In 1924 The Classical Quarterly published a note by Alexander Haggerty Krappe titled ‘Euripides’ Alcmaeon and the Apollonius Romance’.Footnote ¹ Drawing attention to the obscure origins of the ancient Greek and Roman novels in general and pointing out the scholarly agreement on the role love plays in both the ancient novels and Euripidean tragedy, Krappe observed that ‘Euripides was drawn upon for whole episodes in order to enrich the plot of the [ancient] novel’.Footnote ² Krappe then goes on in his note to attribute the plot of Euripides' lost Alcmaeon as a source of inspiration for one of the major episodes of the Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (to wit, the separation and reunion of Apollonius and his daughter, Tarsia). Today, this reliance of the ancient novels on Euripides is generally recognized,Footnote ³ but, curiously, Krappe, while identifying an episode from the lost Alcmaeon, failed to identify a clear plot-borrowing from another extant Euripidean play, the Alcestis.Footnote ⁴

The Historia Apollonii Regis Tyri (HA) is a Latin prose work dating from Late Antiquity and very possibly originating in a lost Greek novel of the second or third century c.e.Footnote ⁵ The work has reached us in two major recensions: Recension A (RA) is considered the older and more complete but grammatically less polished version (that is, it contains many vulgar Latin traits); and Recension B (RB) is a terser and more grammatically polished version that fills in details, such as names, omitted in RA. G.A.A. Kortekaas suggests that RB stems from RA and represents a ‘classicizing emendation’, a practice found in many late-antique and medieval texts.Footnote ⁶ It is precisely in this classicized emendation that the episode likely inspired by Euripides' Alcestis appears.

Our oldest and fullest version of the Alcestis myth comes from Euripides. In his play, Admetus' devoted wife, Alcestis, forfeits her own life so that her husband may live. Shortly after Alcestis' funeral, Heracles, unaware of her death, pays an untimely visit to Admetus, who conceals from Heracles his grief over his wife's death and offers him hospitality. When Heracles learns of Alcestis' demise and realizes the extent of his host's selfless act, he decides to grapple with Death and return Alcestis to Admetus as recompense. Before returning her, however, Heracles approaches Admetus with Alcestis hidden by a veil and in jocund cat-and-mouse fashion reveals that he has learned of Admetus' extreme act at his most grief-stricken moment and eventually lifts the veil to reveal Alcestis as a reward for his host's hospitality.

In the HA, Apollonius of Tyre goes to Antioch to win King Antiochus' daughter. However, after angering Antiochus for solving his riddle, which conceals the king's incestuous relationship with his daughter, Apollonius must flee both Antioch and his homeland. He first goes to Tarsus, where he saves the townspeople from famine, and then to Cyrene, where his ship sinks and he loses his entire crew and belongings. In Cyrene, he is taken in by King Archistrates and weds his daughter. While in Cyrene, Apollonius is informed that Antiochus has died and that he has been proclaimed king of Antioch. En route to Antioch, his wife goes into labour and, appearing to die in childbirth, is cast adrift in a floating coffin. Apollonius leaves his daughter, Tarsia, to be raised in Tarsus by his trusted friends Stranguillio and Dionysias. Dionysias grows jealous of Tarsia's beauty (which eclipses her daughter's) and arranges her murder. Unbeknownst to Dionysias, Tarsia is abducted by pirates, instead, and sold to a pimp in Mytilene. Upon Apollonius' return to Tarsus fourteen years later, he learns of his daughter's supposed death and falls into deep despair. He decides to sail back to Tyre to end his days, but his ship is blown by a storm to Mytilene, where he is reunited with Tarsia, sent to him by the city's prince to relieve his grief. Apollonius marries her to the city's prince, and they all set sail for Tarsus to avenge Tarsia's attempted assassination. Apollonius is then directed in a dream to stop at Ephesus and is there reunited with his wife, who had washed up on its shores and has become the chief priestess of the Temple of Diana. With the family reunited, they again set sail for Tarsus to punish Dionysias and Stranguillio. Apollonius has the couple brought before the people of Tarsus and sentenced to death for their treachery. He then returns to Cyrene with his wife, where they live happily until his death.

In Recension B, the judgement scene is expanded so that Dionysias brazenly lies about attempting to have Tarsia murdered. Apollonius, who has veiled and hidden his daughter behind the judgement seat, summons her back from the dead. She is then unveiled in order to prove that she is alive and that Dionysias is indeed lying and therefore guilty of her crime (HA, RB, 50.18–20):

Tarsia's being called back from the dead is an evident borrowing from the Alcestis story, and her veiling and unveiling likewise point to inspiration from Euripides' play, as this suspenseful veiling and unveiling are not described in Hyginus' retelling of the myth.Footnote ⁸ In the Alcestis, Heracles successfully brings Alcestis back from the Underworld, keeps her veiled and, at the peak moment of the play, removes the veil to convince the incredulous Admetus of his wife's miraculous return from death. In similarly dramatic fashion, the recensor of the RB version of the Historia Apollonii has Apollonius summon from the Underworld a veiled woman (his daughter, Tarsia), and, as in Euripides' Alcestis, he has this woman's veil removed at the novel's peak dramatic moment to prove both her identity and the fact that she is among the living.Footnote ⁹ In each work, the strong male figure brings back a woman from death (one literal, the other a presumed death), and the woman is veiled to heighten the dramatic tension of the story before her identity is revealed, signalling each work's climactic moment.