Classical Greek and Roman Drama

The Dithyramb and the Origins of Greek Tragedy

Little is known about the origins of Greek tragedy. Anthropologists point to fertility rites, masked ceremonies, and other primitive rituals as containing the seeds of drama, but these phenomena, common to many early societies, in themselves do not adequately explain the unique evolution in Attica of a highly developed tragic form. In the absence of other credible information, historians must rely on the testimony of Aristotle , who discusses the origins of drama in the fourth chapter of his De poetica (c. 334-323 B.C.E.; Poetics, 1705). Aristotle maintains that tragedy originated with the leaders of the dithyramb , a choral song sung in the worship of Dionysus. He also adds a second element to these origins, the satyricon : This was an early forerunner of the satyr play a form that might have dropped into oblivion were it not later restored by Pratinas. Support for Aristotle’s theory of a dual origin is found in the figure of Arion, a Corinthian who raised the dithyramb to an artistic form of choral lyric. Arion’s dithyrambs were performed allegedly by satyrs, and this seems to show a clear point at which dithyramb and satyricon converged.

The dithyramb in the hands of Arion probably had a narrative content (as it does in the later, extant works of Bacchylides), and this, too, makes it a likely precursor of tragedy Further support for Aristotle is found in the Dionysiac character of both the dithyramb and the satyricon, because tragedy, from its inception, was always performed at Athens in connection with the great festivals honoring Dionysus. The content of tragedy, however, almost never deals with the mythic stories of Dionysus, but evidence from Herodotos links the choral song of hero-cults with the worship of Dionysus in one specific case, and this might help explain why heroic mythology provides the substance for songs and, later, plays performed in the worship of Dionysus. Epigenes of Sicyon, an obscure figure who predates Thespis, is said to have been the first tragedian; scholars believe that he may have been connected with this early stage at which heroic mythology became linked with the service of Dionysus.

Tragedy, then, began with choral singing, but at some point it became true drama with the introduction of dialogue. An ancient account based on Aristotle reconstructs that momentous step in the following manner: Because the choral song eventually came to include complex mythological material, demanding much knowledge on the part of the listener, it was convenient to add a prologue to lead the audience into the song; in like manner, a speaker could be brought on between songs to explain transitions, and eventually, the narrator and the chorus leader began to speak with each other. Tradition names Thespis , in the last half of the sixth century B.C.E., as the inventor of the tragic actor; it is more likely that he was an important innovator who deeply affected a process that was essentially evolutionary in nature. He was the first to present a tragedy at the Greater Dionysia (established c. 535 B.C.E.) and thus is connected with Pisistratus’s institutionalization of tragedy in Athens as part of official religious life, and it is suggested that he was also associated with the introduction of masks for the actors. Because the tragic presentations at the festivals took the form of competitions, inscriptions recorded the winners and their play titles (didascalia), and much of this evidence has survived, providing the names of other early tragedians. Among these is Choerilus , a figure of the late sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.E. He competed with Pratinas and Aeschylus, and one of his tragedies, titled Alope, dealt with a local Attic legend. Phrynichus was another tragedian of the same era, and many of his titles show the same mythic subject matter later used by Aeschylus and Euripides. Phrynichus also tried his hand at dramas of historical content: The Capture of Miletus (pr. 492 B.C.E.) evoked among the audience such painful recollection of a recent military disaster that Phrynichus was fined and the play banned. A final playwright of the pre-Aeschylean era is Pratinas who wrote tragedies, although he was best known for his reform and restoration of the satyr play.

The Origins of Comedy

Even less is known about the origins of comedy Aristotle confesses in his Poetics that by his own day, the early stages of comedy were already obscure and unknown. He does, however, offer two important clues. He traces comedy back to the phallic songs, fertility rites that persisted in his own time, much as he found the origins of tragedy in the dithyramb. He also supports the etymology of the word “comedy” deriving from the Greek kōmos, the song of a train of revelers. This notion is supported by the relatively late dates of institutionalization of comedy at Athenian festivals—442 B.C.E. for the Lenaea and 486 for the Greater Dionysia—which suggest that comedy was for a long time informal and improvisational in nature.

Something is known of the phallic processions that Aristotle views as the starting point of comedy. One passage in Aristophanes’ Acharnēs (425 B.C.E.; The Acharnians, 1812) includes such a celebration. Semos of Delos describes two kinds of phallic processions: the phallophoroi, garlanded youths who followed one young man wearing the phallus, with his face blackened, and ithyphalloi, performers wearing masks that represented drunkenness. Both types of processions were accompanied by singers, and the phallophoroi involved audience abuse; because Attic comedy employs choral singing, the phallus, and invective aimed at the viewers, it seems likely that Aristotle was, at least in part, correct.

