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Satyr and image in Aeschylus' Theoroi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Patrick O'Sullivan
Patrick O'Sullivan*
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury, New Zealand, p.osullivan@clas.canterbury.ac.nz
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Extract

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 (2.13.6–7) and Diogenes Laertius (2.133) 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 ([c] col. ii 50), 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 (esp. lines 1–22). 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.

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Research Article
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The Classical Quarterly , Volume 50 , Issue 2 , December 2000, pp. 353 - 366
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Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

1 First published by Lobel, E., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri XVIII (London, 1941)Google Scholar as P Oxy. 2162; see also frr.78a-82 Radt TrGF 3 (Göttingen, 1985). The most recent edition is Diggle, J., TrGFS (Oxford 1998), 11–15,Google Scholar which is used here.

2 For a useful overview, see the Appendix by H. Lloyd-Jones to vol. II of the Loeb edition of Aeschylus (Cambridge, MA, 1956), 541–56. See also Kamerbeek, J. C., Mnemosyne 8 (1955), 1–13;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Snell, B., Hermes 84 (1956), 1–11.Google Scholar More recent discussions of the Theoroi in the context of satyric drama generally include: Seaford, R., Maia 28 (1976), 209–21,Google Scholar and the introduction to his text and commentary, Euripides. Cyclops (Oxford, 1984), 10–44, esp. 33–9; Ussher, R., Phoenix 31 (1977), 287–99,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 296–9; Sutton, D. F., The Greek Satyr Play (Meisenheim am Glan, 1980), esp. 29–33;Google Scholar id. GRBS 22 (1981), 335–8. Cf. also Stieber, M., TAPhA 124 (1994), 85–93.Google Scholar

3 Lobel's view (n. 1), 14, that the papyrus is from a satyr play has gained general currency.

4 So Lloyd-Jones (n. 2), 543; Else, G., CPh 53 (1958), 77–8;Google Scholar Lanata, G., Poetica Pre-Platonica (Florence, 1963), 139–40;Google Scholar Philipp, H., Tektonon Daidala. Der bildende Kiinstler und sein Werkim vorplatonischen Schrifttum (Berlin, 1968), 28;Google Scholar Faraone, C., Talismans and Trojan Horses. Guardian Statues in Ancient Greek Myth and Ritual (Oxford, 1992), 37–8;Google Scholar Stieber (n. 2), 85–93; Zeitlin, F. in Goldhill, S. and Osborne, R. (eds), Art and Text in Ancient Greek Culture (Cambridge, 1994), 138–9.Google Scholar Sorbom, G., Mimesis and Art. Studies in the Origin and Early Development of an Aesthetic Vocabulary (Stockholm, 1966), 41–53 Google Scholar argued that the fragment does not testify to the emergence of realistic portraiture, yet conceded that the satyric response is to an art that is ‘vivid and full of life’ (p. 45).

5 Untersteiner, M., Dioniso 14 (1951), 33.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., 31.

7 Stieber (n. 2), 91.

8 Ibid., 94–9.

9 Stieber (n. 2), 104–6, here follows Fraenkel, E., Aeschylus. Agamemnon (Oxford, 1950),Google Scholar ad loc, but differs from him by seeing the statues as portraits of Helen.

10 Stieber (n. 2), 105.

11 Ibid., 97–9.

12 As evident in the use of the passive infinitive νομζεσθαι, as Stieber (n. 2), 98 concedes.

13 For satyrs as essentially rustic, see Seaford (n. 2), 212–13, and his introduction to the Cyclops (n. 2), 18, 21, 30–2, and F. Lissarague in Winkler, J. and Zeitlin, F. (eds), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 228–36,CrossRefGoogle Scholar esp. 235.

