Delphi Complete Works of Aeschylus (Illustrated) (Delphi Ancient Classics) (44 page)

THEÔROI Ê
ISMIASTA
I

FRAGMENT 276

Ed. pr. Lobel,
P.
Oxy.
, vol. 18, no. 2162, with Plates IV and V.

These fragments are
preserved on two sheets of papyrus (1 and 2), each containing two columns of
writing; of these columns, 1 (i) and 2 (ii) are mostly readable, but only the
bottom part of 1 (ii) and only the top part of 2 (i) are preserved. Were the
two sheets in fact consecutive, so that 2 (i) supplies the top and 1 (ii) the
bottom of the same column, a column that stood in the text between 1 (i) and 2
(ii)? Lobel says that this cannot be determined, but that the possibility
cannot be excluded; Snell (in
Hermes
, l.c.) boldly assumes that it is
so. The sense yielded by the text at the three points where the fragments would
join one another ought to resolve this question; these points fall between
lines 35 and 36, between lines 53 and 61 and between lines 72 and 73 in the text printed below.
At the first two points, the text is too deficient for the sense to furnish any
evidence either way; but at the third the sense given by the join is good. I
have therefore followed Snell in printing the text in accordance with this
suggestion, but not without considerable misgivings. If 1 (ii) and 2 (i) really
belonged to the same column, one would expect the pattern of the fibres to make
this clear: but it does not. There is a small fragment (1 (b)) which if this is
right must come from the middle of the column containing 1 (ii) and 2 (i); but
it cannot be fitted to either of these fragments.

In view of the
length of these fragments, it is remarkable that we can make out so little of
the subject-matter.
theôroi
could mean “spectators” or “members of a
sacred embassy”; and since ht text shows that the satyrs of the Chorus mean to
compete in the Isthmian games, the title probably indicates that they came
there as members of a sacred embassy, presumably sent or conducted by Dionysus
in honour of Poseidon.

Our portion of the
text begins with the satyrs, thanking someone for exact likenesses of
themselves, which they then proceed to nail up upon the temple of Poseidon
Isthmios, with the remark that they will frighten away strangers. The strangers
will presumably be frightened, as Snell suggests, because they will think they
have come to a place like the palace of Oenomaus with its display of severed
human heads. We are told that the likenesses are painted (l. 12); but that does
not rule out their being sculptures rather than pictures. Eduard Fraenkel has
suggested that they are antefixes, the upright ornaments placed along the
cornices of Greek temples, originally in order to mask the ends of the covering
tiles that protected the joints between the rain-tiles, and customarily shaped
like masks. Satyr-masks were sometimes used as antefixes, and the practice may
well have suggested this scene; it is not, of course, meant that the satyr’s
portraits are antefixes, since antefixes cannot be nailed up or taken down at
will. The fright which the portraits are likely to give to the satyrs’ mother
or to any strangers makes it likely that such portraits, and probably the art
of portraiture itself, are thought of as being unusual or even new at the time
in question.

A new character now
enters the stage; he has been looking for the satyrs, and grimly remarks that
he has known where to find them. He remarks on them what are probably the
effects of the practice known as
ligatura praeputii
, one which was often
adopted by Greek athletes in training and which satyr-athletes on several vases
are shown as adopting; on this and on the similar but distinct Roman practice
of
infibulatio
, see Dingwall,
Male Infibulation
, London, 1925,
and Brommer,
Satyrspele
74. The satyrs should be giving their minds to
the dance, says this personage, but instead they have learned new habits, and
are exercising their arms and wasting his money (or “ruining his property”?).
Between lines 35 and 65 very little can be made out; but it looks as if either
the Choragus or a Silenus like those of the
Ichneutae
and the
Cyclops
replied to this speech with one in which he complained of the discomforts which
the satyrs have endured while in the other speaker’s service and declared that
they would no longer obey his orders. Lines 53-60 are missing. When we pick up
the thread, the other speaker is replying. “You say I am no good at iron-work,”
he says, “but am a cowardly, womanish creature”; then he repeats his former
reproaches, and threatens to be avenged. Finally he draws the attention of the
satyrs to somebody or something near at hand.

The satyrs now
repeat their refusal to leave the temple (80-4). L. 85 seems to be addressed to
a new character, who has brought with him, he says, newly-made objects straight
from adze and anvil. He offers the first of these to the satyrs, who refuse it
with alarm. “What am I to do with this?” they ask, and are told in reply that
they are to use it in practising the new craft that they have adopted (91-2).
This presumably means athletics (cf. 35). A dangerous object is made with an
adze may well be javelin, as Snell suggests.