In modern times, classical scholars, with the aid of the resources of archaeology, have compiled a list of other rituals, celebrations, and miscellaneous phenomena that may also have contributed to the development of comedy in its earlier stages. Animal masquerade, an Attic form of the sixth century B.C.E. documented by a series of vases, looks forward to the theriomorphic element common in the choruses of comedies of the fifth century. Further, a number of Greek festivals involved the hurling of obscene abuse at the participants, and one custom had groups of jesters travel the countryside in wagons, abusing bystanders. These rituals, rooted in the very ancient idea that obscenity held some apotropaic magic, show their influence in both the obscene and the invective elements of the later, developed comic genre. All the phenomena discussed above are associated with singing, dancing, and speaking by groups, rather than individuals. This reflects the view held by most scholars that comedy, like tragedy, began with the chorus: An analysis of existing comedies makes clear the original importance of the chorus and their participation in prominent structural parts of the plays, especially the parabasis.

Scholars have also examined many predramatic forms in quest of the origin of the actors and the episodic component of Greek comedy. One important influence, often overlooked, must surely be the parallel, but slightly advanced, development of tragedy, which is also characterized by an alternating arrangement of choral parts and actors’ episodes. Other early forms that scholars suggest as possible influences on the episodic scenes in comedy include the Spartan deikeliktai described by Sosibius, the mimic dances described by Xenophon, and the antics of the padded actors seen on a Corinthian vase in the Louvre; all three involve simple dramatic representations of brief, humorous stories. Another possible ancestor of the episodic component of comedy is the Megarian farce , which was apparently very slapstick and obscene in character; similarities to Old Comic humor, as well as explicit comments about Megarian farce by Old Comic playwrights, confirm some sort of connection. In addition, an offshoot of the Doric comic tradition (of which Megarian farce is a part) was the phlyax play f southern Italy. The costume of the phlyax actors included both the body padding and the phallus found on Greek Old Comic actors; this, in addition to certain parallels between specific phlyax vases and scenes from existing Greek comedies, as well as the presence of Attic dialogue on one vase, seems to argue for a connection between the Doric tradition and the Attic comic drama. Alfred Körte, a German scholar of the nineteenth century, was so convinced by this evidence that he hypothesized a dual origin for Greek comedy, with the choral element deriving from animal masquerade and other Attic forms and the episodic scenes descending from Doric farce. Such a clear-cut fusion of Attic and Doric elements is unlikely, and other scholars have disputed Körte, some maintaining that all the prerequisites of comedy existed on Attic soil. In fact, it is most probable that a number of predramatic forms, including Aristotle’s phallic processions, as well as animal masquerade and various festive improvisations, eventually evolved into Old Comedy. Non-Attic influences, such as Doric farce, surely cannot be ruled out, especially in view of the continuous contact among the city-states of Greece (as well as their Greek colonies in southern Italy) in the sixth century.

The Attic comedy of the archaic period was a vigorous combination of various influences, but it lacked unity, especially in comparison with the surviving comedies of the last quarter of the fifth century. Tragedy probably was very influential in helping comedy to become more coherent. Aristotle suggested that Epicharmus a Sicilian of the late sixth and early fifth centuries B.C.E., was associated with the development at Attica of unified comedies. The surviving fragments of Epicharmus are not sufficient to allow evaluation of Aristotle’s claim, but they do show a predominance of ribald mythological travesty, especially involving Heracles, traces of which can be found in scenes from the plays of Aristophanes. Other characteristics demonstrated by the fragments include philosophical discussions and elements of Doric farce. These plays do not seem to have had choruses, except possibly in rare cases. While it is probable that Epicharmus had some influence on Attic comedy, it is impossible to determine to what degree. The mimic element of this playwright was continued on Sicilian soil by his fellow Syracusan, Sophron, the fifth century writer of mimes favored by Plato. The true culmination of ancient Greek comedy, however, is to be found in the Attic political comedy of the late fifth century, dominated by the figure of Aristophanes.

Tragedy in the Fifth Century B.C.E.

Greek tragedies were presented as a part of the official religious festivals honoring Dionysus, the Greater Dionysia and the Lenaea from 432 B.C.E.); thus, tragedy must always be viewed as having a religious and an Athenian state context. The tragic presentations were competitions that climaxed the festivals, though they were by no means the only events of these festivals. At the Greater Dionysia, three poets competed, each presenting three tragedies and a satyr play. Because the Lenaea was mainly devoted to comedy, only two tragedians participated, with two tragedies each. An archon of the Athenian city-state chose the competitors from among those poets who “applied for a chorus.” The archon appointed for each of the chosen poets a choregus, a wealthy citizen who provided the money for the trainer of the chorus; the training, sustenance, and costuming of the chorus members; and the flute player. These were the greatest expenses involved in a tragic production, and the office of choregus imposed a heavy financial obligation as well as conferring a great honor. The remaining expenses, especially for the actors, were paid by the state. The poets sought the favor of the audience, but the contest was decided by judges, chosen by lot from among those nominated by each tribe. It is not known what monetary reward was given, but the victors received olive crowns and, undoubtedly, great honor among their fellow Athenians. First-place and second-place awards were given.