14 Lissarrague (n. 13), 235.

15 Fascination with the powers of visual phenomena is evident in Homeric epic, especially when glossed as a θαμα (II. 5.725, 18.377, 18.549;Od. 6.305–7, 7.44–5; cf. Od. 19.226–31, etc.). Interest in vision and/or visual artworks is attested widely from the late sixth century onwards (all references to Presocratics and Sophists are from the sixth edition of Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, edd. H. Diels and W. Kranz [Berlin, 1951–2]), e.g. Heraclitus BlOla; Empedocles A86, A92, B23, B84, B86, B87, B89; Anaxagoras B21a; Polyclitus Bl, B2; Gorgias B3.86–8, B4, B5, B26, B28, Hel. 15–19, MXG 979al l-980b21; Leucippus A29, 30, 31; Democritus A135, B5h, 28a; Hippias A2. Agatharchus’ commentary on the scaena he designed for Aeschylus is said to have influenced Anaxagoras and Democritus (Vitr. 7 praef. 11). Euripides incorporated visual artworks into some plays, e.g. the ecphrases in Ion (184–218, 1141–80), Electra (452–75), and Phoenissae (1104–40); this last is a suspected passage, but see Mastronarde, D., Phoenix 32 (1978), 105–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar and id., Euripides. Phoenissae (Cambridge, 1994), 456–9 for detailed defences of it. For the prominence in Euripides’ dramas of imagery and terms drawn from artistic sources, see Barlow, S., The Imagery of Euripides (London, 1971), 57–60 Google Scholar with nn.

16 See Vita Aeschyli, 332, 333 OCT (ed. D. L. Page). At Frogs 962–3 the ἔκπληξις of Aeschylean style is implied when Euripides contrasts himself to the older playwright, in saying:οὐδ’ ξ∋ληττον αὐτοὐς (sc. the audience). The reference here is probably to Aeschylean dramaturgy rather than his poetry; see Taplin, O., The Stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford, 1977), 76–7,Google Scholar 422–3, and Sommerstein, A., Aristophanes. Frogs (Warminster, 1996),Google Scholar on Frogs 963. Philostratus, VS 1.9.1 parallels Aeschylus’ theatricality and Gorgias’ rhetorical style, also noted in antiquity for its capacity to induce ἓκ∋ληξμς (Gorgias Al, A4). Both the Suda (s.v. Αἰσχλος) and Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius 6.11 (=TrGFl, T 106) draw attention to the dramatist's visual innovations onstage.

17 Some have needlessly questioned the chronology of Agatharchus, given his connections with Alcibiades ([Andoc.] C. Alcib. 17; Dem. C. Meidias 147; Plut. Ale. 16.4) as well as Aeschylus; see: Rumpf, A., JHS 67 (1947), 13;Google Scholar Pollitt, J. J., Art and Experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge, 1972), 56,Google Scholar n. 15; cf. Taplin(n. 16), 457, n. 4; A. Brown, PCPhS 30(1984), passim, esp. 1–2. There is no evidence that the painter could not have been active from before 456 to the 420s, which is all that is required to bear out the literary testimonies.

18 For instance, Vidal-Naquet, P. in Annali del Seminario di Studi del Mondo Classico: Archeologica e Storia Antica I (1979), 95–118 Google Scholar (repr. as ‘Les boucliers des héros’, in Mythe et trageédie en Gréce ancienne II [Paris, 1986]). Both Thalmann, W., Dramatic Art in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (New Haven and London, 1978),Google Scholar esp. ch. 5, and Zeitlin, F., Under the Sign of the Shield: Semiotics and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (Rome, 1982),Google Scholar passim, esp. 45, see how the shield-scene allegorizes the main conflict, although approaching it from quite different perspectives.

19 This is Page's emendation of the corrupt ξιζοιτο, CR 7 (1957), 191.

20 The translations of Lloyd-Jones (n. 2), 553 ‘… wrought by superhuman skill’, and that of Stieber (n. 2), 88:‘… not made by human hands’ seem to me tenable, confirmed by the gloss on the image as τ Δαιδλου μ[ μημα. See section II below for fuller explication of my reading of the first line.

