38 pages 1 hour read

Euripides

Cyclops

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 422

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Important Quotes

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“O Bromius, thanks to you, my troubles are as many now

As in my youth when my body still was strong!”


(Lines 1-2)

In the first lines of the play, Silenus addresses Dionysus (“Bromius” is another name for Dionysus) in a reproachful manner that is suggestive of the close and familiar relationship between the god and his worshiper. Silenus’s tone also heralds his self-aggrandizing use of language, with Silenus making a dubious reference to “when my body still was strong.”

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“What? How can you dance like that?

Do you think you’re mustered at Bacchus’ feast

And swaggering your sexy way with lyre music

To the halls of Althaea?”


(Lines 37-40)

As the Chorus of satyrs comes on stage, Silenus rebukes them for their joyful dancing, hinting at the stage action that would have unfolded before the original viewers of the play. Silenus evokes the contexts in which satyrs were usually seen by referring to “Bacchus’ feast” and “lyre music.” The satyrs, like Silenus, long for the ease of their lost life, and have a hard time adjusting to the harsh realities of the Cyclopes’ world.

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“No Bacchus here! Not here the dance,

Or the women whirling the thyrsus,

Or the timbrels shaken,

Where the springs of water rill up!”


(Lines 63-66)

The Chorus of satyrs lament the life they have lost, remembering fondly the performing arts associated with Dionysus. These include women dancing with the thyrsus, a pinecone-tipped staff, and the timbrels, or tambourines—instruments of revelry. The vivid descriptive imagery of these lines connects the satyrs and Dionysus to a natural world in

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The World's Best Poetry, Volume 5 (Part 1): Nature

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Mary Mapes Dodge, George Darley, William Motherwell, George Eliot, John Milton, Clement Scott, George Arnold, Robert Browning, James Thomson, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., William Ernest Henley, Denis Florence MacCarthy, William Cullen Bryant, John Sterling, John Clare, Izaak Walton, Matthew Arnold, James Whitcomb Riley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Edward Jenner, William Gilmore Simms, Charles G.D. Roberts, Henry Timrod, William Cox Bennett, Bliss Carman, Archibald Lampman, George MacDonald, William Shakespeare, Matthias Claudius, Alexander Hume, James Beattie, Thomas Gray, Craig Franklin, John Cunningham, Norman Rowland Gale, James Gates Percival, Joel Benton, Thomas Heywood, Richard Hovey, Anna Boynton Averill, Charles Sangster, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Dora Hill Read Goodale, Joanna Baillie, Thomas Nashe, Henry Wotton, Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Bailey Aldrich, John Howard Bryant, John G.C. Brainard, Thomas Campbell, Eduard Mörike, Algernon Charles Swinburne, William Morris, David Gray, William Cowper, W.B. Yeats, William Prescott Foster, Richard Henry Dana Jr., Thomas Carew, William Howitt, John B. Tabb, Jones Very, Henry Fielding, Barry Cornwall, Samuel Daniel, John Keats, Homer, George Francis Savage-Armstrong, John Leyden, Tomas Peter, Thomas Hood, Philip Pendleton Cooke, Richard Watson Gilder, Ethelwyn Wetherald, William Wordsworth, Euripides, Joseph Blanco White, Edmund Clarence Stedman, G.W. Pettee, Robert Tannahill, Ebenezer Jones, John Chalkhill, Abraham Cowley, Paul Hamilton Hayne, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, James Russell Lowell, Andrew Marvell, Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Lisle Bowles, Leanne Yau, Charles Harpur, Sonia, Edith M. Thomas, Charles Kingsley, Lord Byron, Ebenezer Elliott, Benjamin Franklin Taylor, Richard Henry Horne, Jason in Panama, Walter Scott, Hartley Coleridge, Duncan Campbell Scott, Alfred Tennyson, John Davies, Aristophanes, Charles G. Eastman, Elizabeth Roberts MacDonald, William Browne, Robert Burns, Samuel Rogers, Ludwig H.C. Hölty, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, Celia Laighton Thaxter