This brief play—it has hardly more than seven hundred lines—is invaluable as being the only complete work of the satyric type which we now possess. Considered in itself, it is of small value,[767] though it must have formed an agreeable light entertainment. The lyrics are short and trifling. Of characterization there is little, and that little traditional and obvious—Odysseus is pious, valiant, resourceful; Polyphemus brutally sensual, the satyrs cowardly and frivolous. Though there are passages of tension, the audience can never have felt any marked excitement, as the whole story, except that the satyrs are imported by the dramatist, is taken from a well-known episode in Homer[768]; even such things as the joke on the name Outis[769] (“Noman”) and the comparison[770] between the spit which blinds Polyphemus and the auger of a shipwright, are borrowed from the epic. The nature of satyric drama in general is discussed elsewhere.[771] Here it will be enough to note that there are “tragic” features in this play; Odysseus throughout speaks and acts in a manner as dignified, perhaps more dignified, than in certain tragedies of our poet. The farcical scenes provided by the rascally Silenus, the obscene jests and cowardice of the chorus, and a certain approximation[772] to comedy in the iambic metre used by them or by Polyphemus, are marks of a satyric play. It should be noted, however, that even without them, the _Cyclops_ would be no tragedy. Polyphemus is no tragic antagonist of the hero. His exposition of his philosophy of life,[773] such as it is, must not persuade us that there is here any valid moral antagonism as foundation of the drama. Odysseus contends with him and eludes him as one might escape the violence of a ravening animal.