4. Stagecraft

Abstract

First published in 1971, this early second-century papyrus, POxy. 2805, was soon identified as coming from Sophocles’ Niobe. It portrays the killing of Niobe's children by Apollo and Artemis during a tragic drama, the staging of which, as we will see, seems to have been among Sophocles’ most striking dramatic creations. This killing, an unvarying element of the myth, was punishment for Niobe's boast that she had borne many children (fourteen, seven sons and seven daughters, is the number specified in Sophocles’ play: fr. 446), Leto only two. A further papyrus, from a mummy case at El-Hibeh (though quite possibly written at Oxyrhynchus) and dated to between 280 and 240 bc, PGrenf. ii.6(a)+PHib. 11, is from the same drama. Aeschylus wrote a Niobe, set after the killings; Euripides is not known to have written such a play. That leaves Sophocles’ Niobe (whose citation fragments indicate that it included the killings) or a play by a minor tragedian; but it is much more likely that two papyri of a Sophoclean drama should survive, from different times and perhaps places too, than that a work by another tragedian should be so unexpectedly favoured. A decade after Barrett argued this, a hypothesis of Sophocles’ play was published which refers to the event described in POxy. 2805: case closed.