Archaic heroism in Euripides' Scyrians

This paper analyzes how Euripides reworked the myth of Achilles at Scyros in the Scyrians, one of his lost tragedies. After a brief discussion about the sources and the structure of the Scyros-episode, I focus on the dramatist’s treatment of the theme of heroism, which emerges from frr. 683a and 880 Kn., where Odysseus makes use of traditional heroic topoi in order to persuade Achilles to leave. By means of a comparison between what we can infer about Achilles’ characterization in the play and other Euripidean heroic models or antimodels, I try to outline an evolution in the playwright’s poetics and ideology about this topic. By doing so, we may find new insight into the dating of the tragedy, usually placed in the first part of Euripides’ career, but on very uncertain grounds.