At Statesman (Plt.) 291a–c and 303c–d, Plato compares the so-called statesmen of all existing constitutions to a motley crew of lions, centaurs, satyrs, and other beasts, and the entire section of the Statesman devoted to law and constitutions (291c–303c) to a satyr-play of sorts. This paper argues that these thought-provoking images are best understood as literary devices which, in addition to other dramatic elements in the Theaetetus and Sophist, help to bolster the unity of the Theaetetus-Sophist-Statesman trilogy and its (...) apologetic agenda concerning Socrates. (shrink)

The canonical statue known as the Barberini Faun is roundly viewed as a mysterious anomaly. The challenge to interpret it is intensified not only by uncertainties about its date and origin but also by the persistent idea that it represents a generic satyr. This paper tackles this assumption and identifies the statue with the satyr that King Midas captured in the well-known myth. Iconographic analysis of the statue's pose supports this view. In particular, the arm bent above the head, the (...) twist of the torso, and the splay of the legs are paralleled in many well-understood figures and furnish keys to interpreting the Barberini Faun as an extraordinary sleeping beast, intoxicated and fit for capture. The paper then explores the links between kings and satyrs in the Hellenistic age and finds grounds for understanding the statue within the context of royal patronage before the mid-second century BC. (shrink)

The enduring fame of Aeschylus as the earliest of the ‘three great tragedians’ has made him in effect the first dramatist of the Western tradition, in chronological terms at least. At the same time it is worth noting that among the ancients he also enjoyed a reputation as a master of the satyr play, as Pausanias and Diogenes Laertius tell us. It is to this kind of drama, which comprised one-quarter of his output as tragedian, that I would like to (...) turn, with particular focus on his Theoroi or Isthmiastai, and its treatment of another visual medium, the plastic arts. Our fragments of this play begin with a figure presenting a chorus of satyrs with artfully wrought images made in their likenesses which bring them a startled delight. In the second discernible scene of the fragment the chorus receivesνεοχμᾰ… θρματα , usually understood as athletic equipment, which the satyrs find rather more unsettling. The following piece is primarily concerned with the first scene in which the coryphaeus urges his companions to dedicate the depictions as votives on Poseidon's temple, relishing the prospect of the comical, terrifying effect these images would have on his own mother and travellers, the latter probably on their way to the Isthmian games. At least this much is clear from the papyrus . This part of the fragment has attracted a good deal of attention for the evident ‘realism’ of the images that excites the satyrs so much in the first place. (shrink)

De nombreuses répliques du satyre à l'outre conservé au musée du Caire étaient connues jusqu'à présent, provenant d'Alexandrie, de Syracuse, de Kertch et de Phanagoria. Il convient de leur joindre un nouvel exemplaire fragmentaire du musée du Louvre provenant d'Amisos. Il est probable que nous ayons affaire dans chaque cas à une fabrication locale. Un passage des Dionysiaca de Nonnos de Panopolis (XXIII, 148) permet sans doute de voir dans cet objet un satyre voguant sur son outre : en effet (...) les fantassins de Dionysos sont décrits traversant l'Hydaspe, confluent de l'Indus, sur des outres gonflées d'air, mode de navigation connu par ailleurs. On peut supposer que le prototype était un satyre en bronze (peut-être un ornement de fontaine), créé sous l'influence pergaménienne, à la fin du IIIe s. ou au début du IIe s. av. J.-C. à Alexandrie, où l'expédition d'Alexandre aux Indes avait été transposée en une épopée de Dionysos. Suffisamment célèbre, il a pu donner lieu à des répliques en terre cuite, à la fois à Alexandrie, et dans divers centres liés à cette cité. (shrink)

Among the one-word fragments from unknown plays of Sophocles, fr. inc. 1111 R. has been treated as one of the more straightforward. It derives from a passage in Hermogenes of Tarsos’ treatise Περὶ Ἰδεῶν, which includes the Sophoclean adjective, its referent and a brief gloss: … ὁ Σοφοκλῆς … φίλανδρόν που τὴν Ἀταλάντην εἶπε διὰ τὸ ἀσπάζεσθαι σὺν ἀνδράσιν εἶναι. Brunck assigned the fragment to Sophocles’ tragic Meleagros; most subsequent editors have edited the fragment as sedis incertae while commenting favourably (...) on Brunck's ascription. This suggestion has also found support beyond Sophoclean scholarship, and, to my knowledge, no alternative has been brought forward. While the ascription of the fragment to the Meleagros is prima facie not implausible, I shall argue that a thorough analysis of the difficult passage in Hermogenes calls for a revision of the current lexicographical accounts of the word φίλανδρος—as well as φιλανδρία—and suggests that fr. 1111 may in fact originate in a satyr-play. (shrink)

