν βαρὺν εὖντα φίλον καταδήσομαι ἄνδρα ‘I will cast a spell on my cruel lover’, 23 – 24 Δέλφις ἔμ᾽ ἀνίασεν· ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἐπὶ Δέλφιδι δάφναν/ αἴθω ‘Delphis has caused sorrow to me; so, I will burn this bay against him’). Theocritus stages a revenge drama from the opening lines of the idyll. By the end it becomes clear that Simaetha is determined, if only in the realm of the imaginary, to push her lover into the tragic abyss, namely death (159 – 160): αἰ δ᾽ ἔτι κά με/ λυπῇ, τὰν ᾿Aίδαο πύλαν, ναὶ Μοίρας, ἀραξεῖ ‘But if he continues to vex me still, on the door of Hades—I swear to the Fates!—I will make him knock’. Far from being a female victim in a man’s world, Simaetha fancies herself alongside the vengeful destroyers of Attic tragedy: Hecabe, Phaedra, Deianira and Medea.⁷¹ Like the tragic heroines, she is an emancipated female, delivering her own discourse and taking dynamic action against the vexing male.⁷² Although she has succumbed to love and physically displayed the symptoms of uncontrolled passion, at the end she refuses to be victimized.⁷³ In the virtual reality  I borrow the term ‘vengeful destroyers’ from Rabinowitz (,  – ) who studies three female heroines, namely Hecabe, Medea and Phaedra, who, instead of being victimized, become vindictive killers of young males.  For the archetype of the emancipated woman in Theocritus’ Idylls  and , see Griffiths .  The pathology of love is described in two passages of Idyll  ( –  and  – ). Both descriptions draw for inspiration on Sappho  L.-P., but they also recall the symptoms of love-

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of executing her pseudo-magic, she represents herself as an avatar of the vengeful heroine drawn from the tragic repertoire. Simaetha’s tragic impersonation, vivid and credible in her own imagination, is ridiculous in the eye of the beholder (20): ἦ ῥά γέ θην, μυσαρά, καὶ τὶν ἐπίχαρμα τέτυγμαι; ‘Have I then become a mock also to you, despicable girl?’ Such is her tragic exaggeration that she becomes a caricature of the heroines she aspires to become, for example the terrifying witches Circe and Medea to which she expressly refers in lines 15 – 16. The opening scene of Idyll 2 sets up tragic expectations for the reader.⁷⁴ The tragic atmosphere is effectively created by the exaggerated rhetoric and emotional extravagance displayed by Simaetha. The diction of Attic tragedy is exploited throughout the idyll⁷⁵, whereas the metaphors of erotic passion as madness (48 – 51, 136 – 138), fire (82– 83, 131– 134) and illness (85 – 86) suggest emotional pathos. There are passages when the gloomy atmosphere is combined with horror effects, as when Simaetha summons the powers of Heaven and Hades in support (10 – 14): ἀλλά, Σελάνα, φαῖνε καλόν· τὶν γὰρ ποταείσομαι ἅσυχα, δαῖμον, τᾷ χθονίᾳ θ᾽ Ἑκάτᾳ, τὰν καὶ σκύλακες τρομέοντι ἐρχομέναν νεκύων ἀνά τ᾽ ἠρία καὶ μέλαν αἷμα. χαῖρ᾽, Ἑκάτα δασπλῆτι, καὶ ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει Nay, shine bright, O Moon, for to you, goddess, will I softly chant, and to Hecate of the world below, before whom even the dogs stand shivering, as she comes over the graves of the dead and the dark blood. Hail, grim Hecate, and to the end attend me… (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

More powerfully than in Attic tragedy, where action takes place during the day, Theocritus transposes his revenge play to the hours of darkness. The horror of invoking dark divinities, such as Selene and Hecate, has its roots in tragedy,⁷⁶ but, combined with the cemetery imagery, and a few lines later with the horrid sickness as experienced by the gravely ill Phaedra and Medea in Euripides (cf. Eur. Hipp.  –  and Med.  – ). For the pathetic rhetoric of these passages, cf. Segal ,  – .  It is worth noting that the emotional power of The Sorceress was praised by the neoclassical tragedian Jean Racine: see Griffiths , .  A striking example is pointed out by Segal (, ): the cry αἰαῖ () is a reminiscence of tragic rhetoric, whereas calling Eros the ‘Drinker’ of her blood ( –  αἰαῖ Ἔρως ἀνιαρέ, τί μευ μέλαν ἐκ χροὸς αἷμα/ ἐμφὺς ὡς λιμνᾶτις ἅπαν ἐκ βδέλλα πέπωκας;) Simaetha identifies the god of love with the Erinyes, cf. e. g. Aesch. Choeph.  –  (φόνου δ᾽ Ἐρινὺς οὐχ ὑπεσπανισμένη/ ἄκρατον αἷμα πίεται τρίτην πόσιν).  Cf. Eur. Med.  –  where the heroine declares that Hecate is her closest ally; on the ghost-like appearances of Hecate, see Eur. Hel.  – .

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growling of the dogs resonating through the city (35 ταὶ κύνες ἄμμιν ἀνὰ πτόλιν ὠρύονται) and the epiphany of Hecate at the crossroads (36 ἁ θεὸς ἐν τριόδοισι), it reinforces the dark effect of the scene. The revenge plot begins by focusing on the dramatic present—the emphatic deictic νῦν δέ by which tragedy draws attention to the plight of the protagonists that calls for immediate action. Simaetha begins by similarly announcing the action to be taken hic et nunc, namely love magic (10): νῦν δέ νιν ἐκ θυέων καταδήσομαι ‘but now I will cast upon him fire-spells’. Theocritus visualizes the execution of the revenge plan for the reader (24 ἐς τέλος ἄμμιν ὀπάδει); indeed, the entire scene of magic ritual (18 – 63) is a symbolic imitation of the consequences—fancied but never actually accomplished—of Simaetha’s revenge.⁷⁷ A closer look at the magic incantations conjures up the image of a demolished Daphnis. The desired effects may be divided into two categories. First black magic is executed, magic that aims at physically harming Delphis: his bones shall be burnt and crushed (21 τὰ Δέλφιδος ὀστία πάσσω), his flesh shall be destroyed (26 Δέλφις ἐνὶ φλογὶ σάρκ᾽ ἀμαθύνοι) and his heart shall melt (29 τάκοιθ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἔρωτος ὁ Μύνδιος αὐτίκα Δέλφις). Yet—and this is Simaetha’s dilemma— white magic will induce Daphnis to forget his new lover (44– 45 εἴτε γυνὰ τήνῳ παρακέκλιται εἴτε καὶ ἀνήρ,/ τόσσον ἔχοι λάθας), to frequent the door of his former sweetheart (31 τῆνος δινοῖτο ποθ᾽ ἁμετέραισι θύραισιν) and eventually return to her (50 Δέλφιν ἴδοιμι, καὶ ἐς τόδε δῶμα περάσαι). The dual magic action reveals Simaetha’s desire to either attract Delphis back to her or utterly destroy him.⁷⁸ By masterly blending two contrasting types of magic, Theocritus allows the reader a glimpse into the abyss of female psyche. Simaetha’s divided self unequivocally evokes tragedy, whereas the internalization of this struggle, the emergence of the ‘restless consciousness’, forms the essence of mental drama.⁷⁹ Once Simaetha (and the reader) is confronted with reality, as reflected in the narration of the past events of her love affair (64– 143), the generic expectations

 For a detailed analysis of the incantation section of Idyll , see Gow , . – .  Gow (, .) concludes that although “love and desire for revenge are both present in Simaetha’s mind…the refrain sets the tone and purpose of the whole poem and makes the idea of personal injury somewhat out of place here”. In my view, the desire for revenge is not a random thought but the expression of Simaetha’s unconscious.  The ‘divided self’ is one of the most striking moments of Greek tragedy, Medea’s dilemma over killing or not killing her children (Eur. Med.  – ): for an analysis of the pattern, see Foley . In contrast to the typical pattern of tragedy according to which the individual struggles against society (especially in Hegel’s conception of the tragic), the Romantic mental drama represents the conflict taking place within the mind of a single character: for this line of argument, see Richardson ,  – .

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generated thus far are subverted. The opening of Simaetha’s confession with its triple rhetorical question creates an atmosphere of tragic desperation (64– 65):⁸⁰ Νῦν δὴ μώνα ἐοῖσα πόθεν τὸν ἔρωτα δακρύσω; ἐκ τίνος ἄρξωμαι; τίς μοι κακὸν ἄγαγε τοῦτο; Now that I am alone, from what point shall I lament my love? Whence shall I begin? Who brought this curse upon me? (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

Yet patterns, themes and motifs in the flashback narrative suggest the blending of other genres—New Comedy and epigram in particular—into the tragic beginnings of Simaetha’s monologue. An obvious example is the subject matter per se. A heroine who, blinded by her erotic pathos, seeks bloody revenge proves to be just a figment of our literary imagination. Neither virginity nor unhappy marriage, two dysfunctional situations obstructing love affairs in tragedy, are at issue here. Simaetha appears to be an ordinary woman with trivial preoccupations (40 – 41): ἀλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τήνῳ πᾶσα καταίθομαι ὅς με τάλαιναν/ ἀντὶ γυναικὸς ἔθηκε κακὰν καὶ ἀπάρθενον ἦμεν ‘but I am all on fire for him who instead of marrying me—alas!—has left me in shame, not a maiden anymore’. Her passion leads neither to marriage, a stereotype of New Comedy, nor to self-destruction as in tragedy. It is to be understood purely on a sexual basis (138 – 143). This is not the only facet of Idyll 2 where the mundane prevails against the heroic. The urban milieu where Simaetha moves and the remote universe of the tragic heroes are worlds apart; yet she attracts our attention as one of the Aristotelian phauloi, as a heroine who is ‘just like us’ but also tragic at the same time:⁸¹ The Sorceress does present the desired case of a Hellenistic poet taking a female subject seriously in a way that his classical predecessors would not have. Theocritus has found almost tragic stature in a woman of his own day and, indeed, one from a social milieu so lowly that the boundaries of slave and free are blurred. A woman no longer need be monumental like Antigone, Clytemnestra, or even Lysistrata to compel a poet’s attention; nor is her life of interest only as she is impinging on men’s affairs by seduction, treachery, or defiance. Theocritus’ explores Simaetha’s commonplace experiences entirely for their own sake and without involving any male characters beyond her memory of the faithless Delphis.

 Cf. Aesch. Choeph.  –  and Eur. IA , two tragic parallels pointed out by Gow (, .).  Griffiths ,  – .

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Simaetha asserts her own identity and reclaims a self liberated from the constraints of the male-dominated society. It is no coincidence that, apart from the phantom figure Delphis, all the secondary characters surrounding Simaetha are women, whereas she appears to be totally liberated from any male dominion of father, husband or protector.⁸² Moreover, the realism of daily life is dramatized in the narrative of Simaetha: love at first sight during the festival of Artemis (65 – 74) with an aristocrat wrestler just leaving the palestra (76 – 80), the servant acting as a go-between for the two lovers (94– 101), the performing of a κῶμος in front of the door of the girlfriend’s house (118 – 128), the gathering of information from the gossiping neighbors (145 – 149), a toast proposed to a new lover during the symposium (150 – 153).⁸³ The social background depicted in the urban mimes of Theocritus differs markedly from the archaic and classical society reflected in Greek tragedy.⁸⁴ The shifting social identity of the female, in case of Idyll 2 the low-class emancipated woman, has also its generic implications. What has begun as a tragic love story and a revenge drama dissolves into a modern romance as Simaetha’s monologue develops. As anticipated, once motifs from New Comedy and the erotic epigram are tightly interwoven into the idyll, a tragic ending is inconceivable. Indeed the divide between tragedy and low-realistic literature is reflected in the ironic distance between Simaetha’s romantic imagination and her real-life experiences. Like Simaetha, the reader juxtaposes the tragic memory with the realities of the modern world, and both realize the impossibility of resolving the emotional and ethical dilemmas in a tragic/heroic way. If tragedy is impossible, then how can such a story of love and revenge end? Theocritus does not yield a straightforward answer by giving to Idyll 2 its notorious open ending: as day breaks Simaetha’s crisis remains unresolved (165 – 166). Neither Liebestod nor marriage occurs, suggesting that neither tragedy nor comedy can be accomplished,⁸⁵ hence the reader is left wondering about the continuation of the story. The key to this neutral, anticlimactic ending is the enigmatic phrase (164): ἐγὼ δ᾽ οἰσῶ τὸν ἐμὸν πόθον ὥσπερ ὑπέσταν ‘I will  See Griffiths ,  – .  Arnott (,  – ) describes the ‘illusive realism’ of Theocritus as a device resembling the verismo effect, the feeling of experiencing the story in its smallest detail. For this realistic world as an alternative to the literary world of the high genres like epic and tragedy, see Fantuzzi/Hunter ,  – .  For the empowerment of women in the Hellenistic society and the possibility of female vengeance in Idyll , see Burton ,  – .  When the happy ending of a γάμος or κῶμος is eliminated—and this is obviously the case in Idyll —then this signals the death of comedy, as Segal (,  – ) in his excellent analysis of Beckett’s absurd plays argues.

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bear my yearning in the future as I have endured it until now’.⁸⁶ The allure of Idyll 2 stems from this mysterious closure, implying perseverance despite lack of success in the magic rite, compromise with the dashed hopes, healing through realization of the little dramas of life.⁸⁷ Even if catastrophe never occurs and Delphis appears to triumph in the end (the image of the carefree playboy remains intact throughout the idyll), the confession of Simaetha produces a beneficiary result for her. By definition, a confessional narrative, in bringing an intimate story to light, promotes self-awareness and paves the way for self-knowledge.⁸⁸ During this process of introspection, the self recognizes its own deficiencies. At the beginning Simaetha has delusions of grandeur by likening herself to Circe and Medea (15 – 16); then self-pity comes into view (40 τάλαιναν, 72 ἁ μεγάλοιτος, 83 δειλαία); eventually she acknowledges her personal responsibility (138 ἁ ταχυπειθής). It may be true that the closure of the idyll is not even remotely tragic and hence is unable to produce the pity-and-fear emotions triggering catharsis. And yet Simaetha, the girl next door, has a tragic side in her: akin to the grand heroes of the mythical past, she gradually acquires the knowledge of a bitter truth. This truth is not annihilating as in the case of Oedipus, but, on the contrary, it is liberating and enlightening for an actual human being. It is through this realistic approach to the everyday tragedies that Theocritus calls attention to the mundane tragic, as modern thinkers and dramatists have conceived it. Among them Arthur Schopenhauer, whose theory of the tragic has developed against the backdrop of his pessimistic worldview of life (The World as Will and Idea 1.332, transl. R. B. Haldane-J. Kemp):⁸⁹ Lastly [i. e. in the third category of the tragic], the misfortune may be brought about by the mere position of the dramatis personae with regard to each other, through their relations; so that there is no need either for a tremendous error or an unheard-of accident, nor yet for a

 Gow (, .) draws a parallel between this phrase and lines  –  from Idyll  ἀλλὰ τὸν αὑτῶ/ ἄνυε πικρὸν ἔρωτα, καὶ ἐς τέλος ἄνυε μοίρας. Yet, in my view, Daphnis’ heroic resistance and Simaetha’s endurance are contrasting situations.  Cf. to the point Griffiths (, ): “In Greek literature the fallen woman must at the very least expect loss of honor and of family, and often enough pregnancy, madness, and murder (committed or suffered), as well as suicide. When in fact Simaetha walks away from the situation sadder, but wiser and otherwise intact, we may well have the sense conveyed by the pastorals of the essential harmlessness of life’s injustices, of their tendency to issue in moments of fervent song without leaving permanent scars.”  Romantic and modern literature places special emphasis on confessional narratives, because such narratives bring to the fore the individual and its hidden truths and more broadly reveal the particular qualities of being human: see RENT s.v. ‘Confessional Narrative’.  For the ‘banality of the tragic’ in Schopenhauer’s philosophy, see Young ,  – .

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character whose wickedness reaches the limits of human possibility; but characters of ordinary morality, under circumstances such as often occur, are so situated with regard to each other that their position compels them, knowingly and with their eyes open, to do each other the greatest injury, without any one of them being entirely in the wrong. This last kind of tragedy seems to me far to surpass the other two, for it shows us the greatest misfortune, not as an exception, not as something occasioned by rare circumstances or monstrous characters, but as arising easily and of itself out of the actions and characters of men, indeed almost as essential to them, and thus brings it terribly near to us.

By bringing tragedy to the level of a drama looming nearby, Simaetha realizes her tragic failures, whereas the reader becomes aware that what is represented in Idyll 2 is nothing more than a failed tragedy.⁹⁰

 An apt parallel from modern drama would be Anton Chekhov. In a way similar to the plot development and anticlimactic ending of Idyll , Chekhovian plays, by fusing realism and romance, create an alternative to classical tragic, situated midway between melodrama and tragicomedy: for this analysis of the Chekhovian tragic, see Hirst ,  – .

6. Tragedy into Epic in Apollonius’ Argonautica Distilling Attic tragedy into the Argonautica Theocritus’ The Sorceress, like Callimachus’ Hecale, are striking examples of how Alexandrian poetry incorporates the tragic idea. ‘Realism’ functions as a perfect foil for the simple-minded Simaetha, the mundane double of legendary figures such as Medea and Phaedra, and the kind-hearted old Attic woman who evokes, albeit remotely, Hecabe. Attic tragedy is an undercurrent behind these low-tone, small-scale poems and their humble female protagonists. Apollonius, on the other hand, eschews the realistic grounding of the tragic in his Alexandrian epic. The Argonautica represents a different kind of generic experiment in contrast to the one attempted by Theocritus and Callimachus. Reception, intertextuality and the creative rewriting of characters and narrative patterns from Attic tragedy into the epic matrix only partially describe Apollonius’ achievement. In effect, the Argonautica reflects the dynamic interaction between the highbrow genres par excellence: epic, the archetypal form of heroic narrative, and tragedy, the dramatization of actions and characters aiming at the representation of human suffering.¹ Both genres, but for different reasons, are called into question during the postclassical period. If crisis of the high genres is a strong term to use, the need for radical revision of both epic and tragedy becomes a fundamental tenet of poetics in the Hellenistic era. It is against this backdrop that Apollonius’ blending of the two genres should be examined and evaluated.² Alongside the Homeric epics, Attic tragedy is a corpus of paramount importance for the making of the Argonautica. Although the ancient scholia to the Argonautica do not contain any comments on the generic admixture of tragedy into the epic—despite Aristotle’s credo that the final evolutionary stage of epic is tragedy—, they nevertheless frequently note verbal reminiscences and plot details drawn from the major tragedians with reference to specific plays.³ Surprisingly

 It is not just a matter of the Argonautica hosting the genre of tragedy; we may speak of a ‘generic confluence’ and ‘generic enrichment’, in accordance with the term introduced by Harrison (,  – ) to capture the complex generic synthesis of Vergil’s Aeneid.  In studying tragedy in Ovid, Curley (,  – ) introduces the notions of ‘tension’ and ‘synergy’ to denote the generic conflict between tragedy and elegy/epic on the one hand and the possible hybridizations between them on the other. In my view, several passages of the Argonautica and especially Book  suggest both conflict and hybridization between epic and tragedy.  The plays referred to in Apollonius’ scholia by title are four by Aeschylus (Argo, Hypsipyle, Psychagogoi, Prometheus Unbound), twelve by Sophocles (Inachus, The Women of Lemnos,

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Euripides’ Medea is absent from the Argonautica scholia, a play for which modern scholarship assumes that it was a significant intertext for the interpretation of Books 3 and 4.⁴ Undoubtedly, the popularity not only of the monumental play by Euripides but also of the figure of Medea per se as represented in tragedy, comedy and the arts of the fifth and fourth centuries formed the horizon of expectations for the learned Alexandrian audience. Moreover, the notion of the ‘crossing of the genres’ as well as radical reconstructions of the epic that became the new norm in third-century poetry invited the working of various generic features into traditional literary forms. In other words, the Alexandrian reader would have anticipated, and graciously accepted, allusions to tragic heroes and plots in a sophisticated epic on the Argonautic myth. Given the fact that the bibliography on this subject is vast,⁵ I will presently focus on three levels of tragic reception in Apollonius: first, the weaving of Attic tragedy into the Argonautic narrative through reception of specific plays; second, the transformation of the standard epic form as a result of the integration of dramatic narrative strategies into the Argonautica; third, the response to the tragic idea through the portrayal of human passions and sufferings in Books 3 and 4. The Argonautica is a quest epic and as such explores a whole universe of characters, spaces and stories with which the adventurers come in contact. By definition, this multi-hero epic that unfolds from the Eastern to the Western boundaries of the world around a Greek epicenter, incorporates this broad universe not as myth, as mere storytelling, but in its specific configuration in archaic and classical poetry. Each story has markers indicating adoption or rejection of already established literary versions of the myth. One of these markers, in my

King Oedipus, Aias the Whip-Bearer, Polyxena, The Women of Colchis, Ixion, The Scythians, Daedalus, Nauplius, the satyr play The Dullards and The Lovers of Achilles) and seven by Euripides (Orestes, Bacchae, Heracles, Phoenissae, Phrixus, Peirithous, Helena).  Probably because ancient scholars had access to works with the same subject, i. e. the MedeaJason romance, now lost. It is critical therefore to bear in mind that the Cyclic epic Naupactia, Pindar Pythian , The Women of Colchis by Sophocles and perhaps Pherecydes and Eumelus are equally important sources for Books  and , see Vian ,  – .  Apart from numerous articles, there are three monographs, divergent in scope and methodology, dedicated to the reception of tragedy in the Argonautica. Stoessl () offers a survey of the tragic sources (Quellenforschung) exploited by Apollonius and even attempts a reconstruction of lost tragedies on the basis of close reading of specific scenes from the Argonautica; cf. the negative evaluation of Stoessl’s method by Fränkel (). In her dissertation, only partly published, Nishimura-Jensen () explores how Apollonius engages with the tragic past and incorporates dramatic strategies like the Chorus into his epic. A more recent dissertation by Schmakeit (), also difficult to access, is a comprehensive guide to the intertextual dialogue with Attic tragedy.

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view, are characters drawn from Attic tragedy that participate in the Argonautic plot. Like Circe and the Phaeacian royalty in Book 4 who conjure up entire episodes from the Odyssey or Hylas in Book 1 who calls attention to the novel heroes created by Theocritus and Callimachus, key personages encountered during the course of Argo—and during Apollonius’ metaphorical voyage through the literary past—inevitably evoke their realization in previous epic, lyric and dramatic poetry. Among them tragedy is a most significant intertext that gradually emerges as tragic characters play a greater or lesser role in the epic scenario.⁶ It may be true that such characters are already part and parcel of the Argonautic story when Apollonius initiates his epic project. However, their textual identity—in the paradigms under discussion their tragic identity—is carried over into the Argonautica thus enriching the generic quality of the latter. Obviously Apollonius does not reproduce the same plot or even episode as has been recorded in the tragic tradition. His authorial strategy may be described as follows: first, he weaves acclaimed dramatis personae into his epic scenario so as to evoke their tragic intertexts; then, he condenses these intertexts from Attic tragedy into brief narratives; finally, he either dramatizes an alternative episode involving these dramatic characters or he visualizes a tableau that calls to mind the scenic representation of a specific tragedy. A distinctive feature of the Argonautica is that narrative pace, i.e the relationship between story time and narrative time, fluctuates throughout the poem. Depending on whether epic or dramatic conventions dominate a particular passage, the pace at which the narrative on the Argonautic voyage unfolds is constantly modified.⁷ At the beginning of Book 1, the catalogue of the Argonauts, a section indispensable to ancient epos, brings story time to a standstill; in the course of the same book, the narration of the Argonautic voyage develops linearly and with a rapid sequencing of events with the exception of some passages conspicuous in their theatricality. The impact of the departing Argo in the setting of Pagasae (247– 267), the Chorus of local women lamenting for the heroes (251– 259) and the farewell dialogue between Jason and his mother Alcimede with the long rheseis (268 – 305) would make a perfect dramatic scene for representation on

 I have elsewhere pointed out that the Argonautic voyage is symbolic and metaliterary, in the sense that Apollonius’ epic consists of fragmented narratives from past literature (Sistakou b,  – ).  In Genette’s terminology ‘pace’ corresponds to the duration of narrative with respect to the actual time required for the events to unfold. In the Argonautica ‘summary’ and ‘scene’ alternate with each other between the ‘epic’ and ‘dramatic’ sections of the poem: on this manipulation of narrative temporality, see Fusillo ,  – .

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stage.⁸ However, this does not qualify as a drama. Such a drama will be first accomplished when the Argonauts arrive at the island of Lemnos (1.609 – 914). There they encounter Hypsipyle, the Lemnian queen, who, together with the other females of the island, had initiated the massacre of the Lemnian men in the year before, sparing the life only of her father Thoas. The Argonauts visit the island after these bloody events, whereupon the heroes become sexually involved with the Lemnian women and Jason has a passionate romance with Hypsipyle whom he eventually abandons to pursue his mission. The story is hinted at already in the Iliad when their son Euneos is mentioned (7.467– 469) and briefly summarized by Pindar (P. 4.251– 254), but becomes very popular as material for drama. Being a vital part of the Argonautic adventure, the story was dramatized by Aeschylus in his Argonautic tetralogy in two plays, The Women of Lemnos and Hypsipyle, dealing both with the Lemnian ‘evil’, the massive androcide, and the subsequent Jason-Hypsipyle affair.⁹ Sophocles’ The Women of Lemnos recounted a different version about the Argonautic arrival: whereas in Aeschylus the Argonauts were first allowed to land on Lemnos after making a vow that they would have intercourse with the local women, Sophocles told of a fierce battle between the two parties, a variation that led to the hypothesis that this might have been a satyr play.¹⁰ The tragedy for which we are best informed, namely Euripides’ Hypsipyle, dealt with events occurring at a later phase of the myth, when Hypsipyle was reunited with her lost sons in Nemea; the plot might have been invented by Euripides who placed his drama outside the scope of the Argonautic adventure, building upon the premise that Jason had previously died in Colchis.¹¹

 The model for the Jason-Alcimede scene is primarily Homeric, namely the farewell speeches exchanged between Hector and Andromache (Il. . – ); however, the diction of the passage is tragic, cf. Vian ,  n.  – .  See Radt ,  for the hypothetical ordering of the plays in this tetralogy; for their plots, cf.  and .  Sch. Arg. . –  Αἰσχύλος δὲ ἐν Ὑψιπύλῃ ἐν ὅπλοις φησὶν αὐτὰς ἐπελθούσας χειμαζομένοις ἀπείργειν, μέχρι λαβεῖν ὅρκον παρ᾽ αὐτῶν ἀποβάντας μιγήσεσθαι αὐταῖς. Σοφοκλῆς δὲ ἐν ταῖς Λημνίαις καὶ μάχην ἰσχυρὰν αὐτοῖς συνάψαι φησίν. Cf. Radt ,  – .  Comedy extensively treated the Lemnian episode (the dramatists referred to by ancient sources include Aristophanes, Nicochares, Antiphanes, Diphilus and Alexis), a further indication of the popularity of the episode in drama, a popularity that could not have been overlooked by Apollonius (see Radt , ).

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The treatment of the Hypsipyle myth in Attic tragedy is a prerequisite for the reading of the Lemnian episode in the Argonautica. ¹² The central role assigned to the Lemnian women is a common feature both in Aeschylus’ and Sophocles’ dramas, yet the exact terms under which the Argonauts are accepted by them vary—in Aeschylus it is a promise for intercourse under the threat of war, in Sophocles it is the breaking of an armed battle. Yet in Apollonius a civilized invitation by Hypsipyle is all it takes to ensure the sojourn of the Argonauts at Lemnos. The dramatis personae appearing in Apollonius’ Lemnian episode are probably also inherited from the tragic tradition: the messenger Aethalides might have appeared in the lost Aeschylean Hypsipyle, whereas the Lemnian Polyxo is either a Sophoclean reminiscence or Apollonius’ own invention.¹³ Even the mythical background, the flashback on the androcide and the rescue of Thoas— the true version is recounted by the third-person narrator in lines 609 – 639 and then a false account about the events is given by Hypsipyle in lines 798 – 826— owes much to the tragic treatment of the myth, and the prologue to Euripides’ Hypsipyle in particular.¹⁴ That the Lemnian episode in the Argonautica is influenced by Attic tragedy and endorses structural and stylistic patterns from the generic matrix of drama is widely acknowledged.¹⁵ In fact, many scholars consider the Lemnian episode a small-scale, yet fully-fledged tragedy. Its structure follows more or less the typical scheme of an Attic tragedy: it has a mythological introduction that represents the tragic prologue (609 – 632); it develops by means of scenes and sets of speeches that correspond to three dramatic episodes, namely the arrival and the messenger mission by Aethalides (633 – 652), the assembly of the Lemnian

 In a similar vein Stoessl (,  – ) points out the Aeschylean physiognomy of the Apollonian episode and especially its association with The Suppliants. The idea of an Aeschylean intertext is further elaborated by Vian (,  – ).  Hypsipyle’s nurse may have played a part in the Sophoclean tragedy, on which Apollonius might have modelled his Polyxo (on the basis of Sophocles’ The Women of Lemnos fr.  Radt ἄπλατον ἀξύμβλητον ἐξεθρεψάμην)—but everything is uncertain.  Euripides, who in general took liberties in the treatment of myth, may have reversed the main events (androcide/embarking of the Argonauts at Lemnos) and placed the encounter of Jason and Hypsipyle during the returning journey, see Vian ,  – .  The interpretation of this episode on the basis of drama is suggested by Stoessl (,  – ), whereas Vian (,  – ) compares all tragic intertexts to conclude that Aeschylus was the primary source for Apollonius. Essential for the tragic reading of the Lemnian episode is Cusset b,  – , but the most detailed account is found in Schmakeit ,  – . In another line of argument Hunter (,  – ) highlights the epic affinities by drawing parallels with the Nausicaa episode from the Odyssey and remarking that Apollonius rewrites here Iliadic scenes in an amatory mode.

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women featuring speeches by Hypsipyle, Polyxo and the messenger Iphinoe (653 – 720) and the meeting and dialogue between Hypsipyle and Jason (774– 860); Heracles’ revolt who urges the Argonauts to depart (862– 885), a scene closing with the farewell of the two protagonists, may, mutatis mutandis, stand in the place of the exodos (861– 914).¹⁶ Objections may be raised against this exaggerated viewing of the tragedy-like structure of the Lemnian episode. For example, a conspicuous feature of drama, namely direct speech, in other words the preference for showing over telling, is also typical of the Homeric epic, a principle already observed by Aristotle (Poet. 1460a): αὐτὸν γὰρ δεῖ τὸν ποιητὴν ἐλάχιστα λέγειν…ὁ δὲ [sc. ὁ Ὅμηρος] ὀλίγα φροιμιασάμενος εὐθὺς εἰσάγει ἄνδρα ἢ γυναῖκα ἢ ἄλλο τι ἦθος ‘the epic poet should do in his own person, that is, say as little as possible…but Homer after a brief preface at once brings on a man or a woman or other characterized person’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom). In effect, Apollonius employs here a device that is both dramatic and epic.¹⁷ This, however, does not diminish the theatrical value of the episode as a whole. The unities of action, place and time—with the exception of the exodos where it is implicitly stated that it occurs after an indefinite period of time (861 ἀμβολίη δ᾽ εἰς ἦμαρ ἀεὶ ἐξ ἤματος ἦεν)—are generally preserved thus heightening its dramatic dynamics. Apart from the representation through speeches acted out by the dramatis personae, the anonymous Lemnians suggest the presence of a Chorus, whereas the intervention of Heracles evokes the solution provided by the deus ex machina. ¹⁸ What is more challenging is whether this miniature play that is worked into the voyage plot of Book 1 of the Argonautica deserves to be designated as ‘tragedy’. The tragic impact of the Lemnian plays by Aeschylus and Sophocles is by itself a controversial issue, yet on the basis of ancient testimonies concerning these lost plays, the tragic effect might have emerged from the conflict that erupted between the women of Lemnos and the Argonauts. The dark background of the Lemnian crime, one which is deliberately concealed by Hypsipyle, and the eventual revelation of the deception were possibly highlighted in Attic tragedy  For an alternative structuring of the Apollonius’ ‘little tragedy’ into episodes, see Stoessl ,  and its reworking by Vian ,  –  and Cusset b,  – ; for the rejection of the tragic structure, see the arguments put forward by Schmakeit (,  – ).  For the speech-acts in the Iliad which complement the acts of the heroes and function as primary types of performance addressing an audience, i. e. for the epic speeches as dramatic conventions, see Martin .  Nishimura-Jensen (,  – ) considers the Lemnian women to be a female Chorus but more akin to that of comedy than of tragedy; a different view is held by Vian (, ), who believes that the ekphrasis of Jason’s cloak appears in place of a stasimon. Cusset (b, ) regards Heracles a ‘god from the machine’ who brings closure to the Hypsipyle plot.

