ABSTRACT
Alexis Piron's first and third tragedies, both much less successful than Gustave Wasa, share with it and with each other enough common features to make it sensible to consider them together. Nevertheless, in the matter of its treatment of its source text, Callisthène does show significant differences from its successors, most obviously by being expanded from a very brief original, rather than compressed from lengthy histories as we have seen with Gustave Wasa and will encounter again with Fernand Cortés. Piron identifies its source as a single paragraph from the Históriáé Philippicae of Marcus Junianus Justinus. This is Piron's translation of that paragraph, which he also quotes in the original Latin, in the preface of 1758. Piron, whose subsequent tragedies are packed with events, clearly found straightforward to fill five acts, so he complicates things by repetition — a sequence of reprieves that increase the suspense over the fate of Callisthène.
