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This papers analyzes and compares two Plutarchean anecdotes, the one about the Athenians who were prisoners in Syracuse after the defeat of the Athenian expedition and could escape and get freedom through their knowledge of Euripides (Nic. 29), and the other about the decision of the Greek allies not to destroy Athens at the end of the Peloponnesian war after listening to a Phocaean who sang the parodos of Euripides’ Electra (Lys. 15). The aim is to investigate: 1) the information these two passages give about the kinds of re-use and re-performance of Euripides’ text and the ways and the wideness of its circulation; 2) the peculiar use Plutarch makes of these anecdotes, also in comparison with the preceding tradition.

The two anecdotes are generally quoted as evidence of re-performance of Euripidean songs outside Athens (Easterling; Lamari) and/or (the first one) of appreciation of Euripides in Sicily (Csapo-Wilson, 2015 and 2020), but, on the other side, their authenticity has often been questioned (Garland; Wohl). They have been viewed as part of a tradition which tries to show that Euripides, though not loved in Athens during his lifetime, enjoyed great popularity and success abroad (Arrighetti). It has also been argued that Plutarch uses the Syracusan anecdote to illustrate the importance of knowing poetic texts and of being able to quote them (Goldhill). Attention has been paid to the lyric quotations from Greek tragedy and to the references to theatrical performance as means Plutarch uses for an emotionally charged narration (Karanasiou).

This paper aims to show that the two Plutarchean anecdotes testify peculiar ways of circulation of Euripides’ texts: selection and anthologization in written form, memorization (spontaneous or through study), informal performance of a single passage and performance in not-theatrical contexts, (like the symposium), preference for the songs. Some of these ways of circulation find parallels in other witnesses about the knowledge and the re-performance of Euripides’ text in the 5th century BC (Pernigotti), but they spread mainly in the Hellenistic and imperial ages. So the information given by Plutarch can be referred to the classical age, but also (in whole or in part) to a later period, when the two anecdotes originated or were amplified (perhaps by Plutarch himself).

Through the analysis of the Plutarchean contexts, on one side, and the comparison with the other sources that transmit the anecdotes (Satyrus’Vita Euripidis, 39, XIX for Nic. 29 and Xen. Hell. 2, 2, 19-20 for Lys. 15), on the other, it will be argued that Plutarch reuses and reworks these episodes (Stadter) to show the cultural superiority of the Athenians over the other Greeks, both in the mainland and in Sicily. This superiority is so much recognized that the Athenians or Athens itself can be saved thanks to it. So the two anecdotes fit well in the attempt Plutarch makes to protect and enhance not only the Greek political and military past (cf. De Gloria Atheniensium), but also the Greek cultural identity, in which Athens plays a central role (Podlecki; Desideri; Alcalde Martín).