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too.¹⁹ Apollonius alludes both to the conflicting encounter and the atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the arrival of the Argonauts at Lemnos (633 – 639) as well as to the false story told by Hypsipyle about the fortune of the vanished men in Thrace (793 – 826). Yet what renders this episode memorable is the dramatic separation of Hypsipyle and Jason after their passionate affair (886 – 909). Erotic frustration, as experienced by the deserted female, paves the way for the romantic revision of the tragic: in this sense, the tragedy of Hypsipyle foreshadows the Medea drama that will unfold in Book 3.²⁰ To maintain the focus of the present chapter, namely how Apollonius distills Attic tragedy into the Argonautica through the reception of tragic personages, I will now turn to other ‘tragic’ encounters during the Argonautic voyage. Phineus, the blind seer, has a rich tragic past that is projected into Apollonius’ epic. The Argonauts arrive at the abode of Phineus in Bithynia and have the longest stay there, in terms of both story and narrative time, before reaching Colchis (2.178 – 536).²¹ In much the same way as in the episode of Hypsipyle, Apollonius summarizes events covering several days, whereas he dramatizes one or two days dense in speeches and actions. And in a way that parallels the Lemnian drama in Book 1, the prehistory of Phineus is recounted by a third-third person narrator at the very beginning of the episode (178 – 193). By analogy to a tragic prologue, the opening lines give a brief account of the sad story of Phineus up to the dramatic present: how he was endowed with the gift of prophecy by Apollo; how he did not eschew revealing Zeus’ will to men; how Zeus punished him with old age and blindness and tortured him by sending the monstrous Harpies to snatch away his food. The sources for this story are also non tragic and may have included Hesiod’s Ehoiae, Pherecydes and Hellanicus.²² Yet a series of events from the earlier life of Phineus became material for Attic tragedy. We are informed of three tragedies bearing the title Phineus, one

 Cf. Gantz (, .) who observes that only the revelation of Hypsipyle’s deceit towards Jason on the true fate of the men of Lemnos had prompted Argo’s departure may have generated some drama in Aeschylus and Sophocles’ plays.  On the similarities with the Medea episode in the Argonautica, see Hunter ,  – . The Lemnian episode foreshadows both the Apollonian and the Euripidean Medea according to Schmakeit ,  – .  For the tragic resonances in the Phineus episode, see Stoessl ,  –  and Schmakeit ,  – .  On the literary sources of Phineus’ myth, see Gantz , . – ; on the ‘Phineus tragedies’, see Gantz , . – ; cf. . –  for the representation of this celebrated story in art. A comedy by Theopompus under the same title is of unknown content.

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by Aeschylus and two—or a tragedy and a satyr play—by Sophocles.²³ Based on the testimonies and surviving fragments, we may infer that Aeschylus’ tragedy treated the Harpies adventure against an Argonautic background, whereas the Sophoclean lost plays, dealing with a lesser known version about Phineus’ wife Cleopatra and the punishment of his children, also concluded with the old man’s blinding and the Harpies story. The extent to which Apollonius followed the tragic intertexts or significantly deviated from them remains obscure. However, it seems a plausible hypothesis that he condensed the tragic plots, which most probably were based on the crime and punishment thematics, into a narrative prelude, and subsequently dramatized the continuation of the story. In other words, if in Aeschylus and Sophocles the severe punishment of Phineus was the tragic climax of the plays, Apollonius chose to represent the salvation of Phineus by the intervention of the Boreads followed by his prophecy for the course of the Argonautic voyage as a miniature play. Whether or not Apollonius’ episode was modelled on a classical tragedy, it undoubtedly suggests one.²⁴ Intense theatricality is felt throughout the episode, not only because it consists of speeches and scenes, but also because it conveys the visuality of an actual performance. The vivid depiction of Phineus’ aged figure conjures up images of the appearance of such a character on a theatrical stage (197– 205). Like Oedipus heading to Colonus or the limping Philoctetes or the imposing prophet figures of Attic tragedy, Apollonius’ ghost-like Phineus would have aroused genuine tragic emotions to a virtual audience of spectators.²⁵ As the Argonauts approach Colchis, tragedy retains its significance as a source and a generic pattern for Apollonius’ epic. After Hypsipyle and Phineus, the heroes come across the sons of Phrixus (2.1093 – 1230). The Phrixids are shipwrecked on their way from Colchis to Greece, a journey they undertake in fulfilment of their promise to their father to restore the possessions of Athamas in Orchomenus. It may be true that the sons of Phrixus are not directly involved in any of the known tragedies. In effect, Apollonius is our earliest source on their encounter with the wandering Argonauts and their terrified reaction upon hearing of the Argonautic mission. Rescued by the Argo and its crew, they return to Colchis and are reunited with their mother Chalciope, and one

 Rather than presenting two different versions of the same tragedy, Sophocles may have included these two plays alongside The Drummers as a Phineus trilogy ending with the prophet’s blinding (Gantz , . – ).  According to Stoessl’s theory (,  – ) the Phineus episode from the Argonautica directly imitates Aeschylus’ Phineus and may even help us reconstruct the lost play in every detail.  Schmakeit (,  – ) makes a subtle comparison between Phineus and a series of old-aged or debilitated figures from tragedy.

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of them, Argus, even intervenes with Aeëtes to help Jason take hold of the Golden Fleece only to provoke the wrath of the Colchian king (3.299 – 381 and 576 – 615).²⁶ It is tempting to see a miniature tragedy with intense dramatic effect developing in Books 2 and 3 between Argus, Jason, Aeëtes and Chalciope as the dramatis personae. The tragic potential lies indeed in the confrontation between king Aeëtes and his grandsons who claim the Fleece on behalf of the Argonauts; the dramatic plot is intensified by a prophecy warning Aeëtes that his offspring would conspire against him and its misinterpretation by the king who suspects the children of Chalciope for treachery (3.598 – 605). This, however, is Apollonius’ tragedy designed as a sequel to the actual Attic plays treating the adventures of Phrixus.²⁷ A frequently dramatized myth concerns the troubled relationship of Athamas with the young Phrixus and Helle and was repeatedly treated in the ‘Athamas tragedies’ by Aeschylus and Sophocles and probably the latter of the two Euripides’ tragedies entitled Phrixus. ²⁸ More importantly, Phrixus belongs to the core of the Argonautic myth, because it is due to his flight from Orchomenus to Colchis and the shelter he found there that the Golden Fleece comes into Aeëtes’ possession. This second part of the Phrixus story dealing with his reception and life in Colchis is found in early sources from the Hesiodic corpus, the poems Aegimios and Megalae Ehoiae, but must have been also the mythical material for two ‘Phrixus tragedies’, one by Sophocles (whose plot is uncertain) and one by Euripides (the former of the two plays).²⁹ Apollonius may be focusing on an alternative episode, yet even so he previously summarizes the plot from the Attic tragedy into a narrated account of the events (1141– 1152), thus paying tribute to the tragic portrayal of Phrixus. The pattern ‘emergence of a dramatic character—summary of previous tragic plots—dramatization of an alternative tragic episode’ repeats itself several times throughout the Argonautica. This, however, is not the only authorial strategy explored by Apollonius. Some striking visual moments should also be attributed to tragic intertextuality. In these cases the visual overshadows the textual to such  The episode is rewritten in Valerius Flaccus Argonautica Book , where the Phrixids are silent characters who are in harmony with Aeëtes’ views and Jason alone claims the Fleece against their will.  Perhaps Apollonius was the first to relate the prophecy with the Phrixids; it may be that in tragedy the same motif appeared in connection to Phrixus. Cf. Gantz (, .): “Hyginus’ fabula on Phrixus offers an intriguing possibility for drama: Aeëtes is told that he should beware of death at the hands of a descendant of Aeolus, and therefore kills his own son-in-law [i. e. Phrixus]”.  For the different variations of these early episodes in tragedy and other sources from Hesiod and Pindar to Pherecydes and the mythographers, see Gantz , . – .  Cf. Gantz , . – .

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an extent that what is called to the memory is not just a tragic play but a tragic play in its scenic representation. Apollonius’ narrative frequently lays emphasis on visuality and his style has been justly called pictorial.³⁰ Still, certain tableaux in the Argonautica suggest much more than mere pictorialism; theatrical realism resulting from the experiencing of an onstage spectacle is rather the effect sought by the poet.³¹ The awe-inspiring scene of Prometheus bound on Caucasus, encountered by the wandering Argonauts just before the arrival in Colchis, is a case in point (2.1247– 1259): καὶ δὴ Καυκασίων ὀρέων ἀνέτελλον ἐρίπναι ἠλίβατοι, τόθι γυῖα περὶ στυφελοῖσι πάγοισιν ἰλλόμενος χαλκέῃσιν ἀλυκτοπέδῃσι Προμηθεύς αἰετὸν ἥπατι φέρβε παλιμπετὲς ἀίσσοντα· τὸν μὲν ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτης ἴδον ἑσπέρου ὀξέι ῥοίζῳ νηὸς ὑπερπτάμενον νεφέων σχεδόν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἔμπης λαίφεα πάντ᾽ ἐτίναξε παραιθύξας πτερύγεσσιν· οὐ γὰρ ὅγ᾽ αἰθερίοιο φυὴν ἔχεν οἰωνοῖο, ἶσα δ᾽ ἐυξέστοις ὠκύπτερα πάλλεν ἐρετμοῖς. δηρὸν δ᾽ οὐ μετέπειτα πολύστονον ἄιον αὐδήν ἧπαρ ἀνελκομένοιο Προμηθέος∙ ἔκτυπε δ᾽ αἰθήρ οἰμωγῇ, μέσφ᾽ αὖτις ἀπ᾽ οὔρεος ἀίσσοντα αἰετὸν ὠμηστὴν αὐτὴν ὁδὸν εἰσενόησαν. And then, rising above the horizon were the steep cliffs of Caucasus mountains, where Prometheus, his limbs bound fast to the hard cliffs by unbreakable bronze bonds, fed his liver to an eagle ever flying back to him. They saw it at dusk flying with a loud whirr above the top of the ship near the clouds, but nonetheless it made all the sails flap as it darted past on its wings, for it did not have the form of a bird of the air but plied its long wing-feathers like well-polished oars. Not long thereafter, they heard the tormented cry of Prometheus as his liver was being torn out. The air resounded with his shrieking until they saw the flesh-eating eagle flying back from the mountain by the same route. (Transl. W. H. Race)

Storytelling in visual terms is an appropriate description for the Prometheus passage.³² The three-dimensional setting, the audiovisual effects, the night

 Phinney () argues that Apollonius’ fondness for colour contrast, light effects and pictorialism in his descriptions results from an increasing influence of painting on poetry.  The use of perspective is common in art, mainly sculpture and architecture, and theatrical design: according to Fowler (,  –  and  – ), Apollonius shows a predilection for skenographia and skiagraphia in his descriptions.  Byre (, ) definitely hits the mark by the following observation on Apollonius’ Prometheus scene: “But the narrator limits himself for the most part to the ‘narrative present’ of the story and adopts a stance of ‘knowing’ little beyond this. He scrupulously avoids advert-

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hour, the phantom figure of Prometheus and the flying eagle constitute a spectacular mise-en-scène. Similar to a scene represented in the theatre—or to a cinematographic shot capturing the atmosphere through set design and arrangement of actors and props—the encounter of the Argonauts with Prometheus is a performative rather than a mythological experience. In effect, the Argonauts function as an internal audience that perceives the action (1259 εἰσενόησαν) through vision (1251 ἴδον) and hearing (1256 ἄιον).³³ In my view, this episode is not chosen at random. It is the tragic connection that has inspired the Apollonian passage. Among tragedies, Prometheus Bound, as well as its sequel Prometheus Unbound, attributed to Aeschylus or rather to his ‘school’, was staged as a grand spectacle already in the fifth century.³⁴ The imposing setting would have been focused on the rock, whereas the stagecraft probably featured all the technical abilities available to post-Aeschylean theatre, including stage lighting and extensive use of machinery.³⁵ The bird carrying the chariot of Oceanus to the stage, a griffin according to the ancient scholia (Sch. ‘Aesch.’ Pr. 284a ἐπὶ γρυπὸς γὰρ τετρασκελοῦς ὀχεῖται ὁ Ὠκεανός), is evoked by the gigantic eagle whose wings resemble the oars of a huge ship as viewed by the Argonauts. Likewise, the emphasis on its flight through the air (twice mentioned as αἰθήρ in lines 1254 and 1257) not only alludes to the opening lines of Prometheus (‘Aesch.’ Pr. 88 ὦ δῖος αἰθὴρ καὶ ταχύπτεροι πνοαί) but also call to mind the imitation of flight by use of the crane that must have been a hallmark of every Prometheus scenic production. Obviously the unbreakable bonds by which Prometheus is bound to the rock must also have been included in the stage props employed in the performances of this tragedy (cf.

ing to anything beyond the largely static situation of the scene, to any events before or after it in the Prometheus myth. The focus of interest remains firmly fixed on the eagle and on the sufferings of Prometheus.”  The Argonauts, like a theatrical audience, have a single viewpoint of the action on the stage: this explains their limited focalization and partial perception in narratological terms, as argued by Byre ().  By Aeschylus’ son Euphorion, who may also have been the author of the play, see M. L. West . A detailed approach to its staging, definitely not produced by Aeschylus but perhaps by the tragedian Xenocles, in Taplin ,  – .  Konstan (,  – ) illustrates his theory about the extensive use of stage machines and props in Greek tragedy as a means of enhancing its emotive effectiveness by the paradigm of Prometheus Bound and Prometheus Unbound. On how props defined the staging and reception of Greek tragedy, see Mueller .

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‘Aesch.’ Pr. 4– 6 τόνδε πρὸς πέτραις ὑψηλοκρήμνοις τὸν λεωργὸν ὀχμάσαι ἀδαμαντίνων δεσμῶν ἐν ἀρρήκτοις πέδαις).³⁶ The illusion that the reader, alongside the Argonauts, becomes part of a theatrical audience, is not confined to this scene. Theatricality and drama, performance and action triggered by speech, are omnipresent in Apollonius’ epic. A last example by which I will briefly illustrate the visualization of tragedy in the Argonautica occurs in Book 4. During the homeward journey, the Argonauts enter the river Eridanus where they witness a scene frozen in time: Phaethon’s corpse lies struck by Zeus’ lightning, surrounded by his sisters, the lamenting Heliades, who are transformed into tall poplars (4.596 – 611). The setting of Eridanus and the metamorphosis of Phaethon’s sisters is a reminiscence of Aeschylus’ lost play Heliades. ³⁷ The summary of how Phaethon meets his tragic death after his crash with the chariot of Helios is presumably modelled on the same tragedy; its plot was further elaborated in Euripides’ Phaethon, a less probable model for Apollonius’ significantly different version.³⁸ Employing the narrative strategy also found in the Prometheus episode,³⁹ Apollonius presentifies a scene from past tragedy (597 ἔνθα ποτ᾿~599 ἡ δ᾿ ἔτι νῦν περ) on a fantastic stage (603 – 606): ἀμφὶ δὲ κοῦραι Ἡλιάδες ταναῇσιν †ἀείμεναι† αἰγείροισι μύρονται κινυρὸν μέλεαι γόον∙ ἐκ δὲ φαεινάς ἠλέκτρου λιβάδας βλεφάρων προχέουσιν ἔραζε And round about, the maiden Heliades, confined in tall poplars, sadly wail a pitiful lament, while they shed forth from their eyes shining drops of amber to the ground. (Transl. W. H. Race)

The audience immerses itself in this performative revival, representing the smoldering corpse of Phaethon as still emitting smoke, the mourning voices of the Heliades still resonating, their tears of amber still flowing on the ground. Apollonius has just created a moment of pure theatre magic.

 The Prometheus Unbound is a more likely model for the Apollonian passage, because in this latter play Prometheus is already ‘fixed’ on the rock when the scene opens, whereas in Prometheus Bound the audience witnesses his binding to the rock during the play: see Taplin ,  – .  Cf. Diggle ,  – .  Some of the novel elements introduced by Euripides and ignored by Apollonius are: the Aethiopian setting, the leading role of Phaethon’s mother Clymene, the proposed marriage of the young hero and the culmination of the play with an ironic hymenaios instead of a threnos. For a reconstruction of Euripides’ Phaethon, see Diggle ,  – .  That these episodes form a double in the Argonautica is rightly argued by Byre ().

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Epic teleologies and tragic modalities Until now I have analyzed the reception of Attic tragedy and the rewriting of tragic characters into the context of Apollonius’ quest epic, especially in those books that give an account of the Argonautic voyage. Undeniably drama, both in its tragic articulation and in the sense of theatricality, emerges as an essential generic matrix for the composition of Books 1, 2 and partly 4.⁴⁰ Dramatic readings of these parts of the Argonautica range from plain theatrical tableaux like those representing a characteristic scene from the ‘Prometheus’ or the ‘Phaethon tragedies’ to the sophisticated microtragedies consisting of a unified action developed through character-speeches as in the case of Hypsipyle and Phineus. These sections should not be seen as dramatic pauses or deviations from the epic narrative proper. Gestures towards drama are part of the broader generic experiment of Apollonius, an experiment that reaches its climax in Books 3 and 4. We may explain the blending of epic and drama in terms of either a dialectic between a host and a guest genre or a tension/synergy interrelation between the two genres.⁴¹ However, the principles underlying Apollonius’ aesthetic choices should first be taken into account: the genetic affinity between Homeric epic and tragedy, for which Aristotle acknowledges a common starting point in the literary tradition; the questioning of the Aristotelian theory by the Alexandrian learned poets concerning the critical points of ‘linearity’, ‘wholeness’, ‘high and low thematics’ and ‘grand style’; the reading of the Argonautica as a heroic epic that gradually transforms itself into a romance; and, finally, the substantial role of the tragic mode in this generic transformation.⁴² The basic tenet of Aristotle’s Poetics is that tragedy evolved from singleaction, serious mythical epics about the praxeis of the spoudaioi for which Homer—in particular the Iliad—is the ideal example (Poet. 1449b): ἡ μὲν οὖν ἐποποιία τῇ τραγῳδίᾳ μέχρι μὲν τοῦ μετὰ μέτρου λόγῳ μίμησις εἶναι σπουδαίων

 Several scenes qualify as dramatic, albeit not tragic, in Book  too: the encounter of the Argonauts with Circe ( – ), the negotiation between Hera, Thetis and Peleus ( – ), the Phaeacian episode ( – ) are some of these. Obviously the murder of Apsyrtus ( – ) is a tragedy in a nutshell, already dramatized in Sophocles’ The Women of Colchis: see Stoessl ,  – .  Seen against the background of the ‘crossing of the genres’ introduced in Hellenistic times and subtly elaborated by the Roman poets. This mature phase of generic crossing in Roman poetry is explored as generic enrichment through the hosting of a guest genre in Vergil and Horace in Harrison’s monograph () and on the basis of tension/synergy with emphasis on Ovid by Curley ().  For the positioning of the Argonautica between the epic tradition, the Western romance and tragedy, see the insightful observations by Hunter (,  – ).

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ἠκολούθησεν ‘epic, in so far as it is a sizeable mimesis in verse of noble personages, goes along with tragedy’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom). Another principle that brings the correspondences between the Homeric epics and the tragedies into view is that they both feature one complete action (1451a οὕτω καὶ τὸν μῦθον, ἐπεὶ πράξεως μίμησίς ἐστι, μιᾶς τε εἶναι καὶ ταύτης ὅλης ‘likewise the plot, since it is the imitation of an action, this action should be one and presented in its entirety’). Aristotle highlights the superiority of the poet who treats a unified plot, one that is neither episodic nor aspires to encompass the entire life of a mythical hero, a quality of muthos shared both by the Homeric epics, as opposed to the Cyclic ones, and tragedy (1459b τοιγαροῦν ἐκ μὲν Ἰλιάδος καὶ Ὀδυσσείας μία τραγῳδία ποιεῖται ἑκατέρας ἢ δύο μόναι, ἐκ δὲ Κυπρίων πολλαὶ ‘as a consequence, from the Iliad and the Odyssey one or at most two tragedies can be created for each one of them, whereas from the Cypria many’). One should be cautious, though: Aristotle keeps the two genres distinct and argues that, according to his developmental scheme, drama is the ultimate, most perfected form of epic.⁴³ Cohesion and wholeness as the aim of good poetry on the one hand, grandeur and seriousness of the poetic material on the other are issues hotly disputed by Callimachus and the Alexandrian avant-garde. Rethinking the standards by which poetry should be written, the Hellenistic poets negotiate the limits and possibilities of the genres of past eras, among which the problem of epic and that of tragedy are the most daunting to address. The key to associating these genres is their aspiration to wholeness: to narrate, or to represent in the case of tragedy, a story from its beginning through its middle and to its end is the inevitable consequence of a poet’s commitment to telling the entire story. It should be noted though that ‘good’ epic (i. e. the Homeric, not the episodic of the Cyclic poets) and tragedy demonstrate wholeness as a qualitative not a quantitative feature; it is organic unity resulting from the causal association of meticulously selected events that defines these genres, not the accumulation of countless episodes loosely connected. No term has more succinctly expressed this critical distinction than the adjective διηνεκής, an anathema for Callimachean aesthetics.⁴⁴ But whereas Callimachus opts for discontinuity in his own poems (the Aetia is the most telling example for this type of fragmented, highly selective narrative), Apollonius does not reject chronological ordering, narrative

 In the natural history of the literary genres as conceptualized by Aristotle, the epic, especially the Homeric, is a kind of proto-tragedy, superseded and perfected later by tragedy: see Halliwell ,  – .  On the negative conception of διηνεκής by Callimachus, see above pp.  – .

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continuity and completeness for the writing of his own epic.⁴⁵ Given that the teleology of epic was contested by the Alexandrian poets against the background of Aristotle’s theoretical scheme, Apollonius’ positive stance towards the narrative techniques of archaic epic seems to be a notable exception.⁴⁶ The plot of the Argonautica advances linearly towards its ultimate end, namely the successful completion of a heroic quest.⁴⁷ In encompassing all the adventures beginning from the point at which Pelias imposes the dangerous task to Jason and ending once he and the Argonauts have accomplished their mission, the overall design appears to be circular; this circularity is reflected in choosing the same space, Iolcus, as the starting and termination point of the narrative, around which the Argonauts draw a full circle in journeying the world.⁴⁸ On this broader canvas, where the happy ending is secured, no reversals of fortune take place and the plot does not get off the beaten track, any notion of the tragic is unthinkable. Every adventure of the Argonautica brings the heroes closer to their goal, every episode builds up to the final end of the plot, i. e. the acquisition of the Golden Fleece. In this sense, the ultimate goal of the plot, its epic teleology, is secured. In Aristotelian terms the actions undertaken by the Argonauts do not lead to reversals (Poet. 1452a περιπέτεια μὲν ἡ εἰς τὸ ἐναντίον τῶν πραττομένων μεταβολὴ), only to temporary misdirection of the narrative expectations. Every unplanned stop during the voyage—at Lemnos by Hypsipyle or by the Mysians for example—soon ends, every crisis—the Symplegades, Aeëtes’ deadly ordeals, the dark night before the appearance of Anaphe—is overcome and the journey always resumes. Once peripeteia is excluded, tragedy becomes an impossibility.⁴⁹

 Indeed, Apollonius’ use of διηνεκής in the Argonautica (./, ., .) implies the feature of ‘telling the whole story’ which is typical of an archaic narrator; at the same time however, as Hunter (, ) remarks, “Apollonius tells the story διηνεκέως, but the ironic acknowledgement of the impossibility of ‘completeness’, the awareness that all narration is a process of selectivity, undermines the apparent assurance of the archaic category”.  For the affinity of the Argonautica with the Cyclic epics, see Hunter ,  – .  The linear structuring of time in the Argonautica, one that eliminates analepses and prolepses from the narrative, in contrast to the flashbacks and flashforwards regularly found in the Homeric epics, is argued by Rengakos (). For a thorough analysis of the linear narrative technique of the Argonautica, see also Hunter ,  – .  Through this symbolic circularity Apollonius aligns himself with the Cyclic poets rejected by Callimachus, see Rengakos ,  – .  Moreover, Apollonius contextualizes his epic into the genre of fantasy which is by definition untragic: a fairytale ends with success, restoration and well-being (the sudden happy turn to a story termed ‘eucatastrophe’ by J.R.R. Tolkien). For an analysis of the Argonautica as a fantasy narrative, see Sistakou ,  – .

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It seems that Apollonius implicitly deconstructs this teleological model. The introduction of the Medea plot works a fissure into the solid structure of the quest masterplot. The new orientation of the overall plot becomes obvious in the proem introducing Book 3 that stands in stark contrast to the proem of Book 1. The official opening asserts the heroic, and hence teleological, quality of the quest masterplot (1.1– 2): ᾿Aρχόμενος σέο Φοῖβε παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτῶν/ μνήσομαι ‘Beginning from you, Phoebus, I will recount the glory of the men of the past…’. Many illustrious deeds are anticipated by the reader but not much human passion.⁵⁰ At the other end of the spectrum there is Book 3. The evocation of Erato calls attention to a fundamental human emotion, namely love (3.1– 3): Εἰ δ᾽ ἄγε νῦν Ἐρατώ, παρ᾽ ἔμ᾽ ἵστασο καί μοι ἔνισπε ἔνθεν ὅπως ἐς Ἰωλκὸν ἀνήγαγε κῶας Ἰήσων Μηδείης ὑπ᾽ ἔρωτι… ‘Now come, Erato, stand by my side and tell me how from here Jason carried the fleece to Iolcus thanks to Medea’s love…’. At this point the epic nods to romance, since love emerges as a basic ingredient of a quest epic thematizing heroic travels and adventures.⁵¹ Alongside the shift from the heroic enterprise to the romance story, there is also a gradual turn from the epic to the tragic mode. The tragic idea as a concomitant of the romantic atmosphere in Apollonius’ epic dominates Books 3 and 4,⁵² but is first explicitly declared as such in the proem to Book 4 (1– 5): Αὐτὴ νῦν κάματόν γε, θεά, καὶ δήνεα κούρης Κολχίδος ἔννεπε, Μοῦσα, Διὸς τέκος· ἦ γὰρ ἔμοιγε ἀμφασίῃ νόος ἔνδον ἑλίσσεται, ὁρμαίνοντι ἠὲ μιν ἄτης πῆμα δυσιμέρου ἦ τό γ᾿ ἐνίσπω φύζαν ἀεικελίην ᾗ κάλλιπεν ἔθνεα Κόλχων.

 The Argonautica proem emphatically diverges from the proem of the Iliad which focuses on the human passion of anger and its fatal consequences, thus foreshadowing its tragedy structured plot (Il. . – ): Μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω ᾿Aχιλῆος/ οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί᾽ ᾿Aχαιοῖς ἄλγε᾽ ἔθηκε,/ πολλὰς δ᾽ ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν/ οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι.  Thus the Argonautica, in being an epic romance, foregrounds not only ancient novels of love, travel and adventure but also the chivalric romance and Shakespearean romance; for these thematic ingredients in ancient prose romances, see Archibald . Frye (,  – ) gives the first systematic treatment of ‘romance’ as an archetypal generic plot revolving around a quest. ‘Romance’ as a complex critical idiom that may denote a genre, a mode or a narrative strategy and is found in classical, Medieval and Renaissance literature is explored by Fuchs (). For the blending of epic and romance in the Argonautica, see the reference study by Beye .  For an analysis of Books  and  under the viewpoint not only of romance but also of Romanticism, see Sistakou ,  – .

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Now, goddess, you yourself tell of the distress and thoughts of the Colchian girl, O Muse, Daughter of Zeus, for truly the mind within me whirls in speechless stupor, as I ponder whether to call it the lovesick affliction of obsession or shameful panic, which made her leave the Colchian people. (Transl. W. H. Race)

In mirroring the dramatic implications of eros, this proem underlines the transition from romance to tragedy. Reaching far beyond mere epic intertextuality or generic interaction with epic, the tragic modality pervades the second part of the Argonautica at various levels. The most obvious is the devising of Book 3 as a theatrical play that gears up for the reception of the tragic mode; the other aspect, that I will address in the next chapter, is the anatomy of the emotions and passions portrayed in the romance scenario of the Argonautica in the light of the tragic idea. The crossing of the quest plot and the eros plot occurs at a turning point of the Argonautica, namely the arrival of the heroes in Colchis near the closure of Book 2. The transition from the epic narrative to drama is clearly signposted. A major change in the handling of place, time and action becomes evident in Book 3, thus drawing a sharp contrast with the design of the other, epic-structured, books.⁵³ The spatio-temporal outreach of epic is vast, while in drama it has specific boundaries. If the Argonauts navigate throughout the entire world, mapped in detail, in Books 1, 2 and 4, plot in Book 3 is confined to a handful of spaces.⁵⁴ The play opens on Mount Olympus, in the apartments of Hera (7– 35) and then in the chamber of Aphrodite (36 – 110), and ends in the orchard of Zeus (111– 166); after the ethereal spaces of this introductory scene, the plot is basically divided between the Argo and Colchis. The reader is urged to visualize the central scenes of Book 3 as part of a staging that presupposes alternating settings. Apart from the Argo and its surroundings where the heroes hold their assemblies (167– 209, 472– 575, 1163 – 1172), the big scenes are set in the palace of Aeëtes (215 – 470, 609 – 827, 828 – 886, 1146 – 1162), the assembly of the Colchians (576 – 608), the temple of Hecate (887– 1145), a secluded meadow (1191– 1224) and the plain of Ares (1278 – 1407). Given the constant movement of the travelling Argonauts in the previous books, the Colchian plot is relatively static. Yet the theatrical impression conveyed to the reader is undermined by the storylines running parallel

 For a similar synergy between epic and drama against the evocation of celebrated tragic contexts, involving Hecabe, Heracles and Medea, in the Metamorphoses, see Curley (,  – ), who examines the manipulation of space, time and spectacle as a means of dramatizing the Ovidian narrative.  Space depiction ranging from the route of the Argonauts as inscribed in realistic geography to the psychological and symbolic function of spatiality is discussed by Klooster ().

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and the multiple perspectives of Medea, Aeëtes and the Argonauts, through whose eyes and consciousness the narrative is focalized.⁵⁵ In essence, Book 3 lacks the unity of space in terms of classical theatre, because its settings cannot be easily accommodated on one single stage. Nevertheless, these spaces are highly dramatic per se, in directing the plot from the vague, open-air locations to limiting, agonizing indoor places, thus turning the spotlight on the characters, their relationships and their inner life.⁵⁶ Moreover, these places are described so as to create strong visual and theatrical impressions to the reader, ranging from the detailed architecture of Aeëtes’ palace (205 – 248) to the plain of Ares where the Colchians and the Argonauts are transformed into spectators of Jason’s bloody tasks (1270 – 1407).⁵⁷ Likewise, conception of time is theatrical in Book 3. In the epic books recounting the voyage of the Argo the narrative extends over 150 days of adventures, whereas the stasis in Colchis covers just four days of intense dramatic plot.⁵⁸ Day 99 of the Argonautic voyage is the longest day in the entire epic: it begins when dawn breaks (2.1285 ἠὼς δ᾽ οὐ μετὰ δηρὸν ἐελδομένοισι φαάνθη ‘not long after that dawn appeared to the longing heroes’) and ends at an indeterminate late hour of the night when Medea experiences her agonizing dilemmas after almost nine hundred verses (3.827). Day 100 unfolds again from early morning (3.828 ἐπεὶ οὖν τὰ πρῶτα φαεινομένην ἴδε ἠῶ ‘when she first saw dawn appearing’) until the fall of night (3.1171 ἐπεὶ κνέφας ἔργαθε νυκτός ‘when the darkness of night restrained them’). Day 101 is the shortest, covering approximately fifty verses (3.1172 – 1223), with an action divided again between day and night when Jason prepares for Aeëtes’ tasks. Day 102 concludes the Colchian episode, typically from daybreak until the very end of the night just before

 Representation of simultaneous actions in classical drama is excluded by Aristotle, whose narration is only feasible in the epic (Poet. b): see also above pp.  – . Yet Book  is set simultaneously in different locations of Colchis, cf. Klooster , .  Cf. Klooster , : “Book , however, is mainly taken up with the intimate emotions of Medea. On a symbolic level this is echoed by the fact that she is often depicted indoors, in her room in the palace. The fact that many scenes take place behind closed doors in the women’s quarters also enhances the atmosphere of secret treachery and duplicity characterizing the Colchian episode.”  Curley (,  – ) uses the term ‘amphitheatre’ to denote violent acts taking place in theatrical settings in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, such as the death of Actaeon or the dismemberment of Pentheus. The effect of the closing scene of Argonautica Book  matches exactly the impression of a Roman amphitheatre avant la lettre.  For the calculation of the days of epic narrative in the Argonautica, see the tables compiled by Vian (,  and  – , and ,  – ). Astronomy as a means of calculating the internal chronology of the Argonautica is explored by Murray ().

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the coming of the new day (3.1223 – 4.182). This manipulation of time conforms, albeit freely, with the Aristotelian tenet that a tragic praxis does not require more than ‘a single revolution of the sun’ to be represented in its wholeness and therein lies tragedy’s divergence from the epic (Poet. 1449b):⁵⁹ ἔτι δὲ τῷ μήκει· ἡ μὲν [sc. τραγῳδία] ὅτι μάλιστα πειρᾶται ὑπὸ μίαν περίοδον ἡλίου εἶναι ἢ μικρὸν ἐξαλλάττειν, ἡ δὲ ἐποποιία ἀόριστος τῷ χρόνῳ It also differs in length, tragedy attempting so far as possible to keep to the limit of one revolution of the sun or not much more or less, while epic is unfixed in time. (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

Apollonius may not fully adhere to the rule of the ‘tragic day’ but the compression of the vast narrative time of the sea travel into four days privileges the notion of dramatic time.⁶⁰ Four days replete with action not pertaining to the Argonautic voyage bring the intensity of a drama into play. As the narrative pace slows down, dramatic time is prolonged to enlarge upon human experiences, thoughts and emotions. On the other hand, the transposition of the most intense and emotionally laden actions from daytime to the night hour highlight a new, typically Alexandrian, conception of the tragic: if characters are destined to act and deliberate ‘under the sun’ in Attic tragedy,⁶¹ the protagonists of the Hellenistic microdramas relocate the tragic idea and its concomitant emotions in the hours of darkness. Arrangement of time and place in Book 3 may be more akin to a theatrical play than an epic narrative, even if the dramatic characters of Apollonius’ play can move freely onstage and offstage and their time may exceed the ‘tragic day’ in contrast to what applies to their counterparts in classical tragedy.⁶² The reader is invited to relive the epic narrative as a theatrical experience and the transformation of the epic ‘there-and-then’ to the dramatic ‘here-and-now’ is just the first

 However, this is not true of earlier tragedies, especially trilogies like the Oresteia, which widen the perspective so as to embrace the history of a whole family or generation. For the heightening of the dramatic intensity when the tragic hero deliberates for his fate under the pressure of time and emotion, see Hall ,  –  and  – .  The time-frame of drama is by definition narrow: for dramatic time which may be accelerated or decelerated to suit the plot, see Taplin ,  –  and Curley ,  – .  The preference for the suffering ‘under the sun’ in Attic tragedy is both explained in terms of its immediate performative context in the open-air theatres as well as on the basis of the symbolic and psychological dimension of the sun for human life, see Hall ,  –  and passim.  For this conflation of the epic and the dramatic/tragic spaces as observed in narratives with tragic models in the Metamorphoses, see Curley ,  – .

