Orestes Papyrus

Text

The full text of the fragment reads as follows:

[κατολοφύρομαι, κατολοφ]ύρομαι,
ματέρος [αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ’ ἀναβα]κχεύει,
ὁ μέγ[ας ὄλβος οὐ μόνιμο]ς ἐν βροτοῖς,
ἀνὰ [δὲ λαῖφος ὥς τις ἀκά]του θο[ᾶς] τιν[άξας δαίμων],
κατέκλυσεν [δεινῶν πόνων] ὡς πόντ[ου
λάβροις ὀλεθρίοισιν ἐν κύμασιν]

(I cry, I cry, your mother’s blood that drives you mad, great happiness in mortals never lasting, but like a sail of a swift ship, which a god shook up and plunged it with terrible troubles into the greedy and deadly waves of sea.)

The arrangement of the fragmentary text differs from traditional versions because the words "κατολοφύρομαι, κατολοφύρομαι" (''I cry, I cry'') come before the sentence "ματέρος αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ’ ἀναβακχεύει" (''your mother's blood that drives you mad''). Due to this, the lines could instead be read as "ματέρος αἷμα σᾶς, ὅ σ’ ἀναβακχεύει, κατολοφύρομαι, κατολοφύρομαι" (''your mother's blood that drives you mad, I cry, I cry''). This was likely a mistake from the scribe who copied the play.

Poetic features

The metre of the song is mainly dochmiac. The preserved vocal notes coincide with the ancient Dorian or Phrygian harmoniai transmitted by Aristides Quintilianus, the Damonian harmoniai, in enharmonic genus, which was usual in tragedies from the fifth century BCE.

Authorship

Whether this fragment represents the original music Euripides composed in 408 BCE is an open question, given the absence of fifth century BCE musical inscriptions. The fragment accords with observations by Dionysius of Halicarnassus and Aristophanes about the complexity of the Euripidean style.