1. Opinions differ. Victor Steffen admits the possibility that Euripides' Busiris did not have a chorus of satyrs, in ‘The Satyr-Dramas of Euripides,’ Eos 59 (1971) 215Google Scholar; Luigi Rossi inclines to think the satyrs were essential to the genre, ‘Il dramma satiresco attico — forma, fortunaet funzione di un genere letterario antico,’ Dialoghi di Archeologia 6 (1972) 254 and n.15Google Scholar; and Dana Sutton is categorical on the matter: ‘its chorus is invariably composed of satyrs,’ ‘Father Silenus: Actor or Coryphaeus,’ CQ 24 (1974) 19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See, for example, Steffan, Victor, ‘De Fabularum satyricarum generibus,’ Eos 65 (1977) 191Google Scholar; Duchemin, Jacqueline, Le Cyclope d' Euripide (Paris, 1945) xv–xviiGoogle Scholar.

3. This is the view of Rossi (n.1 above) 257: ‘Nel dramma satiresco il personaggio tragico conserva intatto il suo ethos, che e serio e nobile. Il compito di evocare un atmosfera giocosa poggia cosi tutto sui satiri…’ Compare the famous remark by Demetrius, , On Style 169Google Scholar, that the satyr play was ‘tragedy at play’ (paizousa tragōidid). On the relative neglect suffered by the Cyclops, cf. Ussher, R. G., ‘The Cyclops of Euripides,’ G&R n.s. 18 (1971) 166Google Scholar; as he observes, ‘the time may be right for reappraisal.’

4. Euripides: The Cyclops (Cambridge, 1927Google Scholar; repr. 1976). Some lines of the play are purged in this edition.

5. See, for example, Duchemin (n.2 above) xiv: ‘Il nous est facile d'établier les principales différences entre le drame d'Euripide et l'Odyssée, differences qui tiennent la plupart du temps a la nature même de l'oeuvre;’ Steffen (n.1 above) 206: ‘Only in some details did Euripides deviate from his original and that seems to have been determined by the dramatic requirements of the story.’ This is the view as well of Wetzel, G., De Euripidis fabula satyrica, quae Cyclops inscribitur, cum Homerico comparata exemplo (Wiesbaden, 1965Google Scholar). Sutton, Dana, ‘Satyr plays and the Odyssey,’ Arethusa 7 (1974) 161–85Google Scholar, Suggests a connection between the satyr play as a genre and the themes and tone of the Odyssey, and contrasts them with tragedy and the Iliad.

6. For the idea of a semantic field, Snell, Bruno, Die Ausdrücke fur den Begriff des Wissens in der vorplatonischen Philosophie (Berlin, 1924Google Scholar); Trier, Jost, Der deutsche Worschatz im Sinnbezirk des Verstandes: die Geschichte eines sprachlichen Felds (Heidelberg, 1931Google Scholar); Lyons, John, Structural Semantics (Oxford, 1963Google Scholar).

7. That Silenus was an actor, and not the coryphaeus, is argued carefully and persuasively by Dana Sutton (n.1 above).

8. While the binary nature of the Polyphemus episode in the Odyssey leaves no room for a third term in the culinary scheme, which we may diagram as:

we may note that the Lotus-eaters, who immediately precede the Cyclops episode, are vegetarians. I owe this observation to George Dimock, who suggested it to me during the reading of a draft of this paper at the Smith College Symposion.

9. Thus, androbrōs, used of the Cyclops at v. 93, elsewhere in Euripides modifies charmonai (H.F. 384) and hēdonai (fr. 537), cit. LSJ. Anthrōpophagos may be used of man-eating beasts as well as of cannibals. Androphagos (Od. 10.200; Herod 4.18, 106) is perhaps more restricted, but it is not used in Euripides; various forms of anthrōpoboros indicate that the idea included dangerous animals as well as cannibals proper.

10. See Duchemin ad v. 12 for full citations of the evidence.

11. Simmonds and Timberlake ad v. 239; they cite Thucydides 6.62 as the only other instance. Long, W. E., Euripides Cyclops (Oxford, 1891Google Scholar), ad v. 239, suggests that it might be ‘safer’ to render the verb, ‘deliver over’.