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step in this direction.⁶³ More importantly, if praxis is the heart of drama, and this applies particularly to tragedy, then Book 3 is focused on such a praxis. At the same time, Book 3 conforms to the most essential convention of tragedy: that action should emerge from the dramatic utterances of the characters. Beginning from the latter, we may observe some striking instances of speeches throughout this book. Leaving aside the speeches of Hera, Athena and Aphrodite on Mount Olympus, the first big episode, an exchange of rheseis between three characters, namely Aeëtes, Argus and Jason, reads as a dramatic, three actors’ scene set in the palace (299 – 438). A multi-character speech exchange takes place later on the Argo with the participation of Argus, Jason, Peleus, Mopsus and Idas (472– 571). As the night advances and drama becomes more intense, Medea engages in a dialogue with Chalciope (673 – 739) and eventually merges into a powerful soliloquy (772– 801). Apollonius’ distinct use of tragic rhetoric, of speeches expressing debates, thoughts, decisions and emotions, transforms the plain spectacle to true theatre.⁶⁴ This first day of the plot is laden with drama, acted out by the speaking characters. The mission impossible (ἄεθλος) launched by the Argonauts, namely to claim the Golden Fleece from Aeëtes, begins as a conflict but is almost resolved by the end of this long dramatic day, when Medea decides to rescue Jason; what remains to be seen are the details of this rescue in the remaining ‘tragic days’. Therefore, the praxis represented in Book 3 seems to consist of the devising and execution of a plan that will lead the Argonautic mission to the desirable outcome. The core of this praxis involves betrayal through craft and cunning— in this sense δόλος becomes a key term in the reading of the Argonautica. ⁶⁵ One is tempted to fit this plot into a pattern corresponding to the different phases of Medea’s plan to save Jason: conflict erupts between Aeëtes and the Argonauts; Medea devises a rescue plan which is materialized after her romantic encounter with Jason; Jason prepares himself and successfully faces the deadly ordeals; having stolen the Golden Fleece, Medea, Jason and the Argonauts escape Colchis.⁶⁶ If we add to this plot design the Olympus scene which functions as

 This critical opposition between epic and drama is explored by Curley (,  – ) in regard to the Metamorphoses.  For the features of tragic rhetoric in Ovid’s epic, see the brilliant analysis by Curley ,  – .  Schmakeit (,  – ) speaks of a ‘mechanema-drama’ whose plot revolves around revenge or rescue as achieved through cunning and trickery. To the rescue tragedies belong Euripides’ Orestes, Iphigenia in Tauris and Helen. A systematic close reading of the Medea plot in the Argonautica in the light of Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris in Sansone .  See Schmakeit ,  – .

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a divine prologue to the ensuing tragedy, then we have almost a complete play— a play that could be accommodated to the five-act division that becomes standard in post-Euripidean drama, almost a rule according to Horace.⁶⁷ Even the length of Book 3 fits ideally into the ‘magnitude’ required for a tragedy.⁶⁸ Still a question remains open: where should one set the end of this tragedy, which seems to reach beyond Book 3? Addressing this question hinges on the broader issue of how the tragic idea is incorporated into the scenario of the Argonautica, to which the following chapter is dedicated.

An Alexandrian epic on tragic passions In composing his Argonautic epic in the Alexandrian manner, as a narrative retelling an old myth while engaging in a dialogue with the numerous adaptations of this myth, Apollonius was faced with a major challenge. For centuries Medea, an awe-inspiring figure, took center stage in the epic, lyric and foremost the dramatic tradition, as well as in philosophy and art.⁶⁹ Once Medea enters the Argonautica, the poet and his audience have to reckon with her rich intertextual background.⁷⁰ Books 3 and 4 read as a multilayered narrative, where the story of the young Medea falling in love with Jason and fleeing with the Argonauts to Greece is set against the backdrop of the previous literary ‘lives’ of Medea, both past and future. By far the most influential are those found within the tradition of tragedy. Two tragedies that have exerted considerable influence on the formation of the Colchian episode and its development in Book 4 are The Women  For the five-part construction of Book , see Beye ,  – . Kotlińska-Toma (,  – ) provides an overview of the five-act drama and its features in Euripides, Menander and beyond. A difficulty in applying this pattern to Apollonius’ tragic Book  is the lack of choral interludes through which the five parts or episodes of a drama are divided; yet Apollonius seems to have included multiple Choruses into his epic, on which see Nishimura-Jensen ,  – .  Dramatic economy forms the basis for measuring the length of a good tragedy according to Aristotle (Poet. a): ἐν ὅσῳ μεγέθει κατὰ τὸ εἰκὸς ἢ τὸ ἀναγκαῖον ἐφεξῆς γιγνομένων συμβαίνει εἰς εὐτυχίαν ἐκ δυστυχίας ἢ ἐξ εὐτυχίας εἰς δυστυχίαν μεταβάλλειν, ἱκανὸς ὅρος ἐστὶν τοῦ μεγέθους. For an original analysis of the structuring of the Argonautica into four books as part of Apollonius’ poetic agenda, see Hutchinson ,  – : a parallel is also provided by the dramatic Hecale of Callimachus, on which see above pp.  – .  For the ‘enduring spell’ cast by Medea in the literary, artistic and philosophical contexts of antiquity and beyond, see Clauss/Johnston .  Besides the numerous tragedies based on Argonautic or Colchian material, the poetic sources include the Theogony, the Corinthiaca by Eumelus, Ibycus and Simonides, Pindar Pythian  and the Lyde by Antimachus, on which see Gantz , . – .

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of Colchis and the Scythians by Sophocles.⁷¹ His Root-Cutters may also have provided Apollonius with stories concerning the magical skills of Medea. Non-Colchian material, that nevertheless builds up the profile of the tragic Medea, was treated by Euripides in his lost Peliades and Aegeus, and in his monumental Medea. Numerous minor tragedians (Neophron, Melanthius, Theodorides, Carcinus and others) but surprisingly also comic poets, from Epicharmus and Deinolochus to Cantharus, Strattis and Antiphanes, complete the picture on the dramatic production of diverse Medeas during the fifth and fourth centuries. But among them it is Euripides’ portrayal of the heroine that became a legend— and a benchmark against which all subsequent Medeas are evaluated and whose literary phantom hovers over the Argonautica. ⁷² Through Medea Euripides illustrates the catastrophic implications of an illfated eros, of a love affair fading away and causing a disproportionate disaster; it appears, however, that certain features incorporated in the archetypal barbarian female, her intellectual and magical powers, ending in her terrible revenge and culminating with the infanticide made the most sustained impression on audiences of the subsequent centuries.⁷³ Apollonius could not overlook this powerful intertextual model nor the horizon of expectations shared by the Hellenistic audience, but, in being a poet of the Callimachean avant-garde, should strike an original tone by releasing his own, sophisticated version of Medea. Apollonius seeks to deconstruct the established Medea by the very words of Euripides: while the prospect of the tragic aftermath of her marriage to Jason lies ahead, the making of a young, innocent Medea is the aim of his depiction.⁷⁴ In introducing the theme of Book 3 with the phrase ἔνθεν ὅπως ἐς Ἰωλκὸν ἀνήγαγε κῶας Ἰήσων/ Μηδείης ὑπ᾽ ἔρωτι ‘how from here Jason carried the fleece to Iolcus thanks to Medea’s love’ (2– 3) he adapts the opening lines of Euripides’ tragedy (Med. 7– 8): Μήδεια πύργους γῆς ἔπλευσ᾽ Ἰωλκίας/ ἔρωτι θυμὸν ἐκπλαγεῖσ᾽

 The importance of this tragic source is buttressed by the ancient scholia, see Sch. Arg. .c, .a and d.  As succinctly expressed by Hunter (, ) “the action of Euripides’ tragedy hangs over the epic like a cloud about to burst, so that the later poem becomes almost an explanatory commentary on the terrible events of the drama”. Despite being a mythological sequel, Euripides’ Medea is a literary prequel which cannot be overlooked after the fifth century; its reception in Apollonius is examined by Schmakeit (,  – ). The other classical model taken into account for the making of the Apollonian Medea is obviously Pindar Pythian , cf. Hunter ,  – .  Medea becomes a popular tragedy figure in Hellenistic and Roman times also because it incorporates the Stoic arguments against passion: a brilliant analysis of Medea from a Stoic viewpoint in Nussbaum .  The model for the helper-maiden Medea is the Homeric Nausicaa, cf. Clauss ,  – .

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Ἰάσονος ‘Medea sailed to the castle of Iolcus smitten at her heart with love for Jason’. Ironically Apollonius appears to shift the focus of the Argonautic expedition from Medea to Jason. Yet the verbal shift from ἔρωτι Ἰάσονος to ἔρωτι Μηδείης is not just a witty wordplay; it compels the reader to review the love story from Medea’s perspective.⁷⁵ Henceforth, the narrative is oriented towards supplementing the missing chapter in the past story of Jason and Medea; in effect, Apollonius provides the aition for their notorious affair. From the very beginning Medea falls victim to external powers, to an almighty destiny, personified by Eros; in succumbing to necessity, she gives up her own freedom.⁷⁶ Her victimization becomes evident upon receiving his blow (284– 290): τὴν δ᾽ ἀμφασίη λάβε θυμόν. αὐτὸς δ᾽ ὑψορόφοιο παλιμπετὲς ἐκ μεγάροιο καγχαλόων ἤιξε∙ βέλος δ᾽ ἐνεδαίετο κούρῃ νέρθεν ὑπὸ κραδίῃ φλογὶ εἴκελον. ἀντία δ᾽ αἰεί βάλλεν ἐπ᾽ Αἰσονίδην ἀμαρύγματα, καί οἱ ἄηντο στηθέων ἐκ πυκιναὶ καμάτῳ φρένες∙ οὐδέ τιν᾽ ἄλλην μνῆστιν ἔχεν, γλυκερῇ δὲ κατείβετο θυμὸν ἀνίῃ. Speechless amazement seized her heart. He [sc. Eros] darted back out of the high-roofed hall, laughing out loud, and the arrow burned deep down in the girl’s heart like a flame. She continually cast bright glances straight at Jason, and wise thoughts fluttered from her breast in her distress. She could remember nothing else, for her heart was flooding with sweet pain. (Transl. W. H. Race)

The debilitating effects of eros may sound familiar in evoking descriptions from archaic lyric, but the shifting of the focus from Medea’s mind to her heart is novel. Incorporating the cunning and eloquent female according to Euripides, Medea destroys the males around her by exploiting her wisdom. By contrast, Apollonius’ Medea is speechless and helpless in the view of a good-looking hero, and her heart soon proves triumphant over her mind. Lovesickness results from her amazement upon beholding Jason (443 – 456): it is an external won-

 Unlike Euripides’ take on the male/heroic role assigned to Medea, Apollonius attributes the accomplishment of the mission to Jason, thus highlighting Medea as a love heroine only: see Clauss ,  – .  The tragic misfortune does not result from error as Aristotle maintains but from an unavoidable fate or the gods, a metaphor for a destiny from which humans cannot escape: this view of the tragic is introduced by German Idealists beginning with Schelling, on which see Young ,  – . For the notion of fatality, of an overarching necessity, governing the plot and characters and the problem of their freedom as the core debate of tragedy, see Eagleton ,  – .

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der that annihilates reason and arouses the most extreme passions in the soul of Medea.⁷⁷ At the aftermath of their first encounter, her mind is transformed to a fleeting dream—thus this new Medea becomes a shadow of her Euripidean self (446 – 447 νόος δέ οἱ ἠύτ᾽ ὄνειρος/ ἑρπύζων πεπότητο μετ᾽ ἴχνια νισσομένοιο ‘her mind, as a creeping dream, flew after his footsteps as he left’). Recast like this Medea becomes a romance heroine that sets the generic tone for the entire Book 3. The essential ingredients of a romance scenario are identifiable here: the quest of the Argonauts who travel to a faraway land; the chivalrous code of honor upon meeting with the king and the princess; the ‘damsel in distress’ who is detained by her tyrannical father in the castle; the innocent maiden falling in love with the mysterious prince and betraying her country to flee with him; the couple celebrating its marriage after a plethora of adventures. Apollonius, however, has more to offer than a cluster of novelistic stereotypes leading to a ‘happily ever after’ end. Stripped of her rational self, Medea is immersed in her irrational passions. Tragedy surfaces by the time excessive pathos is internalized and projected on the human psyche. The nocturnal sequence, including her symbolic dream, soon turns the mawkish love story to a psychological drama (616– 826).⁷⁸ Once Medea’s interior monologue is dramatized during an anguished night, the dilemma experienced by the heroine adds a novel twist to her tragic situation. Whereas classical tragedy articulates an unresolvable conflict against an overwhelming power outside the control of the hero, Apollonius’ Medea suffers from an internal strife between shame and desire or, on a symbolic level, between reason and emotion (653 αἰδοῖ δ᾽ ἐργομένην θρασὺς ἵμερος ὀτρύνεσκεν ‘whereas shame held her back, bold desire urged her on’).⁷⁹ Among the available models, the Euripidean Medea, who struggles between rational deliberation and maternal love, pervades Apollonius’ portrayal; in effect, Euripides anticipates the modern tragic by demonstrating that passions govern human action. Apollonian Medea may be reproducing the rhetoric of the divided soul, yet she elaborates on her classical counterpart.⁸⁰ In the Attic play the heroine exists mainly  Here Apollonius encounters Stoic ideas about the arousal of the passions through an external cause: see Nussbaum ,  – . That such external causes may effect great tragedies is argued by the Stoic Epictetus (Dissertationes ab Arriano digestae ..): τί γάρ εἰσιν ἄλλο τραγῳδίαι ἢ ἀνθρώπων πάθη τεθαυμακότων τὰ ἐκτὸς διὰ μέτρου;  For the resonances of Attic tragedy in the nocturnal sequence of Book , see the in-depth analysis in Schmakeit ,  – . On the dark atmosphere of Book  presupposing the patriarchal family, the figure of the tyrannical father and the hysterical behavior of the maiden, see Sistakou ,  – .  On the conflict of passions in Apollonius’ Medea, see Vian ,  – .  Barkhuizen () gives an overview of the psychology of love as thematized by Apollonius, and attempts a parallel reading with Euripides’ Medea who is torn between her thumos and bou-

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through her drastic actions and powerful rhetoric against her enemies, whereas her climactic soliloquy reflects the gradual shift to the portrayal of female psychology, perceived by Euripides as a tragic theme par excellence. ⁸¹ In the Argonautica, from the moment at which Medea steps into the spotlight, her self-reflection becomes a dominant action of the drama in progress. A rapid succession of anguished thoughts promotes the interior focalization, the viewing of Medea’s personality from within.⁸² The allure of this figure is only comparable to that of the great Shakespearean heroes, who bring their disturbed ego to light in self-revelatory monologues:⁸³ Whereas Sophocles has little interest in the inner workings of Electra’s heart, Shakespeare’s —and our—obsessive focus is on the question of why Hamlet does not act, on what is going on in that enigmatic soul. Typically, as with Macbeth’s ambition or Othello’s jealousy, there is nothing ethical about the ruling passion in the life of the modern tragic hero. Often, indeed, that passion is positively unethical, leading the hero to engage in evil acts in pursuit of his end. Like Hamlet, modern heroes can hesitate and dither, and so they lack the ‘sculptural’ solidity provided by the single pathos that defines the classical hero.

Both the unethical nature of these passions and the inner crisis resulting from them evokes the situation of Apollonius’ Medea. Unlike the classical tragic, the modern tragedy of Apollonius is a study in character rather than in action.⁸⁴ The aforementioned depiction of the Shakespearean tragic character has a tremendous similarity with the psychological anatomy of Medea’s hesitation, her lack of morality upon deciding to betray her oikos for the love of a stranger and her subsequent evil acts involving magic and murder. What makes the Hellenistic Medea fascinating is her psychic transformation from an innocent girl to an evil-doer under the influence of extreme passions. Although these emotional turbulences foreshadow the tragic consequences of passions in the next book, Apollonius secures Medea’s place in the realm

leumata. On the dramatic device of the interior monologue from Sophocles to Euripides and thence to Apollonius, which gives access to the very process of inner thinking of a character, see Papadopoulou .  For Hegel this shift from ethics towards psychology signifies the death of classical tragedy at the onset of the modern age: cf. Young , .  Papadopoulou (,  – ) examines the three monologues of Apollonius’ Medea from this viewpoint.  Young ,  on the Shakespearean tragic hero.  Modern, or its near synonym in this context Romantic, tragedy is markedly different from classical tragedy because it draws attention to the individual, subjective character of the hero: the idea is first expressed by Hegel and taken over by Kierkegaard, see Young ,  –  and  – .

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of romance throughout Book 3. The depiction of the awakening love reaches its most intense point during her encounter with Jason at the shrine of Hecate (1015 – 1021): καί νύ κέ οἱ καὶ πᾶσαν ἀπὸ στηθέων ἀρύσασα ψυχὴν ἐγγυάλιξεν ἀγαιομένη χατέοντι· τοῖος ἀπὸ ξανθοῖο καρήατος Αἰσονίδαο στράπτεν ἔρως ἡδεῖαν ἀπὸ φλόγα, τῆς δ᾽ ἀμαρυγάς ὀφθαλμῶν ἥρπαζεν∙ ἰαίνετο δὲ φρένας εἴσω τηκομένη, οἷόν τε περὶ ῥοδέῃσιν ἐέρση τήκεται ἠῴοισιν ἰαινομένη φαέεσσιν. And then she would even have drawn out her whole soul from her breast and given it to him, exulting in his need for her—such was the love flashing its sweet flame from Jason’s golden head and captivating the bright sparkles of her eyes; and her mind within her warmed as she melted like the dew on roses that melts when warmed by the rays of the dawn. (Transl. W. H. Race)

In showcasing sentimental excess, a state that may be termed ‘lovesickness’, ’madness’ or ‘lust’, this scene gestures towards melodrama. Action freezes, while Medea’s emotions, symbolized by the powerful image of her offering her heart to Jason, are allowed to overflow.⁸⁵ Medea may be the victim of the divine plan, but, upon deciding to yield to her own passions, she assumes personal responsibility too. The narrator is likewise divided (4.3 ἀμφασίῃ νόος ἔνδον ἑλίσσεται) between accepting the godsent madness (4.4 ἄτης πῆμα δυσιμέρου) or her inner impulse (4.5 φύζαν ἀεικελίην) as a motive for her suffering. Medea gradually matures into acknowledging her error (3.891 μέγα δή τι παρήλιτον and 4.1023 ἤλιτον). By thus accepting, to a certain extent, her own hamartia she eventually acquires the status of a true tragic heroine.⁸⁶ Eventually desire generates violence. The magic offered to Jason is only a prelude to the horrific actions that will follow in Book 4. Before considering mur-

 Cf. how Papadopoulou (, ) explains the retardation of action in Book : “Because of the abundance of the interior focalization, which means an emphasis on thought rather than action, the plot of the third book seems to slow down, compared with the rapid succession of actions which is characteristic of the other books, as of an epic in general.” That Medea’s inner life is expressed through thoughts, words and some (attempted) actions is argued by Barkhuizen (,  – ).  According to Hunter (,  – ) the Nausicaa figure of Book  gives way to a darker heroine, evoking shameful females of tragedy like Helen and Clytemnestra. Cf. Papadopoulou (,  – ) who argues that Apollonius juxtaposes divine and human responsibility as a motive for Medea’s actions. Causation for Medea’s actions in the Argonautica is explored by Hunter ().

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der, Medea, in a monologue of tragic self-realization, craves her own death (373 – 375): ἢ σύγ᾽ ἔπειτα/ φασγάνῳ αὐτίκα τόνδε μέσον διὰ λαιμὸν ἀμῆσαι,/ ὄφρ᾽ ἐπίηρα φέρωμαι ἐοικότα μαργοσύνῃσιν ‘or else, take your sword and at once cut right through my throat, so that I may receive the fitting reward for my lustful madness’. Passions cause Medea to view death as the ultimate end of personal suffering; like other emblematic heroines falling prey to the tyranny of eros, Medea’s natural end in the context of classical tragedy would be her own catastrophe.⁸⁷ But the Argonautica tragedy is intensified once the expectations of such an end are confounded. A further point at which the tragic scenario could end is a scene of materialized violence, namely the murder of Apsyrtus, a miniature tragedy in itself (451– 482). Just before the Apsyrtus narrative, the narrator, in a dramatic apostrophe, depicts eros as a demonic force (445 – 447): Σχέτλι᾽ Ἔρως, μέγα πῆμα, μέγα στύγος ἀνθρώποισιν, ἐκ σέθεν οὐλόμεναί τ᾽ ἔριδες στοναχαί τε πόνοι τε, ἄλγεά τ᾽ ἄλλ᾽ ἐπὶ τοῖσιν ἀπείρονα τετρήχασιν. Cruel Love, great affliction, great abomination for humans; from you come deadly quarrels and groans and laments, and countless other pains besides these are stirred up. (Transl. W. H. Race)

If Book 3 anticipates the romantic sensibility, the density of tragic terminology here—πῆμα, στύγος, ἔριδες, στοναχαί, γόοι, ἄλγεα—leaves no doubt as to the generic identity of the Medea plot: it is intended to be read as a tragedy. Drawing upon the proem of the ‘tragic’ Iliad, Apollonius exchanges one primeval human pathos, namely anger, with another, the urge for blind eros; both cause immeasurable calamity, bloodshed and grief. This passage verges on metatragedy—yet the tragedy of Medea will not reach its telos before marriage occurs (1128 – 1222). From the viewpoint of generic conventions, marriage points towards comedy or even melodrama. Apollonius subverts these expectations, by rendering marriage, as opposed to suicide and murder, the most tragic of all endings, because this marriage has already found its ‘unhappily ever after’ in Euripides’ play.⁸⁸

 Illuminating in this respect is Loraux ,  –  who studies female suicide in tragedy either by the rope or by the sword; the latter figures as a virile way of dying in tragedy and it is this ‘virility’ that Apollonius’ Medea evokes here.  Dyck () argues that Book  adumbrates the Medea tragedy at Corinth; along the same lines, Hunter () studies the flight of Medea as a theme akin to tragedy.

7. In the Metatragic Cosmos of the Alexandra The Alexandra, a metatragic play The Alexandra, a prophetic monologue by Cassandra reported by an anonymous messenger to king Priam in iambic trimeters usually attributed to Lycophron of Chalcis, remains an unsolved riddle for scholars over the centuries. Lycophron may have been an acclaimed drama scholar and tragedian in Ptolemaic Alexandria, but his extant Vita sets the Alexandra apart from his main tragic production by simply labelling it a σκοτεινὸν ποίημα (Suda s.v. Λυκόφρων).¹ This is one alongside other chronological and historical indications suggesting that the Alexandra may not have been written by the third-century tragedian; however, during the course of this chapter the poet of the Alexandra will be conventionally called ‘Lycophron’.² Tzetzes—Ioannes or his brother Isaac according to the ascription in the extant manuscripts—,³ the twelfth-century grammarian to whom the extensive commentary on the Alexandra is attributed, regarded the poem as ‘bookish’ (Sch. Lyc. Genus 19 – 21): οὗτος ὁ Λυκόφρων τοῖς φιλαναγνωστοῦσι τῶν νέων χαριζόμενος τὸ παρὸν βιβλίον ἐξέθετο ἱστοριῶν τυγχάνον ἀνάμεστον ‘this ‘Lycophron’ published the book at hand to gratify young people fond of reading as it happens to be replete with stories’. Tzetzes and Suda may be echoing a Byzantine practice of reading the Alexandra,⁴ yet these testimonies do not exclude the possibility that this monodramatic poem was intended for performance as well as reading in Hellenistic times. Performativity would obviously be hampered by the obscure style of the poem, which presented ample opportunity for scholarly exegesis. In effect, the Alexandra owes its survival to the zeal of the grammarians rather than the popularity of the work among learned

 A similar distinction between Lycophron’s dramatic works and the Alexandra is found in a comment by Ioannes Tzetzes (Sch. Lyc. Genus  – ): διὰ τί Λυκόφρονος ᾿Aλεξάνδρα ἐπεγράφη τὸ παρὸν ποίημα; πρὸς ἀντιδιαστολὴν τῶν λοιπῶν τοῦ Λυκόφρονος συγγραμμάτων· εἶπον γὰρ ὅτι ξδ’ ἢ μ’ τραγῳδιῶν ἐποίησε δράματα.  On the authorship problem, see Hornblower ,  –  and  – .  On the dual authorship of the Tzetzean commentary, see Hornblower ,  – .  It should be noted that the scholia on the Alexandra were probably partly written or just supplemented by Tzetzes; their high quality suggests that the main body dates back to Theon, the grammarian of the age of Augustus who also wrote commentaries on Theocritus, Apollonius, Callimachus and Nicander (cf. Steph. Byz. s.v. Αἴνεια…Θέων δ᾽ Αἰνειάδας ταύτην καλεῖ, ὑπομνηματίζων τὸν Λυκόφρονα, cf. s.vv. ᾿Aργύρινοι, Κύτινα). For the reception of the Alexandra and the history of its commentators, see Hurst/Kolde , xlii-lv.

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audiences.⁵ Another comment by Ioannes Tzetzes gives a new insight into the generic quality of the Alexandra (De poematum generibus 135 – 140): γίνωσκε κυρίως δὲ τὴν μονῳδίαν, ὅταν μόνος λέγῃ τις ἐν θρηνῳδίαις, κατὰ δὲ παράχρησιν, ἂν λέγῃ μόνος, ὥσπερ Λυκόφρων εἰς ᾿Aλεξάνδραν γράφει· ἄλλοις γάρ ἐστι τραγικὸς χορεργάτης πολλὰς γεγραφὼς καὶ σοφὰς τραγῳδίας. Learn, especially, about the monody, when one alone speaks in threnodic verses, by abuse if one speaks all alone, like ‘Lycophron’ writes in the Alexandra; because in other works he is a producer of tragic Choruses in having composed numerous and learned tragedies.

Tzetzes classifies the Alexandra as a monody (μονῳδία) in contrast to a choral poem (χορεργάτης); by reason of its tone and subject matter, it resembles a lament (θρηνῳδία) rather than a complex, fully developed tragedy. Therefore, in his scholia, Tzetzes describes ‘Lycophron’ as a poet who writes an ode for only one character (Sch. Lyc. Intro. 107– 109 μονῳδοὶ λέγονται ποιηταὶ…καταχρηστικῶς δὲ καὶ οἱ μονοπροσώπως ὅλην τὴν ὑπόθεσιν ἀφηγούμενοι) as opposed to a tragedian (Sch. Lyc. Intro. 112 – 115 ἀλλαχοῦ γὰρ οὗτος ὁ Λυκόφρων τραγικός ἐστι…λέγειν ἐστὶν ἁρμόδιον καὶ τὰ περὶ τοῦ μονῳδοῦ τούτου Λυκόφρονος). It is notable that elsewhere in the scholia a threnodic ode may not only be an autonomous melos but also a vital part of tragedy—indeed the feature that defines the physiognomy of the tragic mode (Sch. Lyc. Intro. 48 – 51): τὴν δὲ τραγῳδίαν καὶ τοὺς σατύρους…διαφέρειν δὲ πρὸς ἀλλήλους, ὅτι ἡ μὲν τραγῳδία θρήνους μόνον ἔχει καὶ οἰμωγάς ‘tragedy and satyr plays…differ in that tragedy contains just laments and dirges’. Leaving aside the question of performativity for the moment, it appears that the tragic identity of the Alexandra can hardly be contested. If the tragic essence of the Alexandra is indisputable, its delineation as a tragedy is, at least by classical standards, an overstatement.⁶ That said, the Alexandra can be sensed, in some respects, as an idiosyncratic type of tragedy.⁷ Its

 According to Clement of Alexandria Strom. ..: Εὐφορίων γὰρ ὁ ποιητὴς καὶ τὰ Καλλιμάχου Αἴτια καὶ ἡ Λυκόφρονος ᾿Aλεξάνδρα καὶ τὰ τούτοις παραπλήσια γυμνάσιον εἰς ἐξήγησιν γραμματικῶν ἔκκειται παισίν.  Cusset ( – ) claims that the Alexandra is a ‘tragedy without tragedy’ by arguing that its tragic elements consist of its tragic diction and of its rewriting of the tragedians.  The Alexandra has been occasionally described as ‘epic-lyric monologue’, ‘recited mime’ or ‘epic monodrama’, see Kotlińska-Toma ,  – . For its liminal position between ‘epic narrative’ and ‘dramatic discourse’, see Fusillo ; for the Alexandra on the cusp between epic and tragedy, cf. Sistakou ,  – .

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formal composition vaguely evokes a tragedy. Length appears to be particularly relevant to the notion of drama. Like Callimachus’ Hecale and Apollonius’ Argonautica Book 3 that blur the boundaries between narrative poetry and tragedy, the Alexandra is yet another Hellenistic cross-generic poem that appears to conform with the principle according to which a tragedy possesses a certain magnitude. Magnitude corresponds, at least partly, to size. Typically the size of a drama, as well as of a Hellenistic poetry book, ranges between 1000 and 1500 lines; for dramatic poetry, length may relate to time, i. e. the time required for the performance and the dramatic time of the single-day plot.⁸ Obviously the Aristotelian megethos implies much more: grandeur in style and subject matter and dramatic economy in terms of plot structure. The Alexandra apparently conforms with several of these criteria—it comprises 1474 lines, it can be represented within the performative limits of a dramatic evening and its stylistic grandeur cannot be denied—with the exception of the last one, since its plot and structuring pose unique challenges for the reader/audience. An additional formal characteristic is meter. In an era at which the learned poets of Alexandria have a penchant for narratives set either in hexameters or in elegies, metric forms also exploited for dramatic purposes (the dramatic dialogue of the Megara and Theocritus’ mimes are cases in point), the Alexandra is set in iambic trimeters. This is a strong generic marker that points towards the historical consolidation of tragedy as recorded by Aristotle (Poet. 1449a): ἐκ μικρῶν μύθων καὶ λέξεως γελοίας διὰ τὸ ἐκ σατυρικοῦ μεταβαλεῖν [sc. τραγῳδία] ὀψὲ ἀπεσεμνύνθη, τό τε μέτρον ἐκ τετραμέτρου ἰαμβεῖον ἐγένετο ‘as tragedy developed from the satyr style, its plots were at first slight and its expression comical, and it was long time before it acquired dignity, and the iambic trimeter replaced the trochaic tetrameter’ (transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom). Despite being traditional in adopting the iambic form to demarcate his poem as tragedy, ‘Lycophron’ appears to question the validity of another Aristotelian principle: namely that tragedy was composed in iambics because this meter is particularly suited to the versification of everyday speech, thus allowing the tragic genre to attain its own nature (Poet. 1449a λέξεως δὲ γενομένης αὐτὴ ἡ φύσις τὸ οἰκεῖον μέτρον εὗρε· μάλιστα γὰρ λεκτικὸν τῶν μέτρων τὸ ἰαμβεῖόν ἐστιν). From an Aristotelian viewpoint, tragic diction and ‘Lycophronian’ diction represent the opposite ends of the spectrum.⁹ The obscurity and exotic wording of the Alexandra,

 The growing awareness in Hellenistic and Roman times of the proper length of a poetry book is investigated by Hutchinson ().  Illuminating is the following passage where Aristotle opposes the standard names (κύρια ὀνόματα) to their elaboration by the poets into double names, exotic names and metaphors (Poet. a): τῶν δ᾽ ὀνομάτων τὰ μὲν διπλᾶ μάλιστα ἁρμόττει τοῖς διθυράμβοις, αἱ δὲ γλῶτται

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indeed its baroque style, have nothing to do with Aristotle’s conception of the tragic lexis that should capture the naturalness and clarity of prose speech. Aristotle approved of the developments in the verbal constitution of tragedy which were introduced by Euripides.¹⁰ But ‘Lycophron’ breaks his links with the Euripidean and postclassical tragic tradition and returns, by use of stylistic extravagance, to the origins of the genre.¹¹ The Aeschylean ring of his enigmatic and intrinsically poetic language, as distinct from ordinary speech as possible, is not just a return to verbal archaism; it effectively draws attention to the lyric essence of the tragic language.¹² Formally the Alexandra qualifies as tragedy yet lacks its quintessence, the mimesis achieved by the representation of actions but not by the mere narration of these actions (Arist. Poet. 1449b ἔστιν οὖν τραγῳδία μίμησις πράξεως… δρώντων καὶ οὐ δι᾽ ἀπαγγελίας).¹³ Literally the Alexandra is a messenger speech reporting the prophecy delivered by Alexandra, alias Cassandra. It programmatically urges the reader to immerse himself in a dramatic situation from the opening lines, without the intervention of an epicizing prelude (1– 3): Λέξω τὰ πάντα νητρεκῶς ἅ μ᾽ ἱστορεῖς ἀρχῆς ἀπ᾽ ἄκρης∙ ἢν δὲ μηκυνθῇ λόγος, σύγγνωθι, δέσποτ᾽· All will I truly say that you ask from the utter beginning, and if the tale be prolonged, forgive me, master. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

The dramatic illusion is picked up again before the closure of the poem (1467– 1471): ἐγὼ δὲ λοξὸν ἦλθον ἀγγέλλων, ἄναξ, σοὶ τόνδε μῦθον παρθένου φοιβαστρίας, ἐπεὶ μ᾽ ἔταξας φύλακα λαΐνου στέγης

τοῖς ἡρωικοῖς, αἱ δὲ μεταφοραὶ τοῖς ἰαμβείοις. Although Aristotle views metaphor as the core of the expressive means available to the tragedians (Halliwell ,  – ), ‘Lycophron’ exploits also the other types of wording. For metaphor, metonymy and riddle in the Alexandra, see the collection of articles in Cusset/Prioux ,  – .  That stylistic excess is not suitable for tragic diction, at least as perceived by Aristotle from the viewpoint of his contemporary playwrights, is finely argued by Halliwell (,  – ).  Tragic bombast seems to have been the rule rather than the exception, as attested e. g. in comedy (Arist. Poet. b ἔτι δὲ ᾿Aριφράδης τοὺς τραγῳδοὺς ἐκωμῴδει ὅτι ἃ οὐδεὶς ἂν εἴπειεν ἐν τῇ διαλέκτῳ τούτοις χρῶνται).  Alexandra’s speech creatively reworks tragic diction, prominently Aeschylean obscure lyricism, as Cusset ( – ,  – ) argues.  Lowe () provides an insightful overview of the various levels of the Alexandra which is based on the idea that the prophecy should be represented not diegetically but dramatically.

