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Byron ends the seventeenth stanza of Canto the Sixth of Don Juan with the following couplet: In short the maxim for the Amorous tribe is Horatian, 'Medio Tu Tutissimus Ibis.'
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At Ar. Ran. 1028 read ἣν ἤκουσ᾽ εὐχήν for the metrically defective ἡνίκ’ ἤκουσα.
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In the Symposium Plato associates Socrates with satyrs and satyr-play for two reasons: First, satyr-plays were the creation of tragic, not comic, playwrights, and Plato wishes to present his Socratic dialogues as the heirs to the... more
In the Symposium Plato associates Socrates with satyrs and satyr-play for two reasons: First, satyr-plays were the creation of tragic, not comic, playwrights, and Plato wishes to present his Socratic dialogues as the heirs to the prestige of an elevated, not a lewd, genre; second, the figure of the satyr, for all his rampant sexuality, is traditionally barren, a characteristic that Plato assigns (metaphorically) to Socrates in his role as midwife to the fecund minds of young men.
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The tragic (and satyric) chorus throughout the fifth century BC was composed of twelve members. The tradition according to which the number was increased to fifteen is based on a mistaken understanding of the increase in the number of... more
The tragic (and satyric) chorus throughout the fifth century BC was composed of twelve members. The tradition according to which the number was increased to fifteen is based on a mistaken understanding of the increase in the number of actors to three, which brought the total number of performers (τραγῳδοί) to fifteen.
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Read τοῦτον δὲ ἄλλο μὲν ἔχειν οὐδὲν <περιττόν>, περὶ δὲ τῇ χειρὶ χρυσοῦν δακτύλιον, ὃν περιελόμενον ἐκβῆναι.
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After crashing Agathon's dinner-party in Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades famously begins his encomium of Socrates by comparing the philosopher to a silenus or satyr. Socrates refers to the encomium as " this satyric or silenic drama of... more
After crashing Agathon's dinner-party in Plato's Symposium, Alcibiades famously begins his encomium of Socrates by comparing the philosopher to a silenus or satyr. Socrates refers to the encomium as " this satyric or silenic drama of yours. " Socrates' explicit reference to satyr-play has prompted some critics to connect Alcibiades' comparison of Socrates to a satyr with the concluding tableau of the dialogue. There, Socrates attempts to convince the tragic poet Agathon and the comic poet Aristophanes of the absurd proposition that the same poet is capable of composing both tragedy and comedy. This passage has been repeatedly interpreted as conveying Plato's intention to represent the person of Socrates, and the dialogue in which he appears, as both combining and, perhaps, transcending the categories of the tragic and the comic. Further, Plato's comparison of Socrates to a satyr has prompted some critics to propose that satyr-play somehow embodies that very combination of the tragic and the comic. I should like to challenge that view and show that Plato does not in fact believe that it belongs to the same person to be able to write both tragedy and comedy, nor does he consider satyr-play as in any sense a combination of the two genres. Now, to us it seems a perfectly reasonable proposition that the same person is capable of writing both tragedy and comedy, and we can cite as evidence the works of Shakespeare, as well as those of Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Goldoni, Lessing, Ben Jonson and Oscar Wilde. But to Plato's contemporaries it was unimaginable that a tragic poet could also be a comic poet, and they could cite as evidence the fact that no one had succeeded in composing in both genres. Of course, it is possible that Plato, being smarter than most, was able to see what his contemporaries were incapable of seeing, and he could recognize what we now take for granted. It is also possible that critics have allowed what we now take for granted to influence their reading of Plato's Symposium. To begin with, the notion that Plato envisioned his Socratic dialogues as having affinities with comedy is implausible, given that Plato's attitude toward comedy was anything but positive. It is true that he creates a brilliant parody of Aristophanic comedy in the Symposium, thereby appearing to demonstrate his competence in the realm of comedy. But an ability to produce a successful parody of a genre is not evidence of an ability to compose successfully in that genre; if it were, Aristophanes' own unmatched brilliance as a creator of paratragedy would provide all the evidence needed to demonstrate that the comic poet and the tragic poet were one and the same. Rather, Plato's hostility to comedy is in evidence from the beginning to the end of his career: In the Apology he expresses the conviction that " a certain comic poet " contributed to the prejudice that would ultimately result in the execution of his beloved teacher. And in the Laws comedy is relegated to performance exclusively by slaves and non-citizen hirelings. In Magnesia, comedy is a necessary evil, tolerated only to display examples of behavior to be avoided, provided that no citizens are subjected to ridicule, as is regularly the case in Old Comedy. Nor is there any suggestion in the Laws that the Athenian visitor
Research Interests: Plato and Satyr Play
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The account of mutual abductions that is found at the start of Herodotus’s Histories occupies a prominent place because the historian wishes to begin with stories exemplifying a basic determinant of human behavior that is generally felt... more
The account of mutual abductions that is found at the start of Herodotus’s Histories occupies a prominent place because the historian wishes to begin with stories exemplifying a basic determinant of human behavior that is generally felt to require no special explanation, namely acquisitiveness, which is conflated with sexual desire. This conflation, which is shown to be pervasive in Greek thought, is clear from the very start, where the abduction of Io for seemingly commercial purposes is followed by three abductions in which the sexual motivation is increasingly apparent.
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Ancient evidence suggests that it is as likely that the fifth-century satyr-play was performed at the start of the tragic tetralogy as at the end.