171-524: The cult of Dionysus was strongly associated with satyrs , centaurs , and sileni , and its characteristic symbols were the bull , the serpent , tigers / leopards , ivy , and wine. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus , as well as the phallic processions . Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries , which were comparable to and linked with
342-467: A leopard , wearing a leopard skin, or in a chariot drawn by panthers , and is also recognized by his iconic thyrsus . Besides the grapevine and its clashing alter-ego, the poisonous ivy plant, both sacred to him, the fig was another one of his accredited symbols. Additionally, the pinecone that topped his thyrsus linked him to Cybele , an Anatolian goddess. Introduced into Rome (c. 200 BC) from Magna Graecia or by way of Greek-influenced Etruria ,
513-528: A "spiritual biography", along these lines: However, about 80% of his plays have been lost, and even the extant plays do not present a fully consistent picture of his 'spiritual' development (for example, Iphigenia in Aulis is dated with the 'despairing' Bacchae , yet it contains elements that became typical of New Comedy). In the Bacchae , he restores the chorus and messenger speech to their traditional role in
684-505: A "troupe of Fauns and Satyrs far away Within the wood were dancing in a round." Although Satyrs are often negatively characterized in Greek and Roman mythology, the Satyrs in this poem are docile, helpful creatures. This is evident by the way they help protect Una from Sansloy. Sylvanus , the leader, and the rest of the Satyrs become enamored by Una's beauty and begin to worship her as if she is
855-431: A barbarous act to annihilate a city which produced such men" ( Life of Lysander ). Tragic poets were often mocked by comic poets during the dramatic festivals Dionysia and Lenaia , and Euripides was travestied more than most. Aristophanes scripted him as a character in at least three plays: The Acharnians , Thesmophoriazusae and The Frogs . But Aristophanes also borrowed, rather than merely satirized, some of
1026-441: A beautiful, young girl. These sculptures may have been intended as kind of sophisticated erotic joke. The Athenian sculptor Praxiteles 's statue Pouring Satyr represented the eponymous satyr as very human-like. The satyr was shown as very young, in line with Praxiteles's frequent agenda of representing deities and other figures as adolescents. This tendency is also attested in the descriptions of his sculptures of Dionysus and
1197-438: A bewildering variety of labels. He has been described as 'the poet of the Greek enlightenment' and also as 'Euripides the irrationalist'; as a religious sceptic if not an atheist, but on the other hand, as a believer in divine providence and the ultimate justice of divine dispensation. He has been seen as a profound explorer of human psychology and also a rhetorical poet who subordinated consistency of character to verbal effect; as
1368-599: A bookshelf with works such as The Life and Letters of Silenus , Nymphs and their Ways , and Is Man a Myth? . The satyr has appeared in all five editions of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game, having been introduced in 1976 in the earliest edition, in Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-Gods & Heroes (1976), then in the first edition of the Monster Manual (1977), where it is described as
1539-571: A bronze tablet discovered in Calabria (1640), now at Vienna —by which the Bacchanalia were prohibited throughout all Italy except in certain special cases which must be approved specifically by the Senate. In spite of the severe punishment inflicted on those found in violation of this decree, the Bacchanalia were not stamped out, at any rate in the south of Italy, for a very long time. Dionysus
1710-467: A change in speakers was loosely denoted with a variety of signs, such as equivalents of the modern dash, colon, and full-stop. The absence of modern literary conventions (which aid comprehension), was an early and persistent source of errors, affecting transmission. Errors were also introduced when Athens replaced its old Attic alphabet with the Ionian alphabet, a change sanctioned by law in 403–402 BC, adding
1881-699: A common trope in Greek vase paintings starting in the late fifth century BC. Among the earliest depictions of the scene come from a bell krater in the style of the Peleus Painter from Syracuse (PEM 10, pl. 155) and a bell krater in the style of the Dinos Painter from Vienna (DM 7). According to one account, Satyrus was one of the many sons of Dionysus and the Bithynian nymph Nicaea , born after Dionysus tricked Nicaea into getting drunk and raped her as she laid unconscious. Fasti Many names of
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#17327733769712052-476: A debate between the shades of Aeschylus and Euripides, the god brings Aeschylus back to life, as more useful to Athens, for his wisdom, rejecting Euripides as merely clever. Such comic 'evidence' suggests that Athenians admired Euripides even while they mistrusted his intellectualism, at least during the long war with Sparta. Aeschylus had written his own epitaph commemorating his life as a warrior fighting for Athens against Persia, without any mention of his success as
2223-548: A deity. However, the Satyrs prove to be simple-minded creatures because they begin to worship the donkey she was riding. In the seventeenth century, satyrs became identified with great apes . In 1699, the English anatomist Edward Tyson (1651–1708) published an account of his dissection of a creature which scholars have now identified as chimpanzee . In this account, Tyson argued that stories of satyrs, wild men, and other hybrid mythological creatures had all originated from
2394-485: A difference in outlook between the three—a generation gap probably due to the Sophistic enlightenment in the middle decades of the 5th century: Aeschylus still looked back to the archaic period , Sophocles was in transition between periods, and Euripides was fully imbued with the new spirit of the classical age . When Euripides' plays are sequenced in time, they also reveal that his outlook might have changed, providing
2565-585: A dramatist must be able to adopt the personae of his characters in order to successfully portray them on stage. In lines 157–158, Euripides's unnamed relative retorts: "Well, let me know when you're writing satyr plays; I'll get behind you with my hard-on and show you how." This is the only extant reference to the genre of satyr plays from a work of ancient Greek comedy and, according to Shaw, it effectively characterizes satyr plays as "a genre of 'hard-ons.'" In spite of their bawdy behavior, however, satyrs were still revered as semi-divine beings and companions of
2736-851: A fragment from the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women , satyrs are sons of the five granddaughters of Phoroneus and therefore siblings of the Oreads and the Kouretes . The satyr Marsyas , however, is described by mythographers as the son of either Olympos or Oiagros. Hansen observes that "there may be more than one way to produce a satyr, as there is to produce a Cyclops or a centaur ." The classical Greeks recognized that satyrs obviously could not self-reproduce since there were no female satyrs, but they seem to have been unsure whether satyrs were mortal or immortal. Rather than appearing en masse as in satyr-plays, when satyrs appear in myths it
2907-406: A group of male spirits said to dance in the woods. In Germanic mythology, elves were also said to dance in woodland clearings and leave behind fairy rings . They were also thought to play pranks, steal horses, tie knots in people's hair , and steal children and replace them with changelings . West notes that satyrs, elves, and other nature spirits of this variety are a "motley crew" and that it
3078-556: A horrible gnashing and hideous noise: rough they are and hairie all over their bodies, eies they have red like the houlets [owls] and toothed they be like dogs." The second-century Greek Middle Platonist philosopher Plutarch records a legendary incident in his Life of Sulla , in which the soldiers of the Roman general Sulla are reported to have captured a satyr sleeping during a military campaign in Greece in 89 BC. Sulla's men brought
3249-532: A joint project with Brigham Young University , using multi-spectral imaging technology to retrieve previously illegible writing (see References). Some of this work employed infrared technology—previously used for satellite imaging—to detect previously unknown material by Euripides, in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri , a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university. It is from such materials that modern scholars try to piece together copies of
3420-510: A leader of a decadent intellectualism . Both were frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes . Socrates was eventually put on trial and executed as a corrupting influence. Ancient biographies hold that Euripides chose a voluntary exile in old age, dying in Macedonia , but recent scholarship casts doubt on these sources. Traditional accounts of the author's life are found in many commentaries, and include details such as these: He
3591-452: A legend in his Life of Apollonius of Tyana of how the ghost of an Aethiopian satyr was deeply enamored with the women from the local village and had killed two of them. Then, the philosopher Apollonius of Tyana set a trap for it with wine, knowing that, after drinking it, the ghost-satyr would fall asleep forever. The wine diminished from the container before the onlookers' eyes, but the ghost-satyr himself remained invisible. Once all