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καὶ πάντα φράζειν κἀναπεμπάζειν λόγον ἐτητύμως ἄψορρον ὤτρυνας τρόχιν. And I came, O King, to announce to you the crooked speech of the maiden prophetess, since you did appoint me to be the warder of her stony dwelling and did charge me to come as a messenger to report all to you and truly recount her words. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

The absence of an external narrator reinforces the dramatic identity of the Alexandra; in effect, the dramatic illusion is nowhere interrupted during the course of the poem.¹⁴ The framing of the monologue reproduces the conventions of a messenger speech: an anonymous speaking character of low social status, a servant in the palace, reports to a mute character, king Priam (δέσποτα, ἄναξ), an offstage event, the prophetic delirium of Cassandra (μῦθον παρθένου φοιβαστρίας).¹⁵ The event is focalized by the messenger, who professes to retell it as personally experienced by him (8 τῶν ἅσσα θυμῷ καὶ διὰ μνήμης ἔχω).¹⁶ His actual identity is only revealed at the end; he was appointed to guard the imprisoned Cassandra (1469 ἔταξας φύλακα λαΐνου στέγης), and thus he was able to witness her speech and become a tragic ‘messenger’ whose generic identity is demarcated by the metadramatic ἀγγέλλων (1467).¹⁷ The use of past tenses, another conventional feature of the messenger narration, is also retained albeit kept to a minimum.¹⁸ According to the audience’s expectations the when and where of the offstage events must be laid out from the outset. First, the time of the day is indicated by recourse to the epic image of Eos leaving the bed of Tithonus—it was dawn (16 – 19). Then, the moment in the broader mythical story is specified—it was the day when Paris set out to sail for Greece (20 – 27). Finally, the location is demarcated—Alexandra stood on the Hill of Ate, where

 Cf. Lowe (, ) who notes that there is “no overt primary narrator (‘Lycophron’ does not speak)” but the prophecy of Cassandra is presented “within a nested frame of multiple speakers and audiences”. For the maintenance of the dramatic illusion in the Alexandra, see Fountoulakis . A different case is the hexametric Megara which sets off as a dramatic dialogue but is interrupted at the middle by an epic interlude voiced by a third-person narrator (Megara  – ).  See Looijenga () who investigates the dramatic and metadramatic function of the prologue and epilogue of the Alexandra.  On the conventions of the messenger speech, see de Jong ,  – .  Messengers as secondary internal narrators are called to play a role in the narrated events, that of the spectator, the bystander or the active participant, according to de Jong (,  – ).  Past tenses, implying narration of past events are only found at the opening ( ἔλυσε,  φοίβαζεν,  ὑπερποτᾶτο,  λίαζον,  θεῖνον,  ἦρχε) and at the closure of the poem ( ἠγόρευε,  ἔβαινεν,  ἐστέναξε).

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Ilion was founded (29).¹⁹ The event, presentified by emphatic deixis, begins to unfold (30): τοιῶνδ᾽ ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς ἦρχ᾽ ᾿Aλεξάνδρα λόγων ‘with such words did Alexandra begin to speak from the beginning’. Although the aforementioned features build up to a meticulously staged messenger speech, Lycophron constantly challenges tragic stereotypes. The reader/audience is prompted to imagine a ‘play outside the play’. Had the Alexandra been a tragedy proper, it would be set at Troy outside Priam’s palace, the ‘tragic day’ would coincide with the onset of the Trojan war and the characters would at least include Priam, Cassandra and the messenger (perhaps also Paris and other Trojan royalties and heroes, even gods). From a dramaturgical viewpoint, the Alexandra appears to be an extract from a broader tragedy. This impression is shared by the scholiast (Sch. Lyc. Hypoth. 10 – 13): νοητέον δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἐκτὸς ὑπόθεσιν τὸν Πρίαμον ἠρωτηκέναι τὸν ἄγγελον περὶ ὧν ἀπεφθέγγετο ἡ Κασσάνδρα ‘we must assume that outside the story of this work, Priam would have asked the messenger what Cassandra had spoken’.²⁰ Later in the scholia (Sch. Lyc. 1) this device is termed παρεπιγραφή, denoting a stage-direction embedded in the immediate verbal context, in this case the opening line λέξω τὰ πάντα νητρεκῶς, ἅ μ᾽ ἱστορεῖς.²¹ The lack of a dramatic dialogue just before the aggelia fulfills metadramatic purposes in detaching the messenger scene from its context. ‘Lycophron’ dismantles tragedy and questions its unity by expanding one episode so that it acquires the magnitude of a tragedy. The evocation of μῆκος ‘length’ already in the second line of the Alexandra (2 ἢν δὲ μηκυνθῇ λόγος) is a metadramatic comment on this expansion.²² In this generic experiment the messenger speech develops into an autonomous play.²³ The twisting of the readers’, or audience’s, expectations not only asserts the generic particularity of the Alexandra, but moreover suggests that, beyond the

 Further specification of the setting is postponed for the closure of the poem, where the guard described how Cassandra returns to her prison after completing her prophecy ( –  τόσσ᾽ ἠγόρευε καὶ παλίσσυτος ποσὶν ἔβαινεν εἱρκτῆς ἐντός). On the literal and metaphorical imprisonment of Cassandra, see Sistakou ,  – .  The meaning of hypothesis is controversial, cf. Nünlist ,  n. . It may denote the story, the plot summary or, less frequently, an actor’s role or the play itself: for the various meanings, see LSJ s.v. ὑπόθεσις I., II. and .  On παρεπιγραφή in the scholarly tradition, see Nünlist ,  – .  Looijenga (, ) argues that this is intended as a ‘metatextual warning’ by remarking that “the ‘apology’ is more of a captatio benevolentiae that sets the tone for further asides of the messenger that are meant for the external audience”.  A similar experiment is the hexametric Megara, which consists of an exchange of dramatic rheseis out of context where the reader is urged to reconstruct the missing parts of the action, see Ambühl ,  – .

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classical delimitations of form and structure, tragedy as an extract and a fragment has its own tragic potential. But if the Alexandra purports to be an avant-garde tragedy, wherein lies its quintessence, namely the representation of an action through a well-balanced plot? By definition a messenger speech is the narration of a single event, usually involving extreme violence and heightened drama, which functions as a climax to an overall mimetically represented plot. The Alexandra breaks this rule too: what the royal guard reports is a speech and not an action, and the question is how this speech can be accommodated into a plot scheme. Tzetzes’ scholia provide a reconstruction of a plot, formed into an hypothesis (Sch. Lyc. Hypoth. 4– 8): μαντευομένην τὴν Κασσάνδραν τἀληθῆ καὶ διὰ μῆνιν ᾿Aπόλλωνος ἀπιστουμένην καθεῖρξεν ὁ πατὴρ οἰκέτην αὐτῇ παρακαταστήσας ἀκούειν τῶν χρησμῶν, ὅπως ἀναγραφόμενος αὐτοὺς ἀπαγγείλῃ αὐτῷ. Because Cassandra made truthful prophecies but due to Apollo’s wrath nobody believed her, her father imprisoned her and stationed beside her a servant to listen to her oracles, setting him the task to record the oracles and report them to him.

The scholia enlarge on the stage-directions embedded into the dramatic framing to sketch out a rough plot; in a classical tragedy this plot would revolve around such archetypal tragic topics like the wrath of the gods, the madness of the heroine imposed as divine punishment, the family crisis and the conflict between patriarchal authority and personal freedom.²⁴ A ‘Cassandra tragedy’ hovers in the background, whereas action is suspended in the main play—at least an action that might have developed between the phantom characters, Priam and Cassandra, of the ‘play outside the play’.²⁵ On the primary level what is dramatized during the tragic day of the Alexandra are words, the oracular utterance of Cassandra. In terms of dramatic composition the narrative contained in the messenger speech is not followed by development in action. After accomplishing her riddling speech, Cassandra returns to her cell and her eternal silence (28 ἡ δ᾽ ἔνθεον σχάσασα βακχεῖον στόμα ‘she

 For this tragic scenario in the Alexandra and its dark resonances, see Sistakou ,  – .  That ‘Lycophron’ steers the attention of his audience to another play which lies outside the limits of the present one is sensed by the scholiast who uses the term ἡ ἐκτὸς ὑπόθεσις (Sch. Hypoth.  –  νοητέον δὲ κατὰ τὴν ἐκτὸς ὑπόθεσιν τὸν Πρίαμον ἠρωτηκέναι τὸν ἄγγελον…). Cf. the similar philological term ἔξωθεν in the ancient scholia denoting either a) from outside the text, for anything that calls for supplementation by the reader/audience, and b) from outside the speech, when in a narrative text a remark is contained not in the character-speech but in the narrator-text: see Nünlist ,  and  n. .

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opened her divinely-inspired, bacchic mouth’ corresponds to 1461– 1462 τόσσ᾽ ἠγόρευε καὶ παλίσσυτος ποσὶν/ ἔβαινεν εἱρκτῆς ἐντός ‘so much she spoke and hurried back into her prison again’). Action, however, does occur in the language of Cassandra. The story verbalized in her ‘logorrhea’²⁶ encompasses the destiny of Troy, whose trajectory extends from the foundation of Ilion until the establishment of Macedonia and Rome (Sch. Lyc. Hypoth. 9 τὴν ἀφ᾽ Ἡρακλέους ἱστορίαν μέχρι τῆς τῶν Ῥωμαίων ἀρχῆς). The Trojan narration may be further divided into phases: the prehistory of Troy (31– 85), the cause of the war (86 – 179), the tenyear war and the siege of Troy (180 – 364), the nostoi of the Greeks (365 – 1089), the tragic aftermath of the war and the triumph of the Trojans (1090 – 1282) and the eruption of conflicts between Europe and Asia until their final resolution (1283 – 1450). To what extent this large-scale narration amounts to a ‘megaplot’ that contains a fair amount of dramatic episodes and was designed as a ‘megatragedy’ is open to philological speculation.²⁷ That said, the Trojan war saga does not lend itself as a subject of a sole tragedy by classical standards. Such a poetic endeavor would be utterly absurd, indeed a contradiction in terms, because the war of Troy generates a multi-character and complex plot and lacks the εὐσύνοπτον and εὐμνημόνευτον, the indispensable prerequisites for the making of a tragedy. But ‘Lycophron’, in challenging classical taxonomies, experiments with the possibility of a tragedy written on an epic scale.²⁸ It is in terms of deep structure that the Alexandra transgresses the limits between drama and epic and not in the mere use of narration instead of representation, of telling rather than dramatic showing. The Alexandra is an extended speech-act primarily focused on the foretelling of events that will occur in the near and distant future, as seen from the perspective of the dramatic characters and their placement in mythical chronology. It is the ‘play outside the play’, the ‘Cassandra tragedy’, that allows the reader/audience to reconstruct the dramatic ‘here-and-now’ of an imaginary play. Likewise imaginary is the presentification of dramatic actions, all those serious and complete praxeis involving the Greek and Trojan heroes of the big war: these actions, filtered as they are through the prophetic word of Cassandra, are never actually

 I borrow the term from Cusset  – , .  A fascinating hypothesis is put forward by Durbec () who divides the Alexandra into a five act play, according to the rules of dramatic composition of post-Menandrian theatre. In Durbec’s scheme, the third act on the nostoi of the Greeks is ‘hypertrophic’ and functions as a pivot, marking the reversal of fortune of the Greeks and the Trojans between acts I-II and acts IV-V.  Cf. Aristotle’s cautions against modelling a tragedy on an epic plot (Poet. a): χρὴ δὲ ὅ περ εἴρηται πολλάκις μεμνῆσθαι καὶ μὴ ποιεῖν ἐποποιικὸν σύστημα τραγῳδίαν—ἐποποιικὸν δὲ λέγω τὸ πολύμυθον—οἷον εἴ τις τὸν τῆς Ἰλιάδος ὅλον ποιοῖ μῦθον.

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shaped into tragic plots. Like tragedy, the Alexandra foregrounds the primacy of the word.²⁹ But, unlike tragedy, the words do not cause actions to happen but open out into other texts. The locus of these texts is the already established grand literature, the ‘mythic megatext’ in which legendary subjects are molded into recurrent story patterns.³⁰ The only theatrical interaction between the Alexandra and its audience originates from the extreme power of the tragic word; but to solve the riddling words of Cassandra by recourse to the vast heterotopia of previous literature, especially the corpus of tragedy, is literally the metatragic challenge posed to the audience of the Alexandra.

From the tragedy of Cassandra to ‘becoming Alexandra’ Before attempting an interpretation of how Cassandra became Alexandra, it is worth sketching out the literary profile of this dramatic heroine. What has rendered Cassandra such a fascinating character for ‘Lycophron’? First, her double identity as a virgin and a prophetess, both of which are explored in the Alexandra. ³¹ The consistency of her role as an accursed princess, whose main dramatic significance relies in her ability to prophesy the future to Trojans and Greeks but is doomed not to be believed by either. The fact that she participates in two of the most often poeticized mythical cycles, one major about the Trojan war and a secondary concerning the ill-fated House of the Atreids. Her recurrent appearance in a wide range of Greek literature, especially Cyclic epic, archaic lyric and classical tragedy, as a character trapped in its own raving discourse.³² The tragic aspects of her personal drama which include rape (attempted by Apollo, committed by the Locrian Aias), enslavement by and enforced marriage to Agamemnon and murder by Clytemestra. To Cassandra’s celebrated hardships ‘Lycophron’ adds an unknown episode, probably his own invention, about her imprisonment by Priam in the royal palace of Ilion as a

 Illuminating are the remarks by Burian (,  – ), who observes that, whereas physical actions are limited on the classical stage, Greek tragedy is basically a drama of words and concludes by arguing that () “discourse, verbal interaction, is the essential action, not a mere reference to or representation of the action”.  For the notion of the shaping of the tragic plots from the ‘mythical megatext’ I follow Burian ,  – .  As emphasized in the monograph on Cassandra by Mazzoldi .  For the figure of Cassandra in ancient literature, see Neblung . On the literary and artistic sources concerning Cassandra, see also Gantz , . –  and . – ,  – ,  – .

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punishment for her ominous prophecies (1– 30, 1461– 1474).³³ The ‘Cassandra tragedy’ revolving around the heroine appears to be unparalleled, in the sense that Cassandra appears to be always a secondary character and never a protagonist in Greek tragedy.³⁴ The prophetic powers of Cassandra are unknown to Homer (in Il. 13.365 – 366 she only excels in beauty), but were thematized already in the Cypria. In fact, Lycophron sets the plot of the poem at the very beginning of the Trojan war, when Cassandra delivers her prophecy, as the poet of the Cypria had done before him (Proclus Chrestom. 91– 94): ἔπειτα δὲ ᾿Aφροδίτης ὑποθεμένης ναυπηγεῖται [sc. ὁ ᾿Aλέξανδρος]…καὶ Κασσάνδρα περὶ τῶν μελλόντων προδηλοῖ ‘and then, advised by Aphrodite, Paris builds his ships…and Cassandra foretells the future events’. Cassandra the prophetess has impressive mad scenes in two extant tragedies, Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ The Trojan Women, and must also have held a key role in the lost Alexandros by Euripides. The story of how Cassandra acquired her prophetic gift is first fully narrated in the Agamemnon (1202– 1212). Apollo granted Cassandra the gift of prophecy in exchange for her love, but the princess refused the god’s advances and was thereafter condemned to be perpetually disbelieved. ‘Lycophron’ explicitly alludes to the fact that Cassandra refused Apollo because she wanted to remain a virgin forever like Athena (352– 356): ἡ τὸν Θοραῖον Πτῷον Ὡρίτην θεὸν λίπτοντ᾽ ἀλέκτρων ἐκβαλοῦσα δεμνίων, ὡς δὴ κορείαν ἄφθιτον πεπαμένη πρὸς γῆρας ἄκρον, Παλλάδος ζηλώμασι τῆς μισονύμφου Λαφρίας Πυλάτιδος I who spurned from my maiden bed the god Thoraios, Lord of Ptoön, Ruler of the Seasons, as one who had taken eternal maidenhood for my portion to uttermost old age, in imitation of her who abhors marriage, even Pallas, Driver of the Spoil, the Wardress of the Gates. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

 Imprisonment may be the result of Cassandra’s insanity: in this respect she resembles the Sophoclean Antigone who is considered to be insane by Creon, see Hornblower  on ll.  – .  The only tragedy where Cassandra through her predictions changes the course of the plot and thus becomes a major character is Euripides’ lost Alexandros (cf. the hypothesis in P. Oxy. . – ) παραγενηθέντα δὲ τ[ὸν ᾿Aλέξανδρον Κασ[σάν]δρ[α μ]ὲν ἐμμανὴς ἐπέγνω καὶ π[ερὶ τῶν] μελλόντων ἐθέσπισεν, Ἑκάβη [δὲ ἀπο]κτεῖναι θέλουσα διεκωλύθη; cf. Kannicht ()  – . For the role of Cassandra in Euripides’ Alexandros, see Mazzoldi ,  – . The episode must have been also part of the lost Alexandros by Sophocles; cf. Radt ,  – . A hint at this episode is found in the Alexandra line  where Paris is called a ‘firebrand’ (γρυνός) recalling the ominous dream of Hecuba.

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Cassandra’s refusal to succumb to Apollo’s love arises once more in lines 1454– 1457.³⁵ The other two major episodes of the Cassandra legacy hold also a prominent place in the Alexandra. The first occurs in the aftermath of the fall of Troy and involves the Locrian Aias who raped the Trojan princess in the temple of Athena (348 – 364). The literary model may have been the Cyclic epic The Sack of Troy; it is not known whether Sophocles’ lost Aias the Locrian treated the same episode.³⁶ The hubris exercised by Aias is a turning point in the prophecy of the ‘Lycophronian’ Cassandra, because it introduces the large section about the calamitous homecomings of the Greeks. The nostoi section reaches its climax with the murder of Agamemnon by Clytemnestra, a story whose retelling is based on Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. ³⁷ In lines 1099 – 1119 Cassandra foretells her own death by focusing on a strikingly pathetic scene exactly as represented in the Agamemnon: the deadly entanglement of the king in a net in his own bath and next to it the butchering of Cassandra by the axe of Clytemnestra.³⁸ After prophesying her enforced marriage and brutal assassination, Cassandra closes her personal tragedy by referring to the posthumous honors bestowed on her (1126 – 1173). Despite the extreme pathetic traits of this heroine, the most memorable of which must have been the representation of her delirious foretelling on the theatrical stage,³⁹ Cassandra is not a popular heroine beyond fifth-century drama. A notable exception originates from the fourth century in a brief fragment from an unknown tragedy (entitled Hector?) featuring Priam, Deiphobus, Cassandra and the Chorus.⁴⁰ The tragedy was set in the Trojan palace and probably culminated with the death of Hector in his mortal combat against Achilles.⁴¹ Cassandra’s part in the extant scene consists of the ‘viewing’ of the final duel between the

 There are three hidden allusions to Apollo in lines  δαφνηφάγων φοίβαζεν ἐκ λαιμῶν ὄπα,  λοξῶν ἐς διεξόδους ἐπῶν and  φοιβόληπτον χελιδόνα.  The literary and artistic sources are collected by Mazzoldi ,  – .  For the celebrated episode of Agamemnon and Cassandra in literature and the arts, see Mazzoldi ,  – .  For a parallel reading of this scene with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, see Durbec .  The bacchic outburst of the prophetess Cassandra has a prominent place in Aeschylus and Euripides: for the modality and verbal articulation of her prophecies in tragedy, see Mazzoldi ,  – . A Hellenistic parallel to the prophecy of Cassandra is a fragment in anapaests (P. Berol. ), the so-called ‘Cassandra poem’, that bears a striking resemblance to the obscure style of the Alexandra: for an analysis of the poem, see Hornblower ,  – .  Fernández-Galiano () has attributed this tragedy to ‘Lycophron’, based on its similarities with the Alexandra.  For the papyrus fragment see adespoton TrGF  fr. . A detailed discussion of the play in Gentili ,  –  and Mazzoldi ,  – .

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two heroes. This Hellenistic Cassandra is differentiated by her classical counterparts in that she neither imagines the past—in the Agamemnon she envisions the gruesome fate of the House of Atreus—nor the imminent and distant future. In this postclassical drama Cassandra’s clairvoyance is directed towards events taking place simultaneously on the dramatic present—only in an offstage setting representing the battlefield.⁴² Visualizing the present marks a turning point in Cassandra’s development as a dramatic character: from a mythical heroine of marginal significance and a seer of future calamities she becomes a metaphor for physical and emotional suffering, the archetype of female hysteria, the enactment of visionary ecstasy or simply an incessantly speaking ‘voice’. To apprehend how this character was transformed into a theatrical ‘event’ expressed through the reproduction of tragic mannerism one has to turn to the performative habits of postclassical theatre. A practice adapted from sympotic circumstances consists of singing passages from drama, not only those set already in music but also of the iambic ones. Converting iambic rheseis into monodies and performing them in Athenian symposia begun in late fifth century but the practice soon disseminated as public entertainment too.⁴³ Recitations or sung variations of tragic speeches and scenes, popular highlights taken from tragedy, are widely attested in the Hellenistic period. Such practices not only reflect the change of mode in the delivery of tragic discourse but also the formation of a new audience taste for sensational representations on stage. An extreme paradigm of this trend dates from the Imperial Roman period and is associated with emperor Nero. Nero was notorious for his performances of tragic roles, which may have involved acting and singing. It appears that this role-playing had less to do with the portrayal of character and the articulation of his discourse and more with the vivid representation of its distinctive pathos. ⁴⁴ Among Nero’s outstanding impersonations in pathos situations were Canace in labor, Orestes killing his mother, Oedipus blinded and Heracles mad. ⁴⁵ Thus,

 As Gentili (, ) remarks “this is a dramatic technique without analogue precedent in the theatre of the fifth century”. According to Mazzoldi ()  –  the vision of an unfolding reality is a novelty introduced by the unknown playwright aiming at the aprosdoketon, i. e. a trick that would surprise a Hellenistic theatrical audience.  A well-argued discussion of ancient sources and recent scholarship on the matter in Prauscello ,  – .  According to Aristotle’s definition, pathos is most effective when it involves the representation of human suffering on stage (Poet. b): πάθος δέ ἐστι πρᾶξις φθαρτικὴ ἢ ὀδυνηρά, οἷον οἵ τε ἐν τῷ φανερῷ θάνατοι καὶ αἱ περιωδυνίαι καὶ τρώσεις καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα.  The testimony derives from Suetonius Nero .: tragoedias quoque cantavit [sc. Nero] personatus heroum deorumque, item heroidum ac dearum, personis effectis ad similitudinem oris sui et feminae, prout quamque diligeret. inter cetera cantavit Canacen parturientem, Oresten matrici-

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his repertoire was focused on roles that allowed him to demonstrate his histrionic skills in full according to a graphic description by Cassius Dio (Roman History 63.9.4): καὶ τὸ προσωπεῖον ὑποδύνων ἀπέβαλλε τὸ τῆς ἡγεμονίας ἀξίωμα, ἐδεῖτο ὡς δραπέτης, ἐποδηγεῖτο ὡς τυφλός, ἐκύει ἔτικτεν ἐμαίνετο ἠλᾶτο, τόν τε Οἰδίποδα καὶ τὸν Θυέστην τόν τε Ἡρακλέα καὶ τὸν ᾿Aλκμέωνα τόν τε Ὀρέστην ὡς πλήθει ὑποκρινόμενος. Putting on his mask, [Nero] threw off the dignity of his kingship and begged like a runaway slave, was let to be guided as a blind man, became pregnant, was in labor, was a madman or a wanderer, performing mostly as an actor the roles of Oedipus and Thyestes and Heracles and Alcmaeon and Orestes.

Nero’s favorite roles included the crème de la crème of the classical repertoire, roles whose tragic quality and pathos were already well established in tragic theory.⁴⁶ It should be noted, however, that Nero adopted his theatrical style from professional actors whose practices originated in the postclassical era. It is plausible to suppose that such developments in dramatic performance had become the rule already in Hellenistic times. Certain aspects of fourth-century and Hellenistic theatre bear direct relevance to the literary experiment of the Alexandra, namely the performing of highlights from tragedy instead of entire plays, the emphasis on monologues represented in sung versions and accompanied by sensational theatricality and the playing of roles aiming at the display of tragic pathos. The Alexandra may have been intended as a metadramatic comment on exactly these performative habits which dominated postclassical theatre. It is against this background that ‘Lycophron’ created a novel version of Cassandra beyond the Aeschylean and Euripidean mold. Either designed for the theatre (Monodrama), recitation (Rezitationsdrama) or even reading (Lesedrama), or a combination of them, the Alexandra seems to have been composed under the influence of ‘star turns’. Setting aside the vexing question about whether the theatre was the actual venue for its performance (as in this case it would sound as a brain-teaser that would mys-

dam, Oedipodem excaecatum, Herculem insanum: for a discussion, see Prauscello ,  – . Nervegna (,  – ) offers a critical overview of scholarship on the theatrical activity of Nero and the related theories on tragic excerpts set to songs (cantica) and performed by virtuoso singers during the Hellenistic and Roman eras.  By Aristotle (Poet. a), who notes that a handful of mythical characters, namely Alcmaeon, Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes and Telephus, are the most appropriate for the creation of tragic effect and the arousal of the tragic emotions. Aristotle’s list overlaps to a great degree with Nero’s repertoire.

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tify audiences),⁴⁷ ‘Lycophron’ aimed at creating a make-believe theatrical experience out of his Alexandra. ⁴⁸ The first innovation introduced is the making of a play for two voices. A messenger in tragedy would normally narrate the offstage events and only briefly insert at some point the direct speech of the dramatis personae; the role obviously calls for one actor. The Alexandra, on the contrary, is designed as a ‘speech-within-a-speech’, more accurately as a ‘role-within-a-role’. The messenger may still represent the controlling voice, and, on a metadramatic level, reflect the playwright, whereas king Priam functions as an internal audience. Key terms evoking poetic strategies figure prominently in this framing speech, where the messenger refers to the mechanism of memory (8 διὰ μνήμης ἔχω), the notion of imitation (7 ἐκμιμουμένη), the discourse as a riddle demanding an interpreter (14 λοξῶν ἐς διεξόδους ἐπῶν), the promise of narrating from the beginning (30 ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς ἦρχ᾽) and of telling the whole truth (1 λέξω τὰ πάντα νητρεκῶς). The messenger identifies himself as an author who can select, arrange and rephrase his narrative; he is the image of the poet as mirrored in his own poem.⁴⁹ But once Cassandra enters, it is her voice that becomes dominant and it is her speaking ‘I’ that steps in the foreground, rendering the messenger a mere auditor. Textually two voices seem to be blurred here.⁵⁰ If we favor the hypothesis that the Alexandra was intended for performance, these voices may have been interpreted by two actors. In the case that this was a closet drama, then the messenger lending

 Whether ‘Lycophronian’ obscurity would be appropriate for dramatic performance or not is discussed by Hurst/Kolde (, xxxii-xxxvi). Lowe (, ) emphatically asserts that the Alexandra is an ‘unstageable dramatic fragment’.  Cf. Fountoulakis (, ) who concludes that “the Alexandra was a kind of Rezitationsdrama whose technique required recitation in public with appropriate use of theatrical intonation and gesticulation”. Hornblower (,  – ) puts forward the hypothesis that the Alexandra was intended for recitation by a female actor or, alternatively, that it was a riddle to be performed at a symposium.  On the mirroring effect in the Alexandra, see Cusset . How the messenger functions as an intellectual mind questioning the nature of poetic discourse, the power of the word and the communication between poet and audience is subtly demonstrated by Kossaifi ().  From a rhetorical and lexical viewpoint the boundaries between the messenger-speech and the Cassandra-speech are not clear-cut either, see Lowe ,  – , who nevertheless notes () that “the first fifteen lines remain broadly within the lexical and stylistic range of tragic diction, eschewing the neologisms, compaction of metaphor, and mythological cryptograms that distinguish the body of the text”. For the multiplication of the voices, the doubling of the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ and the voice of ‘Lycophron’ as projected in the poem, see Kossaifi ,  – .

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his voice to Cassandra would be engaging in a metadramatic play with the scenic conventions of tragedy.⁵¹ Cassandra qualifies as a pathetic role already in classical tragedy. The Aeschylean Cassandra expresses a transcendental and horrifying delirium that arouses pity and fear to the audience; Euripides elaborates further on this highly expressionistic outburst of pathos. ⁵² Building his poem on these intertexts, ‘Lycophron’ intensifies the hysterical rhetoric of Cassandra by making her the embodiment of Otherness. This new Cassandra, renamed ‘Alexandra’ to mark a distinction from her tragic models,⁵³ is not a character that interacts dramatically with other characters within a tragic plot; and it is much more than a virtuoso role representing a demented maiden and expected to offer sensational moments to a theatrical audience. The ravings of Alexandra prefigure the climactic madscenes of Romantic plays, where the heroine is alienated from the external world as well as from her rational self and eventually collapses under an uncontrolled delirium. Each image conveyed to the prophesying maiden becomes a nightmare that triggers extreme emotional outbursts. The immediate interaction between vision and trauma is sensed in numerous passages of Alexandra’s monologue, as when Cassandra graphically visualizes the Trojan battles (249 – 257): καὶ δὴ καταίθει γαῖαν ὀρχηστὴς Ἄρης, στρόμβῳ τὸν αἱματηρὸν ἐξάρχων νόμον, ἅπασα δὲ χθὼν προὐμμάτων δῃουμένη κεῖται, πέφρικαν δ᾽ ὥστε ληίου γύαι λόγχαις ἀποστίλβοντες, οἰμωγὴ δέ μοι

 In Fusillo’s view (,  – ), this metadramatic play is part of a broader mise en abyme strategy by ‘Lycophron’: the voice of Cassandra reflects the figure of the author (through the display of erudition, the recourse to aitiology, the historical milieu) and the dramatic frame mirrors the relationship of the author with his audience. Hornblower (, ) speaks of a male poet who adopts a female persona, as is the case of female laments in Homer or of the female characters of Greek tragedy and comedy where the poet lends his voice to a woman.  For the affecting and gripping function of the Cassandra-scene in the Agamemnon, see Schein who notes (, ): “Cassandra evokes the same awe, horror, and pity as do schizophrenics, who often combine deep, true insight with utter helplessness, and who retreat radically into madness”. Papadopoulou () discusses the madness of Cassandra in The Trojan Women.  Renaming Cassandra is the first riddle posed by ‘Lycophron’. The etymological explanation provided by the scholia is inadequate (Sch. Lyc. Genus  – ): ᾿Aλεξάνδρα δὲ ἢ παρὰ τὸ ἀλύξαι καὶ ἐκφυγεῖν τὴν τῶν ἀνδρῶν συνουσίαν ἢ παρὰ τὸ ἀλέξειν καὶ βοηθεῖν τοῖς ἀνδράσιν ἤτοι τοῖς ἀνθρώποις διὰ τῶν χρησμῶν. In my view this renaming is the first step towards the molding of a new tragic role.

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ἐν ὠσὶ πύργων ἐξ ἄκρων ἰνδάλλεται, πρὸς αἰθέρος κυροῦσα νηνέμους ἕδρας, γόῳ γυναικῶν καὶ καταρραγαῖς πέπλων, ἄλλην ἐπ᾽ ἄλλῃ συμφορὰν δεδεγμένων. And now Ares, the dancer, fires the land, with his conch leading the chant of blood. And all the land lies ravaged before my eyes and, as it were fields of corn, bristle the fields of the gleaming spears. And in my ears seems a voice of lamentation from the tower tops reaching to the windless seats of air, with groaning women and rending of robes, awaiting sorrow upon sorrow. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

Madness is pushed beyond its limits, once emphasis shifts from the depiction of the visionary lyric ‘I’ to the morbid mentality akin to dark Romanticism.⁵⁴ But, unlike his classical predecessors and the playwrights of Romanticism, ‘Lycophron’ is unique in that he transcends the boundaries of a single coherent plot by voicing through Alexandra the human tragedy in its entirety, in encompassing almost thousand years of myth and history. What forms the core of the Alexandra is not its unwieldy plot. It is the voice ‘that unceasingly pours forth an all-blended cry’ (5 ἄσπετον χέασα παμμιγῆ βοὴν), a voice reaching far beyond the limits of the Cassandra role. Indeed Alexandra predicts her death in line 1119, but the voice exceeds the heroine’s physical death both chronologically and metaphysically.⁵⁵ Even if the performative ‘hereand-now’ is only illusionary, this voice reflects a level of increased deixis. Presentification is a concomitant of a vivid prophetic utterance—the prophetic mind experiences, albeit as perceived by the imaginary, the events predicted— but also a theatrical device. The recurrent λεύσσω (52, 86, 216) turns the spotlight from the power of words to the power of sight. The rapid succession of events unfolding presently is reinforced by such deictic expression like καὶ δὴ (90, 229, 232, 243, 249) introducing strong present tenses (229 καὶ δὴ Παλαίμων δέρκεται, 232 καὶ δὴ διπλᾶ σὺν πατρὶ ῥαίεται τέκνα, 243 καὶ δὴ στένει Μύρινα, 249 καὶ δὴ καταίθει γαῖαν ὀρχηστὴς Ἄρης) or the frequent second-person apostrophes regularly coupled with present tenses (52 λεύσσω σε, τλῆμον, δεύτερον πυρουμένην, 72 στένω σε, πάτρα, 1174 ὦ μῆτερ, ὦ δύσμητερ, 1189 σὺ δ᾽, ὦ ξύναιμε). The reader/audience is invited to view with Alexandra the calamities of the Greeks and the Trojans as they present themselves at an apocalyptic, vision-

 On Alexandra’s discourse of darkness, see Sistakou ,  – .  As Schein (, ) subtly remarks about the poem’s model, the Aeschylean Cassandra: “In thus witnessing her own death, [Cassandra] transcends a boundary of experience which was, for the Greeks, one of the defining limits of the human condition. An audience in turn experiences, in part vicariously and in part through emotional identification, all the pain and horror of this transcendence, of what we might call Cassandra’s ceasing to be human.”

