The centrally-placed second stasimon of Hippolytus, following Phaedra's exit (to die) at 731, is one of the finest features of Euripides' finest play, with complex imagery. The wish to become a bird and to fly away to a mythical far-western paradise is in line with a familiar topos as an ‘out of this world escape-wish’, here vicarious – echoing (while also transmuting) the desires for concealment, escape and death expressed by Phaedra. ‘Bird-transformation’ and ‘flight to the far west’ are funereal motifs, notably developed (recently?) by Sophocles, and the image of Phaedra as a ‘vanished bird’ will recur at 828 . Then in the second pair of stanzas Phaedra's fate, with the predicted death by hanging, is integrally linked with the ‘white-winged Cretan ship’ that as a doubly bad ὄρνις brought her ‘through beating sea-waves’ from Crete to Athens, with ‘fastening of ropes’ for the ‘going ashore’ at the end of the voyage.

Much has been sufficiently discussed (most recently by Halleran); but many points of detail, in both pairs of stanzas, invite further consideration. I give a modifed text, after Diggle, with modifications also of his apparatus.

29–33. Phaedra's ἒρως must at first (at Athens) have been without betraying symptoms, by contrast with the change at Trozen to symptoms of νόσος (still unexplained) as described in 34–40. We need to be told that explicitly, in preparation (μέν) for 34ff. (ἐπєὶδὲ…) and in conjunction with the potentially revealing foundation of a temple to Aphrodite. We therefore need not only Jortin's ὀνομάσουσιν for ὠνόμαζєν in 33, but also my ἂδηλον for ἒκδηλον (v.l. ἒκδηλον) in 32. The nearby ἒκδηλον in 37 will have played a part in the corruption.

The familiar crux in line 139, as obelized by Dawe, disappears in the new Oxford Text, whose editors accept the Triclinian reading . Their short critical note touches only on the metrical issue, citing discussions by Stinton and Diggle, in both of which acceptance of here is cautiously linked with recognition of the same responsion at Philoctetes 209/218 and Euripides, Medea 159/183. The note concludes with a reference (credited to Miss Parker) to p. 75 of an article by K. Itsumi.

In a previous article I discussed some textual and metrical issues in the lyric-iambic stanzas Supplices 71–8/79–86, and the problematic persona and constitution of the Chorus. The preceding maternal ἱκεсα in four ionic stanzas presents fewer textual problems; but here too there is a challenging crux, at 45(–6) in the first strophe; and there is more to be said about the ode's metrical structure. I begin with a metrical reappraisal, which will prove to have a bearing on the textual problem. Unless otherwise stated, the text given is identical with those of both Diggle and Collard, except in lineation.

In response to Iolaus' cry for help, the chorus in Held, enter at a run (βοηδροµοντεс cf. 121), and the Parodos takes a form appropriate to that. Instead of choral song-and-dance, what follows, after an exceptionally brief non-strophic ‘entry’-passage, is an amoibaion first between the Chorus-leader and Iolaus, then between the Chorus-leader and the Herald, musical only as featuring some ‘half-chanted’ sequences in the Chorus-leader's utterances.

The first choral ode of Euripides' Supplices, or the Parodos if that term can be used for an ode which is not an ‘entry’, ends with two stanzas of lyric-iambic threnody, following four stanzas of supplication in ionic metre (42–70)

As Collard comments, this structure is broadly similar to, and very possibly modelled upon, A. Pers. 65–114, 115–39. But there is an important difference here: prima facie, the ‘further∕different concerted lament’ in 71ff. is sung and performed by the πρ⋯сπολοι mentioned in 72, ‘taking over’ in a kind of antiphon to the Seven Mothers'lamenting ἱκεс⋯α

The friendly expatriate ladies of the chorus in Helen enter having heard loud lamentation issuing from the palace, while engaged, like the Φ⋯λα of the chorus in Hippolytus 125ff., in spreading laundered crimson textiles to dry in the sun. The central theme of ‘hearing cries’, with the verb ἒκλυον and nouns of utterance (185–6), is reminiscent also of Medea 131ff., where the opening words of the Parodos ἒκλυον Φων⋯ν, ἒκλυον δ⋯ βο⋯ν… allude to Medea's loud utterances ἒсωθεν in 96ff. (ἰώ…) and 111ff. (αἰαî…): here, as there, the Parodos exploits the familiar motif of βοηδρομ⋯α.

Few, if any, Euripidean plays are altogether free from interpolation. The Phoenician Women, apart from the posthumous Iphigenia at Aulis, has incurred more suspicion than any other. No reputable scholar now doubts that this play contains numerous intrusive verses; and few would deny, though there is almost infinite room for disagreement in detail, that some of these intrusions are of passages rather than odd lines.

More controversial, but also more important, are the related issues, whether it contains longer or otherwise structurally significant interpolations that affect the play's essential integrity; and (if so) whether in a purely additive way (so in principle still remediable by excision) or with an element of retractatio (not so remediable, the Urtext having been deliberately altered with some cutting to make way for new material).

So begins one of the most engaging, and variously controversial, musical scenes in Euripides. The Messenger's narrative of the Phantom Helen's disappearance has proved to Menelaus that the Helen standing before him is the real Helen, altogether innocent of elopement to Troy, from whom he has been sundered for seventeen laborious years. The ensuing embrace is developed in a duet (Hel. 625–59) which is followed without a break by the so-called ‘Interrogation’ (660–97), the two together constituting the so-called ‘Recognition Duo’.

Much has been written about the problematic passage towards the end of the Medea prologue-speech, in which the Nurse expresses fear concerning the intention(s) of her mistress; problematic both in itself, especially as to the interpretation of lines 40–2, and in relation to lines 379–80, which are almost the same as 40–1; a most suspicious circumstance.

πνοϲ, in general a common word in Greek tragedy, is a cardinal theme in the Heracles.

In the first half of the play the glorious saving Labours (πνοι, μχθοι, ἄθλοι, γνεϲ) of the warrior Hero with his bow, club and other weaponry are retrospectively evoked and further enacted. Repeated emphasis on this kind of ‘noble toil’ accords with the heroic definition of ρετ, which traditionally βανει διμχθω–8 the first strophe of the long First Stasimon in honour of Heracles (presumed to be dead) ends with:

ὑμνῆϲαι ϲτεφνωμα μ–

χθων δι' εὐλογαϲ θλω

γενναων δ' ρετα πνων

τοῖϲ θανοϲιν ἄγαλμα.

Heracles par excellence merits the title πολπονοϲ and for their individual greatness. πολυ- can mean either ‘much-’, so that it suffices for Amphitryon at 1190ff. to mention a single especially grand and godlike Labour:

AM.μϲ μϲ ὂδε γνοϲ ὂ πολπονοϲ, <ὂϲ> π

δρυ γιγαντοφνον ἥλθεν ϲὺν θεοῖ-

ϲι Φλεγραῖον ϲ πεδον ϲπιϲτϲ

This we may call the ‘epic’ view of the hero and of the πνοι performed by him cw ϲὺν θεοῖϲ. πνοϲ is normally martial in the Iliad.4 Note also, however, that the terminal ϲπιϲτϲ adds an allusion to the kind of martial ρετ most admired by 5th-century Athenians.