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The origins of satyr drama, and particularly the reliability of the account in Aristotle, remains contested, and several of this volume's contributions try to make sense of the early relationship of satyr drama to dithyramb and attempt to place satyr drama in the pre-Classical performance space and traditions. What is not contested is the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy as a required cap to the Attic trilogy. Here, however, how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides (to whom one complete play and the preponderance of the surviving fragments belong) envisioned the relationship of satyr drama to tragedy in plot, structure, setting, stage action and language is a complex subject tackled by several contributors. The playful satyr chorus and the drunken senility of Silenos have always suggested some links to comedy and later to Atellan farce and phlyax. Those links are best examined through language, passages in later Greek and Roman writers, and in art. The purpose of this volume is probe as many themes and connections of satyr drama with other literary genres, as well as other art forms, putting satyr drama on stage from the sixth century BC through the second century AD. The editors and contributors suggest solutions to some of the controversies, but the volume shows as much that the field of study is vibrant and deserves fuller attention.

Rätsel gehören seit jeher zum Grundinventar menschlicher Kultur. Ihrer zeitlosen und kulturübergreifenden Omnipräsenz sowie ihrer interdisziplinären Relevanz zum Trotz hat man Rätsel bislang nicht mit dem gebührenden Ernst untersucht. Der antike griechische Kulturkreis, der einen exzeptionellen Reichtum an Gelegenheiten, Funktionen und Spielarten des Rätsels aufweist, ist von diesem Desiderat in besonderer Weise betroffen. Die vorliegende Arbeit erschließt durch die erstmalige Sammlung, inhaltliche Kommentierung und Übersetzung der disparat überlieferten griechischen Rätseltexte eine bisher verkannte literarische Kleinform, deren Erforschung zugleich Einsichten in die verschiedensten kulturellen Bereiche wie Orakelwesen, Magie, Philosophie und Politik mit sich bringt. Die Untersuchung stilistischer, inhaltlicher und formaler Rätselaspekte wird dabei flankiert von Erläuterungen ihrer Verrätselungsmechanismen, sozialen Dimension und unterschiedlichen literarischen und kulturellen Funktionen. Die einzelnen Rätselinterpretationen liefern wegweisende neue Erkenntnisse zu z.T. prominenten Texten des Faches, während der abstraktere Blick auf das Rätsel als solches eine eigene Literaturform und zentrale kulturelle Aspekte neu erschließt.

Ein Sohn, der seinen Vater erschlägt, das Rätsel der Sphinx löst, seine Mutter heiratet, seine wahre Identität entdeckt und folglich Selbstblendung vollzieht: Das ist der Kern des Ödipus-Mythos, der schon in der Antike weitverbreitet war und bis in die Moderne fortlebt. Die vorliegende Arbeit leistet eine umfangreiche und gattungsübergreifende Bestandserhebung zu den literarischen Bearbeitungen des Ödipus-Stoffes. Den Schwerpunkt bilden dessen tragische Bearbeitungen bei Aischylos, Sophokles und vor allem Euripides im Spannungsfeld zwischen nachgewiesenen Abhängigkeiten und ausgeprägtem Innovationscharakter. Im Zuge dieser komparatistischen Untersuchung von einzelnen fragmentarisch oder vollständig erhaltenen Texten wird ein Bogen zu den römischen Dichtern Accius und Seneca geschlagen, um aufzuzeigen, in welchem Umfang und in welcher Weise sie auf die genannten griechischen Vorgänger rekurrieren. Insgesamt gelingt es dieser Untersuchung, nicht nur die gattungsinternen Abhängigkeiten der vielfältigen Ödipus-Verarbeitungen, sondern auch den Innovationsanspruch in einer breit angelegten Studie schärfer und systematischer als zuvor zu präsentieren.

This volume contains the collected papers of Albert Henrichs on numerous subjects in ancient Greek myth and religion. What was ancient Greek religion really like? What is the reality of belief and action that lies behind the unwieldy sources, which stem from vast areas and epochs of the ancient world? What is the meaning, intended and otherwise, of religious action and speech in ancient Greece? Who were the Greek gods, how were they worshipped, and how were they viewed by those who worshipped them? One of the leading students of ancient Greek religion over the past five decades, Albert Henrichs, the Eliot Professor of Greek Literature at Harvard University, combines wide and deep learning, a pragmatic, incisive approach to the sources, and an apt use of comparative perspectives. Henrichs breaks new ground in discussing sacrifice, libation, cultic identity, religious action and speech, epiphany, and the personalities of the gods. Special attention is devoted to ancient Greek sources on the ancient Persian prophet Mani, founder of Manichaeism. As a group, Albert Henrichs'papers on Greek religion offer a basic education on Greek myth and religion and constitute a blueprint for serious study of the subject.

Brill's Companion to the Reception of Sophocles offers a comprehensive account of the influence, reception and appropriation of all extant Sophoclean plays, as well as the fragmentary Satyr play The Trackers, from Antiquity to Modernity, across cultures and civilizations, encompassing multiple perspectives and within a broad range of cultural trends and manifestations: literature, intellectual history, visual arts, music, opera and dance, stage and cinematography. A concerted work by an international team of specialists in the field, the volume is addressed to a wide and multidisciplinary readership of classical reception studies, from experts to non-experts. Contributors engage in a vividly and lively interactive dialogue with the Ancient and the Modern, which, while illuminating aspects of ancient drama and highlighting their ever-lasting relevance, offers a thoughtful and layered guide of the human condition.

When Oedipus met the Sphinx on the road to Thebes, he did more than answer a riddle—he spawned a myth that, told and retold, would become one of Western culture's central narratives about self-understanding. Identifying the story as a threshold myth—in which the hero crosses over into an unknown and dangerous realm where rules and limits are not known—Oedipus and the Sphinx offers a fresh account of this mythic encounter and how it deals with the concepts of liminality and otherness. Almut-Barbara Renger assesses the story's meanings and functions in classical antiquity—from its presence in ancient vase painting to its absence in Sophocles's tragedy—before arriving at two of its major reworkings in European modernity: the psychoanalytic theory of Sigmund Freud and the poetics of Jean Cocteau. Through her readings, she highlights the ambiguous status of the Sphinx and reveals Oedipus himself to be a liminal creature, providing key insights into Sophocles's portrayal and establishing a theoretical framework that organizes evaluations of the myth's reception in the twentieth century. Revealing the narrative of Oedipus and the Sphinx to be the very paradigm of a key transition experienced by all of humankind, Renger situates myth between the competing claims of science and art in an engagement that has important implications for current debates in literary studies, psychoanalytic theory, cultural history, and aesthetics.

Euripides'Phoenissae bears one of the richest tragic plots: multiple narrative levels are interwoven by means of various anachronies, focalizers offer different and often challenging points of view, while a complex mythical matrix is deftly employed as the backdrop against which the exploration of the mechanics of tragic narrative takes place. After providing a critical perspective on the ongoing scholarly dialogue regarding narratology and drama, this book uses the former as a working tool for the study and interpretation of the latter. The Phoenissae is approached as a coherent narrative unit and issues like the use of myth, narrators, intertext, time and space are discussed in detail. It is within these contexts that the play is seen as a Theban mythical ‛thesaurus'both exploring previous mythical ramifications and making new additions. The result is rewarding: Euripides constructs a handbook of the Theban saga that was informative for those mythically untrained, fascinating for those theatrically demanding, but also dexterously open upon each one's reception.