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EURIPIDES' ALCESTIS AND THE APOLLONIUS ROMANCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2016

Paul B. Nelson
Paul B. Nelson*
Affiliation:
Louisiana Tech University
*
pnelson@latech.edu
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Extract

In 1924 The Classical Quarterly published a note by Alexander Haggerty Krappe titled ‘Euripides’ Alcmaeon and the Apollonius Romance’. Drawing attention to the obscure origins of the ancient Greek and Roman novels in general and pointing out the scholarly agreement on the role love plays in both the ancient novels and Euripidean tragedy, Krappe observed that ‘Euripides was drawn upon for whole episodes in order to enrich the plot of the [ancient] novel’. Krappe then goes on in his note to attribute the plot of Euripides' lost Alcmaeon as a source of inspiration for one of the major episodes of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (to wit, the separation and reunion of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia). Today, this reliance of the ancient novels on Euripides is generally recognized, but, curiously, Krappe, while identifying an episode from the lost Alcmaeon, failed to identify a clear plot-borrowing from another extant Euripidean play, the Alcestis.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , May 2016 , pp. 421 - 423
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Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2016 

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References

1 Krappe, A.H., ‘Euripides’ Alcmaeon and the Apollonius Romance’, CQ 18 (1924), 57–8Google Scholar.

2 Krappe (n. 1), 57.

3 B.E. Perry, The Ancient Romances: A Literary-Historical Account of Their Origins (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1976), 73.

4 In Krappe's defence, it is possible he relied on a version of the Historia Apollonii that did not include this episode. For the difficulties of editing this text, see Hall, J.B., ‘Editing the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri ’, CR 40 (1990), 291–4Google Scholar.

5 See G.A.A. Kortekaas (ed.), Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Groningen, 1984), 275–411. Kortekaas has revisited his argument in The Story of Apollonius of Tyre (Leiden, 2004).

6 Kortekaas (n. 5 [1984]), ‘Prolegomena’, 67.

7 Text in Kortekaas (n. 5 [1984]), 405 and 407.

8 Hyg. Fab., in R.S. Smith and S.M. Trzaskoma (edd.), Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology (Indianapolis and Cambridge, MA, 2007), 95–192, at 173.

9 In his recent commentary on the HA, Kortekaas does not point out this similarity between these two works. He does, however, find a similarity in Valerius Maximus 6.2.8. See G.A.A. Kortekaas, Commentary on the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (Leiden, 2007), 870.