Une hydrie à figures rouges offre une scène mythologique inédite : un satyre fait face à Héraclès, agenouillé. Autour d’eux, une sphinx et des oiseaux semblent observer la scène. Découvert en 1955 à Apollonia d’Illyrie, ce vase est aujourd’hui exposé au musée archéologique du site. Cet article propose une analyse détaillée de l’iconographie et des modèles qui ont pu influencer le peintre, afin d’en affiner l’analyse, mais aussi la datation et d’en déterminer l’origine, probablement locale.

Active in Alexandria during the second half of the third century, Dioscorides is the author of some forty epigrams preserved in theAnthologia Palatina. Five of these epigrams are concerned with Greek playwrights: three dramatists of the archaic and classical periods, Thespis, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and two contemporary ones, Sositheus and Machon. Dioscorides conceived four epigrams as two pairs (Thespis and Aeschylus, Sophocles and Sositheus) clearly marked by verbal connections, and celebrates each playwright for his original contribution to the history of (...) Greek drama. Thespis boasts to have discovered tragedy; Aeschylus to have elevated it. The twin epigrams devoted to Sophocles and Sositheus present Sophocles as refining the satyrs and Sositheus as making them, once again, primitive. Finally, Machon is singled out for his comedies as ‘worthy remnants of ancient art (τέχνης … ἀρχαίης)’. Dioscorides’ miniature history of Greek drama, which is interesting both for its debts to the ancient tradition surrounding classical playwrights and for the light it sheds on contemporary drama, clearly smacks of archaizing sympathies. They drive Dioscorides’ selection of authors and his treatment of contemporary dramatists: both Sositheus and Machon are praised for consciously looking back to the masters of the past. My focus is on Sositheus and his ‘new’ satyr-play. After discussing the relationship that Dioscorides establishes between Sophocles’ and Sositheus’ satyrs, and reviewing scholarly interpretations of Sositheus’ innovations, I will argue that Dioscorides speaks the language of New Music. His epigram celebrates Sositheus as rejecting New Music and its trends, and as composing satyr plays that were musically old fashioned and therefore reactionary. (shrink)

The paper borrows from recent work by classicists on satyr play and demonstrates significant parallels between Plato’s Republic and the structure, theme and stereotypical contents that characterize this newly studied genre of ancient Greek drama. Like satyr play, the Republic includes repeated passages where metatheatricality can reverse the meaning. The frequent occurrence of all the stereotypical elements of satyr play in Plato’s Republic also suggests to readers that they should be responding to Socrates’ narration as they would to a satyr (...) play, again reversing meaning by communicating a set of literary expectations to Plato’s readers over the heads of Socrates’ interlocutors. As is frequently the case with satyr play, the political purpose of the drama is the critique of tyrannical government. The need for a systematically ironic interpretation of the dialogue is raised. (shrink)

Theorists have long sought to repress or domesticate the shaggy, obscene, and transgressive satyr that ranges through satire’s long history, lurking in dark corners, and to make it into a model of a moral citizen.Unruly, wayward, frolicsome, critical, parasitic, at times perverse, malicious, cynical, scornful, unstable—it is at once pervasive yet recalcitrant, basic yet impenetrable. Satire is the stranger that lives in the basement.Instead of trying to resolve all the problems that arise from the particular of a given tragic dignification, (...) the dramatist in his satyrplay throws out tragic dignification per se. He thus gets freedom by a flat refusal to accept any of the norms that had caused the .. (shrink)

