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.