Cyclops

Euripides’s Cyclops is a satyr play. Euripides’s Cyclops is the only example of this genre that survives intact. The original date of the play’s performance, though, is debated. Today, most scholars gravitate towards a performance date of 408 BCE. Others place the date of performance in 424 BCE (arguing based on stylistic and thematic grounds that the play would have been paired with Euripides’s tragedy Hecuba, staged that year). Another group of scholars posits that the play was first staged even earlier. Whenever Euripides’s Cyclops was performed, it would have been positioned as the final play of a dramatic tetralogy, that is, after three tragedies produced by the same author.

The opening of Euripides’s Cyclops showcases the main elements of satyr drama as we understand it: The prologue speech is delivered by Silenus, the eldest of the satyrs; The Chorus is comprised of rowdy satyrs, the animalistic and wild devotees of Dionysus who were usually represented as half-man and half-horse (or half-goat); and the language is closer to Greek day-to-day vernacular than to the artificial and elevated language that characterized tragedy. The play is structured very much like a typical tragedy: A prologue introduces the plot; then the Chorus sings the first ode, called the parodos; the rest of the play is divided into scenes called episodes, separated from one another by further choral odes, called stasima; the final scene, which is not followed by a full choral ode, is called the exodus.

Silenus’s speech and the choral ode that follows it introduce many of the key themes of the play. Silenus waxes eloquently on his service to Dionysus, but there is a distinct sense that he is magnifying his importance. For example, Silenus describes early in his monologue how he stood by Dionysus during the war between the gods and the Giants, claiming that

I hit Enceladus with my spear

Square on the center of his shield and killed him.

Or wait: was that in a dream? No, by Zeus,

For I displayed the actual spoils to Bacchus (7-9).

This is a conspicuous boast, as it does not cohere with the cowardice Silenus displays later on in the play. Moreover, it conflicts with the more familiar version of the myth, in which the war goddess Athena, not Silenus, kills the Giant Enceladus (highlighting the dubious nature of his statement, Silenus even asks himself if his memory is but a dream). Silenus’s self-aggrandizement and subsequent misrepresentation of himself reflect the play’s theme of The Uses of Language.

Silenus, along with the Chorus, also reflects the theme of The Relationship between Gods, Mortals, and Mythical Creatures. Silenus and the satyrs can lay claim to familiarity with the god Dionysus, with whom they used to drink and dance. The Chorus’ vivid description of their surroundings touches on the role of the natural world in the stories of the gods and the effects of civilization. The satyrs, enveloped by natural beauty, can do little more than lament their forced labor as herders. They miss their accustomed place in the realm of the gods, which in the play symbolizes civilization, in contrast to the backward world of the Cyclopes (who do not even have houses but live in caves).