The date of Euripides' Cyclops
1982; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 102; Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/631134
ISSN2041-4099
Autores Tópico(s)Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies
ResumoThere is still considerable disagreement about the date of Euripides' Cyclops . The most common view seems to be that it was written in the last ten years of Euripides' career. And yet in the only recent detailed study D. F. Sutton argues that it was produced in 424 BC. And so the Cyclops is perhaps the only extant Euripidean play about whose date there is still serious disagreement. This is largely because it is the only one to which the metrical dating criteria formulated by Zieliński and others have never been properly applied. This I now propose to do, as part of a case for about 408 BC as the date of the play. The principle that the frequency and nature of resolution in the iambic trimeter can be an indication of the date of a Euripidean play is generally accepted. Taking the plays of known date, in Alcestis (produced in 438 BC) the number of resolved feet expressed as a percentage of the number of spoken trimeters is 6.2, in Medea (431 BC) 6.6, Hippolytus (428) 4.3, Hecuba ( c . 12.7, Troades (415) 21.2, Helen (412) 27.5, Phoenissae (411–09) 25.8, Orestes (408) 39.4, Bacchae (posthumous) 37.6, Iphigeneia in Aulis (posthumous) 34.7. In Cyclops it is 35.0, which would entitle us to place the play after 412 BC, were it not that the figure may express no more than the greater metrical freedom that satyric drama has over tragedy. After all, Cyclops has 17 anapaests (not involving proper names) outside the first foot, and three irredeemable violations of Porson's Law—a degree of licence impossible in tragedy.
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