I Carii o Europa di Eschilo

Carians or Europa by Aeschylus · Byzantine sources testify to a double name for a play by Aeschylus, Carians or Europa. Three fragments were attributed to the Aeschylean play: 99, 100 and 101 Radt. While the latter two are very short, fr. 99 is still the subject of critical and interpretive debate. The 23 lines of the Pap. Didot, published in 1879 by Weil, were later identified as a single speech, perhaps prologic, in which the heroine remembers her abduction and the fate of her children, expressing anxiety about Sarpedon in the Trojan war. Starting from a linguistic analysis of the text and from the reconsideration of the main critical and exegetical proposals, the paper examines the less known variants of the myth proposed by Aeschylus: the abduction of Europa by a bull only sent by Zeus, the indication of Sarpedon as the third son of Europa, and the controversial setting in Caria evoked by the title. Moreover, the documentation in vase paintings allows us to imagine the following events: the plea of Europa to Zeus and Hera about the fate of her son, and the return of his body by Hypnos and Thanatos. The comparison, though necessarily cautious, with other plays, especially Persians and Suppliant Women, confirms the use of typically tragic and Aeschylean motifs, such as the mother’s mourning and the meditation on heroic glory. The paper also reconsiders the debate on the trilogy and the Aeschylean autorship of the drama.