Bloomsbury (2018) h/b 158pp £85.00 (ISBN 9781474245791)
This book is one of Bloomsbury’s ‘Companions to Greek and Roman Tragedy’ series: it is thus not a commentary (for which, see R. Seaford, 1984), nor does it offer a text and translation (see D. Kovacs, vol. 1 in the Euripides Loeb series, 1994): rather, it comprises a lengthy introduction to the satyr play genre in general and to Cyclops in particular; S. has been working, he tells us on satyr drama for the past decade. The four chapters are (1) The Cyclops and Satyr Drama; (2) Viewing the Play: Plot and Performance; (3) Themes, Issues and Functions; and (4) Euripides’ Cyclops in its Literary Context. There follow notes, bibliography, and (rather sparse) index. There are ten relevant and well-illustrated paintings from vases vel sim., including the remarkable Pronomos Vase.
Chapter 1 takes us through satyrs, satyr drama, the genre (with a useful quotation from Demetrius De elocutione), the history of satyr drama, starting from Pratinas, with a lengthy quotation featuring Dionysus; later plays appear to have relied to some extent on the practice of ὀνομαστὶ κωμῳδεῖν, naming and abusing contemporary figures of note. S. goes on, in ‘Functions of the genre’, to admit that these ‘are uncertain and open to debate’; Aristotle (Poetics) and the Suda provide helpful hints, the latter emphasising the declining role of Dionysus. In ‘Mythological background’, S. takes us through the relevant part of the Odyssey; he concludes the chapter by accepting a date for the play between 412 and 408 BC, and giving a short account of the play’s textual tradition.
Chapter 2 is mainly a detailed account of the play’s plot, with some suggestions about the depiction of its physical setting (in Sicily). In Chapter 3, S. argues that ‘Odysseus and Polyphemus become complex figures, not simple Homeric representations of the “civilized vs. uncivilized” ’; he suggests that the Sicilian location, too, was chosen with reference to Athens’ recent disaster there in the Peloponnesian War. (Readers should, however, be warned that there are scholars who do not accept that Euripidean drama can ever be related to contemporaneous real-world events). S. emphasises here the play’s ‘metatheatrical self-awareness’ (he instances the introductory monologue of Silenus, which is ‘imbued with a certain awareness of the play’s existence in the tradition of satyr plays … Silenus claims to have undertaken `countless labours` alongside and on behalf of Dionysus’). He goes on to say that the play is filled with allusions to ‘contemporary religion, performance, philosophy and history’; whether the audience was alert to these nuances, who can say?
Chapter 4 of necessity occasionally covers ground already touched on earlier. The reviewer was, however, mildly surprised to see Alcestis, in which Hesiod’s Cyclopes receive a very brief reference, as having a generic relation to Cyclops (pp. 93-5), because of its references to komos: L.P.E. Parker’s Alcestis (2007) firmly disposes of this in her edition, pp. xx-xxii, while D.F. Sutton’s The Greek Satyr Play (1980), which ‘finds various supposedly satyric features in Alcestis’ is regarded by Parker as having speculative and casual (and indeed inaccurate) elements. S. does not omit some consideration of the satyr play’s relation to comedy, especially in relation to the performers’ attire, bawdy byplay and sexual references (though, for example, metrical practice is mainly that of tragedy, not comedy: e.g. Porson’s Law is occasionally broken). In conclusion, S. regards Cyclops as the only satyr play to have reached us complete and as one of Athens’ ‘most important ancient theatrical productions’. Whether, as S. says, it is the ‘greatest satyr play in the history of satyr plays’ must remain a matter for speculation.
There is much of interest and good sense in this useful book, in which the text accounts for only 118 pages. But, at £85, it is distinctly expensive (Seaford, with a thorough Introduction of 60 pages, and Kovacs combined cost roughly half as much, and one could add Mark Griffith’s excellent Greek Satyr Play; Five Studies [2015], and still have change from £85). A much less expensive paperback edition would be very welcome.
Colin Leach