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#17327733769713762-534: A loosely structured, simple, and jovial form of entertainment. But in Cyclops (the only complete satyr-play that survives), Euripides structured the entertainment more like a tragedy and introduced a note of critical irony typical of his other work. His genre-bending inventiveness is shown above all in Alcestis , a blend of tragic and satyric elements. This fourth play in his tetralogy for 438 BC (i.e., it occupied
3933-558: A means of representing sexuality without offending Victorian moral sensibilities . In the novel The Marble Faun (1860) by the American author Nathaniel Hawthorne , the Italian count Donatello is described as bearing a remarkable resemblance to one of Praxiteles's marble satyr statues. Like the satyrs of Greek legend, Donatello has a carefree nature. His association with satyrs is further cemented by his intense sexual attraction to
4104-433: A misogynist and a feminist; as a realist who brought tragic action down to the level of everyday life and as a romantic poet who chose unusual myths and exotic settings. He wrote plays which have been widely understood as patriotic pieces supporting Athens' war against Sparta and others which many have taken as the work of the anti-war dramatist par excellence, even as attacks on Athenian imperialism. He has been recognized as
4275-506: A new complication to the task of copying. Many more errors came from the tendency of actors to interpolate words and sentences, producing so many corruptions and variations that a law was proposed by Lycurgus of Athens in 330 BC "that the plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides should be written down and preserved in a public office; and that the town clerk should read the text over with the actors; and that all performances which did not comply with this regulation should be illegal." The law
4446-639: A philosopher is similar to that of the paternal satyr Silenus , because, at first, his questions seem ridiculous and laughable, but, upon closer inspection, they are revealed to be filled with much wisdom. One story, mentioned by Herodotus in his Histories and in a fragment by Aristotle , recounts that King Midas once captured a silenus, who provided him with wise philosophical advice. According to classicist William Hansen , although satyrs were popular in classical art, they rarely appear in surviving mythological accounts. Different classical sources present conflicting accounts of satyrs' origins. According to
4617-610: A pine tree and flayed him alive to punish him for his hubris in daring to challenge one of the gods. Later, this story became accepted as canonical and the Athenian sculptor Myron created a group of bronze sculptures based on it, which was installed before the western front of the Parthenon in around 440 BC. Surviving retellings of the legend are found in the Library of Pseudo-Apollodorus, Pausanias 's Guide to Greece , and
4788-649: A place to rest." Śě'îrîm were understood by at least some ancient commentators to be goat-like demons of the wilderness. In the Latin Vulgate translation of the Old Testament , śĕ'îr is translated as pilosus , which also means 'hairy'. Jerome, the translator of the Vulgate, equated these figures with satyrs. Both satyrs and śě'îrîm have also been compared to the jinn of Pre-Islamic Arabia , who were envisioned as hairy demons in
4959-468: A playwright; and Sophocles was celebrated by his contemporaries for his social gifts, and contributions to public life as a state official; but there are no records of Euripides' public life except as a dramatist—he could well have been "a brooding and bookish recluse". He is presented as such in The Acharnians , where Aristophanes shows him to be living morosely in a precarious house, surrounded by
5130-527: A position in the "ever-changing genre" where he could easily move between tragic, comic, romantic, and political effects. This versatility appears in individual plays and also over the course of his career. Potential for comedy lay in his use of 'contemporary' characters, in his sophisticated tone, his relatively informal Greek (see In Greek below), and in his ingenious use of plots centred on motifs that later became standard in Menander's New Comedy (for example
5301-420: A preoccupation with individual psychology and its irrational aspects is evident....In his hands tragedy for the first time probed the inner recesses of the human soul and let passions spin the plot ." The tension between reason and passion is symbolized by his characters' relationship with the gods: For example, Hecuba's prayer is answered not by Zeus, nor by the law of reason, but by Menelaus, as if speaking for
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5472-410: A radical change of direction". Euripides is also known for his use of irony. Many Greek tragedians make use of dramatic irony to bring out the emotion and realism of their characters or plays, but Euripides uses irony to foreshadow events and occasionally amuse his audience. For example, in his play Heracles , Heracles comments that all men love their children and wish to see them grow. The irony here
5643-537: A rationalized cosmos, but the speech is ill-suited to her audience, the unsophisticated listener Menelaus, and is found to not suit the cosmos either (her grandson is murdered by the Greeks). In Hippolytus , speeches appear verbose and ungainly, as if to underscore the limitations of language. Like Euripides, both Aeschylus and Sophocles created comic effects, contrasting the heroic with the mundane, but they employed minor supporting characters for that purpose. Euripides
5814-406: A remove by attributing that sexuality to satyrs, who were part human and part animal. In this way, satyrs became vehicles of a metaphor for a phenomenon extending far beyond the original narrative purposes in which they had served during earlier periods of Greek history. Some variants on this theme represent a satyr being rebuffed by a hermaphrodite , who, from the satyr's perspective, appears to be
5985-451: A select edition, possibly for use in schools, with some commentaries or scholia recorded in the margins. Similar editions had appeared for Aeschylus and Sophocles—the only plays of theirs that survive today. Euripides, however, was more fortunate than the other tragedians, with a second edition of his work surviving, compiled in alphabetical order as if from a set of his collect works; but without scholia attached. This "Alphabetical" edition
6156-405: A short time as both dancer and torch-bearer at the rites of Apollo Zosterius. His education was not confined to athletics, studying also painting and philosophy under the masters Prodicus and Anaxagoras . He had two disastrous marriages, and both his wives—Melite and Choerine (the latter bearing him three sons)—were unfaithful. He became a recluse, making a home for himself in a cave on Salamis (
6327-443: A skill worth prizes, requiring a long apprenticeship in the chorus. Euripides and other playwrights accordingly composed more and more arias for accomplished actors to sing, and this tendency became more marked in his later plays: tragedy was a "living and ever-changing genre" (cf. previous section, and Chronology ; a list of his plays is below ). The comic poet Aristophanes is the earliest known critic to characterize Euripides as
6498-428: A song about the beginning of the universe. The first-century AD Roman poet Ovid makes Jupiter , the king of the gods, express worry that the viciousness of humans will leave fauns, nymphs, and satyrs without a place to live, so he gives them a home in the forests, woodlands, and mountains, where they will be safe. Ovid also retells the story of Marsyas's hubris. He describes a musical contest between Marsyas, playing
6669-676: A special cult was established for the śě'îrîm of Jeroboam I . Like satyrs, they were associated with desolate places and with some variety of dancing. Isaiah 13:21 predicts, in Karen L. Edwards's translation: "But wild animals [ ziim ] will lie down there, and its houses will be full of howling creatures [ ohim ]; there ostriches will live, and there goat-demons [ śĕ'îr ] will dance." Similarly, Isaiah 34:14 declares: " Wildcats [ ziim ] shall meet with hyenas [ iim ], goat-demons [ śĕ'îr ] shall call to each other; there too Lilith [ lilit ] shall repose and find
6840-415: A speech that he seems to have written in defence of himself as an intellectual ahead of his time (spoken by Medea): σκαιοῖσι μὲν γὰρ καινὰ προσφέρων σοφὰ δόξεις ἀχρεῖος κοὐ σοφὸς πεφυκέναι· τῶν δ᾿ αὖ δοκούντων εἰδέναι τι ποικίλον κρείσσων νομισθεὶς ἐν πόλει λυπρὸς φανῇ. ἐγὼ δὲ καὐτὴ τῆσδε κοινωνῶ τύχης [298–302]. If you bring novel wisdom to fools, you will be regarded as useless, not wise; and if
7011-454: A spokesman for destructive, new ideas associated with declining standards in both society and tragedy (see Reception for more). But fifth-century tragedy was a social gathering for "carrying out quite publicly the maintenance and development of mental infrastructure", and it offered spectators a "platform for an utterly unique form of institutionalized discussion". The dramatist's role was not only to entertain but also educate fellow citizens—he
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7182-691: A sylvan woodland inhabitant primarily interested in sport such as frolicking, piping, and chasing wood nymphs . The life history of satyrs was further detailed in Dragon No. 155 (March 1990), in "The Ecology of the Satyr". The satyr was later detailed as a playable character race in The Complete Book of Humanoids (1993), and is later presented as a playable character race again in Player's Option: Skills & Powers (1995). The satyr appears in
7353-469: A tail resembling those of a horse, as well as a permanent, exaggerated erection . Early artistic representations sometimes include horse-like legs, but, by the sixth century BC, they were more often represented with human legs. Comically hideous, they have mane-like hair, bestial faces, and snub noses and they always are shown naked. Satyrs were characterized by their ribaldry and were known as lovers of wine, music, dancing, and women. They were companions of
