“let Medea be fierce and indomitable, Ino tearful”

September 19, 2024 11:02 AM

Euripides Unbound is an account of the recent discovery by archeologist Heba Adly of a papyrus containing 97 lines from Polyidus and Ino, lost plays by Euripides, written by Robert Cioffi who participated in the dig led by Basem Gehad. The fragment was deciphered by classicists Yvona Trnka-Amrhein and John Gibert, who have been interviewed about it by Johanna Hanink on the Lesche Podcast. Bill Allan wrote a short essay about the fragment for the Times Literary Supplement, which led Mary Beard to discuss it on the TLS Podcast.
posted by Kattullus (8 comments total)

I love that we are still finding this stuff.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 11:55 AM on September 19 [7 favorites]

Plutarch says that Euripides was so popular that, after the disastrous Sicilian Expedition of 415–413 BCE, when the surviving Athenian soldiers were enslaved,

Some gained their freedom by their knowledge of Euripides. It appears that the dramas of Euripides were especially popular in Sicily, but that only a few fragments of his works had hitherto reached the Greek cities in that island. We are told that many of these captives on their return to Athens affectionately embraced Euripides, and told him how some of them had been sold into slavery, but had been set free after they had taught their masters as much of his poetry as they could remember, while others, when wandering about the country as fugitives after the battle, had obtained food and drink by reciting passages from his plays.

posted by cyanistes at 12:03 PM on September 19 [25 favorites]

the letters πορφυραϲ emerged: a form of the Greek for ‘purple’. Since then, the project has released a reconstruction of some fifteen columns of text. They appear to derive from a philosophical treatise on sensation and pleasure

so, purple prose is ancient
posted by HearHere at 2:53 PM on September 19 [8 favorites]

This is of great interest to me and not solely because I will be able to use it to set up at least several months of Euripi-DEEZ NUTZ jokes in my friend group.

Not solely.
posted by Parasite Unseen at 3:53 PM on September 19 [9 favorites]

There's always the old fall-back joke:

Guy walks into a tailor's shop in ancient Greece with torn togas. The tailor says, "Euripides?" The guy says, "Yeah, Eumenides?"

I'll be here all era
posted by Halloween Jack at 6:21 AM on September 20 [11 favorites]

I hadn't heard about this! Thank you for sharing it, Kattullus. I keep hoping that someone's going to stumble upon (not StumbleUpon™) some buried library in the eastern Med region that'll yield Sappho and the tragedians and…
posted by the sobsister at 10:11 AM on September 20 [3 favorites]

From the TLS link:
"(Let’s not forget that we have less than 1 per cent of all that was originally produced on the tragic stage in Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE.)"

The scale of that loss always staggers and astounds me.
posted by the sobsister at 10:21 AM on September 20 [1 favorite]

Mod note: [Wow, thanks, Kattullus! We've added this to the sidebar and Best Of blog!]
posted by taz (staff) at 4:05 AM on September 21 [1 favorite]