satyric drama

satyric drama (satyr-plays). At Athens, at the dramatic festivals, each trilogy (consisting of three tragedies) was followed by a semi-comic satyr-play, written by the same author, in which the chorus was always composed of satyrs, led by Silenus, wearing horses' tails and ears. Aristotle at one point in the Poetics expresses the belief that tragedy originated from this type of performance. Others believed that satyr-plays were a later development. Euripides' Cyclops is the only complete specimen still surviving, but substantial fragments of the Dictyulci (‘drawers of nets’) of Aeschylus and the Ichneutae (‘trackers’) of Sophocles have been found in recent times on papyrus (see PAPYROLOGY). The subject-matter of satyr-plays was a burlesque of some mythical episode appropriate to the preceding trilogy, with a certain amount of coarse language and gesturing. Pratinas of Phlius, writing at the beginning of the fifth century in Athens, is said to have turned the satyr-play into a literary form; he is also said to have written thirty-two satyr-plays himself. Satyric drama continued to be written even in Roman times; rules for its composition are given by Horace in the Ars poetica.