7524-498: A true indication of worth. For example, in Hippolytus , a love-sick queen rationalizes her position and, reflecting on adultery, arrives at this comment on intrinsic merit: ἐκ δὲ γενναίων δόμων τόδ᾿ ἦρξε θηλείαισι γίγνεσθαι κακόν· ὅταν γὰρ αἰσχρὰ τοῖσιν ἐσθλοῖσιν δοκῇ, ἦ κάρτα δόξει τοῖς κακοῖς γ᾿ εἶναι καλά. [...] μόνον δὲ τοῦτό φασ᾿ ἁμιλλᾶσθαι βίῳ, γνώμην δικαίαν κἀγαθὴν ὅτῳ παρῇ [409–427]. This contagion began for
7695-533: A war theme, so that his plays are an extraordinary mix of elements. The Trojan Women , for example, is a powerfully disturbing play on the theme of war's horrors, apparently critical of Athenian imperialism (it was composed in the aftermath of the Melian massacre and during the preparations for the Sicilian Expedition ), yet it features the comic exchange between Menelaus and Hecuba quoted above, and
7866-403: Is Cyclops by Euripides , although a significant portion of Sophocles 's Ichneutae has also survived. In mythology, the satyr Marsyas is said to have challenged the god Apollo to a musical contest and been flayed alive for his hubris . Although superficially ridiculous, satyrs were also thought to possess useful knowledge, if they could be coaxed into revealing it. The satyr Silenus
8037-423: Is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Satyr In Greek mythology , a satyr ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σάτυρος , translit. sátyros , pronounced [sátyros] ), also known as a silenus or silenos ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σειληνός , translit. seilēnós [seːlɛːnós] ), and sileni (plural), is a male nature spirit with ears and
8208-593: Is an epithet of his used prominently in Euripides ' play, The Bacchae . Iacchus (Greek: Ἴακχος ), possibly an epithet of Dionysus, is associated with the Eleusinian Mysteries ; in Eleusis , he is known as a son of Zeus and Demeter . The name Iacchus may come from iacchus , a hymn sung in honor of him. With the epithet Liknites ("he of the winnowing fan"), he is a fertility god connected with
8379-498: Is an issue for many critics, such as Aristotle, who cited Iphigenia in Aulis as an example ( Poetics 1454a32). For others, psychological inconsistency is not a stumbling block to good drama: "Euripides is in pursuit of a larger insight: he aims to set forth the two modes, emotional and rational, with which human beings confront their own mortality." Some think unpredictable behaviour realistic in tragedy: "everywhere in Euripides
8550-505: Is difficult to reconstruct a prototype behind them. Nonetheless, he concludes that "we can recognize recurrent traits" and that they can probably be traced back to the Proto-Indo-Europeans in some form. On the other hand, a number of commentators have noted that satyrs are also similar to beings in the beliefs of ancient Near Eastern cultures. Various demons of the desert are mentioned in ancient Near Eastern texts, although
8721-544: Is equated with both Bacchus and Liber (also Liber Pater ). Liber ("the free one") was a god of fertility, wine, and growth, married to Libera . His festival was the Liberalia , celebrated on 17 March, but in some myths the festival was also held on 5 March. Dionysus sometimes has the epithet Acratophorus', by which he was designated as the giver of unmixed wine, and worshipped at Phigaleia in Arcadia . In Sicyon he
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#17327733769718892-475: Is given human legs, but is exceptionally hairy. The seduction element is removed altogether; the satyr simply extends his arms towards the nymph, who lies on the ground, defeated. Penny Florence writes that the "generic scene displays little sensuality" and that the main factor distinguishing it is its tone, because "[i]t does not seem convincing as a rape, despite the nymph's reluctance." In 1912, Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed Debussy's symphonic poem Prelude to
9063-410: Is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy , some of which are characteristic of romance . He also became "the most tragic of poets", focusing on
9234-436: Is not to sit beside Socrates and chatter, casting the arts aside and ignoring the best of the tragedian’s craft. To hang around killing time in pretentious conversation and hairsplitting twaddle is the mark of a man who's lost his mind In The Frogs , written when Euripides and Aeschylus were dead, Aristophanes has the god Dionysus venturing down to Hades in search of a good poet to bring back to Athens. After
9405-409: Is shown to be flawed, as if Euripides were exploring the problematical nature of language and communication: "For speech points in three different directions at once, to the speaker, to the person addressed, to the features in the world it describes, and each of these directions can be felt as skewed". For example, in the quotation above, Hecuba presents herself as a sophisticated intellectual describing
9576-482: Is sometimes used to refer to him or to solemn songs sung to him at festivals; the name refers to his premature birth. Eleutherios ("the liberator") was an epithet for both Dionysus and Eros . Other forms of the god as that of fertility include the epithet in Samos and Lesbos Enorches ' ("with balls" or perhaps "in the testicles" in reference to Zeus' sewing the infant Dionysus into his thigh, i.e., his testicles). Evius
9747-472: Is that Heracles will be driven into madness by Hera and will kill his children. Similarly, in Helen , Theoclymenus remarks how happy he is that his sister has the gift of prophecy and will warn him of any plots or tricks against him (the audience already knows that she has betrayed him). In this instance, Euripides uses irony not only for foreshadowing but also for comic effect—which few tragedians did. Likewise, in
9918-607: Is the man <who> is roasting a new play for Euripides, and Socrates is laying down the kindling. [...] Euripides bolted together with Socrates Aristophanes alleged that the co-author was a celebrated actor, Cephisophon, who also shared the tragedian's house and his wife, while Socrates taught an entire school of quibblers like Euripides: χαρίεν οὖν μὴ Σωκράτει παρακαθήμενον λαλεῖν ἀποβαλόντα μουσικὴν τά τε μέγιστα παραλιπόντα τῆς τραγῳδικῆς τέχνης. τὸ δ᾿ ἐπὶ σεμνοῖσιν λόγοισι καὶ σκαριφησμοῖσι λήρων διατριβὴν ἀργὸν ποιεῖσθαι, παραφρονοῦντος ἀνδρός So what's stylish
10089-401: Is their "father". According to Carl A. Shaw, the chorus of satyrs in a satyr play were "always trying to get a laugh with their animalistic, playfully rowdy, and, above all, sexual behavior." The satyrs play an important role in driving the plot of the production, without any of them actually being the lead role, which was always reserved for a god or tragic hero. Many satyr plays are named for
10260-455: Is usually in the form of a single, famous character. The comic playwright Melanippides of Melos ( c. 480–430 BC) tells the story in his lost comedy Marsyas of how, after inventing the aulos , the goddess Athena looked in the mirror while she was playing it. She saw how blowing into it puffed up her cheeks and made her look silly, so she threw the aulos away and cursed it so that whoever picked it up would meet an awful death. The aulos
10431-836: The Rāmāyaṇa , an Indian epic poem written in Sanskrit . According to Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) and others, the ancient Celts believed in dusii , which were hairy demons believed to occasionally take human form and seduce mortal women. Later figures in Celtic folklore, including the Irish bocánach , the Scottish ùruisg and glaistig , and the Manx goayr heddagh , are part human and part goat. The lexicographer Hesychius of Alexandria (fifth or sixth century AD) records that
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#173277337697110602-605: The Fabulae of Pseudo-Hyginus. In a myth referenced in multiple classical texts, including the Bibliotheke of Pseudo-Apollodorus and the Fabulae of Pseudo-Hyginus, a satyr from Argos once attempted to rape the nymph Amymone , but she called to the god Poseidon for help and he launched his trident at the satyr, knocking him to the ground. This myth may have originated from Aeschylus 's lost satyr play Amymone . Scenes of one or more satyrs chasing Amymone became
10773-611: The Suda says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete ( Rhesus is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined —he became, in the Hellenistic Age , a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer , Demosthenes , and Menander . Euripides
10944-626: The Bacchae , Pentheus's first threat to the god Dionysus is that if Pentheus catches him in his city, he will 'chop off his head', whereas it is Pentheus who is beheaded at the end of the play. The spoken language of the Euripidean plays is not fundamentally different in style from that of Aeschylus or Sophocles—it employs poetic meters , a rarefied vocabulary, fullness of expression, complex syntax, and ornamental figures, all aimed at representing an elevated style. But its rhythms are somewhat freer, and more natural, than that of his predecessors, and
11115-522: The City Dionysia , the famous Athenian dramatic festival, in 455 BC, one year after the death of Aeschylus ; and did not win first prize until 441 BC. His final competition in Athens was in 408 BC. The Bacchae and Iphigenia in Aulis were performed in 405 BC, and first prize was awarded posthumously. He won first prize only five times. His plays, and those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, indicate
