Vidi ego te, adstante ope barbarica,
Tectis cælatis, laqueatis,
Auro, ebore instructum regifice.
Hæc omnia vidi inflammari,
Priamo vi vitam evitari,
Jovis aram sanguine turpari[167].”
Andromache Molottus is translated from the Andromache of Euripides, and is so called from Molottus, the son of Neoptolemus and Andromache.
Andromeda. Livius Andronicus had formerly written a Latin play on the well-known story of Perseus and Andromeda, which was translated from Sophocles. The play of Ennius, however, on the same subject, was a version of a tragedy of Euripides, now chiefly known from the ridicule cast on it in the fifth act of Aristophanes’ Feasts of Ceres. That Ennius’ drama was translated from Euripides, is sufficiently manifest, from a comparison of its fragments with the passages of the Greek Andromeda, preserved by Stobæus.
Athamas. There is only one short fragment of this play now extant.
Cresphontes. Merope, believing that her son Cresphontes had been slain by a person who was brought before her, discovers, when about to avenge on him the death of her child, that she whom she had mistaken for the murderer is Cresphontes himself.