¹ Clement of Alexandria (late second / early third century c.e.) quotes four verses from Plato Comicus’ Ἑορταί; see fr. 27 Chadwick, K.–A. H., ‘Florilegium’, in Klauser, T. et al. (edd.), Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum (Stuttgart, 1969), cols. 1131–60, at 1144–5Google Scholar, however, argues that most citations of poetry in Clement must derive from anthologies. At any rate, Plato Comicus must have been widely read at least until the first century b.c.e.; see below with n. 63.

² For this possibility, see also below (penultimate paragraph). Farmer, M., Tragedy on the Comic Stage (Oxford, 2017), 92–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar suggests that, while the titles of several comedies by Plato Comicus seem to indicate tragic parody, the evidence is ‘slender and problematic’. For the practice of parodying or travestying mythical tragedy in late Old and early Middle Comedy and how this may have led to the birth of New Comedy, see Nesselrath, H.-G., ‘Parody and later Greek comedy’, HSPh 95 (1992), 181–95Google Scholar. A hexameter poem on Europa is mentioned in Paus. 9.5.8, but we unfortunately know nothing about its content.

³ The text printed in the most recent edition—Pirotta, S., Plato Comicus. Die fragmentarischen Komödien. Ein Kommentar (Berlin, 2009)Google Scholar—is identical to K.–A. The translation is taken from Storey, I., Fragments of Old Comedy (Cambridge, Mass., 2011)Google Scholar.

⁴ Kassel and Austin explain: ‘βίνου παροψίδας intellege τὸ προσκινεῖσθαι et quae fusius enarrat Ar. Lys. 227–231.’

⁵ On the limitations of attempts to put lost comedies back together based on snippets from Athenaeus, see Olson, S.D., ‘Athenaeus’ Aristophanes and the problem of reconstructing lost comedies’, in Chronopoulos, S. and Orth, C. (edd.), Fragmente einer Geschichte der griechischen Komödie / Fragmentary History of Greek Comedy (Heidelberg, 2015), 35–65Google Scholar.

⁶ See, especially, the commentaries of Bühler, W., Die Europa des Moschos (Wiesbaden, 1960), on vv. 8–15Google Scholar; Hopkinson, N., A Hellenistic Anthology (Cambridge, 1988), 201Google Scholar; Campbell, M., Moschus. Europa (Hildesheim, 1991), 7Google Scholar.

⁷ See Fantuzzi, M. and Hunter, R., Tradition and Innovation in Hellenistic Poetry (Cambridge, 2004), 216Google Scholar.

⁸ For the unwilling Io of [Aesch.]’ PV as a foil against which Moschus’ Europa appears all the more active and passionate, see Schmiel, R., ‘Moschus’ Europa’, CPh 76 (1981), 261–72, at 267–9Google Scholar, who also suggests that Moschus’ heroine is more ‘liberated’ in comparison to both Nausicaa and Medea. Io is, of course, depicted on Europa's flower-basket (vv. 43–62).

⁹ See Kuhlmann, P., ‘Moschos’ Europa zwischen Artifizialität und Klassizismus. Der Mythos als verkehrte Welt’, RhM 147 (2004), 276–93, at 288Google Scholar; cf. id., ‘The motif of the rape of Europa: intertextuality and absurdity of the myth in epyllion and epic insets’, in Bär, S. and Baumbach, M. (edd.), Brill's Companion to Greek and Latin Epyllion and its Reception (Leiden and Boston, 2012), 473–90, at 478Google Scholar.

¹⁰ See Merriam, C., The Development of the Epyllion Genre through the Hellenistic and Roman Periods (Lewiston, 2001), 63–4Google Scholar.

¹¹ On the domestic colouring of Plato Comicus’ plays, see Rosen, R., ‘Plato Comicus and the evolution of Greek comedy’, in Dobrov, G. (ed.), Beyond Aristophanes: Transition and Diversity in Greek Comedy (Atlanta, 1995), 119–37Google Scholar.

