Attending Euripides: Philo of Alexandria's Dramatic Appropriations

Philo of Alexandria speaks with fondness of his experience in the audience at a performance of Euripides, and throughout his corpus he quotes from this playwright on 21 occasions and from 10 different plays. As a writer whose driving interest was the exposition of Jewish scriptures in conjunction with Hellenistic philosophy, Philo's repeated recourse to tragedy is noteworthy and illustrative of his intellectual milieu. This study will consider why and how Philo deploys Euripides. Most often, his quotations are gnomic sayings and philosophical proof texts which were common currency among contemporary writers.With respect to at least one drama, however, the satyr-play Syleus, Philo engages in a more extensive discussion of its context, producing a string of five fragments, four of which are unattested elsewhere. By surveying his use of Euripides, I aim to make evident the extent to which Philo was dependent upon received philosophical and literary sources, along with moments of his own innovation as he reads Attic drama in connection with his distinctive Jewish religious commitments.