First, it must be said that P.’s book, a doctoral thesis submitted to the Freie Universität Berlin in 1997, is a great achievement, thanks to the quantity of the material offered (both ancient tradition and modern scholarship), which P. discusses with zeal and intellectual skill. He makes the best possible use of the deplorably scanty remainders an ungracious textual tradition has left us of the 17 satyr plays we know Euripides to have written. Not the least merit of P.’s book is that it conveys a lively impression how painful we must feel this loss to be (still more in the case of Sophocles and, still more, of Aeschylus). Moreover, he makes clear, how high the level of Euripides’ satyr plays was, for which we know he was not held in very high esteem by the ancients. The quality of the fragments will not manifest itself in brilliant comic art as much as in philosophical and theological reflection. P.’s book matches his claim (p. 5) to provide a commentary to the fragments, because he goes beyond the borders of mere philology and makes full use of the whole range of the studies in antiquity ( Altertumswissenschaft). And rightly so, for everyone who has ever dealt with fragments, often consisting of no more than one-word lexicon glosses, knows that vase pictures and inscriptions grant us an indispensable abundance of information which alone make sensible interpretation possible. In this area P. proceeds meticulously and with welcome consistency. As this fact is not in the least self-evident, it deserves appreciation. If there must be criticisms of some of his proposals and results in detail, this does not mean a criticism of his basic concept, which is carried out with good success.
The structure of the book results from its character as a commentary. The introduction (“Einleitung”, pp. 9-18) considers Euripides as a poet of satyr plays, discusses the attention paid to him in the crucial period of Alexandrian philology (p. 16) and inquires into the much debated question, why of all satyr plays Euripides’ Cyclops alone has been preserved (pp. 12 sq.). On pp. 13 sq. P. distinguishes the genre of the satyr play from the “special forms of tragedy” which from the Alcestis onwards sometimes replaced the satyr plays; here one misses a reference to an important recent study: Peter Riemer, Die Alkestis des Euripides (Frankfurt a.M. 1989). An intensive discussion of the actual number of Euripides’ satyr plays follows pp. 19-29, as much as can be gained from the vita of the poet and other testimonies. It is amazing (and might well lead to confusion) that in vita 3 (p. 4 Schwartz) the term
From p. 39 onwards, the preserved fragments are presented in alphabetical order. Sources and testimonies come always first, as well as the indications which lead to classify, the texts in question as fragments of satyr plays. Then the text is printed (according to Nauck resp. Snell’s supplement, v. p. 6, n. 5), provided with a detailed critical apparatus; after that follows the commentary. By describing the respective myths P. not only integrates the dramatic themes into the mythographic tradition, but lets us see what creativity Euripides bestowed on interpreting them in his own modern spirit and on making use of the dramatic possibilities which they contain. A good example is the representation of the figure of Autolycus as a “sophist”, cf. pp. 48 sq. Every part of the commentary ends with a reconstruction of the play in question. Here P. shows most independence and often achieves convincing results, which really mean a progress in understanding. When necessary, the discussion of details is deepened in excurses. Let me only remark that P. sometimes tends to exaggerate his attempts at reconstructing the sense of even the smallest fragments, a method, which by heaping a lot of details may sometimes lead to more confusion than to real help in understanding. An example is his attempt to interpret F 680 (pp. 236 sq.): it is impossible to get any far-reaching conclusions from a mere lexicon gloss whose context, as often, remains absolutely obscure; such a method is bound to produce only speculative results.
The commentary to Autolycus is definitely enriched by illustrating and discussing in full the vase pictures referring to the subject (pp. 93-99); the same holds for Busiris (pp. 34-37). The more the lack of such an autopsis is felt in the case of Syleus (pp. 272-274), where P. contents himself with quoting the pertinent literature. Convincingly, P. does not infer from the testimony of Tzetzes, Prol. de com. XI a I 152-156 Koster that to the Byzantine scholar still more satyr plays were available than the Cyclops; he points out that Tzetzes wants “to put emphasis on his gain of knowledge with regard to a clear distinction between comedy on the one hand and tragedy and satyr play on the other” (p. 55) by saying
The question concerning the Sisyphus is whether it in fact can be a satyr play (cf. p. 206, n. 48). None of the testimonies really backs this classification, and in view of this the fact that the attribute
In l. 101 of the hypothesis of Sciron (printed on p. 223) it would be possible to restore
In Syleus the
One of the best parts of the book is the discussion of the fragment 43 F 19 TrGF 1 (pp. 289-343). For two reasons this relatively long piece of text is of great: first, it is still a matter of debate whether it belongs to Euripides or to Critias. Snell in his edition ascribes it to the latter (also Diels-Kranz, Vorsokratiker 88 B 25), while P. now gives good arguments for assuming Euripides is its author (following Albrecht Dihle, cf. pp. 299 sq.). In any case it is informative how close a connection was seen by the later tradition between the tragedian and the political philosopher; they were obviously regarded as sharing one spirit, that of “enlightenment” in the negative sense. Secondly, Sisyphus, the speaker, unfolds a rationalizing theory of religion which the ancient sources and also modern interpreters have understood as atheism – wrongly, as P. makes plausible with much critical acumen. The fragment rather deals with religion which is made to serve the purposes of human state order and jurisdiction, a theory which has no exact parallel elsewhere, though one feels the reminiscence of, e.g., Prodicus 84 B 5 DK, where the gods are formed by men of elements useful to mankind, or such ideas of law as Thrasymachus expresses in the first book of Plato’s Politeia ( Pol. I 338e-339a).
Rich and well structured indices conclude the book. Perhaps some space ought to have been given to a final passage, which would have summed up the general impressions of Euripides as a satyrographos and the relation of his satyr plays to the whole of his work. But this is also a rather slight criticism, given the almost overwhelming quantity of information and very reasonable observations on detail, which are throughout presented in such a clear and plausible manner as to make the readers’ own occupation with Euripides and his satyr plays much easier and more fascinating.