Leukippe as Tragedy
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William J. Slater
Abstract
This article deals with a mosaic from ancient Zeugma on the Euphrates found in 2002 and recently published with interpretive commentary. Its subject is the story of Theonoe and Leukippe preserved only in Hyginus and nowhere in Greek. Despite this, the authors argue that the myth, in its unique form, can for over one thousand years be connected with romance, mime, pantomime, tragedy and derives ultimately from early Cretan rituals of transvestism. Its immediate inspiration however is imperial pantomime along with the transvestism notorious in that genre, as can be argued from the layout of the mosaic and the iconography of Theonoe, our first clear picture of a pantomime. But the main thrust of the article, especially in appendix B, is to demonstrate that the Hyginus story must now be considered to represent the plot of a lost tragedy, which derived many of its elements from late Euripides, but in its over-enthusiasic use of these represents a post-Euripidean artificially complex plot-type, for which hitherto we had limited evidence.
© by Akademie Verlag, Berlin, Germany
Articles in the same Issue
- Zur Etymologie und Bedeutung des Adjektivs ἄποτμος bei Homer im Hinblick auf potentiell bedeutungsverwandte Begriffe
- A Dove and a Nightingale: Mahābhārata 3. 130. 18–3. 131. 32 and Hesiod, works and days 202–213
- Aeschylus, Supplices 40–85
- The ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus rex
- Leukippe as Tragedy
- Le ,verità nascoste‘. Consapevole appartenenza a un genere, autoinvestitura e bugie metapoetiche in [Mosco] III.
- Il nuovo Artemidoro
- Epictetus 3. 23. 33 and the three modes of philosophical instruction
- ‘Loving too much’: the text of Plutarch, Themistokles 2. 3
- Die providentielle Sorge der Seele um den Körper bei Plotin
- Zur Vergiftung des Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 2, 69)
- Zwei Bemerkungen zum Text des dritten Buches der hippokratischen Epidemien
- Zu Euripides, F 795
- Zum Berner Glossar
Articles in the same Issue
- Zur Etymologie und Bedeutung des Adjektivs ἄποτμος bei Homer im Hinblick auf potentiell bedeutungsverwandte Begriffe
- A Dove and a Nightingale: Mahābhārata 3. 130. 18–3. 131. 32 and Hesiod, works and days 202–213
- Aeschylus, Supplices 40–85
- The ending of Sophocles’ Oedipus rex
- Leukippe as Tragedy
- Le ,verità nascoste‘. Consapevole appartenenza a un genere, autoinvestitura e bugie metapoetiche in [Mosco] III.
- Il nuovo Artemidoro
- Epictetus 3. 23. 33 and the three modes of philosophical instruction
- ‘Loving too much’: the text of Plutarch, Themistokles 2. 3
- Die providentielle Sorge der Seele um den Körper bei Plotin
- Zur Vergiftung des Germanicus (Tac. Ann. 2, 69)
- Zwei Bemerkungen zum Text des dritten Buches der hippokratischen Epidemien
- Zu Euripides, F 795
- Zum Berner Glossar