¹² For Europa's loneliness, see Sistakou, E., ‘The dynamics of space in Moschus’ Europa’, Aitia 6 (2016)Google Scholar [URL: http://aitia.revues.org/1482], 13–15. For a comic Zeus preparing to seduce or rape a lonely heroine at night, see the fourth-century b.c.e. Paestan phlyax vase which shows the god advancing with a ladder towards Alcmene's bedroom window, while Hermes lights the way with a lamp (Vatican Museums 17106). Plato Comicus’ Νὺξ Μακρά must have also included such scenes of nocturnal action.

¹³ See LSJ, which gives the following examples: Hdt. 3.85 (ἐπῆκε ὀχεῦσαι τὸν ἵππον) and 4.30 (σφι ἐν τῇ τῶν πέλας ἐπιεῖσι τοὺς ὄνους), and Arist. Hist. an. 630b33 (ὁ ἐπιμελητὴς περικαλύψας τὴν μητέρα ἐφῆκε τὸν πῶλον).

¹⁴ Contrast τὸ … ὄνειρον in v. 17. For the poem's ‘constant interplay between the language applicable to animals and that applicable to men’, see Fantuzzi and Hunter (n. 7), 219. A metaphor from the semantic field of pasture-animals already appears in this first section of the poem, where the ‘true’ dreams seen in the third part of the night are said to ‘roam afield’ (v. 5: ποιμαίνεται); see Hopkinson's (n. 6) comm. ad loc.

¹⁵ For the possible hint of sexual excitement in ἀνεπτοίησαν ὄνειροι (v. 23), see Bühler's (n. 6) comm. ad loc. For the idea that Europa's (sexual) attraction to a woman can contribute to the poem's humour, see Kuhlmann (n. 9 [2004]), 279–80.

¹⁶ Smart, J., ‘Intertextual dynamics in Moschus’ Europa’, Arethusa 45 (2012), 43–55, at 53CrossRefGoogle Scholar argues that Moschus’ poem ‘has “smoothed over” Persephone-like moments of suffering, a strategy in which Europa is herself made to collude’.

¹⁷ The ‘foreign’ woman is, of course, more powerful because she ‘is’ (or prefigures) Zeus, but the orientalizing view of Europe as manly and of Asia as effeminate could also play a role here.

¹⁸ See Fantuzzi and Hunter (n. 7), 217, who also point out that this re-imagining of the dream ‘exploits a doubleness in the Greek male view of female sexuality’, although the dominant interpretation will be, at the end, the one that Europa herself appears to support: that ‘no woman is carried off “unwillingly”’ (219). Campbell (n. 6), 24 also points out that this is the language ‘conventionally associated with violent acts of rape’.

¹⁹ On the enargeia of Europa's dream, see Paschalis, M., ‘Etymology and enargeia: re-reading Moschus’ Europa (vis-à-vis Hor. C. 3.27)’, in Nifadopoulos, C. (ed.), Etymologia. Studies in Ancient Etymology (Münster, 2003), 153–63, at 153–5Google Scholar, who also draws a connection between Europa's ‘wide-open’ eyes in v. 18 and the ancient etymologizing of her name.

²⁰ See v. 21 (τίς μοι τοιάδε φάσματ' ἐπουρανίων προΐηλεν;), where φάσμα can refer to a dream or apparition.

²¹ Europa's brief speech in vv. 21–7 begins with three consecutive questions: τίς μοι τοιάδε φάσματ' ἐπουρανίων προΐηλεν; | ποῖοί με στρωτῶν λεχέων ὕπερ ἐν θαλάμοισιν | ἡδὺ μάλα κνώσσουσαν ἀνεπτοίησαν ὄνειροι; | τίς δ' ἦν ἡ ξείνη τὴν εἴσιδον ὑπνώουσα;

²² See H. Morales, ‘Rape, violence, complicity: Colluthus’ Abduction of Helen’, Arethusa 49 (2016), 61–92, at 70–1 and 87.

