This article deals with a mosaic from ancient Zeugma on the Euphrates found in 2002 and recently published with interpretive commentary. Its subject is the story of Theonoe and Leukippe preserved only in Hyginus and nowhere in Greek. Despite this, the authors argue that the myth, in its unique form, can for over one thousand years be connected with romance, mime, pantomime, tragedy and derives ultimately from early Cretan rituals of transvestism. Its immediate inspiration however is imperial pantomime along with (...) the transvestism notorious in that genre, as can be argued from the layout of the mosaic and the iconography of Theonoe, our first clear picture of a pantomime. But the main thrust of the article, especially in appendix B, is to demonstrate that the Hyginus story must now be considered to represent the plot of a lost tragedy, which derived many of its elements from late Euripides, but in its over-enthusiasic use of these represents a post-Euripidean artificially complex plot-type, for which hitherto we had limited evidence. (shrink)

I give the text as printed by James Diggle in his new Oxford Classical Text. His deletion of 1570–6 is rejected by Donald Mastronarde in his recent commentary. Apart from this, Mastronarde's text differs from Diggle's on only a couple of minor points which are immaterial to the main problems.

Professor M. L. West has challenged the accepted reading and proposed, 145). This makes for a disappointing antithesis, and Paley seems to have been right in pointing out that would be surprising as an object to tragic diction, at least, seems to use only pronouns, adjectives, or nouns which stand as internal accusatives etc.; fr. adesp.