ABSTRACT

Recognition of identity is a fundamental aspect of Menandrian drama, resulting in the unravelling of a knotty impasse in the play. In Epitrepontes, the gradual revelation that Charisios had in fact made his own future wife pregnant at the nocturnal Tauropolia festival solves the problem of their separation owing to her supposedly illegitimate baby. In Perikeiromene, the establishment of the parentage of Glykera and her brother Moschion paves the way to reconciliation and then marriage between the estranged Glykera and her lover Polemon. These recognitions are classic examples of Aristotelian anagnorisis, recognized in the Poetics as an important element in tragic drama, bringing about a reversal in the action. 1 In Sophokles’ Elektra, for example, no less than in Euripides’ plays of ‘catastrophe survived’, recognition of identity is an important springboard to dramatic resolution. In Euripides IT, Iphigeneia’s letter serves to identify her to her captive brother Orestes, destined for the sacrificial altar, and the two can abscond. 2 In the Ion, late recognition of Ion as Kreousa’s son saves the young man from death in the nick of time, allowing him to found the Ionian line. As Satyros says, and many have recognized, it seems that Menander was Euripides’ heir in the exploitation of this plot element of lost baby and identification in adulthood by way of salvation:

Or the matter of reversals, [involving] rapes of girls, babies foisted on others, recognitions by rings and jewelry—these are the stock-intrade of New Comedy, which [things] Euripides had brought to perfection: ἢ τ[̣ ὰ κ]α̣τὰ τὰς π̣[ερι]πετείας, β[̣ ια]σμοὺς παρθ[έ]νων, ὑποβολὰς παιδίων, ἀναγνωρισμοὺς διά τε δακτυλίων καὶ διὰ δεραίων, ταυ̃τα γάρ ἐστι δήπου τὰ συνέχοντα τὴν νεωτέραν κωμωιδίαν, ἃ πρὸς ἄκρον ἤ̣γα[γ] εν Εὐριπίδης 3