11286-524: The Illyrians believed in satyr-like creatures called Deuadai . The Slavic leshy also bears similarities to satyrs, since he is described as being covered in hair and having "goat's horns, ears, feet, and long clawlike fingernails." Like satyrs, these similar creatures in other Indo-European mythologies are often also tricksters, mischief-makers, and dancers. The leshy was believed to trick travelers into losing their way. The Armenian Pay(n) were
11457-525: The Orphic Mysteries , and may have influenced Gnosticism . Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus. It is possible that water divination was an important aspect of worship within the cult. The cult of Dionysus traces back to at least Mycenaean Greece , since his name is found on Mycenean Linear B tablets as 𐀇𐀺𐀝𐀰 (di-wo-nu-so) . Dionysus is often shown riding
11628-510: The Pouring Satyr is widely accepted as a genuine work of Praxiteles, it may not have been a single work at all and the supposed "copies" of it may merely be Roman sculptures repeating the traditional Greek motif of pouring wine at symposia . The Romans identified satyrs with their own nature spirits, fauns . Although generally similar to satyrs, fauns differed in that they were usually seen as "shy, woodland creatures" rather than
11799-471: The Sicilian expedition led Athenians to trade renditions of Euripides' lyrics to their enemies in return for food and drink ( Life of Nicias 29). Plutarch also provides the story that the victorious Spartan generals, having planned the demolition of Athens and the enslavement of its people, grew merciful after being entertained at a banquet by lyrics from Euripides' play Electra : "they felt that it would be
11970-420: The chorus could dance, a space for actors (three speaking actors in Euripides' time), a backdrop or skene , and some special effects: an ekkyklema (used to bring the skene's "indoors" outdoors) and a mechane (used to lift actors in the air, as in deus ex machina ). With the introduction of the third actor (attributed to Aeschylus by Themistius; to Sophocles by Aristotle), acting also began to be regarded as
12141-551: The mystery religions . A winnowing fan was similar to a shovel and was used to separate the chaff from the grain. In addition, Dionysus is known as Lyaeus ("he who unties") as a god of relaxation and freedom from worry and as Oeneus, he is the god of the wine press . In the Greek pantheon , Dionysus (along with Zeus ) absorbs the role of Sabazios , a Phrygian deity. In the Roman pantheon , Sabazius became an alternate name for Bacchus. This Ancient Greece related article
12312-554: The 'recognition scene'). Other tragedians also used recognition scenes, but they were heroic in emphasis, as in Aeschylus's The Libation Bearers , which Euripides parodied in Electra (Euripides was unique among the tragedians in incorporating theatrical criticism in his plays). Traditional myth with its exotic settings, heroic adventures, and epic battles offered potential for romantic melodrama as well as for political comments on
12483-481: The Afternoon of a Faun as a ballet and danced in it as the lead role of the faun. The choreography of the ballet and Nijinsky's performance were both highly erotic and sexually charged, causing widespread scandal among upper-class Parisians. In the 1980 biographical film Nijinsky , directed by Herbert Ross , Nijinsky, who is played by George de la Peña , is portrayed as actually masturbating on stage in front of
12654-406: The Afternoon of a Faun ), which was first performed in 1894. The late nineteenth-century German Existentialist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was either unaware of or chose to ignore the fact that, in all the earliest representations, satyrs are depicted as horse-like. He accordingly defined a satyr as a "bearded" creature "who derived his name and attributes from the goat." Nietzsche excluded
12825-658: The American woman Miriam. Satyrs and nymphs provided a classical pretext which allowed sexual depictions of them to be seen as objects of high art rather than mere pornography. The French emperor Napoleon III awarded the Academic painter Alexandre Cabanel the Legion of Honour , partly on account of his painting Nymph Abducted by a Faun . In 1873, another French Academicist William-Adolphe Bouguereau painted Nymphs and Satyr , which depicts four nude nymphs dancing around "an unusually submissive satyr", gently coaxing him into
12996-566: The Archer Eros written in the third or fourth century AD by the art critic Callistratus . The original statue is widely assumed to have depicted the satyr in the act of pouring an oinochoe over his head into a cup, probably a kantharos . Antonio Corso describes the satyr in this sculpture as a "gentle youth" and "a precious and gentle being" with "soft and velvety" skin. The only hints at his "feral nature" were his ears, which were slightly pointed, and his small tail. The shape of
13167-469: The Byzantine period, following a change in script (from uncial to minuscule ), and many were "homophonic" errors—equivalent, in English, to substituting "right" for "write"; except that there were more opportunities for Byzantine scribes to make these errors, because η, ι, οι and ει, were pronounced similarly in the Byzantine period. Around 200 AD, ten of the plays of Euripides began to be circulated in
13338-787: The Cave of Euripides , where a cult of the playwright developed after his death). "There he built an impressive library and pursued daily communion with the sea and sky". The details of his death are uncertain. It was traditionally held that he retired to the "rustic court" of King Archelaus in Macedonia , where he died in 406 BC. Some modern scholars however claim that in reality Euripides may have never visited Macedonia at all, or if he did, he might have been drawn there by King Archelaus with incentives that were also offered to other artists. Such biographical details derive almost entirely from three unreliable sources: The next three sections expand on
13509-594: The Devil". In other cases, satyrs are usually shown nude, with enlarged phalli to emphasize their sexual nature. In the Second-Family Bestiary , the name "satyr" is used as the name of a species of ape , which is described as having a "very agreeable face, restless, however, in its twitching movements." During the Renaissance , satyrs and fauns began to reappear in works of European art. During
13680-601: The Hellenistic Period. They often appear dancing or playing the aulos. The maenads that often accompany satyrs in Archaic and Classical representations are often replaced in Hellenistic portrayals with wood nymphs. Artists also began to widely represent scenes of nymphs repelling the unwanted advances of amorous satyrs. Scenes of this variety were used to express the dark, beastly side of human sexuality at
13851-476: The Hellenistic period (as mentioned in the introduction) and, due to Seneca's adaptation of his work for Roman audiences, "it was Euripides, not Aeschylus or Sophocles, whose tragic muse presided over the rebirth of tragedy in Renaissance Europe." In the seventeenth century, Racine expressed admiration for Sophocles, but was more influenced by Euripides ( Iphigenia in Aulis and Hippolytus were
14022-480: The King James Version's translation of this phrase and others like it was intended to reduce the strangeness and unfamiliarity of the creatures described in the original Hebrew text by rendering them as names of familiar entities. Edmund Spenser refers to a group of woodland creatures as Satyrs in his epic poem The Faerie Queene . In Canto VI, Una is wandering through the forest when she stumbles upon
14193-534: The Monster Manual for the 3.0 edition. Savage Species (2003) presented the satyr as both a race and a playable class. The satyr appears in the revised Monster Manual for version 3.5 and also appears in the Monster Manual for the 4th edition, and as a playable character race in the Heroes of the Feywild sourcebook (2011). Matthew Barney 's art video Drawing Restraint 7 (1993) includes two satyrs wrestling in
14364-544: The Pan pipes and, like traditional satyrs and fauns, are portrayed as mischievous. One young faun plays hide-and-seek with a unicorn and imitates a statue of a faun atop a pedestal. Though the fauns are not portrayed as overtly sexual, they do assist the Cupids in pairing the centaurs into couples. A drunken Bacchus appears in the same scene. A faun named Mr. Tumnus appears in the classic juvenile fantasy novel The Lion,
14535-757: The Renaissance, no distinction was made between satyrs and fauns and both were usually given human and goat-like features in whatever proportion the artist deemed appropriate. A goat-legged satyr appears at the base of Michelangelo 's statue Bacchus (1497). Renaissance satyrs still sometimes appear in scenes of drunken revelry like those from antiquity, but they also sometimes appear in family scenes, alongside female and infant or child satyrs. This trend towards more familial, domestic satyrs may have resulted from conflation with wild men, who, especially in Renaissance depictions from Germany, were often portrayed as living relatively peaceful lives with their families in
14706-504: The United States. In 1876, Stéphane Mallarmé wrote "The Afternoon of a Faun", a first-person narrative poem about a faun who attempts to kiss two beautiful nymphs while they are sleeping together. He accidentally wakes them up. Startled, they transform into white water birds and fly away, leaving the faun to play his pan pipes alone. Claude Debussy composed a symphonic poem Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune ( Prelude to
14877-517: The Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) by C. S. Lewis . Mr. Tumnus has goat legs and horns, but also a tail long enough for him to carry it draped over his arm to prevent it from dragging in the snow. He is a domesticated figure who lacks the bawdiness and hypersexuality that characterized classical satyrs and fauns. Instead, Mr. Tumnus wears a scarf and carries an umbrella and lives in a cozy cave with
