EURIPIDES
comes difficult to speak with assurance of the formal nature
of the play or to generalize from it to the formal definition of
fifth-century satyr-drama. Indeed, even if we possessed the
requisite information, the very distance which separates the
tragedy of Euripides from that of Aeschylus and Sophocles
would tend by analogy to preclude a generalization about
satyr-plays. One ancient writer, it is true, speaks of satyr-drama
as being "tragedy-at-play" or "joking tragedy." 2 But this is
hardly helpful, since it may mean either that satyr-drama was
mock tragedy, or tragedy buffa, or pure farce, or simply a
sportive treatment of the subject matter of tragedy. All of
these are possibilities applicable to the Cyclops, but we have
no evidence which might allow us to decide among them.
In point of origins the satyr-play, like both comedy and
tragedy, was closely bound up with Dionysiac fertility ritual.
Even in the fifth century satyr-drama in its frequent obscenity,
its conventional use of Silenus as "nurse" and companion of
Dionysus, and its chorus of satyrs with their phalloi preserves
more vividly than tragedy the memory of its origins. What the
original connection between tragedy and comedy and "satyr"
may have been, we do not know, though Aristotle in a much
disputed passage asserts that the satyr-play was one of the early
stages of tragedy; 3 but the value of the testimony appears
Cyclops should be assigned to a group of three tragedies of which the
extant Hecuba was one. (The Hecuba is dated, on very good grounds,
almost certainly to 425 B.C.) The assignment is strengthened not
merely by topical considerations (cf. E. Delebecque, Euripide et la
guerre du Peloponn&se) but by very close formal resemblances be-
tween the two plays. Thus the blinding of Polyphemus parallels the
blinding of Polymnestor, and Polyphemus' final appearance from the
eave vividly recalls Polymnestor's emergence from the tent. In both
plays again, the guiding idea is that of civilized brutality, and in both
cases a barbaric vengeance is taken upon a barbarian (Polymnestor,
Polyphemus) by a "civilized" person (Hecuba, Odysseus). The final
prophecies again closely parallel each other, and the portrayal of
Odysseus in the Hecuba is given a great deal of point if we have in
mind the sequel in Cyclops. In the dovetailing of actions and the
reversal of roles, the two plays are strikingly similar.
2. Demetrius of Phalerum De interp. 169; cf. Horace Ar$ poetica
231~3?'
3. Poetics i449a 9 ff.
244