Silenus (or the
Choragus) now says to the other person, “What will you do in return if I let
you sail?” (l. 93: Lobel’s suggested restoration of this line, which Snell
ignores, seems almost unavoidable). The other replies that he will be a good
comrade to him at the Isthmian games. Then Silenus may have said that the other
character “will go on board” (l. 95). Soon after that, the text breaks off.

The character who
quarrels with the satyrs is very probably Dionysus, their usual master. It
might be Silenus, in which case the part which I have suggested might belong to
Silenus would belong to the Choragus; but Snell rightly observes that the reproach
of being a
gynnis
is much more appropriately levelled against Dionysus
(cf. fr. 31, etc.). It seems that the satyrs have been brought by Dionysus to
the Isthmus as members of a sacred embassy to the Isthmian games. Once arrived,
they have decided to compete in the games themselves, and have slipped off to
practise them instead of dancing. Perhaps Dionysus had meant them to give a
display of their usual dances or to enter for the choral contest. They are
encouraged in this behaviour by a character who first brings them their
portraits meant apparently to scare off rival competitors, and then implements,
very likely javelins, that will be useful in the games. (If the
javelin-throwing competition was already in existence, the javelin could not be
a new invention; but perhaps these were the first javelins equipped with the
agkylê
(Lat.
amentum
), a device which makes them a good deal easier to aim; see
Saglio in
Darember-Saglio
i, 226).

Who can this other
character be? Snell suggests that it is Sisyphus, the crafty king of Corinth,
who figured in satyr-plays by all the three great tragedians. Sisyphus,
according to one story, founded the Isthmian games, and Snell thinks the play
may have dealt with their foundation. Corinth was a famous centre of craftsmanship;
Sisyphus himself is credited with
philotechnia
as well as with
panourgia
by Diodorus 6, fr. 6, 3 and is coupled with the famous smiths, the Cercopes and
the Telchines, by Aelian,
De nat. anim.
6, 58. Snell also suggests that
a fragmentary text (
P. Oxy.
2250, in vol. xx, 12) in which a rich king is
addressed in marching anapaests, may come from an address to Sisyphus by the
Chorus of this play.

This suggestion
might possibly be right, but there is very little positive evidence in its
favour. There is no suggestion in the text that this is the first performance
of the Isthmian games: if it were, Aeschylus as an Athenian might be thought
likely to prefer the legend that made Theseus their founder. Nor is there any
real evidence for Sisyphus as a craftsman.
philotechnia
in Diodorus must
mean much the same as
panourgia
, and Aelian compares Sisyphus to the
Cercopes and Telchines in point of cunning, not of craftsmanship. No tradition
connects Corinth with the origins of representative art or of weapons; its fame
as a centre of craftsmanship belongs to historic rather than to heroic times. A
more positive objection to the theory is the difficulty of reconciling it with
Lobel’s very probably restoration of l. 93. Why should Sisyphus ask the satyrs “to
let him sail” or “to take him on board”? As for
P. Oxy.
2250, it might
have occurred in any number of different contexts, and there is no substantial
reason for connecting it with this play.

It is worth
exploring other possibilities, provided one remembers that certainty is not
likely to be attainable. It seems likely that he maker of the portraits and
weapons may be one of the great artificers of mythology. At l. 7 one of the
likenesses is called
to Daidalou mimêma
. This has been taken to mean “the
likeness like one by Daedalus.” But a more natural sense would be “the likeness
by Daedalus.” Can Daedalus be the maker of the portraits and the javelins?

Daedalus is often
said to have invented the art of sculpture (see Apollodorus 3. 15. 9, Hyginus,
Fab.
274). He was also the inventor of carpentry and several of its instruments,
including the adze (Pliny, N.H. 7. 198). He was by origin a noble Athenian, a
kinsman of Theseus (Cleidemus ap. Plutarch,
Theseus
19, etc.), and had
to leave Athens because he killed his nephew out of jealousy at his superior
skill. Is Daedalus at the Isthmus, trying to persuade the satyrs to take him on
their ship, perhaps so that he can get to Crete? Daedalus certainly figures in
the
Daedalus
and Camici of Sophocles, either or both of which may have
been satyric, apart from the comedies by Plato and Aristophanes called after
him.

