Euripides’ Telephus

This paper offers a hypothetical reconstruction of Euripides' lost Telephus, burlesqued in Aristophanes' Acharnians and Thesmophoriazusae. It defends the position that Telephus defended the Trojans, and suggests that Telephus made two defence speeches: one in defence of the Trojans, another in defence of Telephus himself.

Whom did Telephus defend in Telephus? We know that he defended himself; fr. 710 proves that. It is widely, and I believe rightly, held that he defended the Trojans also; but this has been denied by some scholars, most recently by David Sansone in an article on the date of Herodotus’ publication. In the first part of this paper I shall comment on Sansone’s arguments and offer a defence of the conventional view; I shall then make some rather speculative suggestions concerning the reconstruction of the play