²³ Morales (n. 22), 70–1.

²⁴ Skutsch, O., The Annals of Ennius. Edited with Introduction and Commentary (Oxford, 1985), 194Google Scholar notes: ‘strange though it may seem, we must imagine Ennius made Mars visit Ilia in her bedchamber, and that her awakening and telling of her dream followed his departure.’ He convincingly argues that it is unlikely that the actual rape would have been narrated elsewhere in the poem. In Ovid's version (Fast. 3.11–42) Ilia falls asleep by a river, where Mars rapes her while she has a symbolic dream. For Zeus visiting a heroine in her bedroom at night, see n. 12 above. Several centuries later, Nonnus’ Zeus also waits for nightfall, so that he can rape Semele in her bedroom, in an episode which clearly echoes Moschus; see Dion. 7.282–368.

²⁵ The verb used is raptare (v. 39), in which—as Skutsch (n. 24), 198 notes—‘there is the merest hint of her rape’.

²⁶ Much has been written on the coherence of the ode; see, for example, Wilson, A., ‘The path of indirection: Horace's Odes 3.27 and 1.7’, CW 63 (1969), 44–6Google Scholar; Cairns, F., Generic Composition in Greek and Roman Poetry (Edinburgh, 1972), 66–9 and 189–92Google Scholar; Bradshaw, A., ‘Horace and the therapeutic myth: Odes 3,7; 3,11; and 3,27’, Hermes 106 (1978), 156–76Google Scholar; Clay, J. Strauss, ‘providus auspex: Horace Ode 3.27’, CJ 88 (1993), 167–77Google Scholar; Paschalis (n. 19), 162–3; the overview in Nisbet, R. and Rudd, N., Horace: Odes Book III (Oxford, 2004), 319–20Google Scholar; and, more recently, Mitchell, E., ‘Horace, Odes 3.27: a new world for Galatea’, CCJ 58 (2012), 165–80Google Scholar. I offer my own view below.

²⁷ Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc. note that niueum is ‘a picturesque touch’, reminiscent of other depictions of half-naked heroines and ‘owing much to works of art’. Horace's actual description of Europa on the bull is much briefer than those of Moschus (vv. 115–30), Ovid (Met. 2.868–75, Fast. 5.605–14), Achilles Tatius (1.1.10–13) and Nonnus (Dion. 1.65–90).

²⁸ Text and translation by Williams, G., The Third Book of Horace's Odes (Oxford, 1969)Google Scholar.

²⁹ For the opening ekphrasis of Achilles Tatius as a ‘bivalent painting’ that can be viewed as an image of Europa and an image of Selene, see Morales, H., Vision and Narrative in Achilles Tatius’ Leucippe and Clitophon (Cambridge, 2004), 38–48Google Scholar.

³⁰ By contrast, in Moschus (vv. 162–3) Zeus-bull and Europa reach Crete without any mention of nightfall.

³¹ Williams (n. 28), 138.

³² At v. 38 she speaks of uirginum culpae and in the following line she says that what she has done is a turpe commissum; the terms might suggest loss of virginity, but this has not been described, nor will it be—see Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc.

³³ Moschus’ Europa too asks three questions in the speech following her dream; see n. 21 above.

³⁴ See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), ad loc.

³⁵ A point made briefly by Paschalis (n. 19), 162–3 n. 34. It is widely accepted that one model for Horace's Europa is Catullus’ Ariadne (another woman bemoaning her fate on a foreign shore), who, in 64.55–6 (necdum etiam sese quae uisit uisere credit, | utpote fallaci quae tunc primum excita somno) cannot yet believe that she is seeing what she sees, ‘since she has just been roused from deceptive sleep’. Although there are no verbal echoes, a reader might indeed recall this model, in which sleep is itself deceptive, with no need for false dreams. It might be significant, therefore, that the traumatic event in Ariadne's case, her abandonment, happened while she was asleep and unable to react. For allusions to Catullus’ Ariadne in Horace's Europa, see, among others, Mendell, C., ‘Catullan echoes in the Odes of Horace’, CPh 30 (1935), 289–301, at 290–4Google Scholar; and Berres, T., ‘Zur Europaode des Horaz (c. 3,27)’, Hermes 102 (1974), 58–86, at 85–6Google Scholar. Readers who recognized the allusions to Ariadne, a figure stereotypically represented as asleep or just waking up, might more easily suspect that Horace's Europa is also asleep.