But there is a
sculptor and smith even more renowned than Daedalus who is constantly portrayed
on vases in the company of satyrs. This is Hephaestus. In spite of Wilamowitz (
Kleine
Schriften
v. 11), there is good reason to believe that Hephaestus was
sometimes referred to as
Daidalos
(see Pearson,
Fragments of
Sophocles
i. 110 and literature there quoted). No legend about satyrs is
more commonly depicted on vases than that of the Return of Hephaestus; of how
Hera slighted her deformed son; of how he made for her a marvellous throne,
which when she tried to rise from it held her fast bound; of how Ares tried to
overcome Hephaestus by force and failed miserably; of how Hepheastus vanished
from Olympus, so that no one was able to release his mother; and of how he was
finally brought back by Dionysus and his satyrs, who had made him drunk (see
Beazley,
Development of Attic Black-Figure
31, 44; Brommer, J
ahrbuch
des Deutschen Institute
52, 1937, 198; id.
Satyrspiele
23, 68,
etc.). Wilamowitz’ guess that it formed the subject of a lost Homeric Hymn
rests on insufficient evidence; but it was handled by Alcaeus (see Page,
Sappho
and Alcaeus
258 f.)
and by Epicharmus in his
Kômastai ê Haphaistos
. The earliest Athenian
work that we know to have treated this theme is the satyr-play
Hêphaistos
of the tragedian Achaeus; but there must have been other satyr-plays that had
the exile and return of Hephaestus as a principal or as a subsidiary theme.

Dionysus complains
(l. 66 f.)
that the satyrs reproach him with being no good at work in iron. This suggests
that he may be being unfavourably contrasted with some other possible patron
who is. It reminds us that there are several legends in which the satyrs figure
as Hephaestus’ workmen (see Pearson, op. cit, ii. 136). And it recalls the
problem set by a fairly numerous group of vases which feature what at first
sight seems to be the Return of Hephaestus: only the figure on the ass and
holding the smith’s tools that we should expect to be Hephaestus turns out on
closer inspection to be Dionysus (see Brommer,
Jahrb. Des Deut. Inst.
L.x., 206, with literature there quoted). It has already been suggested that
there may have been a story of Dionysus stealing Hephaestus’ tools. I cannot
help suspecting that the giver of the portraits and the javelins may have been
the exiled Hephaestus, eager for a lift on the satyrs’ ship to escape those who
are trying to fetch him back to Olympus; that Dionysus may have tried to punish
Hephaestus for stealing his retainers by stealing his tools; and that finally
Dionysus may have learned that Hephaestus was wanted on Olympus and have made
the return of the tools conditional upon his surrender. But I put this forward
only as a guess at the nature of facts that are not known.

[?]
[1]
. . . seeing
the portraits, wrought by super-human skill. And however you may act, you won’t
be guilty of irreverence.

[CHORUS]
[3]
I’m very
grateful to you for this: you’re most obliging. Listen, all of you, and . . .
in silence. Look and see whether this image could [possibly] be more [like] me,
this likeness by the Skilful One; it can do everything but talk! Look at these!
You see? Yes, come! Come! I bring this offering to the god to ornament his
house, my lovely votive picture. It would give my mother a bad time! If she
could see it, she’d certainly run shrieking off, thinking it was the son she
brought up: so like me is this fellow.

[12]
Ho there! look
upon the house of the Lord of the Sea, the Shaker of the Earth! and let each
fasten up the likeness of his handsome face, a truthful messenger, a voiceless
herald to keep of travellers; he’ll halt strangers on their way by his
terrifying look, Hail, King, hail, Poseidon . . . protector . . .

[DIONYSUS]
[23]
I knew I’d
find you, my good fellows! I won’t apply to you the words, “I couldn’t see that
you were on your way.”
 
The road itself
tells me this, and [the . . . . , seeing these companions of yours], warned me
of this and set me on the right track . . . cum decurtatas, tanquam murium
caudas, mentulas vobis video. You’ve practised hard for the Isthmia; you haven’t
been slack but have trained properly. Well, if you’d been loyal to the old
saying, you might have seen to your dancing instead. But you’re playing the
Isthmian competitor; you’ve learned new ways, and are keeping your arm-muscles
in trim and wasting my money . . . So aren’t you breaking your oath when you
flout me? a curse on you . . .