A curious find: ΧÏ￾ίστος Πάσχων

[annis]

A few days ago, while looking for something completely different on GoogleBorgBooks, I unearthed a very curious thing. The title in Latin is Christus patiens, tragoedia Gregorio Nazianzeno falso attributa.

It's the Passion in the style of an Attic tragedy. Well, the chorus just speaks in trimeters, too, so no choral song. What shocked me about it is that Mary (ΘΕΟΤΟΚΟΣ) starts off so:

εἴθ’ ὤφελ’ á¼￾ν λειμῶνι μηδ’ ἕÏ￾πειν ὄφις,
μηδ’ á¼￾ν νάπαισι τοῦδ’ ὑφεδÏ￾εÏ￾ειν δÏ￾άκων
ἀγκυλομήτης·

Anyone who has read Medea in Greek is going to feel strong echos of the opening lines of that play when reading this. The play isn't quite a cento, but there are lots of lines that echo something from one of the three major tragedians. The first set of footnotes in the text lay out parallels.

Anyway, here it is: ΧΡΙΣΤΟΣ ΠΑΣΧΩÎ￾. I haven't read it too much, but what I have browsed seems generally easier than the models so many lines take inspiration from.

[Didymus]

As a point of perhaps some general interest, the Christus Patiens is especially important for textual criticism of the Bacchae.