The plays were presented at the Theater of Dionysus, on the south slope of the Acropolis. In the fifth century, the theater was very rudimentary: It was made of wood rather than stone and consisted of the orchestra, a round area for the choral dancing, and the theatron, where the audience sat. At the rear of the orchestra was a simple building called the skene; the actors made their entrances and exits through doors in the front of the skene, and on occasion, characters even appeared on the roof. Corridors along the sides of the orchestra, called parodoi, provided entryways for the chorus. There were no curtains, no lights, and no darkness to help focus the attention of the audience. The plays began at dawn and were played in the open air. Scenery was rudimentary. The audience was reportedly rowdy and festive, and food was served in the theater. These difficult conditions placed a great weight on the words of the playwright, the skill of the actors, and the performance of the chorus.

The actorswere always men, even when the characters were female. In the early part of the century, the playwright acted in his own dramas; Thespis, and probably Aeschylus too, produced their plays in this manner. At this stage in the development of tragedy, there was only one actor, though Aeschylus soon added a second actor, and Sophocles, a third. Additions ceased after this, because it was decided that three actors should be the canonical number. The number of characters, however, was not limited to three, because actors usually played more than one role in a single play, using the mask in making transformations; the “three-actor rule” did, however, mean that no more than three characters could be onstage at the same moment. With Aeschylus’s addition of the second actor, the playwrights ceased to participate in the plays, and professional actors, chosen by the poets, came into use. Around the middle of the century, when actors’ competitions were added to the festivals, the state assumed responsibility for the actors: The protagonists (actors playing the most important roles) were selected by officials and then allocated to specific playwrights by lot.

The most important asset for a tragic actor was a good voice for the speaking parts (iambic trimeter) and the recitative. Gesture derived special importance from the fact that masks were always worn, precluding the use of facial expression. The masks, to which wigs were attached, were lightweight and boldly painted; tradition attributes to Aeschylus the innovation of coloring the masks. The costumesfeatured chitons with fitted sleeves and ornamental designs, clothing very unlike that of the ordinary Athenian. Sometimes the actors wore no shoes, but often high boots were worn, though not of the high-soled variety, as some scholars allege.

The chorus an important component of tragedy, was in Aeschylus’s day composed of twelve members; Sophocles later increased the number to fifteen. The chorus members were costumed in accordance with their role in the play (in satyr plays this involved the phallus and a horsetail), and they were accompanied by an unmasked flute player. The chorus sang and also danced, and their parts were written in anapests (for marching) as well as in more complicated lyric meters, accompanied by the flute.

The structural parts of a tragedy show alternation between choral portions and actors’ dialogue. The play began with a prologue, whose purpose was usually to introduce the plot and supply background information. This was followed by the parodos, or entrance-song, of the chorus. Thereafter, episodes alternated with choral odes (stasima), with the ode generally containing comment on the substance of the preceding episode. Near the end of the play a kommos, or song of mourning, was often sung by actor and chorus in combination. The play closed with an exodos.

Aeschylus

Greek tragedy derived from choral performances to which actors were subsequently added; in fact, the history of tragedy in the fifth century B.C.E. is characterized by the gradual but steady decline of the chorus and the consequent elevation of the actors. In the plays of Aeschylus the chorus is the dominant element, but by the time of Euripides, the choral odes were reduced to lyric interludes between the episodes. It was once thought that Aeschylus’s Hiketides (c. 463 B.C.E.; The Suppliants, 1777), in which the chorus portrays a group main character, was his earliest play; this seemed to support the notion of a declining chorus by showing a very early play in which the chorus was clearly dominant. Because subsequent papyrus discoveries have moved the date of The Suppliants to 463 B.C.E., however, it has been established that Aeschylus’s earliest surviving play is Persai (The Persians, 1777) of 472 B.C.E., written when Aeschylus was in his early fifties; there is no extant work from his early period.

