Performing and Informing: On the Prologues of the [Euripidean] Rhesus

This paper investigates the two prologues that prefaced the Rhesus according to an ancient Hypothesis to the play (both are missing in our manuscripts). In particular, it highlights the literary ambitions of these prologues as texts probably composed to serve fourth- or early third-century reperformances of the play, and explores the disparaging opinion of the author of the Hypothesis, who considered one of the prologues bad enough to have been ‘composed by actors