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ary moment.⁵⁶ From a theatrical perspective the evocation of sight is a kind of stage-direction, the conjuring up of images, which, in a play like the Alexandra, remain in the realm of the imaginary. In other words, in contrast to an ordinary dramatic presentification, the Alexandra evokes but never fully translates itself into the theatrical. On its stage the spectacle gives its place to an aural performance replete with histrionic vocalisms, overplayed cries and uncontrollable sobbing. A performance of whom, or, better, of what? The Alexandra is not just an experimental play; it moreover anticipates avant-garde experimental theatre. In a postmodernist conception of the theatrical experience, the Alexandra declares the death of character as the core of drama.⁵⁷ Instead it is a potentially performable play for a disembodied voice. Alexandra’s mouth becomes the center of an imaginary staging.⁵⁸ Already at the beginning this mouth forms an independent entity (3 – 7):⁵⁹ οὐ γὰρ ἥσυχος κόρη ἔλυσε χρησμῶν ὡς πρίν αἰόλον στόμα ἀλλ᾽ ἄσπετον χέασα παμμιγῆ βοὴν δαφνηφάγων φοίβαζεν ἐκ λαιμῶν ὄπα Σφιγγὸς κελαινῆς γῆρυν ἐκμιμουμένη. For not quietly as of old did the maiden loose the varied voice of her oracles, but poured forth a weird confused cry, and uttered wild words from her bay-chewing mouth, imitating the speech of the dark Sphinx. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

Alexandra’s mouth claims its dramatic individuality, once the maiden is given over to her possession of the god of prophecy. A few lines later it is revealed

 In capturing the visionary moment the Alexandra anticipates the transcendental character of Romantic poetics, see Sistakou ,  – .  The Death of Character is a  essay by theatre critic Elaine Fuchs who argues that the decline of a psychologically consistent character in drama in favor of fragmented and uncertain identities is the milestone in the development of modernist theatre. For the prominence of monologue performances in postmodernist theatre, see Auslander .  A striking parallel is the dramatic monologue by Samuel Beckett Not I () performed by an actress (the Mouth) whose mouth is spotlighted on a darkened stage and a silent male actor (called the Auditor). It is notable that the female Mouth seems to be listening to an inner voice, just like Alexandra listens to the voice of god Apollo.  The image of the enunciating mouth is as old as Homer, when the epic narrator confesses his weakness in the face of the overwhelming material of the Catalogue of Ships—the situation is similar to the one encountered by the Alexandra narrator regarding the Trojan war material (Il. . –  πληθὺν δ᾽ οὐκ ἂν ἐγὼ μυθήσομαι οὐδ᾽ ὀνομήνω,/ οὐδ᾽ εἴ μοι δέκα μὲν γλῶσσαι, δέκα δὲ στόματ᾽ εἶεν,/ φωνὴ δ᾽ ἄρρηκτος, χάλκεον δέ μοι ἦτορ ἐνείη).

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that this god is not only Apollo but also Dionysus (28): ἡ δ᾽ ἔνθεον σχάσασα βακχεῖον στόμα… ‘and she, opening her god-inspired, bacchic mouth…’. The idea is not new: Euripides was the first to unite the Apollonian and the Bacchic Cassandra, hence intertextuality is at play here.⁶⁰ Bacchus symbolizes the demonic force that motivates the frenzy of Cassandra.⁶¹ Yet in the new context, posed at the opening of a sui generis tragedy, the bacchic trance of Alexandra suggests metatheatricality. Bacchic ecstasy becomes a metadramatic comment on the tragic experience itself. After all, Alexandra, this tragic mouth separated from its body, is herself the visualization of the Dionysiac sparagmos. ⁶²

Tragedy as textual unconscious Alexandra’s enigmatic monologue demonstrates how a character from classical tragedy is transformed into a role designed for what might be viewed as a postmodern performance. In her identity as Cassandra, the heroine experiences the terror of previewing her impending death. In the process towards ‘becoming Alexandra’, this new performing being reverses the temporal perspective, the orientation of her prophetic eye from the present towards the future. She may still be partly ‘Cassandra’ in embedding her personal tragedy into a prophecy about the future of Troy which dramatically has not been realized yet, as it takes place on the idyllic day when Paris sets sail for Greece. But beyond this dramatic temporality, reflected in the messenger speech that frames the monologue, the Alexandra is essentially retrospective. The recurrent pattern of Hellenistic narratives that are designed as prequels from a mythological viewpoint but are sensed as sequels in terms of the literary tradition on which they depend is also the case for the Alexandra. Created against the background not of myth but of its var-

 Cf. Eur. Troad.  ἐκβακχεύουσαν Κασσάνδραν,  εἰ μή σ᾽ ᾿Aπόλλων ἐξεβάκχευσεν φρένας and  ὦ σύμβακχε Κασσάνδρα θεοῖς. For a fine analysis of Cassandra’s bacchic vigor in The Trojan Women, see Papadopoulou ,  – .  On the blending of the Apollonian and the Bacchic in Euripides’ Cassandra, Papadopoulou (, ) notes: “This happens because Apollo is the source of her prophecy, while her ’bacchic’ frenzy is the source of her wild power and of the sense of revenge, towards which her whole essence is orientated”. On the bacchic element here, which suggests maenadism, see Hornblower  on l. .  Storm () explores the deeper connection of Dionysus with the phenomenon of the tragic through the identification of the theatrical art with mimetic impersonation and the symbolic rendition of the tragic self with the Dionysiac sparagmos. The Alexandra personifies both ends of Nietzsche’s scheme, that is the Apollonian vs. the Dionysiac spirit of tragedy: on the celebrated viewing of the Greek tragic by Nietzsche, see Young ,  – .

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ious literary versions, this is a textually constructed Alexandra, an uncanny entity with a colossal unconscious.⁶³ In what follows I will explore both the constitution of this unconscious mind from tragic texts and the emphasis placed on violence as a mechanism for the creation of a new tragic affect. Divided between the space of fiction and the space of textuality, the ‘Lycophronian’ Cassandra dramatizes a subject suffering trauma from the return of the repressed as it is overwhelmed with images that activate painful memories.⁶⁴ The family and Trojan calamities function as a psychological trauma rekindled by the prophetic word and resulting in the emotional outbursts of an agonizing voice. But Alexandra, a state of being that transcends the coherence of a dramatic character, is a fragmented subject in terms of postmodern memory-theatre:⁶⁵ Such a ‘subject’ cannot be the source of memory; memory works through these figures, but never originates in them. The fragmentation of experience and the dissolution of a unified self—basic topoi of postmodern thought—banish memory from the security of individual control, rendering it sourceless, without a psychological home, as though emanating from a culturally determined collective unconscious.

The Alexandra shares this collective class of textual memory with the learned reader/audience. Outside the dramatic scenario, the textual memories of Alexandra are triggered by evoking tragedy in the broadest sense. Drawing on a reservoir of narratives with a tragic outcome, a corpus that encompasses primarily Attic tragedy and potentially tragic stories stemming from the Trojan war cycle, Alexandra herself appears to lament the grim fortunes of Trojan and Greeks as they unfold through the recollection of their textual realizations. ‘Lycophron’ conveys the tragic hypertext by recourse to fragmentariness and imagistic narration. This produces the lack of coherence, the discontinuous structure of the Alexandra. ⁶⁶ Accordingly the reader/audience is intellectually and emo-

 For an analysis of the intertextual dialogue with the epics of the Trojan war cycle in the Alexandra, see Sistakou ,  – . For the literary indebtness of the Alexandra to the entire range of Greek literature, see Hornblower ,  – .  A parallel can be drawn between the mechanism of memory in the Alexandra and the socalled ‘theatre of memory’ invented by the Renaissance philosopher Giulio Camillo. Memory becomes a narrative strategy in postmodern theatre too, on which see Malkin ,  – .  Malkin ,  – .  Along the lines of memory-theatre, it is illuminating to note the remarks of Jeanette Malkin (, ): “There is no unity of enunciation, no closure, no easy way to ‘read’ or organize the sensual and discursive overload…Often the memories burst upon the stage without order, causality, direction, or coherence, as though in reaction to what Heiner Müller has called ‘the nightmare of history’”. That said, there is some sense of chronological order in the structuring of the prophecy (for the linearity of the narrative see the exposition of the contents in Hurst/Kolde

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tionally flooded with tragic snapshots that encode already accomplished narratives.⁶⁷ In other words, intertextuality is dramatized through an all-encompassing entity. This theatre fluctuates between fantasy, delirium and nightmare. Through the voice of Alexandra the reader/audience is urged to visualize the unseen, what occurs in a space and time that is literally and metaphorically set offstage—what I call her ‘textual unconscious’. The prophecy begins with the first capture of Troy (31– 51). The story may have its origins in two Iliadic digressions on the conflict that erupted between Apollo, Poseidon and Laomedon and the subsequent destruction of the city by Heracles (Il. 21.442– 457 and 5.638 – 651). Heracles is the first tragic character to appear in the Alexandra. The textual associations activated in the memory of Alexandra evoke the illustrious career of Heracles on the Attic stage. The attribute τεκνοραίστης (38) recalls the murdering of his children when he was struck with madness by Hera in Euripides’ Heracles. On the other hand, lines 50 – 51 ἐξηνάριξεν ὅν ποτ᾽ ἀξίφῳ δόλῳ/ νέκυς, τὸν Ἅιδην δεξιούμενον πάλαι ‘but one day with swordless guile a dead man killed him, even him who of old overcame Hades’ summarize the climax of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis treating the death of Heracles by the cunning of Centaur Nessus. It is notable that the ‘Heracles’ tragedies are barely touched upon, and from this point on attention shifts to the vast reservoir of the Trojan war tragedies. Alexandra gives prominence to the tragedies recounting the fall of the House of Priam.⁶⁸ By combining material from previous tragedy and stories with a tragic potential not yet dramatized, Alexandra visualizes the prehistory of the royal family of Troy. An illustrating example of the former is the lost Alexandros by Euripides (probably also the Alexandros by Sophocles) from which the image of Paris as a firebrand (86 γρυνὸν ἐπτερωμένον) originates. The story involves a dream of Hecabe that she will give birth to a firebrand, an omen that was interpreted as a grim sign for the birth of Paris. The latter case, namely potentially tragic stories, is best exemplified by the tragic romance of Paris and Oenone (57– 68): All these things the jealous spouse shall bring to light, sending her son to indicate the land, angered by her father’s taunts, for her bed’s sake and because of the alien bride. And herself, the skilled in drugs, seeing the baleful wound incurable of her husband wounded by

,  – ), an impression which is weakened by the random association of images in Alexandra’s mind.  I borrow the term ‘flooding’ from Heiner Müller’s conception of overwhelming the audience with images and voices in the context of a postmodern class of theatricality: on this notion, see Malkin ,  – .  The family curse that befalls the House of Priam is a recognizable tragic pattern illustrated exceptionally in the Atreids tragedies, on which see Sistakou ,  – .

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the giant-slaying arrows of his adversary, shall endure to share his doom, from the topmost towers to the new slain corpse hurtling herself head foremost, and pierced by sorrow for the dead shall breathe forth her soul on the quivering body. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

It is notable that Oenone has the status of the great tragic heroines of the past— Medea, Phaedra, Deianira—but her story is fleshed out against the background of the ‘death in love’ thematics too. Emphasis shifts from the tragic consequences of betrayal and jealousy to the romantic cliché of committing suicide upon the dead body of the beloved.⁶⁹ This is a typical paradigm of Hellenistic rather than classical tragic, foregrounding sentimentalism instead of tragic emotion, a trend that culminates with the pathetic melodramas of Parthenius.⁷⁰ The next section is dedicated to Helen, a figure on whose fate epic and tragedy seem to be divided (86 – 179). The basic point of disagreement concerns the question whether Helen ever actually arrived at Troy. If the epic tradition, both Homeric and Cyclic, knows of her marriage with Paris and their sojourn in Troy, Euripides in his Helen presents an alternative version according to which she never travelled to Troy.⁷¹ Paris took only her eidolon with him, whereas the real Helen remained in the house of Proteus in Egypt. Drawing on the Euripidean twist of the myth, the Alexandra exploits twice the idea of the eidolon. In lines 110 – 114 the ghost of Helen appears as an erotic image haunting the dreams of Paris:⁷² And in the Dragon’s Isle of Acte, dominion of the twoformed son of earth, you shall put from there your desire; but you shall see no tomorrow’s aftermath of love, fondling in empty arms a chill embrace and a dreamland bed. (Adapted transl. A. W.-G. R. Mair)

This snapshot places the love-making of Paris and Helen in Attica; the Egyptian phase of their romance is postponed for later (115 – 127). The Helen-section concludes with a metaliterary tribute to Euripides’ romantic conception of the phantom that has caused the Trojan bloodshed (143 – 144): κλαίων δὲ πάτραν τὴν πρὶν

 The same story pattern is also found in Euripides’ The Suppliants ( – ) in a scene where Evadne decides to throw herself in the death pyre of her husband Capaneus who was killed during the siege of the Theban walls.  Apart from Parthenius (EP  Oenone), Nicander (fr.  G.-S.) and Ovid (Heroid. ) were also fascinated by the romantic tragic exemplified by the story of Paris and Oenone.  Probably elaborating on Stesichorus’ Palinode and evoking Herodotus’ Egyptian version of the story in Book  of the Histories; an overview of the sources in Hurst/Kolde , .  The illusionary intercourse between Paris and Helen’s ghost has a dark Romantic ring: see Sistakou , .

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ᾐθαλωμένην/ ἵξῃ χεροῖν εἴδωλον ἠγκαλισμένος ‘in tears you will come to your fatherland that was burnt of old, embracing the idol in your arms’. Like Helen, Iphigenia is a romance figure in the Alexandra. Once more it is primarily Euripides who provides the frame for this narrative.⁷³ It was Iphigenia whom the cruel Greeks decided to sacrifice (184 βύκταισι χερνίψαντες ὠμησταὶ πόριν) and it was due to the intervention of Artemis that a deer was slaughtered in her place (190 – 191). The next episode in her literary story, which underlies the plot of the Iphigenia in Tauris, is transformed into a dark image involving the human sacrifices performed by the priestess of the Taurians (195 – 199).⁷⁴ At the same time, the rendition of Iphigenia is also based on a lesser known story, according to which she gave birth to Neoptolemus (183 προγεννήτειραν οὐλαμωνύμου, 185 τοῦ Σκυρίου δράκοντος ἔντοκον λεχώ). Seen in the light of this alternative version, Iphigenia becomes an erotic heroine and Achilles a pathetic lover on her side. In a marked deviation from the Euripidean portrayal of a tragic Iphigenia, emphasis shifts to the romantic depiction of Achilles’ desperate quest for his beloved (186 – 190, 192– 194, 200 – 201).⁷⁵ After this prelude revolving around the fatal men of Troy, namely Heracles, Paris and Achilles, and their gloomy love affairs, Alexandra’s mental theatre overflows with tragedy and the tragic. Eros is sensed in Alexandra’s unconscious mind as a dark force engendering violence—the other is war. The eruption of the Trojan war evokes a cluster of Attic plays that are fragmented and transformed into images of blood and terror and in turn trigger the hysterical outbursts and pathetic laments of Alexandra. In an extended scene of massacre on the Trojan battlefield, Achilles emerges as the dominant figure, likened successively to a wolf (246), an eagle (261) and a demon (281). The core snapshot, building around the extravagant designator νεκροπέρνας ‘a trafficker in corpses’ (276), conjures up the end of the Iliad where Achilles accepts the ransom in exchange for the body of Hector, but evokes in particular Aeschylus’ Phrygians in visualizing

 Although we are also informed of two lost tragedies with the title Iphigenia by Aeschylus (Radt ,  – ) and Sophocles (Radt ,  – ) which must have treated the events in Aulis, as well as of an Iphigenia in Tauris attributed to the fourth-century playwright Polyidus (Snell , ).  There is, however, a touch of parody in the visualization of Iphigenia as a bizarre Γραῖα ‘An Old Witch’, a twisted take on Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris ( – ). For the uncanny and gory details of the Iphigenia episode, see Sistakou ,  – .  The major monograph on Achilles as a lover is Fantuzzi . On Achilles as a Byronic hero, a Romantic blending of the villain and the passionate lover, in the Alexandra, see Sistakou ,  – . The insistence on the doomed love affairs of Achilles creates a significant parallel with the erotic destiny of Cassandra that will condemn her to servitude and death (Hurst/ Kolde , ).

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the weighing of Hector’s corpse with gold (271– 272 αὖθις τὸν ἀντίποινον ἐγχέας ἴσον/ Πακτώλιον σταθμοῖσι τηλαυγῆ μύδρον).⁷⁶ The murdering of Troilus foreshadows the future tragedies that will befall the House of Priam (307– 313). The killing of the young prince in an ambush by Achilles in the temple of Apollo Thymbraeus was dramatized in the lost Troilus by Sophocles, which provided the archetype for the tragic theme of the premature death of a handsome youth. In the aftermath of the fall of Troy, apart from Hector, also Laodice, Polyxena, Hecuba and Priam suffer gruesome deaths (314– 339), a section permeated by the lamenting of Alexandra. The intertextual background of these deaths are mainly the Cyclic epics, most notably The Sack of Troy, as well as Euripides’ Hecabe. Yet the most fascinating tragic section involves two secondary characters of the Trojan siege, the traitors Antenor and Sinon (340 – 347). The literary memory of Alexandra evokes here two lost tragedies by Sophocles, namely The Sons of Antenor and Sinon. The nightmare of Alexandra culminates when her alter ego, the character Cassandra, suffers a tragic consequence of the Trojan war, her rape by the Locrian Aias (348 – 364). Her tragedy is accomplished once she falls dead in the bath of the royal palace of Mycenae, a narrative echoing with Aeschylus’ Agamemnon (1099 – 1119).⁷⁷ A new chapter in the tragic conceptualization of Alexandra’s unconscious begins with the homecomings of the Greeks. Alongside classical tragedy, Hellenistic tragic material comes into play too. The Locrian Aias may have been the protagonist of two adventures in the Cyclic The Sack of Troy, both of which are reproduced in Alexandra’s narrative: his hubris in violating of Cassandra (357– 363) and the divine punishment imposed on the hero by Athena and Poseidon who perished in the Aegean while sailing homeward (387– 407). It is unlikely that any of these events was actually dramatized in Sophocles’ Aias the Locrian, because they were inappropriate for presentation on the stage—the play must have focused on the debate of the Greeks on whether they should retaliate against the crimes of Aias or not. But ‘Lycophron’ shifts his attention from the  This scene from Aeschylus’ play was etched in the memory of the Attic audience (Sch. Il. .b): ὁ δὲ Αἰσχύλος ἐπ᾽ ἀληθείας ἀντίσταθμον χρυσὸν πεποίηκε πρὸς τὸ Ἕκτορος σῶμα ἐν Φρυξίν; on Aeschylus’ Phrygians, see Radt ,  – . For a play with the same subject by Sophocles, see Radt ,  – ; its popularity is also attested for the fourth-century tragedian Dionysius ‘the tyrant’ who won the dramatic agon with his play The Ransom of Hector (Snell , ).  The Suda (s.v. Ἰοφῶν) attributes a tragedy with the title The Sack of Troy to the son of Sophocles, the tragedian Iophon. What is worth noting is that such a play might have been multi-character and multi-episodic, counter to the classical practice of building a tragedy around a single action. The Alexandra is closer to this model than to the one developed by the classical tragedians.

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depiction of the tragic conflicts to the visualization of strikingly violent actions. This becomes a dominant pattern in the representation of the deaths of the Greeks in the hypertrophic nostoi section. Hereafter Alexandra’s unconscious is flooded with a bulk of tragic stories. Her delirious outpouring becomes a mosaic of celebrated and lesser known tragedies and characters from Attic drama, the postclassical stage and the plays of the Alexandrian Pleiad. The following listing illustrates the point.⁷⁸ Nauplius, the father of Palamedes, who, in order to take revenge on the Greeks, lit a beacon and caused the shipwreck of the Achaean fleet near Euboea (384 – 386), was the subject of Sophocles’ Nauplius the Fire-Raiser and also treated in tragedies by the fourth-century playwrights Astydamas and Philocles as well as by Lycophron himself. Two tragic figures, Aias, whose madness and suicide were prominent in Aeschylus’ Women of Thrace, in Sophocles’ Aias and in lost plays by Carcinus, Theodectes and Astydamas, and his brother Teucer, who was disowned by his father Telamon and exiled in the aftermath of Aias’ death, were treated by great fifth-century tragedians, namely Sophocles, Nicomachus and Ion, and the later tragic poet Euaretus. From the adventures of Odysseus, the so-called ‘Little Odyssey’ of the Alexandra, only one points towards tragedy: the accidental killing of Odysseus by his son Telegonus (795 – 798) that was treated in Sophocles’ Odysseus Wounded by the Spine and by Lycophron himself in his Telegonus. Menelaus’ wanderings in search of the real Helen instead of her phantom (820 – 824) that bring him to the realm of Proteus in Egypt (847– 851) are modelled on Euripides’ Helen. The nostoi section develops into a ktisis narrative and tragic stories are gradually eliminated.⁷⁹ Some hints at Philoctetes’ wounding and his deadly arrows aiming at Paris (911– 918) evoke Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Philoctetes in Troy, and a series of tragedies on this hero by Aeschylus, Euripides and postclassical dramatists. The appearance of Epeius, the constructor of the Wooden Horse (930 – 950), is probably a reminiscent of Euripides’ satyr play Epeius. The wanderings of the lesser-known Elephenor (1034 – 1046) echo a new, Hellenistic character dramatized by Lycophron in his own tragedy Elephe Other minor occurrences of tragic literature in the Alexandra may have been: Phoenix’ blinding by his father ( – ), an episode treated both by Sophocles and Euripides, the story of Amphilochus ( – ) dramatized by Callistratus, the invulnerability of Aias ( – ) as presented in Aeschylus’ Women of Thrace, the early killing of Protesilaus by Hector ( – ) dramatized by Euripides, the story of Perseus and Andromeda ( – ) which alludes to Euripides’ lost Andromeda and a tragedy with the same title by Lycophron. For the tragic models of the Alexandra, as juxtaposed to epic, lyric and prose sources, see the commentary by Hurst/Kolde  passim.  For the foundation myths and myths of origin in the nostoi section of the Alexandra, see Hornblower ,  – .

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nor. Alexandra’s tragic delirium reaches its climax with a tribute to the Oresteia through the narration of the murder of Cassandra and Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and of Orestes’ vengeance (1099 – 1140). This may be a dazzling display of tragic erudition; however, it is the rewriting of tragedy under the prism of violence that enhances the emotional effectiveness achieved by the Alexandra. Alexandra’s unconscious unleashes the violence that normally resides in a space that is both concealed and disclosed by the messenger speech in classical tragedy. The escalation of verbal and imagistic violence emerges from diverse devices: darkness of expression, recourse to riddles, metonymic use of bestiary, uncanny and grotesque imagery, emphasis on perverse sexuality and morbidity, tomb discourse.⁸⁰ Alexandra, this mysterious performance entity, exposes her imaginary audience to a phantasmagoria of blood and gore. Violence for violence’s sake dominates the performance of the Alexandra and the visceral effect of her discourse replaces the conventional emotions engendered by tragedy. On a metadramatic level, ‘Lycophron’ deconstructs another convention that is indispensable to Attic tragedy, namely that violence should be located in the unseen space of the offstage events.⁸¹ By bringing violence to the center of his stage, ‘Lycophron’ creates a nightmare of blood and terror, thus anticipating postmodern theatricality. The ‘theatre of cruelty’ may have been introduced in Hellenistic Alexandria by the official representative of the tragic Pleiad, a type of performance that both by ancient as well as by modern standards constitutes, after all, an impossible theatre.⁸² On that account, sweet violence, the paradox of experiencing pleasure from the representation of violence that forms the core of tragedy, acquires for the first time the status of an onstage event.⁸³

 For a reconstruction of violence according to this scheme, see Sistakou ,  – .  That violence could not be represented visually but only verbally in classical theatre, a convention explained on the basis of religion, competition rules and theatrical practice, is explored by Sommerstein (,  – ).  ‘Theatre of cruelty’ is a form of avant-garde theatre introduced in the ’s by the playwright, actor and essayist Antonin Artaud. It is based on the idea that the audience should not just watch a play on the stage but experience violence through the actor’s real corporeal pain and suffering onstage and extravagant vocal experimentation; through these strategies, it allows the audience to connect to its own unconscious mind and traumas. The theatre of cruelty, in a striking analogy to the Alexandra, breaks the bond between the body and the voice by creating an acoustical performance for the inarticulated, pure voice, as expressed by the prelinguistic body. However, the lack of concreteness and difficulties in staging has made some theorists to call it an ‘impossible theatre’. For a subtle analysis, see Finter/Griffin .  I borrow the notion of ‘sweet violence’ as the essence of tragic pleasure from Eagleton ().

8. The Romantic Tragic Domesticizing tragedy What ever happened to the tragic heroes? Aias, Philoctetes, Achilles, Heracles and Theseus, when treated in Hellenistic poetry, are never involved in larger than life adventures. The Trojan war veterans, Aias and Philoctetes, are outshone by marginal figures in Euphorion’s epyllia. Achilles is transformed into a fervent lover in Apollonius’ Lesbou ktisis and nearly feminized in the retelling of his Scyrian eros in The Epithalamion for Achilles and Deidameia. Heracles and Theseus, the great laborers of Greek myth, are neither warriors nor leaders in Alexandrian poetry: Theocritus and Callimachus portray them at the tender ages of childhood and adolescence.¹ The eclipse of these heroes, which for centuries had nourished the high genres of epic and tragedy with their sagas, goes hand in hand with the dominance of realism in Hellenistic imagination.² In Aristotle’s view, such an eclipse would strike the death knell for tragedy, once the spoudaioi would no longer be the protagonists of serious poetry. But the Alexandrian recourse to realism resulted in the emergence of the mundane heroes, thus anticipating a Hellenistic version of what modern times would call ‘bourgeois tragedy’.³ There is, however, common ground between Greek drama and the realistic turn of Alexandrian poetry: the prominence of the oikos. The celebrated tragic heroes belong to a few noble families on which the best tragedies draw for inspiration (Arist. Poet. 1453a νῦν δὲ περὶ ὀλίγας οἰκίας αἱ κάλλισται τραγῳδίαι συντίθενται). Some of the most affective tragic passions involve the eminent Houses of Thyestes, of Atreus, of Priam, of Heracles, of Theseus, of Oedipus. In neglecting the political, social and religious facets of most Greek tragedies, Aristotle main-

 For the debunking of the heroes in Hellenistic poetry seen against the backdrop of the rejection of the high genres, see Sistakou ,  – . On the childhood and youth of the great heroes of the past, see the monograph by Ambühl .  Alexandrian realism is thoroughly analyzed by Zanker ().  Aristotle seems to contradict this view by stating that the names of the tragic characters are fictional, simple add-ons to archetypal patterns of human behavior; therefore, he claims, it is possible to compose a tragedy on fictional characters, like Agathon did by writing his Antheus, and engender tragic pleasure all the same (Poet. b οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν ταῖς τραγῳδίαις ἐν ἐνίαις μὲν ἓν ἢ δύο τῶν γνωρίμων ἐστὶν ὀνομάτων, τὰ δὲ ἄλλα πεποιημένα, ἐν ἐνίαις δὲ οὐθέν, οἷον ἐν τῷ ᾿Aγάθωνος ᾿Aνθεῖ· ὁμοίως γὰρ ἐν τούτῳ τά τε πράγματα καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα πεποίηται, καὶ οὐδὲν ἧττον εὐφραίνει).

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tains that tragic pathos is most fascinating when it erupts inside the family (Poet. 1453b): ὅταν δ᾽ ἐν ταῖς φιλίαις ἐγγένηται τὰ πάθη, οἷον ἢ ἀδελφὸς ἀδελφὸν ἢ υἱὸς πατέρα ἢ μήτηρ υἱὸν ἢ υἱὸς μητέρα ἀποκτείνῃ ἢ μέλλῃ ἤ τι ἄλλο τοιοῦτον δρᾷ, ταῦτα ζητητέον… The cases we must look for are those where the pathos involves people closely connected, for instance where brother kills brother, son father, mother son, or son mother—or if not kills, then means to kill, or does some other act of the kind… (Transl. D. A. Russell-M. Winterbottom)

Aristotle emphasizes the intensity of the pity-and-fear effect roused when close blood relatives commit violent crimes against each other, while acknowledging that only a poor selection of such scenarios is available to the tragedians. It is the extremity of these stories that restricts the number of ‘noble’ families which may provide tragedy with original material (Poet. 1454a διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο, ὅπερ πάλαι εἴρηται, οὐ περὶ πολλὰ γένη αἱ τραγῳδίαι εἰσίν). That said, nobility is indispensable to the notion of the tragic family, implying that tragedy must always revolve around the illustrious gene of mythical Greece.⁴ Another key to reading family dynamics in the Greek tragedies are the ties of kinship and philia as maintained in accordance with the dominant ethical and religious codes or marred once the individual explicitly opposes these codes and threatens to demolish the house. Family structures dominating classical tragedy are particularly related to the extended oikos, the clan or the dynasty beyond the individual members, and the conflicts erupting between the domestic and the public sphere. The oikos undergoes radical transformations during the postclassical era, a tendency clearly reflected in the thematics of Hellenistic drama, especially New Comedy. Drama is not simply domesticized but thoroughly privatized: the oikos ceases to be an institution integral to civic life and becomes an intimate affair associated with the little dramas of the everyday human existence. The privatization of the family in Hellenistic drama is comparable to the emergence of the ordinary in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature; the analogies between these literary trends are striking:⁵ With the rise of the novel and of melodrama, we find the entry into literature of a new moral and aesthetic category, that of the ‘interesting’. Its first theoretician may be Diderot,

 Zanker (,  – ) argues that the building of the plots around the spoudaioi and the phauloi corresponds to the distinction between high and low genres, and assumes that Euripides was the first tragedian to challenge this view by representing socially inferior people on his stage and by domesticizing the tragic.  Brooks , .

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in his effort to establish the new genre of drame, which owes much to the novels of Richardson and in some ways prefigures melodrama. Diderot’s definition of le genre sérieux, intermediate between tragedy and comedy—but explicitly not a mixture of the two—addresses itself to the ‘interesting’ in life. What he proposes is a serious attention to the drama of the ordinary: the “picture of the misfortunes that surround us”, the representation of “dangers concerning which you must have trembled for your parents, your friends, yourselves”. This should not be read as a recommendation of naturalistic ‘realism’. On the contrary, Diderot wants to exploit the dramatics and excitement discoverable within the real, to heighten in dramatic gesture the moral crises and peripeties of life.

On this basis, the transition from the classical tragic to the Hellenistic melodramatic receives a plausible explanation. Seriousness may result from the exploration of everyday misfortunes and has the potential to become ‘interesting’ material for literature. Dramas of the ordinary, rather than tragedies of excess, are an expression of the modern imagination of the Hellenistic world.⁶ To explore the turn towards the ordinary, I will first focus on the new concept of the family as household rather than dynasty in two Hellenistic dramas of the oikos, namely the hexametric poem Megara and Eratosthenes’ elegiac Erigone. The Megara is a hexametric poem attributed by the textual transmission to the bucolic poet Moschus, but generally believed to belong to the author of Idyll 25 Heracles the Lionslayer. It consists of a conversation between Megara and Alcmena, following the murdering of Heracles’ children by the hero. Written against the backdrop of Euripides’ Heracles, as evidenced by the numerous thematic and verbal echoes of the Euripidean tragedy found in the later poem, the Megara deviates significantly from the model tragedy in at least two points. The first is a significant variation of Euripides’ plot, since in the Hellenistic version the frenzied Heracles kills his children but spares Megara.⁷ The second deviation concerns the shift of emphasis from the male to the female: focalized through Megara and Alcmena, the horrific infanticide of Heracles is filtered through the consciousness of the wife and the mother. The tragic idea is thus displaced

 Brooks (,  – ) convincingly argues that melodrama should be located in the context of the French Revolution and the invalidation of Christian values in a desecralized society, by concluding that “melodrama does not simply represent a ‘fall’ from tragedy, but a response to the loss of the tragic vision”. A similar development from the archaic and classical values towards a revision of religion, politics and morality in the Hellenistic era may explain the lack of tragic vision in Alexandrian poetry too.  Probably the Hellenistic author follows the Pindaric version (I. . –  ἔμπυρα χαλκοαρᾶν ὀκτὼ θανόντων,/ τοὺς Μεγάρα τέκε οἱ Κρεοντὶς υἱούς). Pausanias .. attests that Stesichorus and Panyassis recounted how Heracles killed his children without referring to Megara.