³⁶ See Bühler (n. 6), 20–4, who argues that Horace reshaped Moschus’ version, but also had other sources in mind; cf. Lowrie, M., Horace's Narrative Odes (Oxford, 1997), 309Google Scholar. For the opposite view, see Berres (n. 35).

³⁷ Williams (n. 28), 140.

³⁸ See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc.; in their summary of the poem (317), they rewrite this verse as ‘“Wretched Europa”, I imagine my father saying’. Lowrie (n. 36), 309 claims that ‘Europa apostrophizes her absent father’, which is clearly not the case. A reader might attribute the speech to Europa herself after reading, later on, that Venus was present by her side during her lament (v. 66: aderat querenti)—her father's speech might be perceived as being part of that lament. But this verse could equally raise the possibility that it is the goddess (present, by Europa's side) who either impersonates her absent father or sends the vision to her; more on this below.

³⁹ The vocabulary of absence and the paradox of ‘absent presence’ are especially pertinent in the context of dreams, as Ovid's poetry will later show. See, for example, Her. 13.107–12 and 15.125 with the comments in Hardie, P., Ovid's Poetics of Illusion (Cambridge, 2002), 133–7Google Scholar, and 138 for dreams which substitute for sexual intercourse.

⁴⁰ See Skutsch (n. 24), 199–200 for the argument that Aeneas does not speak to Ilia coram but remains invisible throughout the dream.

⁴¹ The only explanation for the presence of Venus that has been offered thus far has to do with a fragment from Pherecydes, transmitted in the V-scholia on Od. 11.322, in which Aphrodite appears to Ariadne while she is lamenting her abandonment by Theseus, and consoles her, telling her that she is to be the wife of Dionysus, and will become famous (Διονύσου γὰρ ἔσεσθαι γυναῖκα, καὶ εὐκλεῆ γενέσθαι). See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. on 74–5; cf. S. Harrison, Generic Enrichment in Vergil and Horace (Oxford, 2007), 197, who argues that the narrative pattern suggests a literary text, which may even have been Hesiod's Catalogue of Women.

⁴² For the conventional, and occasionally enigmatic, smiles of Venus, see Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc., with references to Hes. Theog. 205 and Theoc. Id. 1.96, where Aphrodite smiles treacherously.

⁴³ Anth. Lat. 14.35 Reise: perfidus, alta petens abducta uirgine praedo (= Verg. Aen. 7.362). On this poem, see McGill, S., Virgil Recomposed: The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity (Oxford, 2005), 83–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Catullus’ Ariadne (for whose influence on Horace's Europa see n. 35 above) calls Theseus perfide twice in the first two lines of her lament (64.132–3).

⁴⁴ The absence of an aetiological coda at the end of Moschus’ Europa has led some critics to consider the poem incomplete; see Hopkinson (n. 6), 215–16 with arguments against that view. On the undeveloped aetiological theme, see also Hunter, R., ‘Theocritus and Moschus’, in de Jong, I., Nünlist, R. and Bowie, A. (edd.), Narrators, Narratees, and Narratives in Ancient Greek Literature (Leiden, 2004), 84–97, at 96Google Scholar; more recently, Morrison, A., ‘Erotic battles? Love, power-politics and cosmic significance in Moschus’ Europa and Eros on the Run’, in Clauss, J., Cuypers, M. and Kahane, A. (edd.), The Gods of Greek Hexameter Poetry: From the Archaic Age to Late Antiquity and Beyond (Stuttgart, 2016), 197–211, at 200–3Google Scholar detects a contrast between the suppressed aetiology in Moschus’ poems and the strongly aetiological narratives of the Homeric Hymns.

