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Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters
volume VIII (1888-1891)
Van Cleef, F. L.
The pseudo-Gregorian drama Christus Patiens in its relation to the text of Euripides, pp. 363-378
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Page 363
'.NM,,"A RWAYS % t The Pseudo-Gregorian Drama Christus Patiens. 363 THE PSEUDO-GREGORIAN DRAMA Xptdro0 iidxen IN ITS RELATION TO THE TEXT OF EURIPIDES. BY F. L. VAN CLEEF, PH. D. PART I.-- THE BACCHAE. The Christian Drama Xpidvor5 HofXxcav, which by its superscription is ascribed to Gregorius Nazianzenus, has been clearly shown by Dcering and Brambs not to be in accord with the other writings of Gregorius and assignable not to him but to a much later writer. Deering' attributed it to Tzetzes-but Brambs,2 who has most recently and most thoroughly studied the problem, assigns it with seemingly greater right to Theo- dorus Prodromus or an author of that period, i. e. of the 11th or 12th century. The drama is a cento constructed of lines taken from the Prometheus and Agamemnon of Aeschylus, the Cassandra of Lycophron, the Holy Scriptures including Genesis, Exodus, the Psalms, the four Gospels, the letters of Paul and even the Apocryphal books; but mainly, as the writer acknowledges in his introduction (v. 3 sq.), from Euripides, of whom he has used seven plays known to us, Hecuba, Orestes, Medea, Hippolytus, Troades, Rhesus and Bacchae. From these plays it is evident that the MS. of Euripides, that the writer had in his possession, must have been the second of the two classes, into which Kirchhoff has divided our existing MSS. of Euripides, and that no more plays were used may be accounted for on the supposition that the MS. used by the writer contained only the seven above-mentioned plays, with which were perhaps bound the two men- tioned plays of Aeschylus and the Cassandra of Lycophron. That the writer had no other plays of Euripides before him seems certain from the fact that he has plundered these in a most thorough manner, not con- 1De tragoedia Christiana quae inscribitur Xpi6ro5 HIC6Xcn, Realschul- prog. Barmen, 1864, p. 8. 2De auctoritate tragoediae Christianae quae inscribi solet Xpi6ro5 llCY6Xcsy Gregorio Nazianzeno falso attributae. Diss. inaug. scripsit J. G. Brambs, Eichstadii, 1883, p. 64. Cf. also the Praefatio of Brambs' edi- tion of the Christus Patiens, Teubner, 1885, p. 17 sqq.
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