Sikyonioi

About half of the play has survived in fragments of papyrus used to stuff several mummies in the cemetery of Medinet-el-Ghoran in the Faiyum, where they were discovered in 1901 by Pierre Jouguet.

The first acts are almost completely lost, but the rest, although the manuscript is often corrupt, lacunose and hard to read, allows a fair reconstruction of the plot.

In the prologue speech the divinity has exposed how twelve years earlier the four-year-old Philumene, together with her nurse and the slave Dromon, was kidnapped by pirates from her father's estate on the coast of Attica and sold at Mylasa in Caria to a wealthy Sicyonian named Hegemon.

When the girl takes refuge in a temple at Eleusis, the old slave in her company claims that she is an Athenian, and a pale beardless young man offers himself as her protector.

Toward the end of act three, however, Stratophanes' slave Pyrrhias reports him the last words of his mother who revealed on her dying bed that he was adopted from an Athenian family.

Papyrus of the Sikyonioi found at Medinet-el-Ghoran, 3rd Century BC. Institute of Papyrology of Sorbonne University .
The ancient theatre of Sikyon
Roman, Republican or Early Imperial , Relief of a seated poet (Menander) with masks of New Comedy , 1st century B.C. – early 1st century A.D., Princeton University Art Museum