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from the male agent and its repercussions for the oikos and the community towards the female sensibilities as expressed within the confines of the household. The affiliation of Megara with the tragic genre is reflected in its dramatic form. With the exception of a brief narrative interlude in the middle of the poem (56 – 61), the Megara is a dramatic dialogue, an exchange of two lengthy rheseis between Megara (1– 55) and Alcmena (62– 125). The scene evokes a tragic prologue, in summarizing events that have taken place before the beginning of the play and in anticipating future misfortunes.⁸ Reinforcing the impression of an abrupt opening into a performative here-and-now, the double apostrophe νῦν δέ (36, 88) contrasts past events with the present plight of the dramatis personae. If the past is marked by Heracles’ dreadful crime, the females of the oikos are concerned with their grim present: the children lie buried in Thebes, whereas Megara is obliged to stay in Amphitryon’s household at Tiryns in Argos and go through life lamenting (36 – 40); Alcmena is faced with the absence of Heracles who is off to a new labor, while she has to endlessly wait for his return or death (88 – 90). By the standards of classical tragedy this is the opportune moment for a threnos to unfold and thus provide an appropriate closure to the tragic plot. Yet in the Megara the threnos is heard once the curtain rises and the two female figures are revealed to the reader/audience.⁹ Megara picks up the thread of the plot from the point where Euripides had left it. There is a widespread feeling that the unknown Hellenistic author writes a metadramatic comment on the Euripidean Heracles (as line 64 suggests κήδε᾽ ἄλαστα λέγουσα τά τ᾽ οὐ νῦν πρῶτα κέκλαυται), while at the same time providing his own viewpoint on the tragic dynamics of its plot. Despite incorporating images, motifs and entire scenes from Heracles, Megara presents an alternative version of Heracles’ madness and its dire consequences. The most remarkable facet of this Euripidean reception is the rewriting of the messenger speech (13 – 30). Megara assumes the role of the messenger, who, conventionally, is also an eyewitness to the narrated events (17– 18 τοὺς μὲν ἐγὼ δύστηνος ἐμοῖς ἴδον ὀφθαλμοῖσι/ βαλλομένους ὑπὸ πατρί) and whose fearful reactions are an integral part of the scene (25 – 26 ἦ γάρ οἱ αὐτῇ/ ἆσσον ἴμεν μέγα τάρβος ἀμειλίκτοιο πελώρου). In identifying herself with the messenger, Megara cannot, by definition, be

 The insightful remark is owed to Fantuzzi/Hunter (, ) who note: “The combination of an opening in medias res with an enquiry about what is distressing Alcmena (cf. Eur. IA  ff., Men. Heros  ff., Plaut. Pseud.  ff.) and a conclusion with a disturbing dream which forebodes ill evokes the suspenseful opening of a drama (cf. perhaps Eur. IT)”.  Marcovich () argues that this Hellenistic epyllion dramatizes the comparison between two lamentations; according to his interpretation () “Alcmena is entitled to an endless crying, Megara is not. For Alcmena feels that her own lot is much more ill-fated than Megara’s”.

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numbered among the victims of Heracles:¹⁰ thus, her survival in the aftermath of her children’s murder makes her a protagonist in a mundane drama, a down-toearth tragedy without catharsis. In this Hellenistic short play the domestic space is transformed into a tragic stage. In contrast to the public spaces of Attic tragedy, now it is the interior of the house that becomes the locus of women’s everyday dramas.¹¹ The domestic setting is marked both by the presence of the mother and the daughter-in-law and by the absence of the men of the house. Gender roles are reflected in the boundaries that clearly demarcate the inside from the outside; for Heracles, the male dedicated to adventure and action in global sites, the house becomes an inaccessible space (41– 45): ἀλλὰ πόσιν μὲν ὁρῶ παῦρον χρόνον ὀφθαλμοῖσιν οἴκῳ ἐν ἡμετέρῳ, πολέων γάρ οἱ ἔργον ἑτοῖμον μόχθων, τοὺς ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἀλώμενος ἠδὲ θάλασσαν μοχθίζει πέτρης ὅγ᾽ ἔχων νόον ἠὲ σιδήρου καρτερὸν ἐν στήθεσσι My eyes look upon my husband for a little time in our home, seeing he has so many labors to do abroad wandering by land and sea with that brave heart of his so strong as stone or steel. (Adapted translation J. M. Edmonds)

The head of the household, Heracles, impersonates the missing hero already in the Euripidean play; once he actually appears there, Megara can scarcely trust her eyes and believes that she is deceived by a dream.¹² The rhetorical exaggeration of the Euripidean Megara is developed into a proper dream sequence in the Hellenistic poem (91– 121).¹³ From the first to the last line Heracles remains a ghost figure, a hero who eventually will not live up to the expectations of the dramatic characters and will not return to his household in the flesh—his only presence is as a vision in Alcmena’s troubled dream (94– 95 εἴσατο γάρ μοι ἔχων μακέλην εὐεργέα χερσί παῖς ἐμὸς ἀμφοτέρῃσι, βίη Ἡρακληείη). Another  The Hellenistic Megara imagines her own death by the arrows of Heracles as a metadramatic fantasy ( –  ὥς γ᾽ ὄφελον μετὰ παισὶν ἅμα θνῄσκουσα καὶ αὐτή/ κεῖσθαι φαρμακόεντα δι᾽ ἥπατος ἰὸν ἔχουσα), whereas, in effect, it is already a textual reality in Euripides.  For the archetypal domestic space that becomes a stage for the mundane tragedy of Hecale, see above pp.  – .  The dream appearance of Heracles is graphically depicted in lines  –  of Euripides’ Heracles: ὅδ᾽ ἐστὶν ὃν γῆς νέρθεν εἰσηκούομεν,/ εἰ μή γ᾽ ὄνειρον ἐν φάει τι λεύσσομεν./ τί φημί; ποῖ᾽ ὄνειρα κηραίνουσ᾽ ὁρῶ; Cf. lines  –  where Megara invites Heracles to appear even in the form of a dream to scare away his enemies: ἄρηξον, ἐλθέ· καὶ σκιὰ φάνηθί μοι./ ἅλις γὰρ ἐλθὼν κἂν ὄναρ γένοιο σύ.  On Alcmena’s dream and its interpretation in the Megara, see Plastira-Valkanou .

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telling absence of the male concerns Amphitryon. The reader/audience who views the Megara in the light of Euripides’ Heracles expects Amphitryon to become a protector and a savior for the females of the house, to repeat the vital role he assumes in the Euripidean tragedy. Yet Amphitryon is not just absent; he is non-existent in the consciousness of the two deserted females. Exploiting the aura of the heroine that surrounds Alcmena, the Hellenistic poet opts to render this archetypal maternal figure the key dramatic character in Amphitryon’s place.¹⁴ The Megara captures a critical phase of transition in family relationships. Marital liaisons of the past have been subverted; Megara’s blood ties with her parents are broken. Distance in space from one’s family creates a new sensibility in the dramatic present as emerging from the isolation of the female in a deserted home (47– 51): ἄλλος μὰν οὐκ ἄν τις ἐυφρήναι με παραστάς κηδεμόνων· οὐ γάρ σφε δόμων κατὰ τεῖχος ἐέργει, καὶ λίην πάντες γε πέρην πιτυώδεος Ἰσθμοῦ ναίουσ᾽, οὐδέ μοί ἐστι πρὸς ὅντινά κε βλέψασα οἷα γυνὴ πανάποτμος ἀναψύξαιμι φίλον κῆρ None other of my kin can come and comfort me; they are not next-door neighbors, they dwell far away beyond the piny Isthmus; and so I have none to look to, such as a hapless woman needs to revive her heart… (Adapted translation J. M. Edmonds)

The eclipse of the family and its aftermath faced by Megara is a situation beyond tragedy, a drama of loss and loneliness that registers grief.¹⁵ In this play of human misery Alcmena appears as a deus ex machina. But, in contrast to the convention of the tragic deus who comes to resolve the plot’s impasse, Alcmena does not provide solutions. Her empathetic response to Megara’s plight is a lesson in endurance and courage.¹⁶ If tragedy has a clear-cut ending in catastrophe

 A similar supporting role in a domestic scenario is assigned to Amphitryon in Theocritus’ Idyll , another Hellenistic poem where Alcmena plays the lead. Apart from her prominence in the Ehoiae tradition, Alcmena is an established tragic heroine in a series of lost tragedies that are entitled after her and are attributed to Aeschylus, Euripides, Ion and Astydamas.  Konstan (,  – ) describes grief as a modern emotion and sets it apart—following Aristotle—from the human pathe: in contrast to other emotions pertaining to human passions and qualifying as tragic, grief belongs to the private sphere, in the sense that it lacks social status, and therefore does not acquire any specific action. Moreover, grief resembles melancholia, a passion of the modern, not of the tragic psyche.  Alcmena as a loving comforting figure is finely portrayed by Marcovich who concludes that (, ) “this compassionate mutual care and love between Alcmena and Megara, both strick-

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and catharsis, the Megara offers no closure to everyday human suffering and no emotional catharsis. Surviving tragedy is more tragic than experiencing tragedy: this seems to be the message conveyed by the unknown Hellenistic author of the Megara. Two women trapped in a household, waiting and mourning for their personal losses—this may signify the beginning of a tragedy, but, at the same time, may point to the direction of an anticlimactic ending, a drama pending without closure.¹⁷ Whereas the Megara is a drama of loss, desolation and melancholy which does not resolve itself into a pathetic ending, Eratosthenes’ Erigone provides new insights into the Hellenistic tragic. Like Hecale and Megara, the Erigone demonstrates the prominence of the female in the conception of the new tragic: following a crisis in family, the female is faced with a domestic reality of physical and emotional isolation that calls for endurance rather than action. But in contrast to the other female protagonists of the mundane dramas, Erigone reacts to her grief by committing suicide. From the viewpoint of its climactic closure, the tragic potential of the story is hardly questionable. It is notable that the story of Erigone may have been material for the writing of tragedies before the time of Eratosthenes and certainly after him.¹⁸ Eratosthenes must have drawn inspiration from these tragedies, whereas his audience may have been so familiar with a tragic Erigone, that he was forced to radically redesign the Erigone plot into a narrative elegy with a strong aitiological coloring. Eratosthenes’ little

en with grave personal tragedies, is what gives this well designed Alexandrian epyllion its unique aesthetic value”. And its new take on the tragic, I might add.  Modern parallels originate from nineteenth-century realistic melodramas. Anton Chekhov’s plays are comments on a life wasted in waiting. Thus, for example, the house becomes a prison, the locus of a hopeless living in anticipation of death in Uncle Vanya, a play concluding with the following words: “We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us; we shall work for others without rest, both now and when we are old; and when our last hour comes we shall meet it humbly, and there, beyond the grave, we shall say that we have suffered and wept, that our life was bitter, and God will have pity on us”. Waiting in vain for the arrival of a character has replaced traditional emplotment in modernist theatre, whose typical example is Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. It is remarkable that waiting for Heracles forms the first part of the plot in Sophocles’ Women of Trachis and Euripides’ Heracles, as Ambühl (, ) rightly points out.  A tragedy Erigone is attested for Sophocles, although it is not clear whether the subject of this drama (which may also have been a satyr play) was the daughter of Icarius or her namesake, the daughter of Aegisthus (for the testimonies and the fragments, see Radt ,  – ). Other tragedians who have written an Erigone include the fifth-century playwright Philocles and the fourth-century Cleophon, a Phrynichus of unknown date, the second-century BC dramatist Accius and Cicero’s brother Quintus.

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poem has not survived, although antiquity held it in high regard for its formalistic perfection (a well-known utterance on its quality is attributed to ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime 33.5 διὰ πάντων γὰρ ἀμώμητον τὸ ποιημάτιον), while its reputation reached well beyond the Hellenistic era. Its retelling by Nonnus in the Dionysiaca (47.34 – 264) is undoubtedly a tribute to Eratosthenes’ groundbreaking poem.¹⁹ But what renders it so exceptional and how does it promote an alternative sense of the tragic? The Erigone is a complex composition, consisting of a tragic scenario that conforms with Alexandrian aesthetics—among others it featured the motif of theoxenia, a domestic setting, a female protagonist and a series of aitia and concluded with a catasterism—and a philological reflection on the origins of Attic drama.²⁰ Aitiology blends with metadrama in the first episode of the story narrating how the peasant Icarius, after offering hospitality to Dionysus, shares the god’s gift, the wine, with the inhabitants of Attica who eventually beat him to death. Scholarly evidence for the genesis of tragedy is reflected in a much-discussed line comprising an etymological aition (fr. 22 CA): Ἰκαριοῖ, τόθι πρῶτα περὶ τράγον ὠρχήσαντο ‘in Icaria, where for the first time they danced around a goat’. Even if Eratosthenes was not the first to associate tragedy with the rural festivals of Athens (not necessarily with Icarius, since also Thespis was considered the inventor of tragoidia by other theorists), it is likely that the Erigone incorporated theories explaining the beginnings of the tragic genre through the dramatization of Icarius’ adventures.²¹ Yet the elegy was not haphazardly called Erigone. Although the reconstruction of the poem relies on vague testimonies, summaries and scant fragments,²² its title underlines the prominence of the female heroine. Domesticity and the quotidian details must have been the quintessence in his narrative.²³ The events

 For a comparison with Nonnus’ version of Erigone, see the classical reading by Solmsen .  On how Eratosthenes incorporates ancient theories on the invention of drama in the Erigone, see Merkelbach ; a recent article by Broggiato () accepts the metadramatic character of the Erigone, while at the same rejecting the idea that Eratosthenes devised a theory on the origin of tragedy in Attic Icaria.  To dramatize the origins of poetry is not Eratosthenes’ innovation, however. Theocritus’ Idyll  is similarly a metapoetic drama on how the death of Daphnis establishes the tradition of the bucolic song: a thorough discussion in Klooster ,  – .  For a commentary of the testimonies and fragments and a comparison between different sources for the Erigone myth, see Rosokoki .  According to Solmsen (, ) Nonnus eliminated the domestic details which must have been found in abundance in Eratosthenes’ poem (the closest parallel for its excessive domestic-

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involving Icarius must have covered only the first part of the plot, whereas the young girl’s tragedy developed in its aftermath. The various sources available for the poem’s plot are not unanimous as regards the events immediately following Icarius’ death: it is the family’s dog, or, according to Nonnus’ version, Icarius’ phantom appearing in a dream to Erigone, that informs the hapless maiden about her father’s violent death and urges her to search for his murderers. The quest in the countryside soon leads Erigone to her father’s tomb, where she gives herself over to mourning and excessive lamentation. In despair she hangs herself on the spot; her dog, displaying a human-like behavior, mourns by shedding real tears and takes care of her burial until it eventually dies from grief. The story ends with a metaphysical twist, since the three victims of this domestic tragedy, namely Icarius, Erigone and the faithful dog, are all transformed into stars. Evidently the Erigone incorporates narrative patterns that evoke classical tragedy. The core of the story is indeed typical of tragedy: the death of the man who is the head of the oikos, usually the husband, is followed by the woman’s suicide by hanging.²⁴ Eratosthenes gives an Alexandrian twist to this pattern. The man is the father, not the husband, a variation that turns the spotlight away from marital relationships and focuses on the affection and devotion between father and daughter. Dramatic space changes too. Whereas the tragic female resorts to death by rope because this manner of death ensures ‘silence and secrecy’ in taking place behind the closed doors,²⁵ Erigone exits the house and hangs herself in the open air. What would conventionally occur offstage, in the realm of the unseen, within the secret life of the female, becomes visible to everyone. Here intimate relations result in tragedy beyond the delimiting space of the household. On a symbolic level, by becoming alienated from her family surroundings Erigone liberates herself from the constraints of the oikos, its values and duties. In essence, Erigone claims her individuality by transgressing its boundaries. She appears as a modern version of Antigone: renouncing the ethical code and engagement with the family displayed by the latter, Erigone inity was definitely Callimachus’ Hecale): “the Hellenistic delight in pictures of simple life must have pervaded the story to a much greater extent than we are able to realize”.  That the female way of suiciding is the rope rather than the sword as exemplified by Iocasta, Phaedra and Antigone is subtly argued by Loraux (,  – ).  Loraux (,  – ) argues that tragic women express their anguish through silence and retreat to the innermost part of the house to kill themselves. In her view (, ) tragic women “are free enough to kill themselves, but they are not free enough to escape from the space to which they belong, and the remote sanctum where they meet their death is equally the symbol of their life—a life that finds its meaning outside the self and is fulfilled only in the institutions of marriage and maternity”.

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dulges to her excessive emotionality beyond any sense of moral or social duty. Dying of filial love reflects the romantic agony of a female obsessed with her own sentimentality; her tragic power, and hence her freedom as a tragic heroine, emanates from her social and personal isolation.²⁶ In this context her suicide becomes the ultimate act through which she asserts her distinct individuality.

The tragedy of love Three female figures, Hecale, Megara and Erigone, are overcome by emotions that flourish within the confines of the house. These women are unable to experience the different types of domestic philia—of the mother for her children, of the wife for her husband, of the daughter for her father. Their personal failures, precipitated by an omnipotent destiny, lead to a new conception of the tragic and their sufferings reach new emotional depths. These females become the archetypes of romantic sentimentality, which pervades a great part of late Alexandrian poetry. In contrast to the ethical, social and political implications of classical dramas, Alexandrian poetry lacks the ideological background by aiming primarily at the expression of human emotions. In Alexandrian poetics the emotions do not originate from the representation of a tragic plot according to Aristotle’s scheme, but, conversely, poetry is ‘emotionalized’, emotions are first thematized and produce, in turn, the tragic effect. I have termed this new notion of the tragic ‘the romantic tragic’; its most obvious manifestation is the concept of the tragedy of love as reflected in a series of late Hellenistic poems portraying the sufferings of eros. ²⁷ Love as an emotion indispensable to the making of poetry is certainly not a Hellenistic invention. As the subject matter of sentimental poetry, love differs

 The Erigone promotes a notion of the tragic that resides within the soul of the modern world. According to Søren Kierkegaard, this modern world is characterized, first, by melancholy and profound despair, and second, by subjectivity, a state of exaggerated individuality; these are exactly the same human states embodied in Erigone. It is not coincidental that Kierkegaard suggests the rewriting of Antigone as a modern tragic heroine by stressing the same features that are critical for the understanding of Erigone too: in Kierkegaard’s view Antigone’s fate originates from her passionate love for the father and it is only this powerful emotion that makes her character intelligible to modern consciousness (see Young ,  – ). Through this new Antigone Kierkegaard introduces the aesthetics of isolation as a vital parameter of the modern tragic, as Jerr () convincingly argues.  For a comprehensive survey of the erotic narratives and the romanticizing of previous myths in Hellenistic poetry, a trend from which late antiquity novel emerged, see the monumental study by Rohde ,  – .

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from the reciprocated, idealized philia and approaches the notion of an all-consuming pathos. Pathos is perceived as an intense emotion with psychic as well as physical ramifications, whose influence on human existence is manifest across the whole range of Greek poetry. However, two genres are particularly apt to its exploration. The first is lyric poetry, chiefly elegy, a genre offering a detailed anatomy of desire as sickness and madness both in its masculine and in its feminine expression. The prominence of eros in elegy, primarily Hellenistic and Roman, hardly needs documentation. The other genre is tragedy, which focuses either on the grim fate of young maidens undergoing sacrifice or suicide on the verge of marriage or on the complications of marital affairs. Yet the representation of romantic love belongs to the innovations introduced to the tragic genre by Euripides.²⁸ Euripides not only highlights the pleasures of erotic desire but also the power of Aphrodite and Eros to bring about death and destruction to their victims.²⁹ Whereas the tragedy of Phaedra and Hippolytus illustrates the fatal consequences of an implacable eros, other plays of Euripides dramatize lighter romantic scenarios. The most celebrated of these was his lost Andromeda, a romantic drama par excellence and legendary for representing onstage how Perseus literally fell in love with Andromeda.³⁰ The popularity of the Andromeda was not owed solely to its melodramatic plot and romantic atmosphere. What was etched in public memory was also its idiosyncratic way of representation. In this play Euripides must have fused music with rhetoric to convey extreme emotionalism in the theatre. Andromeda’s lament at the opening of the play and Perseus’ monologue were legendary for their naturalism and actors performing them had a sustained impact on ancient audiences. Lucian recounts an amusing anecdote concerning how the popula-

 Emphasis on love thematics as a subject unsuitable for the high genre of tragedy becomes a matter of debate between Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes Frogs. It is there that Aeschylus exclaims ( – ): ᾿Aλλ᾽ οὐ μὰ Δί᾽ οὐ Φαίδρας ἐποίουν πόρνας οὐδὲ Σθενεβοίας,/ οὐδ᾽ οἶδ᾽ οὐδεὶς ἥντιν᾽ ἐρῶσαν πώποτ᾽ ἐποίησα γυναῖκα. On how Euripides integrated the theme of love into tragedy, in contrast to previous tragic practice (despite some memorable exceptions such as Sophocles’ Oenomaus and Andromeda), is briefly discussed by Gibert ( – ,  – ).  For the various facets of eros in Greek tragedy, see Calame ,  – .  The act of falling in love is echoed in the preserved lines (TrGF  fr. . – ): ὅσοι γὰρ εἰς ἔρωτα πίπτουσιν βροτῶν,/ ἐσθλῶν ὅταν τύχωσι τῶν ἐρωμένων,/ οὐκ ἔσθ᾽ ὁποίας λείπεται τόδ᾽ ἡδονῆς. Andromeda may have been such a renowned love story that Aristophanes parodies it as a best-seller romance in the hands of Heracles (Frogs  – ): Καὶ δῆτ᾽ ἐπὶ τῆς νεὼς ἀναγιγνώσκοντί μοι/ τὴν ᾿Aνδρομέδαν πρὸς ἐμαυτὸν ἐξαίφνης πόθος/ τὴν καρδίαν ἐπάταξε πῶς οἴει σφόδρα. On how love was represented in the play and its reception in antiquity, see Gibert  – .

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tion of Abdera was overpowered by a performance of the Andromeda as if by an epidemic disease (How to Write History 1):³¹ ᾿Aβδηρίταις φασὶ Λυσιμάχου ἤδη βασιλεύοντος ἐμπεσεῖν τι νόσημα…ἐς γελοῖον δέ τι πάθος περιίστα τὰς γνώμας αὐτῶν· ἅπαντες γὰρ ἐς τραγῳδίαν παρεκίνουν καὶ ἰαμβεῖα ἐφθέγγοντο καὶ μέγα ἐβόων· μάλιστα δὲ τὴν Εὐριπίδου ᾿Aνδρομέδαν ἐμονῴδουν καὶ τὴν τοῦ Περσέως ῥῆσιν ἐν μέλει διεξῄεσαν, καὶ μεστὴ ἦν ἡ πόλις ὠχρῶν ἁπάντων καὶ λεπτῶν τῶν ἑβδομαίων ἐκείνων τραγῳδῶν, ‘σὺ δ᾽ ὦ θεῶν τύραννε κἀνθρώπων Ἔρως’, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα μεγάλῃ τῇ φωνῇ ἀναβοώντων… They say that in the reign of King Lysimachus the people of Abdera were smitten by an epidemic…but their minds were left in a ridiculous state; they all went mad with tragedy, shouting iambics and creating a din; and they, mostly sang solos from Euripides’ Andromeda, rendering Perseus’ speech in song; the city was full of these seventh-day tragedians, all pale and thin, roaring ‘Love, you tyrant of gods and men’ and the rest in a loud voice… (Transl. K. Kilburn)

Histrionic solos of this type, chiefly laments composed for the female voice and other emotionally laden monodies, were the hallmark of Euripides’ theatrical and musical artistry, and gradually became more elaborate as his plays and musical excerpts were reperformed from the fourth century onwards.³² Through such formal innovations Euripides developed a music-dramatic discourse for the articulation of extreme passions, thus redefining the essence of tragic.³³ Building on these aesthetic trends, Hellenistic poets show a penchant for lyric monologues of a speaker, usually a female, lamenting a lost or unrequited love. These solo lamentations have a rich mythological background; an obvious example of a heroine falling victim to love, favored among Alexandrians and

 For this and other anecdotes concerning monodies represented in the Hellenistic theatres, see Prauscello ,  n. .  Nervegna (,  – ) gives a detailed account of the development of late classical and postclassical drama towards musical theatre: owing to the influence of ‘New Music’ during the late fifth century, the tragoidoi were expected to have exceptional vocal skills to deliver musical solos drawn especially from Euripides’ plays. Thus, the tragic actors qua singers gave recitals rather than theatrical performances. It must be stressed that the theatre was not the only venue for these recitals: the court and the symposia provided also appropriate performative contexts, see Hunter a,  – .  Hoxby () compellingly argues that Euripides was a pioneer in introducing a style of musical tragedy which established a connection between musical expression and the representation of the passions in the theatre. It is exactly the performance of such plays in the ‘decadent’ theatres of the Hellenistic era that, according to Hoxby, provided the model for the formation of Baroque opera.

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Roman poets, is Ariadne.³⁴ Ariadne incorporates the desperation of the abandoned female, a theme that became very popular in lyric lamentations for its palpable tragic touch. Surprisingly, another heroine that becomes the singing voice in such a song is Helen. The Lament of Helen (CA Lyrica adespota 6) is a short lyric piece consisting of two strophes which foregrounds Helen’s feelings of grief and isolation following her abandonment by Menelaus.³⁵ Relocating the motif of betrayal and desertion from Helen to Menelaus, the song registers female frustration caused by the failure of a love affair. Yet female sensibility finds its most elaborate articulation in a longer, monologue-like song, the socalled Fragmentum Grenfellianum (CA Lyrica adespota 1). Staged as a paraclausithuron, this song brings drama to the level of the quotidian and the low. Drawing upon Theocritus’ The Sorceress and the archetype of the abandoned woman impersonated by Simaetha, the Fragmentum Grenfellianum reworks the motifs that are part and parcel of romantic and sentimental literature.³⁶ The song is set outside the door of the beloved (27 κύριε, μή μ᾽ ἀφῇς ἀποκεκλειμένην) during a starry night (11 ἄστρα φίλα καὶ πότνια Νὺξ συνερῶσά μοι), whereas in the background hovers a story of love and tears, whose scenario is sketched out in vague terms—the past is marked first by passionate love-making (1– 2 ἐξ ἀμφοτέρων γέγονεν αἵρεσις· ἐζευγίσμεθα) and then by calculated treachery on behalf of the male (5 – 6 ὡς κατεφίλει ᾽πιβούλως μέλλων/ με καταλιμπάνειν).³⁷ But instead of recounting the story of her affair, as Simaetha does, the female voice expresses the inner self by exploring the subtle shadings of erotic suffering. In this context it is the language of passion rather than the narration of a pathos as such that forms the core of the new sensitivity.³⁸ The story is common Ariadne as the appropriate heroine par excellence to sing the lament of the abandoned female figures as such in her tearful monologue in Catullus . – . It is not coincidental that one of the most famous laments of Baroque opera that originated from such passages is Monteverdi’s Lamento d’Arianna (), on which see Hoxby ,  – .  For an analysis of the poem, see Brillante .  It is worth noting that this is drama transposed to a low register, cf. Hunter (a,  – ): “The importance of the legacy of Attic drama in fact seems to increase as we move into the ‘lower’ regions of literature, as witness the famous Fragmentum Grenfellianum. That the influence of drama should be felt more strongly in ‘popular’ than in elite culture is hardly surprising”.  For an analysis of the poem, which, like Theocritus’ Idylls and the Hellenistic mime, blends the low-life subject with the mood of high poetry, see Hunter a,  – . A full-scale commentary is found in Esposito .  For a concise comparison between the Fragmentum and Theocritus’ Idyll , see Hunter (a,  – ), who attributes their differences, among which the lack of a narrative frame in the former, to the performative character of the Fragmentum as opposed to the ‘literariness’ of Theocritus’ highly stylized poetry.

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place, there is no narrative or specific plot, so emphasis falls on heightened emotionality. Notably, the lyric essence of this erotic song is reinforced by the metrical templates on which it is based and is further defined by its performability as a solo aria.³⁹ Written in dochmiacs, this aria programmatically belongs to the class of the tragic threnos. The female expresses her erotic martyrdom by resorting to the metaphor of eros as pain (17 ταῦτά μ᾽ ἀδικεῖ, ταῦτά μ᾽ ὀδυνᾷ), madness (29 ἐπιμανῶς ἐρᾶν μέγαν ἔχει πόνον) and fire (15 – 16 συνοδηγὸν ἔχω τὸ πολὺ πῦρ/ τοὐν τῇ ψυχῇ μου καιόμενον); oscillating between desire (9 ἔλαβέ μ᾽ ἔρως), jealousy (23 ζῆλος γάρ μ᾽ ἔχει) and anger (33 – 34 γίνωσχ᾽ ὅτι θυμὸν ἀνίκητον ἔχω,/ ὅταν ἔρις λάβῃ με), the female hopes for release from this erotic obsession through total submission to the male (27– 28 κύριε, μή μ᾽ ἀφῇς ἀποκεκλειμένην·/ δέξαι μ᾽· εὐδοκῶ ζηλῶ δουλεύειν). In this passionate aria it is emotion, not action, that overwhelms the soul (62 λελάλ[ηκ᾽ ἐγὼ…πε]ρὶ ἐμὴν [ψυχήν), and through this emotionality the song emphasizes the tyranny of eros over the human psyche. What we have seen thus far is how the form of the tragic threnos is employed to articulate a lamentation not for death but for the uncontrollable emotions of the female soul in love. The Fragmentum Grenfellianum is a performative paraclausithuron that must have been addressed to a broad, non-elite audience, as can be inferred from its oversimplified scenario, overt emotionality and ordinary language. The lack of a mythological storyline or of any reference to mythological exempla, further reinforces the assumption that there was a distinct class of literature acting out realistic scenarios about ordinary characters who, like the colorful society depicted in Herodas’ Mimiambi, become involved in everyday situations to create comic effects, or, conversely, tend to exaggerate their emotionality and produce overwhelming sensations through the portrayal of extreme passions. The latter category comprises both dramatic poems, brilliantly illustrated by the literarized mime of Theocritus The Sorceress, and lyric ones, whose prominent example is the Fragmentum Grenfellianum. Another poem, Idyll 23

 Hunter (a, ) argues that this is a musical piece composed with its potential performative success in mind by pointing out that “the closest analogies to this rhythmical technique are to be found in the monodies of the later plays of Euripides, and it is indeed reasonable to assume that this technique has reached the Fragmentum through living performance traditions, whereas both the meter and prosody of Theocritus’ Idylls suggest rather the centrality of the written text”. That the Fragmentum was originally intended for performance is a commonplace in the relevant bibliography, see Esposito ,  – .

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in the bucolic corpus which is falsely attributed to Theocritus, reads as a combination of the literary and the popular version of the romantic tragic.⁴⁰ At first glance Idyll 23 The Lover is a typical narrative poem in hexameters. Yet both its formal features, especially the monologue, that lies at its core, and its dramatic qualities, pertaining to plot structure and setting, suggest a short play for two characters.⁴¹ The protagonist, who is the only speaking character, assumes the role of the lover who is rejected by an attractive, albeit arrogant and cruel, youth. After an introduction, functioning as a prologue to a play, in that it contains a detailed exposition of the past events (1– 15) and a brief transition to the dramatic present (16 – 18), the lover chants an emotional paraclausithuron at the door of the beloved youth (19 – 48). Words generate actions, so in the aftermath of the lover’s pathetic song he hangs himself at the youth’s doorpost (49 – 53). There is, however, a second ‘act’ to this play: remaining unmoved by the sight of the lover’s corpse, the youth goes to the gymnasium and dives into the pool, where he is struck dead by a statue of god Eros (53 – 63). The unknown author, who may be dated to the late phase of Hellenistic literature, reworks thematic and narrative patterns from the tradition of the paraclausithuron and the erotic lamentation displayed by the Theocritean Simaetha. Yet a model on which Idyll 23 draws for inspiration is Theocritus’ Idyll 3. In this idyll the theme of the paraclausithuron is transposed from the urban setting to the bucolic fictional world. After a highly sentimental paraclausithuron sung outside the cave of Amaryllis, the anonymous goatherd threatens to commit suicide (52– 53): ἀλγέω τὰν κεφαλάν, τὶν δ᾽ οὐ μέλει. οὐκέτ᾽ ἀείδω,/ κεισεῦμαι δὲ πεσών, καὶ τοὶ λύκοι ὧδέ μ᾽ ἔδονται ‘My head aches, but you don’t care. I will not sing any longer, but I will fall dead and lying here the wolves will eat me’. Even before the theatrical presentification of the violent death of the lover, his words clearly anticipate a death that is the hallmark of Idyll 23 too, namely suicide by hanging (9 ἀπάγξασθαί με ποησεῖς). This is a striking instance of a, real or imaginary, Lie-

 Despite the stylistic and narrative shortcomings of this brief poem which derives from an imitator of Theocritus who may be even later than Bion and Moschus, it is a striking, and in some respects an original, illustration of the romantic tragic. Therefore, I disagree with the negative criticism expressed by Gow (, .) who states that “the narrative is bald, frigid, and improbable; the sentiment is sloppy, and embodied in an address to the boy who, ex hypothesi, cannot hear it”.  The only analysis of the so-called ‘suicide paraclausithuron’ Idyll , is owed to Copley (), a perceptive discussion which, despite being old, is not outdated.

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bestod, occurring on a fictional stage, a dramatic plot that resonates through Idyll 23.⁴² Whereas in Idyll 3 the cave functions as an imaginary setting for the bucolic play to unfold, in Idyll 23 the drama plays in two distinct settings: the door leading to the hateful house of the haughty lover (17 ποτὶ στυγνοῖσι μελάθροις, 27 τοῖσι τεοῖς προθύροις) and the interior of the gymnasium where the baths are located (56 – 57 βαῖνε δ᾽ ἐς ἄθλως/ γυμνασίων, 57 φίλων ἐπεμαίετο λουτρῶν). There seem to exist two distinct spaces, one outdoors and one indoors; according to the conventions of the ancient theatre, the action is expected to develop both on the ‘seen’ and on the ‘unseen’ spaces of the stage. These spaces correspond to distinct modes of representation. Outdoors is the anticipated space where drama, representation through mimesis, unfolds; indoors is associated with the occurrence of bloody events, which are vividly represented through a messenger speech. Idyll 23 maintains, mutatis mutandis, this theatrical convention. The reader/audience is invited to ‘view’, albeit only mentally, the locked-out lover in front of a shut door delivering his pathetic monologue; at the same time, one is urged to reconstruct in his imagination the scene of the youth’s violent death. There is one critical deviation from the traditional dramatic mode, however: the suicide of the lover takes place in the dramatic present, in front of the audience’s eyes, if presentification should be understood here in theatrical terms. The idyll, in representing the late Hellenistic taste for the heartbreaking spectacle, highlights the scene of the suicide as a pathetic and melodramatic theatrical experience—even if only on the level of the imaginary. In essence, the idyll records two modes of death which correspond to contrasting literary modes. The lover’s suicide, in anticipating a Liebestod, is a romantic motif par excellence, whereas the youth’s violent death has a realistic effect on the reader/audience.⁴³

 Payne (, ) argues for the theatricality of Idyll , which, however, is never really ‘presentified’ as in actual theatre, and concludes that “the invitation to Amaryllis, offstage, is also an invitation to the reader to once again imagine the poem’s fictional space as a stage, on which the goatherd’s body continues to rest for a few moments now that the drama is over”. On the question whether the goatherd’s suicide comes as a healing or a Liebestod at the end of Idyll , see Baumbach .  The contrasting moods in Idyll  form the main idea of Copley’s analysis (). In his concluding remarks he stresses that (, ) “the poem is then a paradox, in form romantic, in tone morbidly realistic…the realistic depiction of suicide and its mood would have been horrid enough in any setting; it is a triumph of the horrible to set it in the very penetralia of romance, the sentimental lament of the exclusus amator”.

