The Cyclops of Euripides is the only extant specimen of a satyric drama.
The Tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition of the three tragedies, or trilogy, and the Satyric Drama.
But now old age my wit and fancy nips, I gall the Muses with satyric quips; Yet might I with the eagle cast my bill, And gain my youth, I would regain my skill.
How they lounge aloof Each with his Triad, three plays to my one, Not counting the contemptuous fourth, the frank Concession to mere mortal levity, Satyric pittance tossed our beggar-world!
Henceforth it was customary for a tragic author to produce at the same time three successive dramas on the subject he selected, together with a satyric play.
The Edonians, the Bassarids, and the Young Men constituted a connected series of plays--a Lycurgeia, with Lycurgus for the satyric supplement.
It is probable that the satyric play of Lycurgus represented the divine honors paid, after his death, to the old enemy, now become the satellite and subject of Dionysus, by pastoral folk and dwellers in the woodlands.
Dim tradition reports that he invented the satyric drama; and it has thence been inferred with probability that the 150 plays ascribed to him were chiefly composed in tetralogies of one comic and three serious pieces.
Diogenes Laertius records his skill in the satyric drama; Athenaeus remarks that his style was obscure, and that he filled his plays with riddles.
All the rest is obscure, except that we have reason to believe that Choerilus excelled in the satyric drama.
At the same time special pieces for the traditional tragic chorus were retained, and these received the name of satyric dramas.
It comes from the satyric drama of Autolycus, and expresses the contempt felt by cultivated Athenians for young men who devoted all their energies to gymnastics.
The Alcestis is now universally and rightly classed among the plays of a semi-satyric character; and the Andromache is not a genuine tragedy, since the death of Neoptolemus is episodical and has little to do with the previous action.
However that may be, Plato would never have let a leading character in one of his longer dialogues advance (and Socrates refute) a view which had no better authority than a passage in a satyric drama.
Critias, the well-known reactionary politician, the chief of the Thirty Tyrants, is placed amongst the atheists on the strength of a passage in a satyric drama, Sisyphus.
These were often on connected subjects; and the Satyric drama at the end served like a merry after-piece to relieve the minds of the spectators.
The Dorian Pratinas, a native of Philius, but who exhibited his tragedies at Athens, introduced an improvement in tragedy by separating the Satyric from the tragic drama.
The satyricelement seems, however, never to have become really popular, the fabula saltica as we know it dealing mainly with tragic or highly emotional themes.
Pylades and Bathyllus,[105] the former being famed for his tragic dancing, the latter for a broader and more comic style, whose dramatic counterpart would seem to have been the satyric drama.
The subjects of the plays of Epicharmus were chiefly mythological, that is, parodies or travesties of mythology, nearly in the style of the satyric drama of Athens.
I have nothing to remark respecting the satyric drama, except that it must have abounded in mimicry and pantomimic dances, such as were used under the name of hyporchemes in the temples of Apollo.
It cannot have been meant to be played, as a fourth piece, instead of a regular satyric drama.
The Cyclops, of uncertain date, is the only extant example of a satyric drama.
The Alcestis is altogether removed from the character, essentially grotesque, of a mere satyric drama.
They had done gravely very much what satyric drama aimed at doing grotesquely.
With the exception of the Satyric drama, it can hardly be said to have made itself felt, except in the vases of Southern Italy, in the fourth century B.
On a vase in Naples[25] are represented preparations for a Satyric drama.
This looks like a reminiscence of Giraldi Cintio's Egle, and through it of the old satyric drama[202].
Taken as a whole, and partly through being unencumbered with the satyric machinery of the Queen's Arcadia, Hymen's Triumph is a distinctly lighter and more pleasing composition.
Discarding short stories and a ludicrous diction, through its passing out of its satyric stage, it assumed, though only at a late point in its progress, a tone of dignity; and its metre changed then from trochaic to iambic.
The reason for their original use of the trochaic tetrameter was that their poetry was satyric and more connected with dancing than it now is.
In their stead he put a curious sort of pro-satyric tragedy, a play in the tragic convention and free from the satyric coarseness, but containing at least one half-comic figure and preserving some fantastic quality of atmosphere.
The satyric chorus of dithyramb is the saving deed of Greek art; the paroxysms described above spent their force in the intermediary world of these Dionysian followers.
When living in Alexandria he was commissioned by Ptolemy Philadelphus to arrange the tragedies and satyric dramas in the library; some ten years later he took up his residence at the court of Antigonus Gonatas, king of Macedonia.
But apparently it told how Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly, received from Apollo a special privilege which the God had obtained, in trueSatyric style, by making the Three Fates drunk and cajoling them.
To understand Heracles in this scene, one must first remember the traditional connexion of Satyrs (and therefore of satyric heroes) with the re-awakening of the dead Earth in spring and the return of human souls to their tribe.
The Alcestis is a very clear instance of this Pro-satyric class of play.
We have only to remember the old Satyric tradition and to look at them in the light of their historical development.
But the complete type was refined away during the fifth century; and one stage in the process produced a play with a normal chorus but with one figure of the Satyric or "revelling" type.
The influence of the stage is as yet hardly felt, though here and there scenes may be traced to the influence of someSatyric drama.
The exterior subject is interesting as being derived from a Satyric drama.
Among the most famous Apulian vases are those representing the Death of Talos, the Death of Archemoros, preparations for a Satyric Drama, and so on.
Spouts were sometimes modelled in other forms, such as a Satyric mask, or the fore-part of a lion; of the latter there are some examples in the British Museum.
They are decorated with heads and other devices, usually in relief on square panels, and the majority of these heads are of a Satyric or grotesque character, wearing conical caps or adorned with ivy-wreaths.
This same satyric drama took over the phallus-bearing choral dancers from the vegetation festival.
Suggestions of the animal dance occur in the satyric plays of the Greeks.
And the satyric comedies which he wrote himself in his native language, show of how merry and jovial a temperament he was in this way.
There were likewise in them representations of eating parties opposite to one another, of tragic, and comic, and satyric animals, having on real clothes.
The 'Alcestis' was entered by Euripides as a satyric play, but it only in parts approaches the characteristics of such a play.
The competitor was obliged to send in three tragedies called a trilogy, together with what was called a satyric play.
The satyric play was named from the satyrs or attendants upon Bacchus, and was a farce or burlesque intended to relieve the feelings of the spectators after the tragedies.
The fact was that the Alcestis was represented in place of a 'Satyric Drama,' which only allowed two (speaking) personages on the Stage at the same time.
It should be added that the learned editor of the Greek Scenic Poets is inclined to identify the Fire-bearer and the Fire-kindler, and to regard this play as the satyric drama attached to the tetralogy of the Persae.
He broke up the trilogy into separate plays, exhibiting three tragedies and a satyric drama, like AEschylus before him, but undoing the link by which they were connected, so that he was able to make each an independent poem.
The iambic measure then replaced the trochaic tetrameter, which was originally employed when the poetry was of the Satyric order, and had greater affinities with dancing.
Moreover, it was not till late that the short plot was discarded for one of greater compass, and the grotesque diction of the earlier satyric form for the stately manner of Tragedy.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "satyric" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