The peak years of Greek tragedy coincided with the great period of Athenian supremacy under the leadership of Pericles, a period bounded at both ends by wars: The Persian Wars, in which the Greeks, led by Athens, defeated the Persian invaders, effectively ended in 480 B.C.E. and 479 B.C.E. with the great victories at Salamis and Plataea; the Peloponnesian Wars, in which Athens came to blows with its fellow city-state Sparta, started in 431 B.C.E. The conclusion of the Persian Wars ushered in an era of peace and prosperity in Athens that provided the money, the leisure time, and the faith in the abilities of humankind needed to produce great art and literature. The beginning of the Peloponnesian Wars, and the plague of 430 B.C.E., greatly diminished those resources, and the great years of the Pentacontaetia (“the period of fifty years”) were over. Aeschylus’s earliest surviving play, The Persians therefore stands at the commencement of the golden era of Greek tragedy. Moreover, it celebrates the Battle of Salamis, the event that marked the opening of that era.

The Persians, the only surviving example of a historical, rather than mythological, tragedy, tells the story of the Battle of Salamis from the Persian point of view. Xerxes, the Persian king, is the central character, and there are appearances also by the ghost of Darius, by his mother, Atossa, and by a messenger. Lengthy catalogs of foreign-sounding names and Eastern costumes lend the play a Persian flavor, but the central ideas retain their Greek quality. The play is somewhat static, with its alternation between choral odes and two-character dialogues, but it is also stately and grand in its language and characters.

The Persians was not part of a connected trilogy; the titles of Aeschylus’s other two tragedies for this occasion suggest completely unrelated topics. The trilogy structure, for which Aeschylus later became famous, was probably still in the conceptual stage. The Persians does, however, exhibit two other characteristics that later became hallmarks of his work: the devices of suspense and extended climax, and the worldview in which ate, a kind of doom or ruin, deludes a man and speeds him to his destruction, aided by his own hybris, or hubris—overweening pride. This philosophy permeates tragedy even after Aeschylus, and it is also found in the works of the great historian of the Persian Wars, Herodotus.

In 467 B.C.E., Aeschylus presented a tetralogy, detailing the story of Laius and the house of Oedipus, of which only the third play, Hepta epi Thēbas (Seven Against Thebes, 1777), has survived. This does not make it possible to evaluate the structure of the tetralogy, but passages from Seven Against Thebesshow that Aeschylus emphasized the notion of the family curse, to be worked out over several generations, much as he did later in the Oresteia (458 B.C.E.;English translation, 1777) trilogy. Seven Against Thebes is characterized by a slow pace in the early portions, and then a more rapid movement toward a dramatic climax, a structure also found in The Persians. On the thematic level, the play shows the main character, Eteocles, laboring under an awareness of his destruction, but still compelled to act. Thebes, led by Eteocles, prepares to defend against the Argive-based attack led by Polyneices, the brother of Eteocles (both are sons of the cursed Oedipus). In the assignment of battle stations, Polyneices and Eteocles are set against each other, and this ultimately leads to a double fratricide. Eteocles senses his imminent destruction, with its unholy aspect, but he surrenders to the necessity of action, and sped by the curse of Oedipus, he rushes on to his doom.

The Suppliants a play whose dating has already been discussed, is also the sole survivor of a trilogy; because it was the first of three plays, little can be deduced about the development of ideas in the trilogy as a whole. The play is quite static, dominated by the chorus of Danaids who flee an unwanted marriage with their relatives, the sons of Aegyptus. The evidence permits one to conclude that ultimately the trilogy ends with the submission of the Danaids to the will of the gods and with reasonable reconciliation of opposing forces, themes that point toward the Oresteia. A similar conclusion is hypothesized for the trilogy of which Promētheus desmōtēs (date unknown; Prometheus Bound, 1777) is the only surviving play. Prometheus Bound shows the Titan chained to a rock, victim of the outrageous tyranny of Zeus. Very little is known of the remainder of the trilogy (not even the precise titles and order of the plays), but scholars believe that ultimately the Titan was released and that the two opposing forces, Prometheus and the Olympians, reached a reconciliation.

The Oresteiaof 458 B.C.E. is considered to be Aeschylus’s masterpiece. With Agamemnōn (Agamemnon), Choēphoroi (Libation Bearers), and Eumenides, the trilogy structure reaches perfection. The first two plays, each climaxed by a murder, show human actions leading to a confounding web of blood guilt and retribution, and the third shows divine grace, embodied by Athena and Apollo, working out a reconciliation. The Oresteia exhibits advances over the static quality of earlier plays. There, the third actor is used effectively for the first time among surviving tragedies. The prologue, once a mere vehicle for communicating information, is now used to set the mood for each play. Even the set shows progress, because the skene building is here used for the first time to represent the front of a palace, with a large central door.