⁴⁵ For the suggestion that Venus’ satiety is metapoetical, intended to bring the poem to its close, see Lowrie (n. 36), 313. Berres (n. 35), 81 suggests that behind the smiling Venus are the knowing reader and Horace himself. For a metapoetic reading of the whole poem, see Kilpatrick, R., ‘Remember us, Galatea: Horace, Carm. 3.27’, GB 3 (1975), 191–204Google Scholar, who argues that Europa represents the book collection which Horace is reluctantly sending on its journey.

⁴⁶ On this passage and the transition it marks between the simulacra of dreams and the hallucination of love, see Hardie (n. 39), 158–9; the text and translation are taken from there.

⁴⁷ For the furor of erotic love in Lucretius, see especially Brown, R., Lucretius on Love and Sex: A Commentary on De Rerum Natura 4.1030–1247 (Leiden, 1987)Google Scholar. For the Epicureanism of Horace, especially in relation to sex, see, most recently, Kemp, J., ‘Fools rush in: sex, “the mean” and Epicureanism in Horace, Satires 1.2’, CCJ 62 (2016), 130–46Google Scholar.

⁴⁸ For the whole mythological section of the poem as a warning to Galatea, see, for example, Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), 319–20 and 330; and Harrison (n. 41), 193–4. For the view that Galatea and Europa represent every young girl on the brink of sexual maturity, see Strauss Clay (n. 26), who argues that Horace assumes here the role of an auspex nuptiarum, allaying the future bride's fears and assuring her of the happy outcome. For similar universalizing elements in Moschus’ poem, see Fantuzzi and Hunter (n. 7), 216 and 219. Heldmann, K., Europa und der Stier oder der Brautraub des Zeus. Die Entführung Europas in den Darstellungen der griechischen und römischen Antike (Göttingen, 2016), 129–30 and 156–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar follows Strauss Clay in seeing here a positive message for Galatea, but bases his reading on the assumption that the rape of Europa in Graeco-Roman sources before Nonnus always represents a ‘Brautraub’ (meaning that Europa will become the god's wife). To my mind, ‘Brautraub’ might lie at the primitive roots of the myth, but does not apply to either Moschus (who mentions the jealous Hera in v. 77) or Horace.

⁴⁹ See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc.

⁵⁰ Williams (n. 28), 141 goes on to argue that such an interpretation fits in well with Horace's consistent attitude towards the legendary and supernatural: ‘here, as elsewhere, he introduces an element of rationalizing which, without destroying the traditional features of the basic legend or warping them into a crude “explanation”, yet relieves the poet from the necessity of reproducing legends simpliciter, as if he took them at face value.’

⁵¹ On the difficulties of this sentence, see the extensive discussion in Berres (n. 35), 59–60 and 72–4, with further bibliography, and, more recently, Sticker, I., ‘uxor invicti Iovis. Zur Funktion des Europamythos in Horaz’ Ode 3,27’, Hermes 142 (2014), 404–17, at 408Google Scholar.

⁵² See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. ad loc. On the other hand, West, D., Horace, Odes III. Dulce Periculum: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford, 2002), 232–3Google Scholar prefers the first interpretation, detecting ‘a number of oddities with Greek flavour’ in Venus’ words.

⁵³ See Williams (n. 28), 139–40.

⁵⁴ Contrast Aphrodite prophesying to Ariadne Διονύσου γὰρ ἔσεσθαι γυναῖκα in the fragment from Pherecydes cited at n. 41 above.

⁵⁵ See Lowrie (n. 36), 311, especially n. 109, for scholarly attempts to deal with this problem.

⁵⁶ Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. on 50 suggest that, if Jupiter has already raped her, she might be reluctant to mention it explicitly (it could be added, especially if he did so as a bull). But that still does not explain why this is not otherwise indicated in the text.

⁵⁷ For Ennius’ Ilia being either ‘carried off’ or ‘raped’ by Mars, see n. 25 above.