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The theatricality of the idyll which, by formalistic standards is an epic narrative, cannot be doubted. Its plot is almost unified and coherent—although it is not clarified whether the focus of the drama is the fate of the lover or the punishment of the youth or rather their dynamic interaction—and so is the conception of the ‘tragic day’—which, more precisely, comprises a part of the night, when the lover keeps vigil outside the door, and a few hours of the next morning.⁴⁴ From the opening line the spotlight falls on both characters, thus blurring our impression about the play’s actual protagonist (1 ἀνήρ τις πολύφιλτρος ἀπηνέος ἤρατ᾽ ἐφάβω). The prologue that frames the words and actions of the dramatic characters introduces the subject matter of the idyll which deals with the deadly consequences of the disobedience to the god of Love (4– 5): κοὐκ ᾔδει τὸν Ἔρωτα τίς ἦν θεός, ἁλίκα τόξα/ χερσὶ κρατεῖ, χὠς πικρὰ βέλη ποτικάρδια βάλλει ‘but he did not know what god is Eros, what bows he holds in his hands, what bitter arrows he plants in the heart’. The main part of the idyll is dominated by the monologue of the lover who depicts the sufferings of love in a deeply sentimental language. Rather than recalling a serenade outside the door of the beloved, this paraclausithuron gradually develops into an epitaph.⁴⁵ There is a touch of morbidity already from the opening apostrophe (19 – 21): ἄγριε παῖ καὶ στυγνέ, κακᾶς ἀνάθρεμμα λεαίνας, λάινε παῖ καὶ ἔρωτος ἀνάξιε, δῶρά τοι ἦνθον λοίσθια ταῦτα φέρων, τὸν ἐμὸν βρόχον Cruel boy, and pitiless, nursling of the savage lioness; stony-hearted boy, of love unworthy, I am come with these last gifts for you, my halter. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

The portrayal of the young boy alludes both to the figure of the cruel Hades and to the image of a stony tomb.⁴⁶ On a rhetorical level, the blending of love and death brings a tone of decadent romanticism to the lover’s discourse.⁴⁷ Emotion-

 For the displacement of the ‘tragic day’ into the night as a romantic touch that pervades many Hellenistic dramas such as Callimachus’ Hecale, Theocritus’ The Sorceress and Apollonius’ Argonautica, see above pp. ,  –  and  – .  The subtle reading of the paraclausithuron as an epitaph in Copley .  The apostrophe is a reminiscence of Bion’s line for Hades (Epitaph for Adonis  – ): φεύγεις μακρόν, Ἄδωνι, καὶ ἔρχεαι εἰς ᾿Aχέροντα/ πὰρ στυγνὸν βασιλῆα καὶ ἄγριον. As for the adjective λάϊνος it refers, as a rule, to a tomb (e. g. Soph. OC , Eur. El. ) but it may also foreshadow the killing of the youth by the statue of Eros which falls from a stony pedestal (cf. Eur. IT  κρηπῖδας εὕρῃ λαΐνας ἀγάλματος).  Therefore, I disagree with Copley (, ) who argues that the romantic atmosphere is ruined by the theme of death by stating that “the author has injected an element which is

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ality verges not only on morbidity but also on a heightened sense of sensuality. The imminent suicide acquires a hedonistic coloring, once the lover visualizes his post mortem embrace with the beloved (36 – 41): ὁππόταν ἐξενθὼν ἀρταμένον ἐν προθύροισι τοῖσι τεοῖσιν ἴδῃς τὸν τλάμονα, μή με παρένθῃς, στᾶθι δὲ καὶ βραχὺ κλαῦσον, ἐπισπείσας δὲ τὸ δάκρυ λῦσον τᾶς σχοίνω με καὶ ἀμφίθες ἐκ ῥεθέων σῶν εἵματα καὶ κρύψον με, τὸ δ᾽ αὖ πύματόν με φίλασον· κἂν νεκρῷ χάρισαι τεὰ χείλεα. When, as you come forth, will see me, poor wretch, hanging in your doorway, pass me not by, but stay, and weep by little, and with this offering of tears, loose me from the rope, and set clothes from your body on me, and cover me. And give a last kiss and grant at least to my corpse the grace of your lips. (Transl. A. S. F. Gow)

The morbid sentimentality reaches its peak with the description of the suicide’s aftermath: upon viewing the hanged corpse—a dark alternative to the garland that commemorates the paraclausithuron—,⁴⁸ the youth is invited to take care of the dead body, to weep, to cover it with his own clothes and eventually to kiss the dead’s lips.⁴⁹ A kiss of death emphatically transforms the romantic mood to a scene of emotional and physical pathos. ⁵⁰ As the sentimental lament is transformed into a tragic threnos, the pathetic performance is concluded and the lover actually hangs himself at the doorpost. What remains is pure action that will eventually result in the punishment of the youth. In accordance with the didactic orientation of the prologue on the fatal outcome of arrogance in love, it is soon realized that the idyll acts out the scenario of a revenge play. In this play, the main character is killed because of his hamartia, an error, namely the hubris towards the god of Love (58 ποτὶ τὸν θεὸν

fatal to romance, the element of actual death”. Celebrated narratives proving exactly the opposite, namely that committing suicide may bring the most romantic conclusion to a highly emotional story, are the romantic tragedies of Romeo and Juliet and Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther.  For the topoi of the paraclausithuron that are translated into a ritual of death, see Copley ,  – .  The passage becomes a topos in later literature. Gow (, .) draws a parallel with a passage from the novel of Chariton Chareas and Callirhoe (..), where Chaereas threatens to hang himself with the same words used in Idyll .  The morbid kiss, invested with an overwhelming hedonism, is fully explored in one of the idyll’s model poems, namely Bion’s Epitaph for Adonis, e. g. in lines  –  Κύπριδι μὲν τὸ φίλημα καὶ οὐ ζώοντος ἀρέσκει,/ ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ οἶδεν Ἄδωνις ὅ νιν θνᾴσκοντα φίλησεν and  –  δύσποτμε μεῖνον Ἄδωνι, πανύστατον ὥς σε κιχείω,/ ὥς σε περιπτύξω καὶ χείλεα χείλεσι μίξω.

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ἦνθε τὸν ὕβρισε). Such punishments are known from tragedy, as the paradigm of Hippolytus demonstrates, but are also reworked into Hellenistic miniature tragedies, such as ‘The Sufferings of Daphnis’.⁵¹ Yet the anonymous youth is not tragic in Aristotelian terms, in the sense that his sufferings are not undeserved but fully justified in view of his ruthless character, his negative ethos; the anticipated effect of the punishment of the bad is comic rather than tragic. That said, like tragedy, the idyll ends in pain and destruction. Divine justice is accomplished (63 ὁ γὰρ θεὸς οἶδε δικάζειν), once the statue of Eros is mobilized to murder the vain youth. And like in many classical tragedies, the unexpected intervention of a deus ex machina resolves the romantic agony that hovers in the background of the dark Idyll 23.

Parthenius, from tragedy to melodrama If we were to endorse W. B. Yeats’ aphorism that “passive suffering is not a theme for poetry”, then Parthenius’ ambitious project to compile an anthology of sufferings so as to provide material for the elegies of Gallus would be, by definition, off the mark. One might object that whereas Yeats had war sufferings in mind, Parthenius opted for erotic ones. But Yeats’ opinion takes on a new significance, if we take into account the immediate context where the contrast between a poetry of suffering and tragic poetry is emphasized.⁵² Thinking in terms of Greek tragedy, the antithesis between activity and passivity is critical for conceptualizing the genre; tragic characters suffer as a result of acting and, conversely, act as a result of their suffering. The equivalent in the poetical theory of Aristoteles would be an opposition between the action that forms the core of a tragic plot (the praxis) and the physical suffering represented on the tragic stage (the pathos). Both praxis and pathos are indispensable to the making of tragedy. Without action tragedy cannot come into being. Yet, since its aim is also the arousal of the

 Narratives dealing with the revenge of Eros are recurrent in Hellenistic and Roman literature: further paradigms from Hermesianax, Simmias and Conon are cited by Copley (,  – ) and from Ovid by Gow (, .).  W. B. Yeats expresses these ideas in the ‘Preface’ to The Oxford Book of Modern Verse (). His exact words are the following: “I have a distaste for certain poems written in the midst of the great war…passive suffering is not a theme for poetry. In all the great tragedies, tragedy is a joy to the man who dies; in Greece the tragic Chorus danced. When man has withdrawn into the quicksilver at the back of the mirror no great event becomes luminous in his mind; it is no longer possible to write The Persians, Agincourt, Chevy Chase: some blunderer has driven his car on to the wrong side of the road—that is all”.

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audience’s pity-and-fear emotion, the role of pathos in the accomplishment of catharsis is also essential. ⁵³ But which connotations does the title Erotika Pathemata bear? Not substantially different in their lexical semantics, the terms πάθος and πάθημα may denote: ‘anything that befalls one’, ‘suffering, misfortune, calamity’, ‘passion, emotion’ or ‘any passive state’; πάθος can also have the meaning of the ‘emotional style of treatment’ in aesthetics, whereas πάθημα may specifically mean ‘a passive emotion or condition’ and in plural ‘troubles, symptoms’ and ‘incidents, occurrences’.⁵⁴ An extended definition of παθήματα in Parthenius encompasses both an incident that befalls someone who has no control over his fortune, and hence becomes passive, as well as a non-rational state of the soul, and hence a passion, that as a disease engenders emotional and physical suffering.⁵⁵ Parthenius adds that both the passive sufferings as well as the ensuing emotions originate from the power of love. The original texts, being mere summaries with emphasis on plot details, do not elaborate much on love as the ultimate authority over human life. Usually a statement of the kind εἰς ἔρωτα/εἰς ἐπιθυμίαν ἐλθεῖν and the verb ἔραμαι in various forms (ἐρασθείς, ἐρασθεῖσα, ἐρασθῆναι) describe the erotic passion in plain words. In some cases the passivity of the desiring subject is reinforced by articulations such as πολλῷ πόθῳ κατείχετο, τὴν δ᾽ ἄρα πολὺς εἶχε πόθος and πολλῷ δὲ ἐνεχόμενος πόθῳ. Divine authority may also be the driving force behind human eros (EP 5.2 οὗτος κατὰ μῆνιν ᾿Aφροδίτης εἰς ἔρωτα ἀφικόμενος τῆς ἀδελφῆς and 27.1 κατὰ μῆνιν ᾿Aθηνᾶς ἐπιμανῆναι

 It should be noted that the representation of suffering on the tragic stage never becomes an end in itself but only a means for promoting contemplation. As Hall (, ) argues “tragedy, while representing an instance of suffering in dramatic form, always asks why it has occurred. It is not a matter of whether the suffering is of a particular type or quality: neither the Greek audiences nor Shakespearean ones are likely to have drawn much distinction between pitiful and ‘tragic’ agony. Philoctetes’ abscessed foot is as fit for arousing tragic fellow-feeling as Iphigenia’s death sentence, Lear’s isolation, or Hamlet’s alienation. The philosophical interest is in the causes of the suffering rather than its neuropathology”. Halliwell (,  – ) argues that, according to Aristotle, the passive experience of suffering is minimized in tragedy, whereas its focus is primarily on the erring tragic agent who is the main cause of the tragic praxis.  LSJ s.vv. πάθος, πάθημα. A very interesting connotation is that connected with the plural παθήματα and implies either a series of misfortunes (Soph. OC  πεύσῃ τὰ κείνης ἀθλίας παθήματα) or simply a chain of events in a plot (Pl. Rep. b πᾶσαν σχεδόν τι οὕτω πεποίηται διήγησιν περί τε τῶν ἐν Ἰλίῳ καὶ περὶ τῶν ἐν Ἰθάκῃ καὶ ὅλῃ Ὀδυσσείᾳ παθημάτων)—always with a metatextual undertone. I think that Parthenius’ use suggests the idea of the multiple events resulting from the sufferings of eros as they are reflected in his multi-episodic, anti-Aristotelian plots. For the various interpretations of the title, see Francese ,  – .  This definition stems from the synthesis of the various meanings of πάθημα as pointed out by Lightfoot (,  – ).

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ξένῳ). An internal struggle between reason and morality on the one hand and irrational desire on the other, ending always with the triumph of the latter, reinforces the notion of an all-controlling eros. A striking example is the story of Clymenus who is trapped in a forbidden lust for his daughter Harpalyce (EP 13.1): ‘he fell in love with her but held out against it for some time (χρόνον μέν τινα ἐκαρτέρει), trying to master his passion (περιῆν τοῦ παθήματος). But when the disease became too much for him (ὑπέρρει τὸ νόσημα), he got access to the girl by means of her nurse and secretly slept with her’.⁵⁶ In effect, the passion grows more powerful as time passes and no resistance against it proves effective.⁵⁷ The disease of incest, for example, becomes gradually overwhelming as in the case of Periander’s mother (EP 17.1– 2): ‘His mother was smitten with a violent passion for him (πολλῷ κατείχετο) when he was still a very young man, and for a while satisfied her desires (ἀνεπίμπλατο τῆς ἐπιθυμίας) by embracing the boy. But as time went on the passion got worse (τὸ πάθος ἐπὶ μεῖζον ηὔξετο) and she was no longer able to contain her malady (κατέχειν τὴν νόσον οὐκ ἔτι οἵα τε ἦν)…’ Love happens at the beginning of each story and befalls a central character. Once smitten by eros, this character is driven to uncontrolled and eventually catastrophic actions. The conception of eros as the protagonist’s blind destiny, the force which is responsible for his sufferings, renders the Erotika Pathemata an early paradigm of melodrama.⁵⁸ Melodrama provides the benchmark against which the idiosyncratic tragic of the Erotika Pathemata may be evaluated. But before attempting a reading of Parthenius’ stories in the light of melodrama, it is first worth inquiring about the generic potential of the Erotika Pathemata. If we follow Parthenius’ own prescriptions as stated in the dedicatory preface to his little book, these love stories may only provide the material for the writing of hexametric poems and elegies (EP Preface 2 αὐτῷ τέ σοι παρέσται εἰς ἔπη καὶ ἐλεγείας ἀνάγειν τὰ μάλιστα ἐξ αὐτῶν ἁρμόδια). Obviously the background of Hellenistic and Roman neoteric poetry favored narrative rather than dramatic genres, thus drama, and hence tragedy, is omitted from the list.⁵⁹ From a strictly generic viewpoint, to compose

 All translations of the Erotika Pathemata are taken from Lightfoot .  Desire triumphs over morality also in the story of Arganthone (EP .): καὶ τὸ μὲν πρῶτον ἡσυχάζει αἰδοῖ κατεχομένη, ἐπειδὴ δὲ σφοδρότερον ἐγίνετο τὸ πάθος, ἀπετόλμησεν…  Tragedy, however, may also provide the background for the interpretation of some of Parthenius’ stories. A prominent example is the story of Byblis and Caunus (EP ); for its tragic reading, see Curley ,  – . Another example is the story about the sacrifice of Eulimene (EP ); on its tragic models, see Calderón-Dorda .  Parthenius was himself dedicated to elegiac and hexametric poetry, and so was Gallus, see Lightfoot ,  –  and  – . The affinity of Parthenius’ summaries with the plots of

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tragedies out of Parthenius’ stories would pose a daunting challenge for any playwright. The stories collected by Parthenius are anti-theatrical and anti-dramatic by classical rules. Their plots expand over a long period of time, often covering many years in the lifespan of the main protagonist or even comprising events that range over generations. It is not unusual for a story to develop in two, chronologically distant, periods of time. The story of Oenone, for example, unfolds in two phases (EP 4): during Paris’ youth, the prince fell in love and married Oenone, who prophesied to him his love for Helen and his wounding during the great war that would prove fatal unless herself came to cure him; many years later (χρόνον μέντοι τινὰ γενήσεσθαι), the prophecies are fulfilled and result in the death of Paris and the suicide of Oenone.⁶⁰ No doubt, such a perception of time lacks the intensity of the tragic day.⁶¹ Similarly vast and changing is the space that provides the background for the plots to develop. The opening of the narrative about Lyrcus, who in vain travels the whole world to find Io, illustrates the point (EP 1.1): ‘among those [who searched for Io] was Lyrcus, son of Phoroneus; he traversed vast areas of land (μάλα πολλὴν γῆν ἐπιδραμὼν), crossed huge tracts of sea (πολλὴν θάλασσαν περαιωθεὶς), but finally, when he could not find her, he gave up out of weariness’. Dramatic spaces keep changing as Lyrcus moves from Argos to Caunus (ἀφικόμενος δὲ εἰς Καῦνον) to Didyma (ἦλθεν εἰς Διδυμέως) to Bybastus (ἀφίκετο ἐς Βυβαστὸν) and back (ἐξέπλευσεν), and each space becomes the setting for a new phase of his adventures. The third of the classical rules to be violated is the unified plot that focuses on a single action. Parthenius uses character as an organizing principle, around which a chain of loosely connected actions develops. According to Aristotelian dramatic logic, Parthenius’ stories would not qualify as tragic plots.⁶²

the ancient novel has been already emphasized by Rohde (,  – ) and subtly argued by Lightfoot (,  – ).  Similarly bipartite is the story of Arganthone, whose love affair with Rhesus begins at Cius before the outbreak of the Trojan war and ends with the fatal wounding of Rhesus by Diomedes and the death by grief of Arganthone during the war (EP ). Another type of plot comprises an act that concludes after many years, usually aitiologically, for example EP  Leucippus and  Celtine.  Some stories from the Erotika Pathemata, however, tend to compress plot timelines, for example the story of Peisidice which takes place during the siege of Lesbos outside the city walls (EP ) or the suicide of Cleite upon learning of the killing of her husband in battle (EP ). It is notable that only one tragedy, the lost Euryalus by Sophocles, is cited as a source for Parthenius in EP  Euippe. It is rather improbable that EP  Antheus drew upon Agathon’s tragedy: on the different arguments, see Lightfoot ,  n. .  The numerous events around a central hero, connected by chronology rather than causality, do not constitute a plot according to Aristotle (Poet. a).

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The distortion of the tragic norms should not come as a surprise. Parthenius is not a tragedian, the Erotika Pathemata is not even a poetic oeuvre; it is a mythographical treatise, an anthology of stories collected from both poetic and prose sources.⁶³ But beyond the limitations posed by the tragic genre, Parthenius’ ‘little note-book’—his ὑπομνημάτιον as stressed in the Preface ⁶⁴—contains stories which are surrounded by the aura of late classical tragedians, notably Euripides. Euripides not only dominates postclassical tragedy, in introducing romance and melodrama combined with extreme pathos, but also becomes the model for a series of thematic and aesthetic innovations developed by the Alexandrian poets. In this context Euripides must have been a source of inspiration for Parthenius, although he is not mentioned as an authority in the manchettes prefacing the erotic stories.⁶⁵ Taboo love affairs ending in catastrophe and death are the theme par excellence in both as well as in an array of other authors; but what Parthenius seems to have adopted specifically from Euripides is the notion of eros as a disease that befalls its victims and from which they cannot escape and whose representation aspires to arouse the sympathy of the reader/ audience.⁶⁶ Evidently the Erotika Pathemata does not qualify as plot material for classical tragedy, yet looks forward to melodrama, especially if we take into account its Euripidean connection.⁶⁷ Melodrama is not a clear-cut generic category; the term has been so often overused that it has become too broad to indicate a specific class of drama. Reaching its peak in the nineteenth century, melodrama is usu-

 The generic matrix from which Parthenius’ hypomnema stems is mythography, to which collections such as the ones compiled by Conon and Antoninus Liberalis belong: see Lightfoot ,  – . On the sources, see Lightfoot ,  –  and Francese ,  – .  That Parthenius characterizes his work an hypomnema links him to the tradition of the Peripatetics, and especially to their writings on erotika, see Lightfoot ,  – .  However, Euripides hovers in the background of the story of Polymela (EP ), the daughter of Aeolus. Euripides was notorious in antiquity for presenting incest on the Athenian stage, especially in his lost Aeolus, where the love affair of Canace for her brother Macareus was dramatized to a highly sensational effect: see Lightfoot ,  – .  For a systematic comparison of the erotic sufferings in Euripides and Parthenius, see Francese ,  – . Francese convincingly argues that Parthenius, like Euripides, opts for a sympathetic depiction of the erotic passions (, ): “Characteristic of the sympathetic mode are lamentation, the grotesque, the external causation of passion, disease imagery, and resistance to passion…Parthenius, not surprisingly, aligns himself with the sympathetic, Euripidean tradition”. On how Euripides exploited melodrama and sensationalism and presented erotic themes beyond any sense of decorum to shock his audiences, see Michelini ,  – .  Euripides has been regularly considered as the precursor to Romantic age melodramas: for an overview of the relevant bibliography, see Michelini ,  – .

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ally seen as a degenerate form of Romantic tragedy.⁶⁸ Apart from denoting a special type of popular theatre, with a penchant for exaggerated, pathetic plots that aim at eliciting extreme emotional responses from the audience and whose form usually involves recitation set in music and song, melodrama may be viewed as a transgeneric artistic mode. The melodramatic mode applies to various artistic means and has a wide-ranging typology.⁶⁹ However, the melodramatic twist in drama, literature and popular culture is readily recognizable by critics and audiences. It may include “the indulgence of strong emotionalism; moral polarization and schematization; extreme states of being, situations, actions; overt villainy, persecution of the good, and final reward of virtue; inflated and extravagant expression; dark plottings, suspense, breathtaking peripety”.⁷⁰ To review Parthenius in the light of melodrama is a challenging task but worth undertaking, because the Erotika Pathemata represents a case that most vividly illustrates how the tragic idea gradually collapses into pathetic sensationalism during the last centuries of the Hellenistic world.⁷¹ Rather than attempting to define a vague generic category such as melodrama, I will examine some of its defining characteristics as manifested in the Erotika Pathemata. ⁷² Essential to the making and the reception of melodrama is pathos. Pathos arouses pity and fear to the audience of tragedy too, yet in melodrama it specifically denotes the visceral sensation and the emotional identification with the play’s characters as intensely experienced by the audience. Pathos forms the quintessence of the Erotika Pathemata as suggested by its title: the reader/audience is invited, through identification with the dramatis personae, to relive their sufferings as his own. A heightened sense of realism is required for such an identification to be effected. In fact, in contrast to Greek tragedy, where characters belong to the distant world of myth and whose misfortunes acquire biggerthan-life dimensions, the nature and sufferings of Parthenius’ heroes are re-

 The fascinating story of how the death of tragedy in nineteenth-century theatres paved the way for melodrama is told by Cox ().  For a theoretical approach to the vexing question of what is melodrama, I draw on Brooks . Singer (), in studying cinematic melodrama, offers a concise overview of the mode. That melodrama originated from the exaggerated plots of the Romantic theatre and is a variation of tragicomedy is argued by Hirst (,  – ).  Brooks ,  – .  It should be noted that both Parthenius and Gallus were deeply influenced by Euphorion. On Euphorion’s dark aesthetics that display a taste for sensationalism, morbidity, pathetic love stories and uncanny effects, see Sistakou .  Although most scholarly opinions on the features of melodrama converge, I found that the codification proposed by Singer (,  – ) is transhistorical and broad, and therefore more helpful for the analysis of Parthenius.

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duced to human scale. In effect, Parthenius creates his characters, these semifictional personages, against the background of myth and history; yet they never acquire the status of genuine tragic heroes neither are their praxeis as monumental as those of their tragic counterparts. A telling example is the treatment of incest.⁷³ Incest is a recurrent subject of tragedy: as may be inferred from its dramatization in Sophocles’ King Oedipus, it results from the lethal combination of divine will, family curse and human fallibility. Incest in the Erotika Pathemata is free from such complexities. Like other unhealthy passions, incest possesses its victims and drives them to their own catastrophe. In the story of Byblis (EP 11), brother and sister fall in love with each other, and both are victimized by their cruel fate. According to Nicaenetus’ version ‘Caunus fell in love with his sister and travelled far from his native land, founding a city…’ (1). Other poets narrate that ‘Byblis’ passion did not abate; in addition, when she considered that she was the reason for Caunus’ departure, she fastened her girdle to an oak tree and put her neck in it’ (3). The denouement invites the reader/audience to sympathize with the sorrows of Byblis: ‘some also say that from her tears flowed the everlasting stream called Byblis’ (4). It may be true that incest is an abnormal passion, yet the grim ending of this forbidden romance moves the audience to let out a good cry.⁷⁴ Pertinent to pathos but distinct from it is the demand of melodrama for overwrought emotion. Outbursts of emotions are not easily detectable in the Erotika Pathemata, since what has come down to us are mere summaries, whereas their reworking into narratives, speeches or scenes is left to our imagination. A close reading of the summaries, however, reveals the rapidly shifting emotions the protagonists might have displayed, emotions that by no means are confined to the expression of love and eroticism.⁷⁵ The story of Oenone, for example, is a good showcase for the exploration of female emotion resulting from erotic passion (EP 4). Oenone is given over to jealousy for Paris’ future affair to Helen (cf. 3 πτοηθεὶς ἐπὶ γυναικὶ ξένῃ), then to resentment (4 μεμφομένη τῶν πραχθέντων τὸν ᾿Aλέξανδρον), haughtiness (6 ἡ δὲ αὐθαδέστερον ἀπεκρίνατο) and anger  On the motif of incest in Greek tragedy and the Erotika Pathemata, see Lightfoot ,  – .  Similarly moving is the recurrent motif of death by grief, such as the suicide of Oenone upon viewing Paris dead (EP ), the self-killing of Cyanippus after finding his beloved wife Leucone torn by dogs (EP ), the suicide of Clymenus upon realizing the disaster following his incestuous relationship with his daughter Harpalyce (EP ), Cleite’s hanging when she sees her husband Cyzicus falling dead in battle (EP ) and many more. Pathos results also when martyrdom is implied, for example through the repeated scenes of lamentation (EP , , , , , , ) and metamorphoses (EP , , ) that come as a grim closure to the erotic stories.  On the various manifestations of eroticism in the Erotika Pathemata, see Francese .

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(cf. 6 ὡς χρὴ παρ᾽ Ἑλένην αὐτὸν ἰέναι κἀκείνης δεῖσθαι) and eventually, when Paris dies, to utmost grief (7 ἀνῴμωξέ τε καὶ πολλὰ κατολοφυραμένη). Excessive emotions in swift succession which burst out in fiery scenes are typical of Parthenius’ melodramatic characters whose actions lack the consistency and reasoning inherent in those of their tragic counterparts.⁷⁶ The third feature poses special challenges when applied to Parthenius, namely the moral polarization that defines the melodramatic plot. The world of melodrama is divided in black and white figures, based on the opposition between the innocent hero or heroine and the villain. In the Erotika Pathemata the boundaries between these ethical categories are blurred, because the main character finds himself in the grip of an irrational desire and thence is transformed into an evil-doer. Despite being himself a victim of a cruel fate, it is his violent actions that eventually turn the innocent object of his passion into a martyr. A striking example of a plot based on the antithesis between vice and virtue is the story of Assaon (EP 33.2– 3): ‘Assaon, smitten with desire for his daughter, wanted to marry her himself. When Niobe would not give in, he called her children to a banquet and burnt them all to death. As a result of this disaster Niobe threw herself off a high rock; as for Assaon, when he reflected on his crimes, he took his own life.’ Assaon’s villainy against the virtuous and innocent Niobe is beyond measure, as in melodrama: Niobe’s resistance to his advances results in the slaughtering of her children and her suicide. Yet Assaon feels the pang of conscience and decides to put an end to his life too.⁷⁷ This might imply that evil is always punished in Parthenius as in melodrama—although virtue is not necessarily rewarded at the end.⁷⁸

 Emotions and actions of Parthenius’ characters are often contradictory to each other, and therefore absurd from the viewpoint of tragic poetics. Cf. for example the story of Antheus (EP ): Cleoboea desires Antheus ( ἐρασθεῖσα), he rejects her sexual advances, she becomes angry ( κακῶς φερομένη) and vengeful ( ἐν νῷ εἶχε τίσασθαι αὐτόν), yet, once she kills Antheus with her own hands, she is again struck by desire ( καιομένη σφοδρῷ ἔρωτι) and finally hangs herself in remorse ( ὡς δεινὸν ἔργον δεδράκοι).  It seems that most stories collected in the Erotika Pathemata have a turning point just before closure, at which the ‘villain’ realizes his sins and commits suicide. The motif of the repentant sinner is exemplified by the story of Alcinoe (EP ) who, infatuated with a stranger, runs off with him and leaves behind her husband and children; upon realizing her actions (ἔννοιαν λαβεῖν τῶν εἰργασμένων), she is filled with remorse (πολλά τε δάκρυα προΐεσθαι) and drowns herself. Such characters abound in Parthenius.  It is notable that, despite being in essence morbid and dark, some of the Erotika Pathemata end happily in marriage (EP , ). In this context scholars have questioned the moralizing intent of the Erotika Pathemata: see Lightfoot ,  –  and Voisin ,  – .

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Nonclassical narrative structure is another distinctive feature of melodrama. The Erotika Pathemata may not be dramas or epic narratives, but a collection of plots intended for dramatization or narrativization. Therefore, the underlying plot structure is even more discernible in these model stories. From a cursory reading it is evident that the Erotika Pathemata breaks every rule of dramatic unity—time, place and plot. The Erotika Pathemata liberates plot from the closed world imposed by classical playwrights and looks forward to romantic notions of drama; if the stories of Parthenius were to be dramatized, then the romantic stage would have provided the perfect framing for them.⁷⁹ Indeed, the Erotika Pathemata could provide rich material for the composition of melodramas, whose narrative mechanisms directly oppose those of classical tragedy:⁸⁰ Compared with the classical narrative’s logical cause-and-effect structure, melodrama has a far greater tolerance, or indeed a preference, for outrageous coincidence, implausibility, convoluted plotting, deus ex machina resolutions, and episodic strings of action that stuff too many events together to be able to be kept in line by a cause-and-effect chain of narrative progression.

A melodramatic plot is, by definition, episodic; its episodes lack a deeper causal connection and by no means constitute a unified plot; these episodes portray ‘situations’ rather than ‘events’ which are accumulated for the sake of sensationalism; vivid impressions thus substitute the progression of plot according to logical development. The similarly episodic, non causal structuring of the stories in the Erotika Pathemata hardly needs any documentation.⁸¹ Sensationalism is the last key to decoding melodrama. Violence (crime and gore included), thrilling action, surprise and suspense, all represented through vivid spectacle, are the sine qua non of melodrama. If we visualize the Erotika Pathemata as theatrical spectacle, then its sensationalism becomes manifest. Paradigms abound in the exaggerated scenarios of the Erotika Pathemata. Instead of developing through the speeches of the characters which, in turn, result in actions, Parthenius’ stories consist of a deluge of fascinating, albeit discon Cox () juxtaposes the closed world demanded by tragedy—a world from which the hero cannot escape—to the openness sought by romance through recourse to the idea of quest and change. In this sense, Romanticism has redefined the tragic idea, as Cox remarks (, ): “the simplest approach to the Romantic effort in tragedy is to see it as a rejection of the rules set down by neoclassical theorists—primarily the unities, but also the strictures of decorum on style and subject matter and the insistence on ‘moral’ tragedy embodied in the doctrine of ‘poetic justice’.”  Singer , .  For the miscellaneous motifs that are woven together in the stories of Parthenius, see Lightfoot ,  –  and Voisin .

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nected, events. It is impossible to list here all the lurid and extravagant motifs that permeate these stories, such as curses, conspiracies, prophecies, oaths, treason, self-exile, and, of course, all possible combinations of sex, murder and suicide.⁸² Strong doses of melodrama are the rule in the entire Parthenian corpus. One example suffices to convey Parthenius’ taste for sensational, episodic drama. The story of Leucippus (EP 5) reworks the common scenario of incest between brother and sister. At the beginning Leucippus resists his sickness; as time passes, he confesses his passion to his mother and threatens to cut his throat; his mother serves as a go-between and arranges that brother and sister have sex; in the meantime, the girl’s fiancé learns about the secret affair and conspires with Leucippus’ father, Xanthius, without revealing the name of the incestuous lover. At this point the little play reaches its sensational peak (4– 5): Xanthius was distressed by what he was told and made it his main business to hunt out the seducer: he told the informer to let him know when he found the two of them together. The other readily agreed, and brought the old man straightaway to the bedchamber. At the sudden noise the girl darted through the door, thinking that she would escape whoever was coming in; but her father thought she was the seducer, stabbed her with a dagger, and struck her down. In agony she cried out, and Leucippus came to her rescue; yet, in the chaos, he did not look to see who was there, and killed his father. He had to leave his homeland after this, and put himself at the head of a band of Thessalians who were on their way to Crete.

This is genuine Parthenian drama showcasing multi-character, convoluted, absurd plot. Such tones would resonate again in the European theatres of the nineteenth century, when the spirit of tragedy was reborn as opera and melodrama.

 In Parthenius illicit sex is, as a rule, followed by murder and suicide. Both would provide the reader/audience with visceral thrills: Xanthus beheads Herippe (EP ), Polycrite is suffocated under the weight of garlands and girdles (EP ), Leucone is torn to pieces by dogs (EP ), Harpalyce cuts up her brother and serves the child’s flesh as dinner to her father (EP ), Orion attempts to rape Leiro but his eyes are burnt out by her father (EP ), Peisidice is stoned to death (EP ) and Thymoetes enacts necrophilia (EP ).

