Tracking Satyrs

The Tracking Satyrs is a substantial fragment of a satyr play by Sophocles, discovered at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt in 1907. We have some 400 lines of a play that was probably about 800 lines long. The plot is the same as that of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes: Apollo’s cows have been stolen, and the culprit turns out to be his newborn brother Hermes. This translation is adapted from The Ichneutae of Sophocles, Richard Johnson Walker, London: 1919. Walker established his own text for the fragment, filling in many of the gap reason="lost"s. I have occasionally adopted his supplements, but have basically translated the text of the first publication of the play, Oxyrhynchus Papyri 9, no. 1174, ed. Arthur S. Hunt, London: 1912. Who’s Who in the PlayApollo, son of Zeus and god of prophecySilenus, father of the satyrsCyllene, a nymphHermes, newborn son of Zeushe does not appear in the fragment we have, but must have showed up before the play was overChorus of satyrs The scene is outdoors. There is a cave upstage center (represented by the skene door). Enter Apollo, right.There are no stage directions in the texts of Greek plays; translators normally add them for the convenience of the modern reader. Apollo could appear on the roof of the skene building, like Athena in Ajax, or could enter in the usual way from the wings. ApolloI, Apollo, proclaim to all gods and all mortal men: This speech is rather fragmentary. I have followed Walker’s heavily-supplemented text. The main ideas are clear, but the details are missing.I shall give a golden basin to whoever can bring back my cattle from far away.It is quite unpleasant to me that they are gone, all of them: cows, calves, heifers. They are all gone, and I look in vain for their tracks, while they wander far from their own mangers. I never thought that any of the gods or of men, whose lives are like a single day, would dare do such a thing. Since I found out about this, shocked as I was, I have been seeking them, and I have proclaimed the deedso that no god or mortal men could be unaware of it. I am beside myself. I have gone to visit the whole nation of the Locrians, those who inhabit Opus, those in Ozolis, those in Knemis by the Cephisus. I have gone to Aetolia and to Acarnanian Argos. From there I came to the grove of Zeus at Dodona, shaded by leaves of prophecy. I then hastened to the fruitful plains of Thessaly