Agamemnon tells of Agamemnon’s return from Troy to Argos, and of his murder by Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus. Once again, as in The Persians, the early scenes are spacious, later quickening to a climax. The plot shows a human being compelled to act and surrendering his will completely to that destructive compulsion: Agamemnon’s decision to sacrifice Iphigeneia recalls Eteocles in Seven Against Thebes. Agamemnon’s involvement in an inextricable chain of guilt and retribution recapitulates the motif of a god who speeds humanity to destruction, as seen in The Persians.

Two other aspects of this play merit discussion here. The first is the remarkable use of imagery: yokes, nets, lions, and snakes are used to characterize actions and individuals, creating a rich network of images that enhances the poetry and underlines the connections between seemingly separate events. The second is Aeschylus’s craftsmanship in bringing in past events that have a bearing on the incidents here dramatized. The choral odes are used to tell of the sacrifice of Iphigeneia and of Helen and the origins of the war. Most interesting is the mad raving of Cassandra, Agamemnon’s prophetic concubine: She moves back in time to tell of Atreus and Thyestes, then uses her clairvoyance to describe the murder of Agamemnon as it happens; this eliminates the need for a messenger’s speech, the usual device for depicting murder on a stage where violence was, by tradition and convention, never portrayed directly.

The second play in the trilogy, Libation Bearers, tells the story of Orestes’ return to Argos and his killing of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. Once again, the opening scenes are slow and expansive: They build first to the anagnorisis, or recognition, of Orestes by his sister Electra, and ultimately to the two murders. In the climactic scene of the play, Clytemnestra and Orestes meet in a confrontation full of tension and emotion. Orestes’ hesitation in the face of his mother’s plea is ended by Pylades, breaking for the first time the silence of the third actor. Orestes’ ethical problem in this play is very great: He is under divine compulsion to avenge his father’s death (the Delphic oracle has so ordered him), but his own will recoils from the deed of matricide. In Homer, the will of the gods and the actions of men are always shown as potentially conflicting, but they never do; instead, they form a cosmic unity. In tragedy, however, human will and divine decree do collide, and this collision is the very essence of tragedy; only a solution from the gods can undo a tragic web of events.

This leads to the final play in the trilogy, Eumenides. Libation Bearers ends with Orestes being pursued and driven mad by the Erinyes, the Furies that traditionally persecuted perpetrators of kindred murder. Seeking refuge at the Delphic oracle, Orestes is told to go to Athens. Aeschylus, up to this point conservative in his use of the mythology, now departs boldly from the tradition to endow the story with a uniquely Athenian concept of Justice (Diké). A trial is held, in Athens, at the Areopagus, with Apollo as advocate for Orestes. In conflict are the very primitive Greek religion, which held that the mother was all-important, and the newer, father-dominated religion, here represented by Apollo. After the presentation of cases, the jurors cast their votes; Athena votes for acquittal, and the resulting tie is declared an acquittal by the rules of the Areopagus. The Erinyes are still angry and unappeased, but Athena’s gentle persuasion soothes even them: They will now be called the Eumenides, “the kindly ones,” and they will be held in special honor by the Athenians. Thus, the opposing forces achieve reconciliation, and the curse of the house of Agamemnon is, at long last, lifted.

The Oresteia demonstrates a tragic worldview that is, finally, optimistic: The world is full of conflicting forces that give rise to tragic situations, but reconciliation is possible, through the wisdom of the gods. Aeschylus articulates this philosophy through dramas that are elevated in thought as well as language. The language is ornate and filled with rich imagery. The chorus is dominant and vital. Aeschylus’s craftsmanship shows an awareness of drama and spectacle. The poet provides the grand form to match and complement his important content, and in so doing achieves greatness.

Sophocles

Sophocles the second of the great Attic tragedians, lived a long life that nearly spanned the fifth century. He quickly attracted and held a favorable audience, and he was also a vigorous participant in the life of the Athenian polis (city-state), holding several public offices. Thus, Sophocles, more than any other playwright, embodies the character of Athens in its proudest moments.

Sophocles introduced his own innovations in the genre of tragedy: He increased the chorus from twelve to fifteen members, and he added the third actor (in which Aeschlyus, though older, followed him). Sophocles also abandoned the trilogy framework perfected by Aeschlyus, producing instead single plays of taut structure. His language is less ornate than that of earlier tragedy, and the chorus begins to recede slightly, focusing more of the attention on the individual characters.