15048-581: The activity in which the chorus of satyrs engage during the production, such as Δικτυουλκοί , Diktyoulkoí , 'Net-Haulers', Θεωροὶ ἢ Ἰσθμιασταί , Theōroì ē Isthmiastaí , 'Spectators or Competitors at the Isthmian Games';, and Ἰχνευταί , Ichneutaí , 'Searchers'. Like tragedies, but unlike comedies , satyr plays were set in the distant past and dealt with mythological subjects. The third or second-century BC philosopher Demetrius of Phalerum famously characterized
15219-459: The aulos, and the god Apollo, playing the lyre. Marsyas loses and Apollo flays him as punishment. The Roman naturalist and encyclopedist Pliny the Elder conflated satyrs with gibbons , which he describes using the word satyrus , a Latinized form of the Greek satyros . He characterizes them as "a savage and wild people; distinct voice and speech they have none, but in steed thereof, they keep
15390-582: The bacchanalia were held in secret and attended by women only, in the grove of Simila, near the Aventine Hill , on 16 and 17 March. Subsequently, admission to the rites were extended to men, and celebrations took place five times per month. The notoriety of these festivals, where many kinds of crimes and political conspiracies were supposed to be planned, led in 186 BC to a decree of the Senate —the so-called Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus , inscribed on
15561-467: The backseat of a moving limousine . A satyr named Grover Underwood appears in the young adult fantasy novel The Lightning Thief (2005) by American author Rick Riordan , as well as in subsequent novels in the series Percy Jackson & the Olympians . Though consistently referred to as a "satyr", Grover is described as having goat legs, pointed ears, and horns. Grover is not portrayed with
15732-426: The chorus considers Athens, the "blessed land of Theus", to be a desirable refuge—such complexity and ambiguity are typical both of his "patriotic" and "anti-war" plays. Tragic poets in the fifth century competed against one another at the City Dionysia , each with a tetralogy of three tragedies and a satyr play . The few extant fragments of satyr plays attributed to Aeschylus and Sophocles indicate that these were
15903-402: The city regards you as greater than those with a reputation for cleverness, you will be thought vexatious. I myself am a sharer in this lot. Athenian tragedy in performance during Euripides' lifetime was a public contest between playwrights. The state funded it and awarded prizes. The language was metrical, spoken and sung. The performance area included a circular floor (called orchestra ) where
16074-504: The claims of each of these sources, respectively. Euripides was the youngest in a group of three great tragedians, who were almost contemporaries: his first play was staged thirteen years after Sophocles' debut, and three years after Aeschylus's Oresteia . The identity of the trio is neatly underscored by a patriotic account of their roles during Greece's great victory over Persia at the Battle of Salamis —Aeschylus fought there, Sophocles
16245-645: The clergy officially disapproved of them. In this form, satyrs are sometimes described and represented in medieval bestiaries , where a satyr is often shown dressed in an animal skin, carrying a club and a serpent. In the Aberdeen Bestiary , the Ashmole Bestiary , and MS Harley 3244, a satyr is shown as a nude man holding a wand resembling a jester 's club and leaning back, crossing his legs. Satyrs are sometimes juxtaposed with apes, which are characterized as "physically disgusting and akin to
16416-620: The democratic order. Thus, for example, Odysseus is represented in Hecuba (lines 131–32) as "agile-minded, sweet-talking, demos-pleasing", i.e. similar to the war-time demagogues that were active in Athens during the Peloponnesian War . Speakers in the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles sometimes distinguish between slaves who are servile by nature and those servile by circumstance, but Euripides' speakers go further, positing an individual's mental, rather than social or physical, state as
16587-602: The distinction between humans and animals was spiritual rather than physical, it was thought that even a satyr could attain salvation. Isidore of Seville ( c. 560 – 636) records an anecdote later recounted in the Golden Legend , that Anthony the Great encountered a satyr in the desert who asked to pray with him to their common God . During the Early Middle Ages, features and characteristics of satyrs and
16758-582: The distinction between the two was lost entirely. Since the Renaissance , satyrs have been most often represented with the legs and horns of goats. Representations of satyrs cavorting with nymphs have been common in western art, with many famous artists creating works on the theme. Since the beginning of the twentieth century, satyrs have generally lost much of their characteristic obscenity, becoming more tame and domestic figures. They commonly appear in works of fantasy and children's literature , in which they are most often referred to as "fauns". The etymology of
16929-490: The drunk and boisterous satyrs of the classical Greeks. Also, fauns generally lacked the association Greek satyrs had with secret wisdom. Unlike classical Greek satyrs, fauns were unambiguously goat-like; they had the upper bodies of men, but the legs, hooves, tail, and horns of goats. The first-century BC Roman poet Lucretius mentions in his lengthy poem De rerum natura that people of his time believed in "goat-legged" ( capripedes ) satyrs, along with nymphs who lived in
17100-782: The earliest written sources for satyrs is the Catalogue of Women , which is attributed to the Boeotian poet Hesiod . Here satyrs are born alongside the nymphs and Kouretes and are described as "good-for-nothing, prankster Satyrs". Satyrs were widely seen as mischief-makers who routinely played tricks on people and interfered with their personal property. They had insatiable sexual appetites and often sought to seduce or ravish both nymphs and mortal women alike, though these attempts were not always successful. Satyrs almost always appear in artwork alongside female companions of some variety. These female companions may be clothed or nude, but
17271-448: The entire live audience during the climax of the dance. The 1917 Italian silent film Il Fauno , directed by Febo Mari , is about a statue of a faun who comes to life and falls in love with a female model. Fauns appear in the animated dramatization of Ludwig van Beethoven 's Symphony No. 6 (1808) in the 1940 Disney animated film Fantasia . Their goat-legs are portrayed as brightly colored, but their hooves are black. They play
17442-447: The era to signify that the woman in question is of loose morals. The satyr's tongue is visible as the nymph playfully tugs on his goat beard and he strokes her chin. Even during this period, however, depictions of satyrs uncovering sleeping nymphs are still common, indicating that their traditional associations with rape and sexual violence had not been forgotten. During the nineteenth century, satyrs and nymphs came to often function as
17613-678: The extent that after the failure of the Sicilian Expedition , many Athenian captives were released, simply for being able to teach their captors whatever fragments they could remember of his work. Less than a hundred years later, Aristotle developed an almost "biological' theory of the development of tragedy in Athens: the art form grew under the influence of Aeschylus, matured in the hands of Sophocles, then began its precipitous decline with Euripides. However, "his plays continued to be applauded even after those of Aeschylus and Sophocles had come to seem remote and irrelevant"; they became school classics in
17784-556: The external order of tragedy but missed its entire meaning". This view influenced Friedrich Nietzsche , who seems, however, not to have known the Euripidean plays well. But literary figures, such as the poet Robert Browning and his wife Elizabeth Barrett Browning , could study and admire the Schlegels, while still appreciating Euripides as "our Euripides the human" ( Wine of Cyprus stanza 12). Classicists such as Arthur Verrall and Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff reacted against
17955-423: The female sex with the nobility. For when those of noble station resolve on base acts, surely the base-born will regard such acts as good. [...] One thing only, they say, competes in value with life, the possession of a heart blameless and good. Euripides' characters resembled contemporary Athenians rather than heroic figures of myth. For achieving his end Euripides' regular strategy is a very simple one: retaining
18126-468: The final defeat of his city. It is said that he died in Macedonia after being attacked by the Molossian hounds of King Archelaus, and that his cenotaph near Piraeus was struck by lightning—signs of his unique powers, whether for good or ill (according to one modern scholar, his death might have been caused instead by the harsh Macedonian winter). In an account by Plutarch , the catastrophic failure of
18297-441: The forms of animals who could sometimes change into other forms, including human-like ones. In archaic and classical Greek art, satyrs are shown with the ears and tails of horses. They walk upright on two legs, like human beings. They are usually shown with bestial faces, snub noses, and manelike hair. They are often bearded and balding. Like other Greek nature spirits, satyrs are always depicted nude. Sometimes they also have
18468-530: The full importance of satyrs in Greek culture and tradition, as Dionysian symbols of humanity's close ties to the animal kingdom. Like the Greeks, Nietzsche envisioned satyrs as essentially humans stripped down to their most basic and bestial instincts. In 1908, the French painter Henri Matisse produced his own Nymph and Satyr painting, in which the animal nature of the satyr is drastically minimized. The satyr