21 See: Fraenkel, E., PBA 28 (1942), 245;Google Scholar Snell (n. 2), 6; Mette, H., Der vorlorene Aischylos (Berlin, 1963), 165;Google Scholar Ussher (n. 2), 297; Sutton (n. 2), 29; Green, J. R., Theatre in Ancient Greek Society (London, 1994), 45.Google Scholar Easterling, P. E. in The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy, ed. Easterling, P. E. (Cambridge, 1997), 49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As a parallel for the self-referential use of masks in stage action, Mette and Ussher cite Cratinus’ Seriphioi fr. 205 K (= Fr. 218 K-A).

22 Green (n. 21), 45–6.

23 Fraenkel (n. 21), 245; cf. Lloyd-Jones (n. 2), 543.

24 LIMC VIII.2, s.v. ‘Silenoi’ fig. 167 for a satyric model from Gela, datable to the early fifth century; cf. also figs 166, 168, 170.

25 One of Plato's bugbears in his criticisms of painting:R. 10.598cl-599a4, 602c10-d4; Soph. 234b5–10, 235d5–236c7. In the Sophist Plato consigns visual arts to the realm of misleading appearances, or øανταθτκ for discussion see Pollitt, J., The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven and London, 1974), 46–7.Google Scholar See Rouveret, A., Histoire et imaginaire de la peinture ancienne (Paris, 1989), 115–27Google Scholar for fuller accounts of Plato's views of θκιαγραøα.

26 Cf. also Democritus B194.

27 See J. C. Kamerbeek (n. 2), 4, who compares Pindar, O. 7.52 with Plato Comicus, fr. 204 K-A; and Sutton (n. 2), 62 for Euripides, fr. 372, which he takes to be a satyr play and the addressee to be Silenus.

28 See Gombrich, E., Art and Illusion (London, 1972), ch. 4, 127.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., 127; cf. 128–39.

30 For useful discussion of these and other passages where reference is made to the apparent ability of Daedalus's statues to move, see Morris, S., Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art (Princeton, 1992), ch. 8, esp. 221–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As Colld, C., Euripides. Hecuba (Warminster, 1991), on 836–40Google Scholar suggests, Hecuba apparently refers to Daedalus’ speaking automata, which recall those made by Hephaestus (Il. 18.376).

31 For instance, see Snell (n. 2), 8–9; Seaford (n. 2), 212–13, 216–17, and his introduction to E. Cyclops (n. 2), esp. 36–7; cf. Ussher (n. 2), esp. 291–3, and 297–8; F. Lissarrague (n. 13), 235, whose views are accepted by Easterling (n. 21), 41. Sutton (n. 2), 157, n. 455 is unduly skeptical of this as a feature of satyr plays, but is well countered by Stieber (n. 2), 91, n. 12.

32 As the context of Plutarch's quotation makes clear (Mor. 2.86e).

33 As Faraone (n. 4), 102 notes.

34 I print here Diggle's OCT text.

35 For more on the pleasurable, beguiling, and deceitful effects of music and song in Homer and early epic, see Schadewaldt, W., Von Homers Welt und Werk (Stuttgart, 1959), 81–5;Google Scholar Lanata (n. 4), 6–13, 16–17, who also rightly links music's effects in the Ichneutae (325–7) to what Gorgias attributes to λγος(Hel. 8), apropos of its joy-giving and grief-banishing capacities (p. 154); Verdenius, W. J. in Kerferd, G. B.(ed.), The Sophists and their Legacy (Wiesbaden, 1981), 121–3;Google Scholar Walsh, G. B., The Varieties of Enchantment (Chapel Hill and London, 1984), ch. 1;Google Scholar Ritook, Z., Mnemosyne 42 (1989), 333–42.Google Scholar Segal, C., in Lamberton, R. and Kenney, J. (edd.), Homer's Ancient Readers (Princeton, 1992), 3–9,22–3,29.Google Scholar

36 For ἔκπληξις, see Thucydides on Pericles’ rhetoric (2.65.9); Critias B25.28; cf. Gorgias Pal. 4 (bis). For ψυχαγωγα, see Plato, Phdr. 261a8, 271clO; Isocrates, Evag. (9.10). Interestingly, Xenophon, Mem. 3.10.6 sees ψυχαγωγα as a feature of sculpture; and Aristotle applies it to tragedy, and, rather grudgingly, to the visual dimension, or ψις, of tragedy (Po. 1450a33-bl, b16–17).

