Ad benedicendum delectandumque redacti. The law of the Decemviri was this: Siquis occentassit malum carmen, sive condidisit, quod infamiam faxit, flagitiumve alteri, capital esto.—A strange likeness, and barely possible; but the critics being all of the same opinion, it becomes me to be silent, and to submit to better judgments than my own. But, to return to the Grecians, from whose satiric dramas the elder Scaliger and Heinsius will have[Pg 43] the Roman satire to proceed, I am to take a view of them first, and see if there be any such descent from them as those authors have pretended. [Pg 43] Thespis, or whoever he were that invented tragedy, (for authors differ,) mingled with them a chorus and dances of Satyrs, which had before been used in the celebration of their festivals; and there they were ever afterwards retained. The character of them was also kept, which was mirth and wantonness; and this was given, I suppose, to the folly of the common audience, who soon grow weary of good sense, and, as we daily see in our own age and country, are apt to forsake poetry, and still ready to return to buffoonery and farce. From hence it came, that, in the Olympic games, where the poets contended for four prizes, the satiric tragedy was the last of them; for, in the rest, the Satyrs were excluded from the chorus. Among the plays of Euripides which are yet remaining, there is one of these Satyrics, which is called "The Cyclops;" in which we may see the nature of those poems, and from thence conclude, what likeness they have to the Roman Satire. Satyrics Satire The story of this Cyclops, whose name was Polyphemus, so famous in the Grecian fables, was, that Ulysses, who, with his company, was driven on the coast of Sicily, where those Cyclops inhabited, coming to ask relief from Silenus, and the Satyrs, who were herdsmen to that one-eyed giant, was kindly received by them, and entertained; till, being perceived by Polyphemus, they were made prisoners against the rites of hospitality, (for which Ulysses eloquently pleaded,) were afterwards put down into the den, and some of them devoured; after which Ulysses, having made him drunk, when he was asleep, thrust a great firebrand into his eye, and so, revenging his dead followers, escaped with[Pg 44] the remaining party of the living; and Silenus and the Satyrs were freed from their servitude under Polyphemus, and remitted to their first liberty of attending and accompanying their patron, Bacchus.
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