Only seven plays survive by which to judge the skill and accomplishment of Sophocles, the same number extant for Aeschylus. Aias (c. 440 B.C.E.; Ajax, 1729),considered the earliest of the surviving plays, tells the story of the title character’s anger and despair at not receiving the arms of Achilles, of his suicide and the subsequent debate over the treatment of his body. The suicide of Ajax takes place halfway through the play, so that the drama falls into two parts: The first part deals with Ajax’s deluded attempt to avenge himself on Agamemnon and Menelaus; his anguish at discovering that, in his madness, he has captured and tortured not his enemies but their cattle; and finally his death. The second half deals with attempts by Ajax’s wife, Tecmessa, and his half brother, Teucer, to secure proper burial, and their success, aided by the advocacy of the man who defeated Ajax in the contest for the arms, Odysseus. The play has often been criticized as having a “diptych” structure, two distinct parts only loosely welded together. In fact, however, the play coheres properly. Ajax, in the form of a corpse, continues to dominate the tragedy, even in the second half, and his destiny is not completely resolved with his death, because a Greek would regard the issue of disposal of the body as an important part of the individual’s fate. It is, however, proper to note that Ajax, like other early plays of Sophocles, lacks the tight unity of his later tragedies, especially Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 B.C.E..; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715; also known as Oedipus the King).

On a thematic level, Ajax shows the overweening pride, the hubris, of Aeschylean tragedy, and he surely suffers as a result. There is more here, however, than the Aeschylean hubris and ate motif: Odysseus’s refusal in the prologue to gloat over Ajax’s catastrophic situation points the way to a more complex philosophy. Odysseus take the plight of Ajax as a reminder of his own difficult lot as a mortal, and Athena compliments his self-restraint. Even in a society that believed in harming one’s enemy, Odysseus shows great compassion and humanity. Sophocles demonstrates his debt to Aeschylus in this play, but he also shows the ability to move beyond these roots.

One interesting point of craftsmanship in this play, later to become a Sophoclean trademark, is the moment of premature joy and relief, when it appears that disaster might be averted, only to be followed by complete catastrophe. The moment comes in this play when Ajax, realizing that he has been deluded, comes out of his tent and makes a speech: He has learned, through suffering, the laws of the universe, and he now intends to purify himself, bury his sword, and make peace with Agamemnon and Menelaus. The speech itself has led to much scholarly debate (Can Ajax be lying? Is he merely speaking figuratively, knowing his words will be taken literally?), but the chorus responds with an ode of joy, to be followed quickly by Calchas’s ominous words and the suicide of the hero. The same device, an ironic manipulation of the audience’s emotions that also serves to emphasize the Sophoclean theme of the fallibility of human reasoning, would be used later in Oedipus Tyrannus.

Like Ajax, Antigonē (441 B.C.E.; Antigone, 1729) as been criticized for a lack of unity: Some see separate tragedies here, that of Antigone and that of Creon, which do not cohere completely. The story begins in the immediate aftermath of the expedition of the seven against Thebes, the battle in which Polyneices, the invader, killed and was killed by his brother Eteocles, defender of Thebes. Creon, now king of Thebes, has declared that Polyneices shall remain unburied. In the prologue, the sisters of the slain brothers, Ismene and Antigone, discuss these events, and it becomes clear that while Ismene feels powerless in the face of Creon’s power, Antigone is determined to act. This scene, similar to one in Ēlektra (418-410 B.C.E.; Electra, 1649), is crucial because it eliminates a possible ally and helps to place the tragic figure, Antigone, in isolation.

Antigone’s defiance is largely symbolic, but it makes clear her disregard for Creon’s edict: She sprinkles dust over the corpse of Polyneices, thus performing a ritual burial. When the messenger reports this to Creon, the chorus marvels at the human ingenuity that has made this act possible, in spite of Creon’s guards: The famous choral “Ode to Man” speaks of humankind’s greatness and strangeness, of people’s abilities to tame their environment and their boldness in confronting nature. These words reflect the humanism of the mid-fifth century B.C.E.: “Man is the measure of all things,” Protagoras said. This was the era of Athenian imperialism, of the rise of sophism, and humanity’s potential seemed limitless. Sophocles’ anxiety over these developments is clear in the final lines of the ode, which remind the audience that humankind is ultimately subject to the law of the gods.

Antigone, here the representative of the immutable divine law and thus not cowed by human pretensions of power, persists even in a face-to-face confrontation with the king; as a result, she is sentenced to be buried alive. Haemon, the son of Creon and betrothed of Antigone, attempts to dissuade his father, but he meets with failure and departs in anger. The prophet Tiresias gives stern warning against the pollution of the unburied corpse, but he, too, is rebuffed. An eleventh-hour change of heart comes too late: Antigone hangs herself in the underground chamber; Haemon kills himself on the body of his beloved; and Eurydice, hearing of her son’s death, curses Creon and dies also. Creon alone survives, a broken man.