18639-512: The general trend, with satyrs losing aspects of their original bestial appearance over the course of Greek history and gradually becoming more and more human. In the most common depictions, satyrs are shown drinking wine, dancing, playing flutes, chasing nymphs, or consorting with Dionysus. They are also frequently shown masturbating or copulating with animals. In scenes from ceramic paintings depicting satyrs engaging in orgies, satyrs standing by and watching are often shown masturbating. One of
18810-498: The god Dionysus and were believed to inhabit remote locales, such as woodlands, mountains, and pastures. They often attempted to seduce or rape nymphs and mortal women alike, usually with little success. They are sometimes shown masturbating or engaging in bestiality . In classical Athens , satyrs made up the chorus in a genre of play known as a " satyr play ", which was a parody of tragedy and known for its bawdy and obscene humor. The only complete surviving play of this genre
18981-577: The god Pan , who resembled a satyr, became absorbed into traditional Christian iconography of Satan. Medieval storytellers in Western Europe also frequently conflated satyrs with wild men . Both satyrs and wild men were conceived as part human and part animal and both were believed to possess unrestrained sexual appetites. Stories of wild men during the Middle Ages often had an erotic tone and were primarily told orally by peasants, since
19152-582: The god Dionysus. They were thought to possess their own kind of wisdom that was useful to humans if they could be convinced to share it. In Plato 's Symposium , Alcibiades praises Socrates by comparing him to the famous satyr Marsyas. He resembles him physically, since he is balding and has a snub-nose, but Alcibiades contends that he resembles him mentally as well, because he is "insulting and abusive", in possession of irresistible charm, "erotically inclined to beautiful people", and "acts as if he knows nothing". Alcibiades concludes that Socrates's role as
19323-486: The hero Heracles an enema . A number of vase paintings depict scenes from satyr plays, including the Pronomos Vase, which depicts the entire cast of a victorious satyr play, dressed in costume, wearing shaggy leggings, erect phalli, and horse tails. The genre's reputation for crude humor is alluded to in other texts as well. In Aristophanes 's comedy Thesmophoriazusae , the tragic poet Agathon declares that
19494-428: The horse-like satyrs of Greek tradition from his consideration entirely and argued that tragedy had originated from a chorus of men dressed up as satyrs or goats ( tragoi ). Thus, Nietzsche held that tragedy had begun as a Dionysian activity. Nietzsche's rejection of the early evidence for horse-like satyrs was a mistake his critics severely excoriated him for. Nonetheless, he was the first modern scholar to recognize
19665-525: The iconography of these beings is poorly-attested. Beings possibly similar to satyrs called śě'îrîm are mentioned several times in the Hebrew Bible . Śĕ'îr was the standard Hebrew word for ' he-goat ', but it could also apparently sometimes refer to demons in the forms of goats. They were evidently subjects of veneration, because Leviticus 17:7 forbids Israelites from making sacrificial offerings to them and 2 Chronicles 11:15 mentions that
19836-478: The inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was "the creator of ... that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare's Othello , Racine's Phèdre , of Ibsen and Strindberg ," in which "imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates". But he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw . His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as
20007-493: The legs of horses, but, in ancient art, including both vase paintings and in sculptures, satyrs are most often represented with human legs and feet. Satyrs' genitals are always depicted as either erect or at least extremely large. Their erect phalli represent their association with wine and women, which were the two major aspects of their god Dionysus 's domain. In some cases, satyrs are portrayed as very human-like, lacking manes or tails. As time progressed, this became
20178-504: The literary conventions that modern readers expect: there was still no spacing between words; little or no punctuation; and no stage directions; but abbreviated names denoted changes of speaker; lyrics were broken into "cola" and "strophai", or lines and stanzas; and a system of accentuation was introduced. After this creation of a standard edition, the text was fairly safe from errors, besides slight and gradual corruption introduced with tedious copying. Many of these trivial errors occurred in
20349-427: The lyrics often seem dislocated from the action, but the extent and significance of this is "a matter of scholarly debate". See Chronology for details about his style. Euripides has aroused, and continues to arouse, strong opinions for and against his work: He was a problem to his contemporaries and he is one still; over the course of centuries since his plays were first produced he has been hailed or indicted under
20520-563: The main criterion for success (the system of selecting judges appears to have been flawed), and merely being chosen to compete was a mark of distinction. Moreover, to have been singled out by Aristophanes for so much comic attention is proof of popular interest in his work. Sophocles was appreciative enough of the younger poet to be influenced by him, as is evident in his later plays Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus . According to Plutarch, Euripides had been very well received in Sicily, to
20691-517: The misidentification of apes or monkeys. The French materialist philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1709–1751) included a section titled "On savage men, called Satyrs" in his Oeuvres philosophiques , in which he describes great apes, identifying them with both satyrs and wild men. Many early accounts of the orangutan describe the males as being sexually aggressive towards human women and towards females of its own species, much like classical Greek satyrs. The first scientific name given to this ape
20862-514: The models for his plays Iphigénie and Phèdre ). Euripides' reputation was to take a beating in the early 19th century, when Friedrich Schlegel and his brother August Wilhelm Schlegel championed Aristotle's 'biological' model of theatre history, identifying Euripides with the moral, political, and artistic degeneration of Athens. August Wilhelm's Vienna lectures on dramatic art and literature went through four editions between 1809 and 1846; and, in them, he opined that Euripides "not only destroyed
21033-551: The mountains and fauns who played rustic music on stringed instruments and pipes. In Roman-era depictions, satyrs and fauns are both often associated with music and depicted playing the Pan pipes or syrinx . The poet Virgil , who flourished during the early years of the Roman Empire , recounts a story in his sixth Eclogue about two boys who tied up the satyr Silenus while he was in a drunken stupor and forced him to sing them
21204-428: The mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea : [...] ὡς τρὶς ἂν παρ᾿ ἀσπίδα στῆναι θέλοιμ᾿ ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ τεκεῖν ἅπαξ [250–251]. I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once. The textual transmission of the plays, from the 5th century BC, when they were first written, until the era of the printing press, was a largely haphazard process. Much of Euripides' work
21375-491: The mythical and heroic setting that it can seem like Euripides aimed at parody. For example, in The Trojan Women , the heroine's rationalized prayer elicits comment from Menelaus: ΕΚΑΒΗ: [...] Ζεύς, εἴτ᾿ ἀνάγκη φύσεος εἴτε νοῦς βροτῶν, προσηυξάμην σε· πάντα γὰρ δι᾿ ἀψόφου βαίνων κελεύθου κατὰ δίκην τὰ θνήτ᾿ ἄγεις. ΜΕΝΕΛΑΟΣ: τί δ᾿ ἔστιν; εὐχὰς ὡς ἐκαίνισας θεῶν [886–889]. Hecuba : [...] Zeus, whether you are
21546-791: The name 'satyr' is sometimes derogatorily applied to a "brutish or lustful man". The term satyriasis refers to a medical condition in males characterized by excessive sexual desire. It is the male equivalent of nymphomania . According to classicist Martin Litchfield West , satyrs and silenoi in Greek mythology are similar to a number of other entities appearing in other Indo-European mythologies, indicating that they probably go back, in some vague form, to Proto-Indo-European mythology . Like satyrs, these other Indo-European nature spirits are often human-animal hybrids, frequently bearing specifically equine or asinine features. Human-animal hybrids known as Kiṃpuruṣas or Kiṃnaras are mentioned in
21717-462: The name from an ancient Peloponnesian word meaning 'the full ones', alluding to their permanent state of sexual arousal. Eric Partridge suggested that the name may be related to the root sat- , meaning 'to sow', which has also been proposed as the root of the name of the Roman god Saturn . Satyrs are usually indistinguishable from sileni , whose iconography is virtually identical. According to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable ,
21888-536: The necessity of nature or the mind of mortal men, I address you in prayer! For proceeding on a silent path you direct all mortal affairs toward justice! Menelaus : What does this mean? How strange your prayer to the gods is! Athenian citizens were familiar with rhetoric in the assembly and law courts, and some scholars believe that Euripides was more interested in his characters as speakers with cases to argue than as characters with lifelike personalities. They are self-conscious about speaking formally, and their rhetoric
