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The Classical Greece, Democracy, and Greek Tragedy. Week 13-14. The classical period. The three major Greek tragedians. Aeschylus— Agamemnon Sophocles— Oedipus the King Euripides— Medea. AESCHYLUS 524?-456 B.C. Epitaph of Aeschylus.
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The Classical Greece, Democracy, and Greek Tragedy Week 13-14 Alice Y. Chang
The classical period Alice Y. Chang
The three major Greek tragedians Aeschylus— Agamemnon Sophocles— Oedipus the King Euripides— Medea
Epitaph of Aeschylus “This tomb hideth the dust of Aeschylus, an Athenian, Euphorion’s son, who died in wheat-bearing Gela; his glorious valour the precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the long-haired Medes, who knew it well.” • ~Aeschylus, Fragment 272
the creator of tragedy The earliest documents in the history of the Western theater are the seven plays of Aeschylus that have come down to us through the more than two thousand years since his death.
490s BCE • When he produced his first play in the opening years of the fifth century B.C., the performance that we know as drama was still less than half a century old, still open to innovation—and Aeschylus, in fact, made such significant contributions to its development that he has been called “the creator of tragedy.”
Dionysia Festival After the defeat of the Persian invaders (480-479 B.C.), as Athens with its fleets and empire moved toward supremacy in the Greek world, this spring festival became a splendid occasion. The Dionysia, as it was now called, lasted for four or five days, during which public business (except in emergencies) was suspended and prisoners were released on bail for the duration of the festival.
an open-air theater • In an open-air theater that could seat seventeen thousand spectators, tragic and comic poets competed for the prizes offered by the city.
three tragedies and a satyr play Poets in each genre had been selected by the magistrates for the year. On each of three days of the festival, a tragic poet presented three tragedies and a satyr play (a burlesque on a mythic theme), and a comic poet produced one comedy.
trilogy • The three tragedies could deal with quite separate stories or, as in the case of Aeschylus’s Oresteia, with the successive stages of one extended action. • By the time this trilogy was produced (458 B.C.) the number of actors had been raised to three; the spoken part of the performance became steadily more important.
an equilibrium (~concerto) In the Oresteia an equilibrium between the two elements of the performance has been established. The actors, with their speeches, create the dramatic situation and its movement, the plot; the chorus, while contributing to dramatic suspense and illusion, ranges free of the immediate situation in its odes, which extend and amplify the significance of the action.
justice The first play, Agamemnon, was followed at its performance by two more plays, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, which carried on its story and theme to a conclusion. The theme of the trilogy is justice, and its story, like that of almost all Greek tragedies, is a legend that was already well known to the audience that saw the first performance of the play.
retribution This particular legend, the story of the house of Atreus, is rich in dramatic potential, for it deals with a series of retributive murders that stained the hands of three generations of a royal family, and it has also a larger significance, social and historical, of which Aeschylus took full advantage.
Tribe polis The legend preserves the memory of an important historical process through which the Greeks had passed: the transition from tribal institutions of justice to communal justice, from a tradition that demanded that a murdered person’s next of kin avenge the death to a system requiring settlement of the private quarrel by a court of law (the typical institution of the city-state, which replaced the primitive tribe).
Avenge When Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy, he is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, who is Agamemnon’s cousin. Clytemnestra kills her husband to avenge her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed to the goddess Artemis when he had to choose between his daughter’s life and his ambition to conquer Troy. Aegisthus avenges the crime of a previous generation, the hideous murder of his brothers by Agamemnon’s father, Atreus.
standards of the old system, justice The killing of Agamemnon is, by the standards of the old system, justice; but it is the nature of this justice that the process can never be arrested, that one act of violence must give rise to another.
This red-figure crater • The Libation Bearers presents the revenge taken on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes, Agamemnon's son. • This red-figure crater (c470 BCE) shows Orestes striking down Aegisthus as Clytemnestra tries to intervene with an axe. • Electra stands at far right, urging him on.
insoluble dilemma • Agamemnon’s murder must be avenged too, as it is in the second play of the trilogy by Orestes has acted justly according to the code of tribal society based on blood relationship, but in doing so he has violated the most sacred blood relationship of all, the bond between mother and son. • The old system of justice has produced an insoluble dilemma.
The ending of the second play At the end of the second play they are only a vision in Orestes’ mind—“You can’t see them,” he says to the chorus. “I can; they drive me on. I must move on.” But in the final play we see them too; they are the chorus, and they have pursued Orestesto the great shrine of Apollo at Delphi where he has come to seek refuge.