Some critics have argued that the play derived its tragedy from a clash between two forces of equal moral validity: the state and the family. In fact, Creon does not represent the legitimate interests of the state, because he breaks divine law in depriving the dead of burial. Sophocles reminds his audience and his city that every ruler, however strong, remains subject to a higher law. Creon, in his hubris, breaks that law, creating a web of tragedy that destroys everything he loves.

Trachinai (435-429 B.C.E.; The Women of Trachis, 1729)tells story of Deianira, the wife of Heracles, who lives in Trachis with their son Hyllus while the hero is off on his adventures. Word comes to Trachis that Heracles will soon arrive, but Deianira learns that he is bringing with him his new love, the nymph Iole. She remembers the dying words of the centaur Nessus, who had promised that his blood could be used as a love-philter, should Heracles’ affections every stray. She sends her husband a robe smeared with Nessus’s blood, but it has far from the desired effect. Heracles begins to die in agony, and Deianira, hearing this, kills herself. The hero finally arrives onstage, where he bids that Hyllus marry Iole, and then dies.

Sophocles has clearly moved beyond the world of Aeschylean hubris and “learning through suffering.” Deianira is guilty of nothing more than trying to secure her husband’s love, yet every action brings her closer to doom. What can be the meaning of this? The gods’ ways may seem obscure and even reproachable to people, but Sophocles never wavers in his religious faith. The play closes: “In all this there was nothing that was without Zeus.” This deep religious acceptance, as well as the concept of people’s active role in bringing about their own downfall, looks forward to Sophocles’ greatest tragedy, Oedipus Tyrannus.

The exact date of Oedipus Tyrannus s not certain, but scholars place it somewhere between 429 B.C.E. and 425 B.C.E. As such, it stands at the very climax of the classical era, at the last moment of undisputed Athenian supremacy. The art of Sophocles also reaches a climax with this work, whose classic unity remains unparalleled in Western literature. Gone are the diptych structures of Ajax, Antigone, and The Women of Trachis: The play coheres perfectly around the character of Oedipus, who stands before the audience in nearly every moment of every episode. Oedipus, seeking a murderer, is himself the very murderer he seeks. This taut, ironic mystery story is enhanced by equally ironic imagery. Sight and blindness lose their traditional meanings in a world in which the blind can see while the sighted are blind. Walking and foot imagery focuses attention on Oedipus’s ancient ankle injury, which holds the key to his identity. The Delphic motto, “Know thyself,” becomes a leitmotif as Oedipus, the great riddle-solver, searches for the man who is really himself. The imagery, structure, and expert plotting of the play result in such a strong, compact composition that Oedipus Tyrannus became even in ancient times a standard by which other plays were judged. Indeed, in the fourth century, Aristotle, in his Poetics, organized his methodology for criticizing tragedy around this play, his paradigm for excellence.

Most of the important events that contribute to the tragic situation have already taken place before the point in time when Oedipus Tyrannus begins. Laius and Jocasta, fearing a prophecy that Laius’s own offspring will one day kill him, exposed their infant son, Oedipus (“swell-foot”), piercing his ankles with a thong. The servant charged with disposing of the child, overcome with pity, disobeyed his orders and handed Oedipus to a Corinthian shepherd. The shepherd gave the infant to his childless king and queen, Polybus and Merope, who reared him as their own. As a young man, Oedipus left Corinth, troubled by a drunken remark impugning his legitimacy. Seeking help from the Delphic oracle, he was told that he was destined to kill his father and marry his mother; in order to spare his beloved Polybus and Merope, he resolved never to return to Corinth. On leaving Delphi, he encountered Laius and his entourage. A scuffle ensued, in which Oedipus killed Laius and all in his bodyguard with the exception of one man. Soon after, he arrived at Thebes, where he rescued the city by solving the riddle of the sphinx. As a reward, he was made king and became the husband of the widowed Jocasta; they have lived together happily, bearing four children.

The play opens with a group of Thebans gathered at the palace of Oedipus, seeking relief from the plague that has gripped the city. Oedipus emerges to say that he sympathizes with them and has anticipated the suggestion that he seek aid from the oracle; in fact, he is now awaiting the return of Creon from Delphi. This speech immediately establishes Oedipus as a leader of compassion, energy, and intelligence. Creon soon returns with the message that the plague is caused by moral pollution: Laius’s murder remains unsolved. Oedipus at once sets out to discover the identity of the murderer, calling down a curse on the guilty man. He sends for the blind seer, Tiresias, whose hesitation to speak frustrates Oedipus, and angry words are exchanged. Tiresias’s anger leads him to blurt out an accusation: Oedipus himself is the murderer, and he lives in incest. The outburst surprises Oedipus; his intelligent mind darts in an erroneous direction, and he leaps to the assumption that Creon has conspired with Tiresias to unseat his government. A rancorous confrontation between Oedipus and Creon follows, but it is interrupted by Jocasta. On hearing about the revelations of Tiresias, the queen attempts to comfort her husband by deriding prophecy and prophets: After all, did not a prophecy predict that Laius would die at the hands of his son, when instead he was killed by robbers at a triple crossroad? Her attempt to comfort Oedipus plants a seed of doubt in his mind; he recalls the incident at the crossroad, but he clings to the hope that Laius was killed by more than one man and sends for the servant who survived the encounter.