12. Note harpazō, 109, 400; anarpazō, 112.

13. The ambivalence of the concept behind xenos is expressed by way of an aetiological story by Finley, Moses, The World of Odysseus (2nd ed. Harmondsworth, England, 1979) 101Google Scholar: ‘In primitive times, the poet [Homer] seems to be suggesting, man lived in a state of permanent struggle and war to the death against the outsider. Then the gods intervened, and through their precepts, their themis, a new ideal was set before man, and especially before a king, an obligation of hospitality: “all strangers and beggars are from Zeus” ([Od] 14.57-8). Henceforth men had to pick a difficult path between the two, between the reality of a society in which the stranger was still a problem and a threat, and the newer morality, according to which he was somehow covered by the aegis of Zeus.' Under the ‘newer’ morailty, obligations of hospitality were due to strangers, that is, to potential guest-friends. The role of hospitality (xenia) is touched upon also by Sutton (n.5 above) 162-63, again in connection with the Odyssey.

14. Rossi, Luigi Enrico, ‘Il Ciclope di Euripide come kōmos “mancato”,’ Maia 23 (1971) 10–38, esp. pp. 21, 27Google Scholar.

15. Uses of the word monos suggest the contrast between Odysseus' concern for his men and Polyphemus' selfishness; on Odysseus, 479; 489; on the Cyclops, 362, 453, and — possibly — also monoderktēs, 79. I do not find nomades in 120 sufficiently strange to justify emending to monades; see however, Schmidt, Volkmar, ‘Zu Euripides, Kyklops 120 und 707,’ Maia 21 (1975) 291–92 for a defense of monadesGoogle Scholar.

16. There is a kind of crux in the plot here, for Odysseus' companions might also have escaped, especially had Polyphemus been encouraged to join his brothers in a kōmos. I return to this problem below. There is no justification, however, for drawing the conclusion that Odysseus' men are cowardly or unreliable, as Ussher (n.3 above) 176-77, does, nor does oikeioi philoi, in its context (650), possibly ‘contain a sneer;’ it precisely distinguishes Odysseus' men from the satyrs.

17. See, for example, Benveniste, Emile, ‘Philos,’ in Indo-European Languages and Society, trans. Lallot, Jean (London, 1973) 277–78Google Scholar. On amicitia, Brunt, P. A., ‘Amicitia in the Late Roman Republic,’ PCPS N.S. 2 (1965) 1 ffGoogle Scholar.

18. Cf. 276 (Polyphemus to Odysseus): ‘What city (polis) educated (exepaideusen) you?’; and 119-20: ‘or is the power (kratos) with the people (dedēmeutai)?’ etc.

19. In an exchange of proverbs on the subject of the kōmos, Polyphemus can use the term philos for drinking mates (533), but this does not affect the argument.

20. Oliver's paper appears in Olson, Alan M., ed., Myth, Symbol, and Reality (Notre Dame, 1980Google Scholar); the passage quoted is on pp. 73-74. The citation from Moore, G. E. is from Philosophical Studies (repr. Totowa, N.J., 1968; orig. 1922) 288Google Scholar.

21. Ideologically, one of the forms in which the social phenomenon of household autarky might be expressed was the extreme individualism of the sophists. I am not suggesting that these ideas reflected a social fact, in some allegorical fashion; only that they were available to be contrasted, say, to traditional notions of justice and solidarity, and thereby to be part of a structured set of oppositions that had analogies with social life. Victor Steffan (n.1 above) 206, remarks: ‘the cyclops is made into a representative of the contemporary radical sophists;’ the point, however, is not mere topicality, but central to the semantics of the play. It is worth observing also that the satyrs — in so many ways like Polyphemus — have also a sophistical air about them; see, for example, Luigi Spina, ‘Il momento “sofistico” della maschera satiresca,’ AFLN 17 (1974–1975) 57–64Google Scholar, who analyzes P. Oxy.8.1083 = fr. 2 inc. poet. Steffen.

22. A mechanical solidarity obtains where the division of labor is relatively undeveloped. Durkheim develops the idea in The Division of Labor in Society, trans. Simpson, George (New York, 1964Google Scholar); for a brief review, see Giddens, Anthony, Émile Durkheim (Harmondsworth, 1978) 28Google Scholar.

23. Herodotus 1.4. Herodotus himself did not take so frivolous a view of the causes of the war; cf. 2.120. The idea that the Trojan War was fought for the sake of a woman is expressed also in Euripides' tragedies, e.g. Trojan Women 368-69, Iphigeneia in Aulis 1393-94.

