L’ALIBI DI ORESTE: L’ANDROMACA DI EURIPIDE, DIDIMO CALCENTERO E DITTI CRETESE*

Abstract

The present paper aims to show that ancient writers and critics discussed the plausibility of the events that
were not narrated or shown onstage. The Andromache of Euripides presents notorious problems in the
reconstruction of off-stage events: does Orestes return to Delphi to kill Neoptolemus? Or was he in Thessaly
with Hermione, Neoptolemus’ wife, when Neoptolemus was killed by his associates? Could Orestes
cover the distance to Delphi in time? Modern interpreters offer different reconstructions of the off-stage
events: some accept Orestes’ alibi, others do not. This paper argues that Euripides’ text purposely created
two possible parallel narrative worlds and played on the ambiguity in order to downplay Orestes’ culpability.
The paper also shows that ancient critics, especially Didymus, noticed some of the incongruities of the
off-stage action presupposed by the play. Finally, the paper argues that an ancient writer, Dictys of Crete, in
his Ephemeris belli Troiani, was aware of the narrative difficulties noted in the scholia as well as others that
are not discussed in the extant scholia (and were possibly discussed in other sections of ancient commentaries
that are now lost). Dictys chose to narrate the events of the play in a way that shows awareness of both
versions and of the logistic difficulties of Orestes and stressed that Orestes’ alibi was false.