The Furies At the end of The Libation Bearers , Orestes sees a vision of the Furies. They are serpent-haired female hunters, the avengers of blood. Agamemnon had a son to avenge him, but for Clytemnestra there was no one to exact payment.
Furies/ Erinyes/ Eumendies • female, chthonic deities of vengeance or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. • They represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. • A formulaic oath in the Iliad (iii.278ff; xix.260ff) invokes them as “those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath.” • Burkert suggests they are "an embodiment of the act of self-cursing contained in the oath".
The Remorse of Orestes (1862) by William Frederic Bouguereau (1825–1905)
The task of the Furies • This task is taken up by the Furies, who are the guardians of the ancient tribal sanctities; • they enforce the old dispensation when no earthly agent is at hand to do so. • Female themselves, they assert the claim of the mother against the son who killed her to avenge his father.
The trial • The arguments employed in the trial may not strike us as compelling, and may appear disappointing as an answer to the problems of guilt and justiceraised by the trilogy.
The establishment of the court • According to this argument, the fact of the court’s establishment is more important than the particular judgment in Orestes’ case. • This is the end of an old era and the beginning of a new. • The court institutes a system of communal justice, which punishes impersonally and has at last replaced the inconclusive anarchy ofindividual revenge.
Human institutions Besides, the trilogy not only is concerned with the history of human institutions but also makes a religious statement. The sequence of murderous acts and counter-acts over three generations, leading to an important advance in human understanding and civilization, can be seen as the working out of the will of Zeus.
Athenian democracy The ending of the Eumenides, then, when the Furies call blessings down on Athens, gives a vision of a city ruled by law and living in harmony with its land and its gods. In this story of progress painfully won, Aeschylus offers Athenian democracy its charter myth just as it is entering the era of its greatest achievements and its greatest risks.
Athena Erichthonius Athenians • In myth Athena gave her name to the City (Athens) after being chosen over Poseidon as protector of the land. • She was the surrogate mother of the autochthonous child, Erichthonius, from whom the Athenians sprang.
Gaia (the earth) hands her newborn son Erikhthonios over to the goddess Athene, who will foster him as the founding king of Athens. Gaia is shown only partially risen from the earth, being inseparable from her native element. Zeus, holding a lightning bolt, and two goddesses, possibly Hera (?} and Nike with a fillet, stand as witness.
THE CITY-STATES OF GREECE • The geography of Greece – a land of mountain barriers and scattered islands – encouraged this fragmentation. Alice Y. Chang
The expansion of Greece750-580 BCE • Starting with colonies at Ischia and Cumae around the Bay of Naples in c. 750 BCE, the Greeks founded cities all around the Mediterranean, from the south of France to Naucratis in Egyptian Delta, to solve problems of over-population at home. Alice Y. Chang
ATHENS AND SPARTA • By the beginning of the fifth century B.C. the two most prominent city-states were Athens and Sparta. • These two cities led the combined Greek resistance to the Persian invasion of Europe in the years 490 to 479 B.C. • The defeat of the solid Persian power by the divided and insignificant Greek cities surprised the world and inspired in Greece, and particularly in Athens, a confidence that knew no bounds. Alice Y. Chang
Athens • Athens was at this time a democracy, the first in Western history. • It was a direct, not a representative, democracy, for the number of free citizens was small enough to permit the exercise of power by a meeting of the citizens as a body in assembly. Alice Y. Chang
The Athenian Acropolis Alice Y. Chang
Athena • Athens is the symbol of freedom, art, and democracy in the conscience of the civilized world. • The capital of Greece took its name from the goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. Alice Y. Chang
Earliest coinage: Electrum • Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. It has also been produced artificially. • The ancient Greeks called it 'gold' or 'white gold', as opposed to 'refined gold'. Its color ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. • The gold content of naturally occurring electrum in modern Western Anatolia ranges from 70% to 90%, in contrast to the 45–55% of electrum used in ancient Lydian coinage of the same geographical area. • This
Sophocles’ Antigone • “Make your profits, import electrum from Sardis if you wish, and gold from India” (Anti 1037-1039).
An Athenian Owl • Silver Tetradrachm, with the Owl standing on a olive twig, a crescent on the upper left and "ΑΘΕ" in front and Athena wearing an ornamented helmet, 454 - 449 BC.
Resorted plan of the Agora in 400BCE Alice Y. Chang