37 Δαιδλου is most likely subjective; cf. Morris (n. 30), 218 for other possible renderings. It seems less plausible here to read Δαιδλου as ‘artwork’ and hence as an objective genitive, even though Δαιδλου can be an Homeric word for art-images (Il. 18.479,482, etc).

38 So Lloyd-Jones (n. 2), 547–8. For Daedalus as Hephaestus'Doppelgänger, see Kassel, R., ZPE 51 (1983), 1–5.Google Scholar

39 Edwards, M., The Iliad. A Commentary 4 (Cambridge, 1991),CrossRefGoogle Scholar on 18.548; A. Becker, AJPh 111 (1990), 145.

40 Snell (n. 2), 7–8; Page (n. 19), 191 makes the same inference; see Faraone (n. 4), 37–8.

41 Green (n. 21), 182, n. 60.

42 Welsh, D., CQ 29 (1979), 214–15,CrossRefGoogle Scholar saw references here to Cleon's ugly eyebrows; however, Olson, S. D., CQ 49 (1999), 320–1,CrossRefGoogle Scholar most recently claims that Cratinus’ comment refers to Cleon's menacing use of his eyebrows.

43 Dover, K. J., Greek and the Greeks. Collected Papers, vol. I:Language, Poetry, Drama (Oxford and New York, 1987), 273.Google Scholar

44 Lloyd-Jones (n. 2), 545; Seaford (n. 2), 34, 35. More than one interlocutor has been identified in the Theoroi, but the actual identity does not affect my approach.

45 As suggested by Snell (n. 2), 8.

46 Cf. ρν μουρα κα β ραχα τᾰ ø[αλλ]α (29). See W. Slenders, Mnemosyne 44 (1992), 145–58, for a study of sexual innuendo and double entendre in Aeschylean satyr plays (esp. 146–51).

47 Green (n. 21), 79, fig. 3.16.

48 LSJ s.v. μορμολυκεῖον 2; and s.v. μορμώ

49 Professor C. Collard draws my attention to Euripides, Hec. 1215 where the smoke of Troy signifies its destruction.

50 Hutchinson, G. O., Aeschylus. Seven Against Thebes (Oxford, 1985) on Septem 81–2.Google Scholar

51 Friis Johansen, H. and Whittle, E., Aeschylus. The Suppliants (Copenhagen, 1980,Google Scholar 3 vols) on Suppl. 180 note the verbal similarity between these three passages but neglect the significance of Theoroi (20) as an appositional phrase.

52 As noted by Faraone (n. 4), 38, and 48, n. 13.

53 See Diggle's and Radt's apparatus for such conjectures as øβον βλπων and others along the same lines.

54 LIMC vol. VIII.2, s.v. ‘Silenoi’, figs 187, 188; see also the catalogue of shield devices compiled by Chase, G., HSCPh 13 (1902), 121.Google Scholar

55 Sutton(n.2), 159.

56 See Carpenter, T. H., Dionysian Imagery in Fifth Century Athens (Oxford, 1977), pi. 45b.Google Scholar

57 On this as a theme in satyric drama, see Sutton (n. 2), 147–8; Seaford, Euripides. Cyclops (n. 2), 33–36.

58 For the satyr-as-warrior, see Hedreen, G. M., Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase Painting. Myth and Performance (Ann Arbor, MI, 1992), pi. 36a;CrossRefGoogle Scholar see also LIMC VIII.2, s.v. ‘Silenoi’ figs 132,133, 138. For the Heracles parody, see Carpenter, T., Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (London, 1991), fig. 212.Google Scholar

59 See above n. 15 for an outline of the evidence for this claim.

60 See above n. 16.

61 I am grateful to CQ's anonymous referee, Associate-Professor Graham Zanker and especially Professor C. Collard for comments on earlier versions of this paper.