Reconstructing Satyr Drama, Berlin: DeGruyter 2021

Reconstructing Satyr Drama , 2021

From Marseille to the cities of Asia Minor, spectators enjoyed performances of Greek drama throughout the Hellenistic period, and well into the Roman imperial era.1 Overall, the number of Greek agonistic festivals increased drastically from the age of Augustus through the early third century AD, what Louis Robert called an 'explosion agonistique'.2 Leschhorn counts over 500 festivals in the Greek East in the imperial period.3 Upwards of 30 cities in the Empire are known to have had competitions in drama, and some of these cities celebrated multiple dramatic festivals.4 New tragedies, comedies, and satyr dramas continued to be performed at Greek festivals into the second century AD. Reproductions of tragedy and comedy continued into at least the early third century AD. Although the scripts of satyr drama of the late Hellenistic and Roman era do not survive, even in fragments, there is material evidence for the genre, for which the most crucial source is epigraphical. Inscribed documents pertaining to the administration and celebration of dramatic festivals reveal not only how long satyr drama persisted in the Greek world, but also how important the institutional framework of the festivals was to its survival. Before the analysis of these epigraphic sources on satyr drama, there had been doubts about whether it was performed at all in the late Hellenistic and Roman era. In 1979, Plotnick questioned why Horace had written at such length in the Ars Poetica about satyr drama, 'a currently non-existing dramatic art form'.5 In the same year, however, Steffen made a first attempt at reconstructing post-classical satyr drama on the basis of epigraphic evidence in his short Latin dissertation.6 In 1991, Ghiron-Bistagne collected some of the epigraphic evidence for Hellenistic satyr

Ordia Prima 14, 2015

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Polis: the journal for ancient greek political thought, 2012

BICS 62.2, 2019

Satyr drama is defined by the dominating presence of its eponymous chorus; yet its choreia always appears precarious and problematic. The satyrs sing and dance and are scolded for doing so, or they do not sing and dance and are scolded for not doing so. Even when they are singing and dancing, the satyrs themselves question their own choreia as they lament the impossibility of singing and dancing under current circumstances, share memories of better songs and past dances, or imagine them happening in the future. This paper considers the persistent problematization of choreia in satyr play and the specific uses of satyric choreia as a central element in the poetics of the genre, arguing that these are tied to an unabashedly Dionysiac reconstruction of the origins of drama. Finally, a postscript shows how satyr drama's treatment of choreia translates into the visual sphere on the famous Pronomos Vase. * I would like to offer my heartfelt thanks to Lyndsay Coo, Anna Uhlig, and the anonymous referee for their insightful comments and admirable patience; to Oliver Thomas, Naomi Weiss, and Seth Schein for helpful questions and comments on an earlier version of this article; to Oliver Taplin, Thomas Mannack, and Liz Potter for generous help 'in things Pronomos'; and to Raymond Geuss, Emily Gowers, Richard Hunter, and Cédric Scheidegger Lämmle for their invaluable criticism. 1 Οἱ σάτυροι is also the best-attested name for the genre: the title of the only known ancient monograph on satyr play, by Chamaeleon, is Περὶ Σατύρων (fr. 37 Wehrli) (cf.

Ad perpetuam memoriam Michaelis D. Petruševski : proceedings of the international conference : 100th anniversary of the birth of professor Mihail D. Petruševski, 1911-1990

Theory and Event, 2014

In this paper I argue that by reading Plato's Republic through the ancient Greek genre of the satyr-play, new insights into his project emerge. I start by showing that the dialogue abounds with a number of hitherto unrecognized satyr-play elements. Second, I argue that the unique form of serious play, characteristic of the ancient Greek satyr-play, helps to explain the kind of stance that Plato hoped to pass on to his readers, which includes a combination of suspicion and engagement, distance and proximity, humor and seriousness in relation to any authoritative utterance, including those coming from his character, Socrates.

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’s 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’s interlocutors. And 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.