22059-428: The old gods. And the perhaps most famous example is in Bacchae where the god Dionysus savages his own converts. When the gods do appear (in eight of the extant plays), they appear "lifeless and mechanical". Sometimes condemned by critics as an unimaginative way to end a story, the spectacle of a "god" making a judgement or announcement from a theatrical crane might actually have been intended to provoke scepticism about
22230-421: The old stories and the great names, as his theatre required, he imagines his people as contemporaries subjected to contemporary kinds of pressures, and examines their motivations, conduct and fate in the light of contemporary problems, usages and ideals. As mouthpieces for contemporary issues, they "all seem to have had at least an elementary course in public speaking". The dialogue often contrasts so strongly with
22401-605: The original plays. Sometimes the picture is almost lost. Thus, for example, two extant plays, The Phoenician Women and Iphigenia in Aulis , are significantly corrupted by interpolations (the latter possibly being completed post mortem by the poet's son); and the very authorship of Rhesus is a matter of dispute. In fact, the very existence of the Alphabet plays, or rather the absence of an equivalent edition for Sophocles and Aeschylus, could distort our notions of distinctive Euripidean qualities—most of his least "tragic" plays are in
22572-510: The people performing the flaying are shown calmly absorbed in their task, while Marsyas himself even displays "an unlikely patience". The painting reflects a broad continuum between the divine and the bestial. In the 1560 Geneva Bible , the word sa'ir in both of the instances in Isaiah is translated into English as 'satyr'. The 1611 King James Version follows this translation and likewise renders sa'ir as 'satyr'. Edwards states that
22743-535: The play, Polyphemus has captured a tribe of satyrs led by Silenus, who is described as their "Father", and forced them to work for him as his slaves. After Polyphemus captures Odysseus, Silenus attempts to play Odysseus and Polyphemus off each other for his own benefit, primarily by tricking them into giving him wine. As in the original scene, Odysseus manages to blind Polyphemus and escape. Approximately 450 lines, most of which are fragmentary, have survived of Sophocles 's satyr play Ichneutae ( Tracking Satyrs ). In
22914-464: The position conventionally reserved for satyr plays) is a "tragedy", featuring Heracles as a satyric hero in conventional satyr-play scenes: an arrival, a banquet, a victory over an ogre (in this case, death), a happy ending, a feast, and a departure for new adventures. Most of the big innovations in tragedy were made by Aeschylus and Sophocles, but "Euripides made innovations on a smaller scale that have impressed some critics as cumulatively leading to
23085-411: The precursor of New Comedy and also what Aristotle called him: 'the most tragic of poets' ( Poetics 1453a30). And not one of these descriptions is entirely false. — Bernard Knox Aeschylus gained thirteen victories as a dramatist; Sophocles at least twenty; Euripides only four in his lifetime; and this has often been taken as indication of the latter's unpopularity. But a first place might not have been
23256-457: The religious and heroic dimension of his plays. Similarly, his plays often begin in a banal manner that undermines theatrical illusion. Unlike Sophocles, who established the setting and background of his plays in the introductory dialogue, Euripides used a monologue in which a divinity or human character simply tells the audience all it needs to know to understand what follows. Aeschylus and Sophocles were innovative, but Euripides had arrived at
23427-463: The remainder is derived from elsewhere. P contains all the extant plays of Euripides, L is missing The Trojan Women and latter part of The Bacchae . In addition to L, P, and many other medieval manuscripts, there are fragments of plays on papyrus. These papyrus fragments are often recovered only with modern technology. In June 2005, for example, classicists at the University of Oxford worked on
23598-422: The sake of rhetorical display"; and one spring to the defence: "His plays are remarkable for their range of tones and the gleeful inventiveness, which morose critics call cynical artificiality, of their construction." Unique among writers of ancient Athens, Euripides demonstrated sympathy towards the underrepresented members of society. His male contemporaries were frequently shocked by the heresies he put into
23769-511: The same deity and states that a festival in honor of Bacchus is held every year atop Mount Parnassus , at which many satyrs are often seen. Starting in late antiquity, Christian writers began to portray satyrs and fauns as dark, evil, and demonic. Jerome ( c. 347 – 420 AD) described them as symbols of Satan on account of their lasciviousness. Despite this, however, satyrs were sometimes clearly distinguished from demons and sometimes even portrayed as noble. Because Christians believed that
23940-528: The satiric genre in his treatise De Elocutione as the middle ground between tragedy and comedy: a "playful tragedy" ( τραγῳδία παίζουσα , tragōdía paízdousa ). The only complete extant satyr play is Euripides 's Cyclops , which is a burlesque of a scene from the eighth-century BC epic poem, the Odyssey , in which Odysseus is captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus in a cave. In
24111-487: The satyr to him and he attempted to interrogate it, but it spoke only in an unintelligible sound: a cross between the neighing of a horse and the bleating of a goat. The second-century Greek travel writer Pausanias reports having seen the tombs of deceased silenoi in Judaea and at Pergamon . Based on these sites, Pausanias concludes that silenoi must be mortal. The third-century Greek biographer Philostratus records
24282-500: The satyrs always treat them as mere sexual objects. A single elderly satyr named Silenus was believed to have been the tutor of Dionysus on Mount Nysa . After Dionysus grew to maturity, Silenus became one of his most devout followers, remaining perpetually drunk. This image was reflected in the classical Athenian satyr play . Satyr plays were a genre of plays defined by the fact that their choruses were invariably made up of satyrs. These satyrs are always led by Silenus, who
24453-770: The satyrs that appear in Nonnos' Dionysiaca are heavily assumed to have been coined by the author, and are nothing more than plot devices with no mythological significance. Four names listed in the epic, when translated, are merely adjectives associated to the character ("Pastoral", "Cult-association", "Tall-horn", and "Mountain-dweller"). The names of the satyrs according to various vase paintings were: Babacchos , Briacchos , Dithyrambos , Demon , Dromis , Echon , Hedyoinos ("Sweet Wine"), Hybris ("Insolence"), Hedymeles , ("Sweet Song"), Komos ("Revelry"), Kissos ("Ivy"), Molkos , Oinos , Oreimachos , Simos ("Snub-nose"), Terpon and Tyrbas ("Rout"). The iconography of satyrs
24624-454: The sculpture was an S-shape , shown in three-quarter view . The satyr had short, boyish locks, derived from those of earlier Greek athletic sculpture. Although the original statue has been lost, a representation of the pouring satyr appears in a late classical relief sculpture from Athens and twenty-nine alleged "copies" of the statue from the time of the Roman Empire have also survived. Olga Palagia and J. J. Pollitt argue that, although
24795-527: The sexually obscene traits that characterized classical Greek satyrs. Instead, he is the loyal protector to the main character Percy Jackson , who is the son of a mortal woman and the god Poseidon . Euripides Euripides ( c. 480 – c. 406 BC ) was a Greek tragedian of classical Athens . Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles , he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but
24966-562: The standard representations of gods and heroes. They could be used to embody what Stephen J. Campbell calls a "monstrous double" of the category in which human beings often placed themselves. It is in this aspect that satyrs appear in Jacopo de' Barbari 's c. 1495 series of prints depicting satyrs and naked men in combat and in Piero di Cosimo 's Stories of Primitive Man , inspired by Lucretius. Satyrs became seen as "pre-human", embodying all
25137-524: The surviving portion of the play, the chorus of satyrs are described as "lying on the ground like hedgehogs in a bush, or like a monkey bending over to fart at someone." The character Cyllene scolds them: "All you [satyrs] do you do for the sake of fun!... Cease to expand your smooth phallus with delight. You should not make silly jokes and chatter, so that the gods will make you shed tears to make me laugh." In Dionysius I of Syracuse 's fragmentary satyr play Limos ( Starvation ), Silenus attempts to give
25308-405: The tattered costumes of his disreputable characters (and yet Agathon , another tragic poet, is discovered in a later play, Thesmophoriazusae , to be living in circumstances almost as bizarre). Euripides' mother was a humble vendor of vegetables, according to the comic tradition, yet his plays indicate that he had a liberal education and hence a privileged background. Euripides first competed in
25479-477: The term satyr ( ‹See Tfd› Greek : σάτυρος , translit. sátyros ) is unclear, and several different etymologies have been proposed for it, including a possible Pre-Greek origin. Some scholars have linked the second part of name to the root of the Greek word θηρίον , thēríon , meaning 'wild animal'. This proposal may be supported by the fact that at one point Euripides refers to satyrs as theres . Another proposed etymology derives
