Greek Tragedy

1. Greek Tragedy 508 Athens creates first democratic constitution, but it’s immediately threatened by two Persian invasions in 490 and 480 BCE (both successfully repelled). Great Greek theatre by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides takes place after victories against Persia, from 479-404 BCE. Much of it took place in the great peace between the battles with the Persians and the Peloponesian war (431-404) The great series called the Oresteia reflects the newly created Jury system Most surviving plays reflect the problems facing a democracy, especially those that threaten political stability, such as conflicts between overbearing rulers and popular opinion

2. Birth of Drama • Drama is thought to come from the “dithyramb,” and ecstatic choral song celebrating Dionysus. It had a chorus of 50 men and 50 boys dancing and singing. • This celebration began with a community processional. The people carried grotesque masks, sacred phalluses, and an effigy of Dionysus dismembered. • Drama was part of a contest; each playwright submitted three tragedies and a satyr play • Thespis was the legendary “first actor” who stepped out of the chorus

3. Tragedy or “Goat Song” • All men; women were played by men wearing wigs, masks, and robes • Traditionally had only two actors playing multiple parts (projecting in a huge out-door ampitheater was a difficult skill that required talent and training). Sophocles is said to have added the third actor; Aeschylus copies this in Oresteia • Aristotle would later say a tragedy had a noble (or moral) hero who made a tragic error (hamartia or “miss the mark”—an archery term) and whose fall allowed a community catharsis (purging through pity and fear). He believed plays should observe the “unities” of time, place, and action, but playwrights did not routine observe these rules. • P.S. Hamartia does not mean “tragic flaw”!

4. Tragedies deal with community tensions and oppositions • Tragedy adapts mythic stories to modern urban ideals • Apollo represents moderation and enlightenment; Athena represents wisdom and masculine ideas; she “sides with the men” • The tragic hero’s new self-knowledge is in tension with urban moderation; the hero discovers the capacity to feel • Tragedy plunges us into the “chaotic forces in the human mind,” exploring incest, matricide, infanticide, and other taboos. Wisdom comes from suffering. • Tragedies pit men against women, young against old, god against human, ancient against modern, powerful against disenfranchised • Dionysian ritual, assumed by the protagonist, means taking community suffering on oneself to save the community

5. The Tragic Universe • Gods no longer speak directly, but through riddles • No narrative voice • Chorus has limited knowledge; reacts without narrating • Reasons for tragic reversals (peripeteia) are not clear • Protagonist has unusual capacity to feel deeply

6. The House of Atreus Thyestes rapes own daughter to have Aegisthus • Oresteia first produced 458 BCE • Examines the causes of Agamemnon’s death at Clytemnestra’s hands and the moral dilemma of his son; sets story in modern democracy • Looks at dark family history of family • Curse of the house of Atreus: Tantalus kills his own son and serves him to gods to test their omniscience • Thyestes sleeps with Atreus’s wife; Atreus in turn kills Thyestes’ children and feeds them to him at a banquet • Agamemnon sacrifices Clytemnestra’s favorite daughter to sail to Troy • Cassandra is innocent victim of Agamemnon; war prize raided from temple • Cassandra has the curse of not being belived (she rebuffed Apollo)

7. The Chorus in Oresteia • In Agamemnon, the chorus is men too old to go to Troy. They feebly protest Clytemnestra’s attitude and look on passively • In Libation Bearers, the chorus are slave women hired by Clytemnestra to bring ritual offerings to Agamnon’s tomb to appease his ghost • In Eumenides, the chorus consists of Furies (Erinyes). They represent the old goddess cult (chthonic) and resist the new sky god (ouranic). They represent primitive ideas of justice, violence, and gender.