Conclusion: Tragic Failures and Hellenistic Challenges Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy. F. Scott Fitzgerald, ‘Notebook E’ (1932– 1940)

Tragedy, a theatrical experience shared by the members of a closed community with strong religious and social ties, epitomizes the values and aesthetics of classical Athens. Beyond the fifth century there have been redefinitions of tragedy against the backdrop of different historical and cultural realities. To speak of ‘Roman’, ‘Shakespearean’, ‘Neoclassical’, ‘Romantic’, ‘Bourgeois’ and ‘Modern’ tragedy reveals the diversity and versatility of a mode that has left its distinguishing mark on the formulation of Western civilization. The tragic mode has early on transcended the boundaries of the dramatic genre, and it may literally apply to any artistic and intellectual medium from literature to film, from history to philosophy, from art to political theory. The reception of this cultural phenomenon over the centuries gave birth to the notion of the tragic idea as a philosophical outlook on the human condition as a whole. Eventually ‘tragedy’ and ‘the tragic’ came to be used broadly, beyond historical and artistic limitations, to designate any sad event and fated calamity of life. The present study has examined both the historically established genre of Greek tragedy as well as the universal notion of the tragic as seen from the perspective of third-century Alexandria. Tragedy in Alexandria was neither a decadent nor a marginal artistic phenomenon, and the inhabitants of this metropolis must have been enthusiastic theatregoers equaling the audiences across the Greek, Sicilian and Asia Minor cultural capitals of the Hellenistic era. The Hellenistic stages were probably the locus for the reperformances of classical plays as virtuoso spectacles; moreover, there is compelling evidence that the Alexandrian playwrights, the members of the official Pleiad, renewed tragedy, thematically and stylistically, to satisfy their sophisticated audience. Hellenistic epigram attests to the fact that tragedy was a living tradition in Alexandria, even if occasionally epigrammatists looked back to fifth-century tragedy with a wave of nostalgia. Theatre, both tragedy and comedy, were promoted in the context of the cultural politics of the Ptolemaic regime too. It was a matter of prestige for the new kings to carry the spirit of Athens to Alexandria—and tragedy formed its quintessence. To edit and comment on the tragic texts and more importantly to standardize the philological terminology around drama and refine drama theory was a major mission carried out by the scholars of the Museum.

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One of the vexed questions addressed by this study was the response of the scholar poets of Alexandria to both classical tragedy per se and its evaluation by fourth- and third-century criticism. Seen against the intertextual dialogue with Homer and archaic lyric, tragedy’s impact appears to have been more limited on Alexandrian poetry. Yet essential for Alexandrian poetics was the theory developed around tragedy by Plato and especially by Aristotle. But whereas Plato reviews tragedy from a philosophical viewpoint, which is largely irrelevant to the scholarly thought of the Alexandrians, Aristotle introduces formal and structural criteria to the conceptualization of tragedy as a literary genre. The metaclassical tragic developed under the shadow of Aristotle’s viewing of tragedy as a mimetic representation of a heroic action, a notion which was radically revised and adapted to the new aesthetic standards, primarily those defended by Callimachus. A major innovation introduced against Aristotle’s conviction was the quest for the tragic in everyday realism, in other words the blurring of the boundaries between the spoudaioi and the phauloi. Another notion challenged by the Alexandrians was the ideal of representing one coherent muthos. Callimachus obviously asserts the incompatibility of the pathetic representations and emotional effects of classical tragedy with his own aesthetics, an antithesis highlighting the gap between poetic magnitude and stylistic leptotes. In this context the contamination of tragedy and comedy to surprising effects, a trend originating in late Euripides, became one of the dominant expressions of the Hellenistic tragic. These hypotheses regarding the renewal of tragic poetics in Alexandria overlook a critical parameter: the plays written by the members of the Pleiad. Curiously, Alexandrian, and more broadly Hellenistic tragedy, is one of the ancient literary corpora to have disappeared almost without leaving any trace. The fact that some of the Pleiad poets, such as Alexander Aetolus and Lycophron of Chalcis, were leading members of the Museum reinforces the point that their tragedies were academic, in the sense that they demanded the learnedness of an elitist audience, although they might have been produced for the stage too. The surviving titles mainly point towards two directions: on the one hand, the myths treated show a close affinity with classical tragedy material, although plotlines and characters must have been substantially modified by the Alexandrian playwrights; on the other hand, marginal and new heroes emerged as protagonists in their tragedies. A distinctively Alexandrian development is the return of the historical tragedy, inspired both by past glories of Greek history and by contemporary events and political personalities with a tragic profile. Perhaps it was in this class of tragic writing that Aeschylus’ influence was most deeply felt, whereas its dialogue with tragic historiography must be taken for granted. Hellenistic tragedy did not eschew the penchant for experimentation ei-

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ther, for even the motif ‘death by love’—incorporated by the tragic personage of Adonis—or bucolic thematics found their way into tragic muthos. But the theatre, or the Library where academic drama flourished, was not the locus to search for the Alexandrian responses to tragic. The tragic idea may have not been the subject of independent philosophical debates as is the case in modern times, yet since the time of Plato and Aristotle the notion that tragedy possesses an inherent property, a transgeneric quality, haunts postclassical and Hellenistic aesthetics. The first gesture towards conceptualizing the tragic idea is its liberation from the boundaries of the dramatic genre. Once the tragic idea claims its autonomy, it enriches the entire range of literature. Released from the strict rules introduced by Aristotle and his narrow sense of what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into mainly non-dramatic genres. Whether the attempted metamorphosis of the tragic idea beyond the confines of drama was a breakthrough innovation or a failed experiment is the question posed by the present study. It should not come as a surprise that the less straightforward answer comes from Callimachus. Apart from certain affinities between Euripidean stylistic innovations and the quest for refined expression indicated in the Aetia-Prologue, Callimachean poetry is aesthetically detached from classical tragedy and the pity-and-fear emotion deriving from it. That Callimachus does not have a taste for the pathetic and the sentimental does not, however, mean that he was not attracted by the tragic mode either. Thus, rather than resorting to emotional effects, such as the ones created by the depiction of Leto’s agonizing wanderings in the Hymn to Delos, Callimachus dislocates the big questions of life from the heart of tragedy into other genres. The mythical narratives from the Bath of Pallas and the Hymn to Demeter represent a central tragic problem, namely the conflict between man and god, of Tiresias/Athena and Erysichthon/Demeter respectively. By staging these myths as family dramas with bourgeois characters, Callimachus transforms them into tragicomedies. The view of the tragic as conveyed by the Aetia is more variegated. In effect, the Aetia engage with all major issues of tragedy, namely the relationship between man and god, the family crisis, the citizen in conflict with his polis. Yet it is the Hecale, the enigmatic epyllion, that both exploits and rejects the conventions of tragedy. Callimachus first stages his little epic as a drama based roughly on the unities of plot, time and space, but then subverts the reader’s expectations by displacing the tragic from plot to character, by grounding tragedy from the world of heroes in the mundane realities of Hecale. Theocritus gives his own unconventional responses to classical tragedy. Theocritus primarily plays with the dramatic form—all three Idylls discussed engage

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with tragedy through allusion to its distinctive literary format. The most striking case is the rewriting of the messenger speech from Euripides’ Bacchae in Idyll 26: only here the dramatized speech of the messenger is turned into an epic narrative and its emotional impact is dramatically reduced. In effect, Idyll 26, in highlighting the story of Pentheus as a philological comment on the birth and death of tragedy, indicates the fossilization of the tragic genre in the time of Theocritus. But Theocritus’ achievement is more than a reproduction of established tragic tropes. Thus, in creating the bucolic cosmos as a theatrical stage where human passions, especially erotic sufferings, are reenacted by the boukoloi, Theocritus offers an early version of a ‘play within a play’. The finest example is obviously the death by love of the boukolos Daphnis in Idyll 1. In a modern turn of dramatic writing, Theocritus stages an autonomous theatrical monologue in Idyll 2. The confessional tone of Simaetha’s lyric voice anticipates the mental drama of Romanticism, whereas the reconstruction of her ill-starred love affair shifts the attention from the heroic to the everyday tragic. By contrast, Apollonius’ Argonautica revises the tragic from within, that is from the perspective of the heroic world. Apollonius blends tragedy in his neoteric epic first by distilling tragic texts and characters into the Argonautic muthos. By drawing on Aeschylean, Sophoclean and Euripidean plays, Apollonius integrates the miniature tragedies of Hypsipyle and Phineus into his epic and introduces celebrated personages like Phaethon and Prometheus into the Argonautic universe. Apart from these sporadic allusions to the tragic past, Apollonius experiments by merging the epic form with the tragic mode in Books 3 and 4. In essence, the Argonautica adheres to Aristotle’s rules on narrative teleology and unified plot, whereas Book 3 is designed as a tragedy, in maintaining the unities of action, time and place. The adventures in Colchis are romantic in essence, yet Apollonius never loses sight of his tragic model, namely Euripides’ Medea. Against the backdrop of Euripides’ play, Apollonius stages his Medea as a heroine subjected to her pathos, thus paving the way for subjective, psychological drama to unfold. If there is one Hellenistic poem that not only draws heavily on tragic sources but may also be called a tragedy by generic criteria, albeit an idiosyncratic one, is the iambic Alexandra. Not a drama proper but a monologue intended either for reading or for monodramatic performance, the Alexandra is the reported prophecy of Cassandra embedded in a messenger speech. Equaling the length of a proper tragedy, it is an expanded messenger speech that functions as an independent tragic play. For the reader to comprehend this discontinuous tragedy it is vital to have recourse to the broader literary and mythological material around the Trojan war. The tragedies involving Cassandra, primarily Aeschylus’ Agamemnon and Euripides’ The Trojan Women, focus on the prophetic delirium of the her-

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oine. Once this delirious speech became a star-turn intended for independent performance on the postclassical stage, ‘Cassandra’ developed into a role aiming at sensational effect. Against this background the Alexandra was designed as a postmodern performance for a disembodied voice. In abandoning the notion of the tragic character and highlighting violent stories, ‘Lycophron’ created a ‘theatre of cruelty’ where horror acts as a catalyst for the tragic effect. In addition to these metamorphoses of the tragic mode in the major Alexandrian poets, there is also a tendency towards the sentimental and the romantic tragic. To highlight human emotions Hellenistic poets dramatize manifestations of private life, chiefly family relations and love affairs, as potentially tragic scenarios. The oikos is essential to the making of classical tragedy too, yet it returns in its non-heroic version in Hellenistic poetry. Female protagonists, isolated from the world of men, experience their personal, everyday tragedies. The hexametric Megara casts light on two women who, trapped in their household, are doomed to endless lamentation and desolation. Eratosthenes’ Erigone, on the other hand, responds with a tragic climax to family crisis: upon discovering the death of her father, Erigone commits suicide to give vent to her own romantic agony. But the core of Hellenistic sentimentality lies in the representation of love as suffering, as an overwhelming pathos. Inspired by the romantic tragedies of Euripides, and especially his popular Andromeda, a series of highly emotional monologues composed for the female voice, whose well-known example is the Fragmentum Grenfellianum, and other dramas of unrequited love enjoy a vogue in the late Hellenistic period. Just before the Hellenistic taste for tragic romances is to be transformed into Roman elegy, Parthenius compiles his mythographical collection of erotic sufferings. The Erotika Pathemata is an anthology of romantic stories ending in death and destruction. These stories are hardly tragic by Aristotelian standards. In arousing pathetic sensationalism Parthenius’ dark scenarios look forward to romantic melodrama and away from Attic tragedy. The question hovering in the background of this study may be summarized as follows: was tragedy still possible in the rapidly changing world after Alexander and which version of the tragic idea could express the emerging individualism of the Hellenistic era? The Hellenistic period has been considered transitional in so many ways—politics, religion, philosophy, language, art. Tragedy, a genre that had drawn a full circle from Aeschylus through Sophocles to Euripides and was established as ‘classic’ by the Poetics, inevitably had to be transformed or else degenerate into low drama. Tragedy survived as theatre, as a fascinating spectacle rather than as a philosophical worldview. The emotion engendered to the audience would be a far cry from pity and fear, since Hellenistic theatre seems to have aimed at either sentimentality or pure sensationalism. The tragic conflicts, originating in the classical polis and dramatized through re-

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course to the distant realm of heroic myth, became gradually less ‘interesting’ in terms of the preoccupations of a metaclassical audience. Even if some poets attempted to resurrect the tragic genre from the past and despite the support of the Ptolemaic kings, Alexandrian tragedy was not destined to endure for long. It was rather the Library where the impact of classical tragedy was mostly felt, where the spirit of scholarship inspired the metadramatic experiments performed in the Alexandrian Museum. Breaking the boundaries of the polis community resulted in the breaking of the generic rules governing tragedy too. An obvious divergence is that the dramatic form was not a prerequisite anymore for the development of the tragic idea. Alexandrian poets embarked on an ongoing quest for a Hellenistic tragic with novel qualities. Their tragic plots were drawn from reality or life-like mythical stories rather than the traditional repertoire concerning a few tragic families. The tragic day, dense with action and intense emotion, was converted to the agonizing, deeply emotional tragic night. Females were more fascinating than men as the protagonists of this new tragedy. Contrary to Aristotle who claimed that praxis lies at the core of tragedy, the anatomy of character and the exploration of psychology opened up new opportunities for achieving the tragic effect. Pathos resulted from emotional, not physical, suffering. Digging into the abyss of the human psyche prevailed against any moralizing content or message conveyed by the tragic conflict. The everyday tragic overrode the dominance of the spoudaion tragic. Catharsis was circumvented by the lack of catastrophe and the preference for anticlimactic endings. If indeed a hero is required for the writing of a tragedy, then the Hellenistic distaste for the exemplary heroism of the few and noble and their undeserved sufferings would inevitably result in a failure of tragedy. The neoteric poets of Alexandria, faced with the prospect of writing failed tragedies, accepted the challenge of rendering the tragic failures of human life as sophisticated, modern poetry.

Bibliography Abbreviations CA HE

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[Unless otherwise noted, translations are mine.] Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon: Gaselee, S. (1969), Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Clitophon, Cambridge, MA. Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica: Race, W. H. (2008), Apollonius Rhodius Argonautica, Cambridge, MA. Aristotle Poetics and Rhetoric: Russell, D. A. / Winterbottom, M. (1972), Ancient Literary Criticism. The Principal Texts in New Translations, Oxford. Callimachus: Nisetich, F. (2001), The Poems of Callimachus, Oxford. ‘Longinus’ On the Sublime: Russell, D. A. / Winterbottom, M. (1972), Ancient Literary Criticism. The Principal Texts in New Translations, Oxford. Lucian How to Write History: Kilburn, K. (1959), Lucian, vol. 6, London-Cambridge, MA.

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Index Achilles 189 – 190 actors – associations of 17 – at court 24 – dominance of 22 Adonis 84 – 85 Aeantides 64 Aeëtes 100 – 101 Aeschylus – as a model 128 – style 48 – 49, 171 – as a tragedian 54 – 56 – Agamemnon 80, 177 – 178, 190, 192 – Athamas 105 – Heliades 152 – Hypsipyle 144 – 145 – Laius 70 – Oedipus 71 – Pentheus 71, 117 – Persians 79 – 80 – Phineus 148 – Phrygians 189 – The Suppliants 70, 92 – The Women of Lemnos 144 – The Women of Thrace 191 ‘Aeschylus’ – Prometheus Bound 86, 91, 151 – 152 Agave 120 Agen 63, 78 agon 95, 124, 127 Aias 191 Aias Locrus 102, 178, 190 aitiology 56, 76, 99 – 105, 110, 200 Alcmena 195 – 199 Alexander 63 Alexander Aetolus – as member of the Pleiad 64 – 66, 68 – as scholar 27 – The Dice Players 74 – 75, 87 Alexandra 182 – 185 Alexandria – Library 25 – 30 – as new Athens 16 – performance of tragedy 20 – 23

– spectacle in 20 – 21 – theatre of 16 – tragedy in 15 – 19, 63 – 88 – tragedy and the tragic 52 – 62, 221 Alexandrianism 7, 9 – 10, 65, 75, 85, 223 – 226 Amphitryon 198 anagnorisis 2, 110 anagnostikos 24 Antigone 103 – 104, 201 Apollonius of Rhodes – and tragedy 141 – 152 – and the tragic 153 – 167, 224 – Argonautica 141 – 167 – Book 1 143 – 147, 156 – Book 2 147 – 148, 150 – 152 – Book 3 149, 156, 160 – 167 – Book 4 152, 156, 166 – 167 archaicizing style 16, 49, 55 Ariadne 205 Aristarchus 29 Aristophanes – on tragic style 5, 58 – 59 – Clouds 49 – Frogs 40, 48 – 49 Aristophanes of Byzantium 29, 34, 57 – 58, 61 – 62 Aristotle – on actors 22 – and Alexandrian criticism 35 – 36 – centrality of plot 38 – 39, 46 – on character 42 – 43 – on epic and tragedy 153 – 154 – episodes 47, 154 – vs. Hellenistic tragedy 38 – 44 – magnitude 46 – 48, 106 – 107 – on meter of tragedy 170 – on morality of poetry 32 – 33 – pathos/ethos in 43 – on pity and fear 130 – 131 – plot types of tragedy 3 – 4 – poetry vs. history 81 – on simultaneous actions 107 – 108 – on spectacle 22

244

Index

– on speeches 146 – structure of tragedy 110 – tragedy as genre 2 – 5 – on tragic diction 170 – 171 – on tragic heroes 39, 76, 193 – 194 – on tragic myth 60 – transgeneric tragic 4 – on unities 107 – 108, 214 – on unity of plot 47, 98, 154 Aristoxenus of Tarentum 34 Asclepiades 53 Asclepiades of Tragilos 34 Assaon 218 Athamas 105, 149 ‘Athamas tragedies’ 149 Athena 93 – 94 Atlas 76 Autonoe 119, 120 bucolic – agon 124 – roles 125 – scenario 124 – stage 125, 207 – 208 – thematics 84, 88, 118, 122 – 131 – world 122 – 125 Busiris 102 Byblis 217 Callimachus – editorial work on drama 27 – 28 – leptotes 34, 48 – 49 – as playwright 51, 69, 89 – and tragedy 44 – 52, 89 – and the tragic 89 – 114, 223 – Aetia 98 – 105 – Aetia-Prologue 45 – 49, 98 – Bath of Pallas 93 – 95 – Epigrams 53 – 54 – Hecale 105 – 114 – Hymn to Delos 90 – 92 – Hymn to Demeter 96 – 98 – Iamb 2 50 – Iamb 13 50 – 51 Cassandra 102, 171 – 185, 190, 192 ‘Cassandra tragedy’ 174 – 175, 177 Chaeremon 24, 117

character drama 107, 114, 158 – 160, 218 Chariklo 95 Chorus 17, 70, 80, 146 Cleophon 117 comedy 41 – 42, 61, 97 comic 40 – 41, 62, 96 – 98, 102, 211 Crotopus 101 Cyclic epics – Cypria 177 – The Sack of Troy 178, 190 ‘Cynic tragedy’ 86 Daphnis 88, 126 – 131 darkness 80, 100 – 105, 135 – 136, 146, 189, 192, 209 – 211 deus ex machina 95, 99, 146, 211 Dicaearchus of Messana 34 didaskaloi 28 Dionysia 12, 14, 17 – 18, 63 Dionysiac technitae 66, 78, 84 Dionysiades of Tarsos 64 Dionysus – and bacchic frenzy 185 – cult of 13, 17, 66, 84, 115 – 117, 120 – and origins of tragedy 117, 121 – statue of 21 Dioscorides 54 – 57 drama 58 drama – academic 65 – 67, 77 – chanted 23 – 24, 179 – in education 53 – as genre 45 – 46, 106 – 109 – mental 132 – 133 – music in 49 – 52, 203 – 204 – reading of 24 – 25, 54, 168 – recitation of 23 – unities of 107 – 109 dramatic competitions 53 – 54, 66 dramatic festivals 13 – 15, 18 dramatic setting 108 – 109, 118, 132, 151 – 152, 157 – 158, 208 dramatic time 61, 108, 143 – 144, 158 – 159, 208

Index

Elephenor 72, 191 emotion 1 – 2, 43 – 44, 98, 103, 112 – 113, 129 – 130, 165 – 167, 192, 202, 205 – 206, 217 – 218 Epeius 191 epic 8, 17, 47, 90, 106 – 109, 115, 141 – 143 epigram 52 – 57 epyllion 105 – 106, 115 Eratosthenes – Erigone 199 – 202 Erechtheus 111 Erigone 99, 199 – 202 Eros 129, 207, 210 – 211 Erysichthon 96 – 98 ethos 42 – 44, 113 Euphronius 64 Euripides – as a model 129, 215 – ‘the most tragic poet’ 3 – plot types of his tragedies 3 – 4 – and realism 39 – 41 – romantic tragedies 88 – style 48 – 49, 98 – as a tragedian 55, 78, 164, 203 – Aegeus 111, 162 – Aeolus 71 – Alcestis 61 – Alexandros 177, 187 – Andromeda 71, 203 – 204 – Bacchae 53, 71, 83, 93, 116 – 121 – Busiris 102 – Chryssipus 70 – Elephenor 191 – Epeius 191 – Erechtheus 111 – Hecabe 190 – Helen 188, 191 – Heracles 71, 187, 195 – 198 – Hippolytus 71, 85, 93, 103 – Hypsipyle 144 – 145 – Ino 105 – Iphigenia in Aulis 4 – Iphigenia in Tauris 189 – Medea 142, 162, 164 – 165 – Peliades 162 – Phaethon 152 – Phrixus 149

245

– The Reapers 88 – The Suppliants 70, 92 – Thyestes 72 – The Trojan Women 177 Ezekiel – Exagoge 19, 83 family drama 95, 101, 103 – 104, 197 – 199 father figure 100 – 101, 103, 201 female 133 – 135, 161 – 167, 195 – 202, 204 – 207 fragmentariness 98, 186 – 187, 189 Fragmentum Grenfellianum 205 – 206 grand poetry 34, 37, 40, 46, 106 Grand Procession 21, 66, 83 Gyges 80 – 81 hamartia 32, 43, 94, 96, 128, 166, 210 Hecabe 112, 187 Hecale 42, 105 – 114 Hector 178 – 179 hedonism 130 – 131 Helen 188 – 189, 205 Hellanicus 147 Heracleides of Pontus 34 Heracles 101, 187, 195 – 197 Herodotus 81 hero – Alexandrian 84 – 85, 103 – marginal 71, 74 – 76 – as subject for tragedy 39 – 41 heroic silence 128 Hesiod 71, 147, 149 Hippolytus 129 Hippomenes 103 Homer – as first tragedian 4, 48, 153 – 154 – pathos/ethos in 43 – 44 – Iliad 75, 87, 102 – 103, 187, 189 Homerus of Byzantium – as member of the Pleiad 64 – 66, 68 – Eurypyleia 74 Horace – ‘classical-type’ tragedy 5, 161 – Ars Poetica 35 – 36

246

Index

hymn 115 – 116 Hypsipyle 144 – 147 Icarius 200 Ino 105, 120 Ion of Chios 50 Iphigenia 189 Jason

160

Lament for Helen 205 Leimonis 103 Leto 90 – 92 lexis 171 ‘Longinus’ – On the Sublime 34, 43 – 44, 100 Lycophron of Chalcis – and Aeschylus 80 – as member of the Pleiad 27, 64, 168 – as scholar 65 – tragedies 70 – 73 – Aeolides 71 – Aeolus 70 – Aletes 70 – The Allies 70, 80 – Andromeda 70 – The Cassandreians 70, 79 – 80 – Chrysippus 70 – Elephenor 72, 74, 192 – Heracles 71 – Hippolytus 71 – Laius 70 – The Marathonians 70, 80 – Menedemus 86 – 87 – Nauplius 66, 70, 74 – Oedipus 67, 71 – The Orphan 70 – The Pelopids 72 – Pentheus 71, 117 – The Suppliants 70 – Telegonus 72, 191 ‘Lycophron’ – Alexandra 73, 83, 115, 132, 168 – 192, 224 – 225 Lyrcus 214

Machon 55 Maenads 118 – 120 magnitude 47, 161, 170 male 164, 187 – 188, 197 – 198, 201 Mausolus 77 Medea 111 – 112, 142, 160 – 167 Megara 195 – 199 megethos 47, 170 Meleager 76 melodrama 41, 44, 166, 203, 213 – 220 memory-theatre 186 – 187 Menander 17 – 18, 42, 53, 55, 62 Menandrian turn 40 – 41 Menelaus 191 messenger speech 115 – 121, 171 – 174, 196 metatragedy 126 – 131, 168 – 192 mime 22, 123, 126, 138 mimesis 46, 130, 171 miniature play 95, 119 – 120, 126 – 131, 146 – 149, 167 Minos 100 Mnesimachus 77 monodrama 168 – 169 monologue 131 – 133, 165, 167, 205, 207, 209 – 211 Moschion – as a tragedian 75, 86 – The Pheraeans 80 – Themistocles 79 ‘Moschus’ – Megara 195 – 199 mother figure 95, 112 – 113, 198 Museum 15, 19, 24, 30, 34, 64 – 65, 67 – 69 Nauplius 191 Neoptolemus of Parium 35 – 36 Nero 63, 179 – 180 New Comedy 18, 41 – 42, 62, 70, 103, 137 – 138, 194 Nicomachus 75 Nisus 101 Odysseus 191 Oedipus 94 Oenone 187 – 188, 214, 217 – 218 oikos 39 – 40, 193 – 195, 201 Old Comedy 29, 55, 87

Index

paraclausithuron 205 – 210 Paris 187 – 188, 214 Parthenius – plots 34 – and pathos 44 – Erotika Pathemata 72, 211 – 220 pathos 2, 43 – 44, 61, 92, 102, 110, 112, 121 – 122, 128, 135, 137, 164, 167, 179 – 180, 182, 194, 203, 205, 210 – 213, 216 – 218, 225 Peneius 91 Pentheus 93, 116 – 121 performance – of excerpts 23, 179 – 180 – in the Hellenistic era 20 – 23, 28 – 29 – of monodrama 168 – musical interludes in 23 – postmodern 184 – 185 – reperformances 23 Peripatetics 33 – 34 peripeteia 2, 95, 110 – 111, 155 ‘Persian tragedies’ 81 Phaethon 152 ‘Phaethon tragedies’ 152 – 153 Phanocles 84 phaulos 42, 110, 137 Pherecydes 147 Phili(s)cus of Corcyra – as member of the Pleiad 64, 66, 83 – 85 – Adonis 84 – 85 – Themistocles 79 Philoctetes 191 Philodemus 37 Phineus 147 – 148 Phrixids 148 – 149 Phrixus 149 ‘Phrixus tragedies’ 149 Phrynichus 71 Pindar 144 pity and fear 37, 42, 89, 90, 92, 96, 98, 113, 129 – 130, 194 Plato – city as tragedy 31 – 32 – and emotion in poetry 1 – philosophical tragic 5 – transgeneric tragic 4 play outside the play 173 – 175

247

play within a play 95, 125 – 131 Pleiad – name 19 – and satyr play 87 – 88 – significance of 82 – 83, 222 – tragedians 64 – 69 – tragedies 70 – 75 polis 12, 99 praxis 38, 46, 160, 175, 211 presentification 125, 127, 175, 183 – 184, 207 – 208 Priam 173 prologue 145, 147, 161, 196, 207, 209 Prometheus 128, 150 – 152 ‘Prometheus tragedies’ 151 – 153 psychological drama 164 – 167 Ptolemies – copies of tragedies 26 – cultural politics of 15 – 19, 64 – 66 – recitations 24 Ptolemy Philadelphus 18 – 19, 64, 66, 68, 83 Ptolemy Philopator 63, 85 realism 40, 60, 114, 138 – 141, 193, 216 – 217 revenge drama 134 – 136, 210 – 211 rhesis 91, 110, 146, 160, 179, 196 role-playing 125, 179 – 180 role within a role 180 romance 138, 144, 156 – 157, 164 satyr play 55, 75, 86 – 88 Seneca 5, 38, 86 sensationalism 102, 179 – 180, 206, 216, 219 – 220 sentimentality 131, 166, 188, 202, 205, 209 – 211 Simaetha 42, 132 – 140, 205 Sophocles – as a model 128 – as a tragedian 55 – 56 – Aegeus 111 – Aias 93, 191 – Aias Locrus 102, 178, 190 – Aleites 70 – Andromeda 71 – Antigone 104

248

Index

– Atreus 72 – Heracles 71 – King Oedipus 71, 94 – Nauplius 70 – Nauplius the Fire-Raiser 191 – Odysseus Acanthoplex 72, 191 – Oedipus at Colonus 71 – Philoctetes 191 – Philoctetes in Troy 191 – Phineus 148 – The Root-Cutters 162 – The Scythians 162 – Sinon 190 – The Sons of Antenor 190 – Thyestes 72 – Troilus 190 – The Women of Colchis 162 – The Women of Lemnos 144 – 145 – The Women of Trachis 187 Sosiphanes of Syracuse – as member of the Pleiad 64, 66 – Meleager 76 Sositheus of Alexandria – as member of the Pleiad 55, 64, 66, 87 – 88 – Aethlius 76 – Crotus 76 – Daphnis or Lityerses 88 spectacle 20 – 21, 23 – 25, 150 – 152 spoudaios 4, 42, 46, 110, 113, 193 star turns 180 Stoics – on poetry 37 – 38 telos 4, 167 Teucer 191 theatre – in Alexandria 16 – 17, 54, 64 – Hellenistic 21 – 22, 179 – 180 – and Hellenistic lifestyle 13 – 15, 63 – 64 – Roman 179 – 180 theatre of cruelty 192 theatrical event 178 – 185, 192, 203 – 204 theatricalism 125 – 126 theatricality 15, 21 – 22, 107 – 109, 119, 123 – 131, 132 – 133, 143 – 144, 208 – 209

theatrical staging 109, 119 – 120, 132, 148, 150 – 151, 157 – 160, 173 – 174, 176, 184 – 185, 197, 208 Theiodamas 101 themes – change of fortune 113 – 114 – conflict 102, 160 – confrontation with god 92 – 98 – crime and punishment 93 – 98, 210 – 211 – cunning 160 – death 152, 190 – death in love 85, 126 – 129, 187, 207 – 211 – divine punishment 85, 91 – 98 – dream 164, 187 – 188, 197, 201 – family 95 – 97, 100 – 101, 103 – 104 – fate 92, 94, 217 – 218 – freedom 92 – 93 – hubris 102, 178 – incest 216, 220 – isolation 91, 198 – 199, 202 – love 85, 128 – 129, 133 – 140, 147, 156 – 157, 162 – 164, 187 – 188, 202 – 211, 211 – 220 – madness 166, 182 – 183, 187, 196 – marriage 137 – 138, 164, 167 – murder 72, 80, 103, 120, 167, 178 – rape 102, 178, 190 – sacrifice 102, 104 – 105 – suffering 2, 4, 85, 90 – 92, 110, 126 – 131, 167, 179, 205, 209, 211 – 220 – suicide 188, 201 – 202, 208 – 210, 217 – truth 139 – 140 – violence 189 – 192 ‘Themistocles tragedies’ 79 Theocritus – and tragedy 115 – 121 – and the tragic 122 – 140, 223 – 224 – Idyll 1 126 – 131, 133 – Idyll 2 131 – 140 – Idyll 3 207 – Idyll 15 20 – 21, 23 – Idyll 23 206 – 211 – Idyll 26 115 – 121 Theodectes 77 Theophrastus 41 – 42 Theseus 103, 105 – 114

Index

Thespis – as a tragedian 54 – 56 – Pentheus 117 threnos 95, 100, 127 – 128, 169, 196, 205 – 206, 210 Thyrsis 126 Timon of Phlius 68 Tiresias 93 – 95 tragedians 49 – 51, 59 – 60 tragedy – Alexandrian 63 – 88 – according to Aristotle 2, 38 – 44 – Attic 5, 11 – 13, 26 – 28, 89, 99, 111 – 113, 128 – 129, 133 – 134, 141 – 152 – bourgeois 41, 193 – 202 – classical 12 – 13, 39, 70 – 71, 104 – 105, 117, 174, 186 – 192 – domestic 39 – 41, 193 – 202 – ending of 3 – 4, 61 – 62, 138 – 139, 199 – vs. epic 105 – 109, 141, 153 – 161, 175 – in epigram 52 – 57 – Hellenistic 11 – 30 – historical 19, 77 – 82 – and history 81 – 82 – mundane 114, 137 – 140, 197 – neoclassical conceptions of 36 – origins of 55 – 57, 121, 200 – and passions 37, 85 – 86, 161 – 167 – in performance 22 – and philosophy 31 – 38, 85 – 87 – and politics 11 – 13 – and religion 13, 83 – 85 – as ritual 104 – 105 – and scholarship 25 – 30, 99 – as serious poetry 4 – 5

249

– and Stoicism 38, 86 – vs. the tragic idea 7 – 9 tragic – characters 129, 143, 147 – 149 – and comic 8, 40 – 41, 62, 87, 96 – 98, 102, 211 – day 159 – 160, 173 – 174, 209, 214 – everyday 42, 137 – 138, 194 – 199 – in Hellenistic scholarship 57 – 62 – hero 79, 93 – 94, 96 – 97, 114, 128 – 129 – heroine 133 – 135, 138, 162 – 167, 202 – the idea of 5 – 7, 223 – intertextuality 186 – 192 – metaclassical 31 – 62, 222 – mode 89 – 90, 98 – 99, 221 – myth 69 – 77 – vs. the pathetic 44, 80, 85, 103, 134, 178, 182, 207 – 208, 216 – in philosophy 92 – 93 – plot 34, 39 – 42, 60 – 61, 71 – 72, 174 – 175, 213 – 214 – romantic 147, 156 – 157, 182 – 183, 202 – 211, 215 – 220 – Shakespearean 165 – silence 127 – 128, 174 tragicomedy 41, 97 tragikos 3, 56, 58 – 59 tragoidia 56 tragoidoi 50 Troilus 190 Trojan war myth 74 – 75, 78, 175, 186 – 192 Tzetzes Ioannes 27, 168 – 169, 174 visualization 109, 120, 148 – 152, 158 voice 50, 179 – 185, 204 – 205