Hypsipyle (play)

Hypsipyle
Written byEuripides
Place premieredAthens
Original languageAncient Greek
GenreTragedy

Hypsipyle (Ancient Greek: Ὑψιπύλη) is a partially preserved tragedy by Euripides, about the legend of queen Hypsipyle of Lemnos, daughter of King Thoas.[1] It was one of his last and most elaborate plays.[2] It was performed c. 411–407, along with The Phoenician Women which survives in full, and the lost Antiope.[3]

Originally only known from a few fragments, knowledge of the play was greatly expanded with the discovery of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 852 in 1905, and its publication by Grenfell and Hunt in 1908.[4] Of his lost plays, it is the one with the most extensive fragments.[5] The prologue referenced Dionysus leading a dance along Mount Parnassus.[6]

  1. ^ For the extant fragments of Euripides' play, with introduction and notes, see Collard and Cropp, pp. 250–321.
  2. ^ Collard and Cropp, p. 251.
  3. ^ Collard and Cropp, pp. xiv, 254.
  4. ^ Collard and Cropp, pp. 250, 255; Gantz, p. 511 with note 44.
  5. ^ Collard and Cropp, p. 255.
  6. ^ Aristophanes, The Frogs