24. Ussher (n.3 above) 171, has an astute comment on this passage: ‘In an interesting piece of near self-parody — if that term can be used without reference to date — Euripides makes them [the satyrs] sympathize with Menelaos and inveigh against the race of women (186 ff.). But their qualification (ei mē moi monōi) pin-points a leading trait of the stage satyr. I mean not his sexuality … but his selfishness and marked pursuit of policies, however contradictory, unprincipled, or devious, which will lead to his own self-preservation.’ The related passages in Euripidean tragedy are Hippolytus 616 ff., Medea 573 ff. On the whole question of self-parody in the Cyclops, see the discussion of Arnott, Geoffrey, ‘Parody and Ambiguity in Euripides’ Cyclops,' in Hanslik, R., Lesky, A., Schwabl, H., edd., Antidosis: Festschrift fur Walther Kraus (Vienna, 1972) 21–30, esp. 22-24Google Scholar.

25. This is not sufficient grounds to warrant William Arrowsmith's interpretation of the Cyclops as a sympathetic figure, with Odysseus as the sophistical politician of the tragedies; see Arrowsmith's introduction to his translation of the Cyclops, in Grene, D. and Lattimore, R., edd., The Complete Greek Tragedies, Euripides II (Chicago, 1956) 5–8Google Scholar.

26. Odyssey 9.405-06. The pun was observed first, to my knowledge, by Stanford, W. B., Ambiguity in Greek Literature (Oxford, 1939) 104–05Google Scholar; see also Simpson, Michael, ‘Odyssey 9: Symmetry and Paradox in Outis,’ CJ 68 (1972) 22–25Google Scholar.

27. See, for example, the parallel expressions exantlō ponon, 10, and ponon … exēntlēkotes, 282, of Silenus and the Greeks respectively; also 110: ton auton daimon' exantleis emoi.

28. Arrowsmith (n.25 above), who feels that ‘Odysseus is in fact the familiar depraved politician of the Hecuba, the Trojan Women, and the Iphigeneia at Aulis; he stands, as he almost always does in tragedy, for that refinement of intellect and eloquence which makes civilized brutality so much more terrible than mere savagery’ (p. 5), while in Polyphemus he sees ‘a drunken, almost lovable, buffoon’ (p. 6).

29. The god is addressed at least through line 17 (s' anax), after which the form of apostrophe is tacitly dropped, and we may suppose that Silenus speaks directly to the audience, as is usual for the prologue. The god's name is also the last word of line 9, which sets off the first statement or paragraph of the prologue; note also the responsion indicating closure in the echo ponous/ponon, lines 1 and 10.

30. Other terms for their servitude to Polyphemus are thēteuō (77), and latreuō(24); perhaps a contrast in the nature of their relation to Polyphemus and to Dionysus is intimated in the choice of words anax (17) for the god and despotēs (34) for the Cyclops.

31. There are analogies here with the chorus in the Bacchae, 402 ff., and especially 537-75.

32. See Machery, Pierre, A Theory of Literary Production, trans. Wall, Geoffrey (London, 1978Google Scholar); Jameson, Frederick, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca, New York, 1981) 56Google Scholar: ‘It follows, then, that the interpretive mission of a properly structural causality will … find its privileged content in the rifts and discontinuities within the work, and ultimately in a conception of the former “work of art” as a heterogeneous and (to use the most dramatic recent slogan) a schizophrenic text. In the case of Althusserian literary criticism proper, then, the appropriate object of study emerges only when the appearance of formal unification is unmasked as a failure or an ideological mirage.’ See also Kermode, Frank, ‘Secrets and Narrative Sequence,’ Critical Inquiry 7 (Autumn, 1980) 87–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar: ‘Secrets, in short, are at odds with sequence, which is considered as an aspect of propriety; and a passion for sequence may result in the suppression of the secret. But it is there, and one way we can find the secret is to look out for evidence of suppression, which will sometimes tell us where the suppressed secret is located.’

33. See especially Girard, Rene, Violence and the Sacred, trans. Gregory, Patrick (Baltimore, 1977) 56Google Scholar: ‘the modern mind has difficulty conceiving of violence in terms of a loss of distinctions, or a loss of distinctions in terms of violence. Tragedy can help to resolve this difficulty if we agree to view the plays from a radical perspective. Tragic drama addresses itself to a burning issue — in fact, to the burning issue. The issue is never alluded to in the plays, and for good reason, since it has to do with the dissolution by reciprocal violence of those very values and distinctions around which the conflict of the plays supposedly revolves.’ For a probing analysis of the failure of categoriality in all discourse, see Derrida, Jacques (the father of deconstructionism), ‘The Supplement of Copula,’ in Harari, Josué V., ed., Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism (Ithaca, New York 1979) 82–120Google Scholar.

34. Dionysus there is of the party of the enthusiasts, while Pentheus asserts discipline through repression. There is no mediating figure (though Winnington-Ingram thought he saw one in Teiresias). I wish to thank my colleagues Marylin Arthur and Michael Roberts for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.