The
Sisyphus fragment is an 42-line excerpt in
iambic trimeterIambic trimeter is a meter consisting of three iambic units per line.In Ancient Greek, iambic trimeter was a quantitative meter in which a line consisted of three iambic metra; and each metron consisted of two iambi...
from an ancient Greek
satyr playSatyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar to the modern-day burlesque style. They always featured a chorus of satyrs and were based in Greek mythology and contained themes of, among other things, drinking, overt sexuality , pranks and general merriment...
written either by
EuripidesEuripides was the lastof the three great tragedians of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias...
or
CritiasCritias , born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose...
. (In Diels-Kranz, it is 88 B 25, attributed to Critias.) The words are spoken by
SisyphusIn Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity....
, a character in the play. The play itself is no longer extant. But
Sextus EmpiricusSextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....
preserved the excerpt in full for us by quoting it in his
Against the Mathematicians 9.54; other ancient writers, apparently independently of Sextus, refer to and/or quote parts of the excerpt.
The
Sisyphus fragment is an 42-line excerpt in
iambic trimeterIambic trimeter is a meter consisting of three iambic units per line.In Ancient Greek, iambic trimeter was a quantitative meter in which a line consisted of three iambic metra; and each metron consisted of two iambi...
from an ancient Greek
satyr playSatyr plays were an ancient Greek form of tragicomedy, similar to the modern-day burlesque style. They always featured a chorus of satyrs and were based in Greek mythology and contained themes of, among other things, drinking, overt sexuality , pranks and general merriment...
written either by
EuripidesEuripides was the lastof the three great tragedians of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias...
or
CritiasCritias , born in Athens, son of Callaeschrus, was an uncle of Plato, and a leading member of the Thirty Tyrants, and one of the most violent. He was an associate of Socrates, a fact that did not endear Socrates to the Athenian public. He was noted in his day for his tragedies, elegies and prose...
. (In Diels-Kranz, it is 88 B 25, attributed to Critias.) The words are spoken by
SisyphusIn Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished in Tartarus by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, and to repeat this throughout eternity....
, a character in the play. The play itself is no longer extant. But
Sextus EmpiricusSextus Empiricus , was a physician and philosopher, and has been variously reported to have lived in Alexandria, Rome, or Athens. His philosophical work is the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman skepticism....
preserved the excerpt in full for us by quoting it in his
Against the Mathematicians 9.54; other ancient writers, apparently independently of Sextus, refer to and/or quote parts of the excerpt. It is the oldest known account of a
naturalisticNaturalism is divided into two philosophical stances:*Naturalized epistemology which focuses on epistemology: This stance is concerned with knowledge: what are methods for gaining trustworthy knowledge of the natural world? It is an epistemological view that is specifically concerned with practical...
evolution of
religionA religion is a system of human thought which usually includes a set of narratives, symbols, beliefs and practices that give meaning to the practitioner's experiences of life through reference to a higher power, deity or deities, or ultimate truth...
. It expresses an atheistic viewpoint by founding religion not in a valid belief in divinity, but in a man-made device for getting people to obey the law out of fear of divine punishment for transgressions.
Authorship
Sextus attributes the lines to Critias, as do other ancient authors. Recently, modern scholars (e.g., Dihle 1977, Kahn 1997) have increasingly begun to question this identification, attributing the lines instead to
EuripidesEuripides was the lastof the three great tragedians of classical Athens . Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias...
, who is known to have written a play (now lost) titled
Sisyphus, and who (more importantly) is identified by other ancient writers as the author of the fragment.
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