⁵⁸ For one such case, see Fraenkel, E., Horace (Oxford, 1957), 194Google Scholar, who argues for ‘unmitigated seriousness’.

⁵⁹ For the propemptikon as a spoof on the technicalities of augury, see Williams (n. 28), 138; also, in more detail, West (n. 52), 225–9, who sees it (and the rest of the poem) as a burlesque. For its connections with love-elegy, see Harrison (n. 41), 194, who also notes that Europa's words evoke ‘the world of clever declamation’ (195).

⁶⁰ For parody of epyllion, see Büchner, K., ‘Review of Perfidum ridens Venus. L'ode III 27 di Orazio con versione ritmica ed esegesi by Corso Buscaroli’, Gnomon 14 (1938), 636–9, at 639Google Scholar, with criticism in Berres (n. 35), 83–6. Cf. West (n. 52), 234. For para-tragedy, see below.

⁶¹ See Harrison, S., ‘A tragic Europa? Horace Odes 3.27’, Hermes 116 (1988), 427–34Google Scholar. Fraenkel (n. 58), 194 had already noted that the beginning of Europa's monologue adopts a pattern from Attic tragedy (‘a passionate utterance is after the first phrase interrupted by the speaker himself, who is carried away by the feeling that what he has been saying is wrong because it is not true or only partially true and in any case does not go to the root of his grief’), which can also be found in Terence (Haut. 93).

⁶² See Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), comm. on 45–6; cf. Lowrie (n. 36), 312 n. 112, with further bibliography.

⁶³ For this inscription, see T18 K.–A.

⁶⁴ For Europa as ‘hysterical’, see Berres (n. 35), 72; Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), 320 and 332. West (n. 52), 230 calls her a ‘silly girl’. For the poem as ‘spoof’, see West (n. 52), 229, and as ‘melodrama’, see Nisbet and Rudd (n. 26), 320; cf. Harrison (n. 41), 196 (‘hyperbolic melodrama’). For the poem's tone as ‘pseudo-serious’, see Wilson (n. 26), 44.

⁶⁵ For Menander as a playwright who draws attention to the suffering of his raped heroines, see, for example, Bathrellou, E., ‘Menander's Epitrepontes and the festival of the Tauropolia’, ClAnt 31 (2012), 151–92, at 176–7Google Scholar.

⁶⁶ Lowrie (n. 36), 308–9 argues that Europa misidentifies the story-pattern she is in: she is the ‘innocent girl raped by a god’, but behaves as if she is the ‘bad girl who chooses an all too mortal foreign lover over her family and father, and is abandoned by him’.

⁶⁷ See Campbell (n. 6), 23. This one-line fragment (= 1018 Nauck) is transmitted in the scholia to Aesch. Pers. 181 and in [Herodian], who quotes it as an example of the construction ἔδοξα ἰδεῖν, which is used to report dreams. Nauck thought that the verse should not be attributed to Sophocles but to a comic poet parodying Aeschylus; this opinion, however, has not found much support among critics; see comm. by Radt ad loc.

⁶⁸ See Fantuzzi and Hunter (n. 7), 216.

⁶⁹ See Strauss Clay (n. 26).

⁷⁰ Zeitlin, F., ‘Configurations of rape in Greek myth’, in Tomaselli, S. and Porter, R. (edd.), Rape (Oxford and New York, 1986), 122–51, at 142Google Scholar attributes this dichotomy to a system which ‘seems incapable of imagining (or allowing) reciprocal desire between the sexes, whether within or without the boundaries of marriage’.

⁷¹ I take this expression from Higgins, L.A. and Silver, B.R. (edd.), Rape and Representation (New York, 1991), 4Google Scholar.

⁷² For many stimulating discussions on New Comedy and rape I should like to thank Eftychia Bathrellou, who also read and commented on the final draft of this article. For their careful reading and helpful suggestions, I thank Anna Lefteratou and the anonymous reviewer for CQ.