This work contains many novel readings, supplements and reconstructions, some insightful and plausible, others extremely speculative. As a whole, the volume is rather uneven, perhaps reflecting the fact that some chapters are unrevised journal articles. This disjointedness also raises some questions: what do these texts have in common beyond being fragmentary works of Aeschylus and Sophocles usually understood as satyr-dramas? Why these five texts for analysis as opposed to other fragments of Aeschylus or Sophocles (not to mention other dramatists)? Does analysis of one text shed significant light on any others discussed elsewhere in the book? Such issues are not addressed in the (barely more than) one-page preface; nor is there any introduction giving an overall rationale or methodology behind the choice of texts. So it seems that an opportunity has been missed to explore how these texts might engage with each other or be fruitfully brought together into one study. That said, this work does contain many points of interest in specific readings and conjectures, even if it emerges as the somewhat variable sum of its parts.
This review will focus on some of the more noteworthy, and speculative and/or controversial, readings proffered by T. The opening chapter on Aeschylus’ Theoroi occupies over one third of the book and primes readers for what lies ahead; its radical approach to the play's plot includes a re-ordering of the fragments as they have generally been accepted, especially since S. Radt's magisterial edition (TrGF, 1985). For instance, T. has fr. 78c R. precede fr. 78a R. and argues that the play involves a conflict between Poseidon and Dionysos for the support of the satyrs; he further speculates, without evidence, that Theoroi was an attack on those who wanted to ban satyr-plays or bowdlerise the satyrs themselves ‘to turn them decent by softening their obscenity’ (p. 24). T. identifies the sea-god as the speaker who appears at fr. 78a col. I R. and fr. 78c.49 R. and offers the satyrs ‘novel play-things’ (νεοχμὰ ἀθύρματα). This figure is usually identified as Dionysos presenting the satyrs with athletic equipment, but T. has Poseidon offering the chorus shields with satyr-images on them; and, in a reconstruction that seems to me as implausible as it is dramatically cumbersome, T. has the sea-god dispensing these shields from a trolley and handing them out individually to all the choreuts, which T. numbers at eleven (T. considers Silenos a sub-coryphaeus who is denied a shield [p. 42]). The satyrs are then encouraged to attach these to the sea-god's temple to terrify those on their way to the Isthmian games. Dionysos appears and berates the satyrs for neglecting his worship, and T. reads this as reflecting a supposed ongoing conflict between Athens and Corinth at the time of the play's performance, which he dates to 459 bce (pp. 80, 101–2 etc.). Such a reading, while interesting, is too often beset by a lack of evidence; even though T. rightly notes that depictions of satyrs appear as shield-devices in archaic and classical Greek art, nothing in Aeschylus’ text makes it more likely that the satyrs receive shields as opposed to masks or other images (εἰκοὺ[ς]), as scholars often infer. T.'s overall approach rests on major changes to the text and a number of his own supplements; so his reading is weakened by being based on what amount to circular arguments.
Aeschylus’ so-called ‘Dike-Drama’ (fr. 291a R.), while generally accepted as a satyr play, has baffled scholars with, inter alia, Dike's reference to the παῖς μάργος (‘rampant child’) of Hera and Zeus, who seems to have terrorised travellers like a typical satyric ogre. While many have suggested it is Ares, T. argues for Eros on the basis of ancient testimonia that are by no means unanimous on the parentage of Eros; in any case, T. goes on to claim that Dike is speaking of herself as the nurse of Eros, whose ‘horrible doings’ lead to the god's punishment (pp. 123–4). For T. this fragment comes from Hypsipyle, the satyr-play of Aeschylus’ tetralogy on the Argonautic theme, and Dike is telling the satyrs of the imminent arrival of Jason and his crew, soon to be lovers of the women of Lemnos, who will be purged of the crime of having killed their husbands. While the function of the satyrs in ‘Dike-Drama’ remains obscure, T.'s reading hardly provides a more likely role for them and, by his own admission, is highly conjectural (pp. 124, 127 etc.); it also rests on many of his own supplements. Similarly speculative, as T. acknowledges, is his view that a portion of Aeschylus’ Laios is preserved in P. Oxy. 2256 frr. 6 and 8 (p. 158). T. heavily restores this text and suggests that Laios is the speaker and that the play involves the king's return to Thebes from Delphi (after the rule of Amphion and Zethus), where he has asked Apollo how to have a long and successful reign and is instructed to set up cults to Artemis and Athena (p. 172). The action of the play, T. says, does not involve the murder of Laios, as often argued by others, but includes the occurrence of portents, described in a messenger speech, which leads to Teiresias’ mentioning of the curse that will bring about the king's death. These are interesting possibilities, but again there is a lack of telling evidence.
T. attempts some radical reappraisals in his handling of Aeschylus’ Prometheus Pyrkaeus and Sophocles’ Inachos. T. argues that the Aeschylean drama, long considered the satyr-play of the tetralogy that also included Phineus, Glaukos Potnieus and Persians at the City Dionysia of 472 bce, was from the winter festival of the Anthesteria of 469 (along with Prometheus Bound, Prometheus Unbound and Prometheus the Fire-Bearer), largely because of references to winter in the text of the play (pp. 224–5); he even suggests that it could have been performed at night, citing a fragment that compares the gleam of fire to a full moon (p. 226). One needs more evidence than this to be convinced of such a hypothesis. T. claims that Inachos is not a satyr-play, but prosatyric in the vein of Euripides’ Alcestis, reviving a view of Wilamowitz (pp. 229, 289). While not all are convinced of a satyric status for Inachos, which deals with the myth of Zeus's lust for Io, daughter of king Inachos of Argos, many have plausibly suggested it as satyric on the basis of its characters, language, plot and numerous depictions of scenes connected to the myth that feature satyrs (e.g. LIMC V.1 669, s.v. ‘Io I’, nos 56, 60). T. infers that the chorus are servants in the palace of Inachos (p. 289), and while T. is correct to say that no explicit references are made to the presence of satyrs, these figures could take the role of servants or slaves in this drama as they do in other satyr-plays such as Ion's Omphale (fr. 20 R.) or Euripides’ Cyclops. T.'s claim that the chorus in Inachos cannot be satyric because they are sometimes vulgar or funny and at other times serious (pp. 288–9) ignores the fact that satyrs frequently combine these qualities in the same play (e.g. Eur. Cyc. 179–87; cf. 356–74 etc.); they are creatures eminently suited to a genre known as ‘tragedy at play’ in Demetrius’ apt and oft-quoted description (Eloc. 169).
Discussion of each text is preceded by a learned, if select, overview of some major scholarly approaches to the plays; and the bibliography details further useful material, even if there are some notable omissions, for example R. Lämmle, Poetik des Satyrspiels (2013). Whatever misgivings one has about some readings and conjectures proffered by T., this study is nevertheless informed by much erudition and confidence in attempting to reconstruct important, if elusive, features of these plays. This volume will be worth consulting, not least for providing readers grounds for reconsidering aspects of these endlessly fascinating dramas in a provocative and sometimes insightful new light.