When Rhesus was composed and by whom is still debated, and we shall probably never have unequivocal answers. Regardless of whether it was written by Euripides, who was known for experimenting, or by someone else, could we reasonably consider it a pro-satyric play (i. e. a light play that concludes a tetralogy instead of a satyr play), due to similarities with the Alcestis in its treatment of serious themes, certain satyric features, and some of the play’s unconventional elements, such as (...) lack of pathos, deflation of ethos, and the humor of some scenes? Could the play have been presented in place of the burlesque satyr-play which usually provided humor and release from the tragic tension created by the three preceding full-scale tragedies performed in the agōn? We know that in 438 BCE Euripides presented the Alcestis, which is neither a satyr-play, nor a full-fledged tragedy, as a pro-satyric play. The likelihood that the play was pro-satyric would support the view advanced by some scholars that Euripides preferred pro-satyric plays to satyr-plays, and would thus help explain the low number of satyr-plays (eight) in the catalogue of Euripides’ plays (estimated at ca 92). (shrink)

"Homer and Classical Philology," Nietzsche's 1869 inaugural lecture at the University of Basel, addresses not only the history of the Homer question as a problem but also raises the question of the discipline of classical philology as science . Thematically, Nietzsche's first lecture as a professor of classical philology focuses on the significance of style as such. In this meta-scholarly context, the issue of scholarly discernment is explored in terms of aesthetic judgment, as a judgment of taste, a focus Nietzsche (...) subsequently resumes in the second of his Untimely Meditations, "On the Utility and Liability of History for Life."1 To be . (shrink)

On l’oublie vite à la lecture, pourtant cet ouvrage de plus de deux cents pages de textes et d’images est un défi lancé aux historiens : avec La Cité des satyres, François Lissarrague produit une histoire de personnages, les satyres, qui ne sont documentés par quasiment aucun texte antique. Seule une longue pratique des vases grecs – dans le cas présent, de production attique – peut permettre l’accumulation d’une connaissance telle qu’elle autorise l’historien à livrer les éléments de signifi...

Counters the long-standing, solemn interpretation of Plato’s dialogues with one centered on the philosophical and pedagogical significance of Socrates as a comic figure. Plato was described as a boor and it was said that he never laughed out loud. Yet his dialogues abound with puns, jokes, and humor. Sonja Madeleine Tanner argues that in Plato’s dialogues Socrates plays a comical hero who draws heavily from the tradition of comedy in ancient Greece, but also reforms laughter to be applicable to all (...) persons and truly shaming to none. Socrates introduces a form of self-reflective laughter that encourages, rather than stifles, philosophical inquiry. Laughter in the dialogues—both explicit and implied—suggests a view of human nature as incongruous with ourselves, simultaneously falling short of, and superseding, our own capacities. What emerges is a picture of human nature that bears a striking resemblance to Socrates’ own, laughable depiction, one inspired by Dionysus, but one that remains ultimately intractable. The book analyzes specific instances of laughter and the comical from the Apology, Laches, Charmides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, and the Symposium to support this, and to further elucidate the philosophical consequences of recognizing Plato’s laughter. Sonja Madeleine Tanner is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and the author of In Praise of Plato’s Poetic Imagination. (shrink)

In Sophocles' Ichneutai Silenos reproaches the Satyrs for their cowardice. Among other things that he says to them, he contrasts their current attitude to his own bravery in youth; in lines 154-155 he speaks of many monuments of bravery, which he has left in the homes of the nymphs. After illustrating the syntax of these lines and offering a new translation, the author goes on to investigate the possible reference of these "monuments of bravery" and hence of the (alleged) (...) exploits of Silenos. (shrink)

La morale occupe une place centrale dans l’oeuvre de Diderot et dans Le Neveu de Rameau. La morale a un double sens: les moeurs, les opinions et les comportements valorisés dans une société et la science des moeurs. À côté des études savantes ou apologétiques (religieuses), la satire offre un moyen pour comprendre les normes et les valeurs morales, en dénonçant leur transgression par des vicieux. Le Neveu de Rameau est une « satyre ». L’article analyse le genre de satire (...) qu’est ce dialogue. Il apparaît que si d’un côté c’est Lui, le vicieux qui est la cible de la satire, de l’autre c’est lui qui fait la satire d’un milieu social qui nie les valeurs de la morale commune. L’hypothèse est que ce dispositif vise à montrer les limites de la philosophie en ce qui concerne la morale. (shrink)