25650-524: The time of Euripides, traditional assumptions are constantly under challenge, and audiences therefore have a natural affinity with the Euripidean outlook, which seems nearer to ours, for example, than the Elizabethan. As stated above, however, opinions continue to diverge, so that modern readers might actually "seem to feel a special affinity with Sophocles"; one recent critic might dismiss the debates in Euripides' plays as "self-indulgent digression for
25821-487: The tragedian's methods; he was himself ridiculed by Cratinus , another comic poet, as: ὑπολεπτολόγος, γνωμιδιώτης, εὐριπιδαριστοφανίζων a quibbler of words, a maker of maxims, a Euripidaristophaniser According to another comic poet, Teleclides , the plays of Euripides were co-authored by the philosopher Socrates: Μνησίλοχός ἐστ᾿ ἐκεῖνος, <ὃς> φρύγει τι δρᾶμα καινόν Εὐριπίδῃ, καὶ Σωκράτης τὰ φρύγαν᾿ ὑποτίθησιν. [...] Εὐριπίδης σωκρατογόμφους. Mnesilochus
25992-421: The tragic plot, and the play appears to be the culmination of a regressive or archaizing tendency in his later works (for which see Chronology below). Believed to have been composed in the wilds of Macedonia, Bacchae also dramatizes a primitive side to Greek religion, and some modern scholars have interpreted this particular play biographically, therefore, as: One of his earliest extant plays, Medea , includes
26163-481: The traits of savagery and barbarism associated with animals, but in human-like bodies. Satyrs also became used to question early modern humanism in ways which some scholars have seen as similar to present-day posthumanism , as in Titian 's Flaying of Marsyas ( c. 1570–1576). The Flaying of Marysas depicts the scene from Ovid's Metamorphoses in which the satyr Marysas is flayed alive. According to Campbell,
26334-518: The views of the Schlegels and Nietzsche, constructing arguments sympathetic to Euripides, which involved Wilamowitz in this restatement of Greek tragedy as a genre: "A [Greek] tragedy does not have to end 'tragically' or be 'tragic'. The only requirement is a serious treatment." In the English-speaking world, the pacifist Gilbert Murray played an important role in popularizing Euripides, influenced perhaps by his anti-war plays. Today, as in
26505-438: The vocabulary has been expanded to allow for intellectual and psychological subtleties. Euripides has been hailed as a great lyric poet. In Medea , for example, he composed for his city, Athens, "the noblest of her songs of praise". His lyrical skills are not just confined to individual poems: "A play of Euripides is a musical whole...one song echoes motifs from the preceding song, while introducing new ones." For some critics,
26676-485: The water of a nearby stream. This painting was bought that same year by an American named John Wolfe, who displayed it publicly in a prominent location in the bar at the Hoffman House, a hotel he owned on Madison Square and Broadway . Despite its risqué subject, many women came to the bar to view the painting. The painting was soon mass reproduced on ceramic tiles, porcelain plates, and other luxury items in
26847-578: The wilderness. The most famous representation of a domestic satyr is Albrecht Dürer 's 1505 engraving The Satyr's Family , which has been widely reproduced and imitated. This popular portrayal of satyrs and wild men may have also helped give rise to the later European concept of the noble savage . Satyrs occupied a paradoxical, liminal space in Renaissance art, not only because they were part human and part beast, but also because they were both antique and natural. They were of classical origin, but had an iconographical canon of their own very different from
27018-461: The wine had vanished, the ghost-satyr fell asleep and never bothered the villagers again. Amira El-Zein notes similarities between this story and later Arabic accounts of jinn . The treatise Saturnalia by the fifth-century AD Roman poet Macrobius connects both the word satyr and the name Saturn to the Greek word for "penis". Macrobius explains that this is on account of satyrs' sexual lewdness. Macrobius also equates Dionysus and Apollo as
27189-419: Was Simia satyrus . Relationships between satyrs and nymphs of this period are often portrayed as consensual. This trend is exemplified by the 1623 painting Satyr and Nymph by Gerard van Honthorst , which depicts a satisfied satyr and nymph lasciviously fondling each other after engaging in obviously consensual sex. Both are smiling and the nymph is showing her teeth, a sign commonly used by painters of
27360-417: Was born on Salamis Island around 480 BC, with parents Cleito (mother) and Mnesarchus (father), a retailer from the deme of Phlya . On receiving an oracle that his son was fated to win "crowns of victory", Mnesarchus insisted that the boy should train for a career in athletics. But the boy was destined for a career on the stage (where he was to win only five victories, one of these posthumously). He served for
27531-691: Was combined with the "Select" edition by some unknown Byzantine scholar, bringing together all the nineteen plays that survive today. The "Select" plays are found in many medieval manuscripts, but only two manuscripts preserve the "Alphabetical" plays—often denoted L and P, after the Laurentian Library at Florence, and the Bibliotheca Palatina in the Vatican, where they are stored. It is believed that P derived its Alphabet plays and some Select plays from copies of an ancestor of L, but
27702-469: Was expected to have a message. Traditional myth provided the subject matter, but the dramatist was meant to be innovative, which led to novel characterizations of heroic figures and use of the mythical past as a tool for discussing present issues. The difference between Euripides and his older colleagues was one of degree: his characters talked about the present more controversially and pointedly than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, sometimes even challenging
27873-520: Was gradually conflated with that of the Pans, plural forms of the god Pan , who were regularly depicted with the legs and horns of a goat. By the Hellenistic Period (323–31 BC), satyrs were beginning to sometimes be shown with goat-like features. Meanwhile, both satyrs and Pans also continued to be shown as more human and less bestial. Scenes of satyrs and centaurs were very popular during
28044-439: Was just old enough to celebrate the victory in a boys' chorus, and Euripides was born on the very day of the battle. The apocryphal account, that he composed his works in a cave on Salamis island, was a late tradition, probably symbolizing the isolation of an intellectual ahead of his time. Much of his life, and his whole career, coincided with the struggle between Athens and Sparta for hegemony in Greece, but he did not live to see
28215-445: Was lost or corrupted; but the period also included triumphs by scholars and copyists, thanks to whom much was recovered and preserved. Summaries of the transmission are often found in modern editions of the plays, three of which are used as sources for this summary. The plays of Euripides, like those of Aeschylus and Sophocles, circulated in written form. But literary conventions that we take for granted today had not been invented—there
28386-424: Was more insistent, using major characters as well. His comic touches can be thought to intensify the overall tragic effect, and his realism, which often threatens to make his heroes look ridiculous, marks a world of debased heroism: "The loss of intellectual and moral substance becomes a central tragic statement". Psychological reversals are common and sometimes happen so suddenly that inconsistency in characterization
28557-413: Was no spacing between words; no consistency in punctuation, nor elisions; no marks for breathings and accents (guides to pronunciation, and word recognition); no convention to denote change of speaker; no stage directions; and verse was written straight across the page, like prose. Possibly, those who bought texts supplied their own interpretative markings. Papyri discoveries have indicated, for example, that
28728-419: Was picked up by the satyr Marsyas, who challenged Apollo to a musical contest. They both agreed beforehand that whoever won would be allowed to do whatever he wanted to the loser. Marsyas played the aulos and Apollo played the lyre. Apollo turned his lyre upside-down and played it. He asked Marsyas to do the same with his instrument. Since he could not, Apollo was deemed to victor. Apollo hung Marsyas from
28899-423: Was soon disregarded, and actors continued to make changes until about 200 BC, after which the habit ceased. It was about then that Aristophanes of Byzantium compiled an edition of all the extant plays of Euripides, collated from pre-Alexandrian texts, furnished with introductions and accompanied by a commentary that was "published" separately. This became the "standard edition" for the future, and it featured some of
29070-479: Was the tutor of the young Dionysus and a story from Ionia told of a silenos who gave sound advice when captured. Over the course of Greek history, satyrs gradually became portrayed as more human and less bestial. They also began to acquire goat-like characteristics in some depictions as a result of conflation with the Pans, plural forms of the god Pan with the legs and horns of goats. The Romans identified satyrs with their native nature spirits, fauns . Eventually
29241-593: Was worshiped by the name Acroreites. As Bacchus, he carried the Latin epithet Adoneus', "Ruler". Aegobolus, "goat killer", was the name under which he was worshiped at Potniae in Boeotia . As Aesymnetes ("ruler" or "lord") he was worshipped at Aroë and Patrae in Achaea . Another epithet was Bromios, "the thunderer" or "he of the loud shout". As Dendrites, "he of the trees", he is a powerful fertility god. Dithyrambos
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