At this point, a messenger arrives from Corinth, announcing the death of Polybus. Oedipus, sad yet relieved, refuses to return to Corinth, still fearing incest with Merope. The messenger now attempts to comfort Oedipus by telling him that Polybus and Merope were not his real parents: The messenger himself, once a shepherd, received the infant Oedipus from a servant of Laius. Here Jocasta leaves the scene in ominous silence, and Oedipus assumes that she is troubled by some “womanly” fear that her husband may prove to be of low birth. The chorus sings a jaunty song of wonder at Oedipus’s birth: Perhaps he is the child of god. (The happy ode ironically prefiguring doom is reminiscent of a similar pattern in Ajax.) The servant of Laius now enters. He resists speaking, because he is in a unique position to know everything: Not only did he witness the death of Laius, but he is also the very servant once charged with the exposure of the infant Oedipus. The king interrogates the servant, and even when the truth is nearly apparent, he presses on until all is known. Oedipus cries out his misery and leaves the stage. A messenger soon reports the denouement: Oedipus rushed into the palace, saw that Jocasta had hanged herself, and struck his eyes repeatedly with her garment-brooches. The blinded Oedipus now returns, bids his daughters farewell, and prepares to go into exile.

A summary of the plot reveals several points of Sophoclean craftsmanship. The play is structured so that every effort to provide comfort merely brings the web closer around the participants, and Oedipus’s own intelligence and vigor plunge him into the abyss; this structure provides a fine vehicle for Sophocles’ superb use of irony. On the negative side, critics have often pointed out that in order to achieve such a compact composition, Sophocles was forced to make two of his characters perform double functions: The servant of Laius who was charged with the exposure of Oedipus is also the survivor of the incident at the crossroad, and the Corinthian shepherd who received the infant is the same man later sent to bear the message of Polybus’s death. All of this is very contrived, yet it does not interfere with the believability of the play.

On a deeper level, what does the play mean? Surely, the concepts of Aeschylean hubris and ate do not apply here. Oedipus is guilty of nothing more than being himself, and yet, this terrible fate befalls him. As always, Sophocles finds his answer in the great, impenetrable ways of the gods. After Jocasta’s speech deriding prophecy, the chorus sings an ode questioning the truth of the gods and their oracles: If these things are not valid, the chorus asks, what is the point in performing in a tragic chorus? Ultimately, the play proves the veracity of all the oracular predictions. Human reasoning is fallible, as seen in Oedipus’s repeatedly erroneous conclusions, but Zeus’s wisdom is perfect, and his justice is valid. The deep religious faith of Sophocles persists.

Electrais usually grouped with Sophocles’ late works. Like Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, Electra tells the story of Orestes’ return to Argos and the vengeful killings of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, but there are many differences between the two plays. Electra focuses on the title character rather than on her brother—her suffering in the household of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, her anguish when she believes her brother is dead, her bitterness toward her mother, and her joy when the lovers have been killed. Moreover, the moral view has changed: Whereas Aeschylus saw the act of killing Clytemnestra as a classic dilemma, fraught with problems whether Orestes acted or refrained from acting, Sophocles’ Clytemnestra is wholly evil, and the matricide is simple and laudable. Another Sophoclean innovation is the addition of the character of Chrysothemis, a sister who is mentioned in very early descriptions of the family of Agamemnon but who does not appear in Aeschylus or in Euripides’ Ēlektra (413 B.C.E.; Electra, 1782). Like Ismene in Antigone, she is a foil whose cowardly withdrawal adds to the isolation of the heroine while also emphasizing her bravery.

Electra bears certain similarities to the other plays of Sophocles’ old age. The characters interact with one another in a more meaningful way than in earlier plays, replacing the static speech making of previous dramas. Ultimately, they are still subject to the gods, but the divine element has receded to the background of the action. The deep emotions of Electra dominate, and there is less mention of oracles and prophecies. Another important change that characterizes the plays of Sophocles’ old age is the disappearance of the tragic situation in which human action and divine ordinance come into conflict, to be replaced by insights into the way a profound human soul responds to momentous changes in its circumstances and situation.

This is true also of Philoktētēs (Philoctetes, 1729), for which there is a firm date of 409 B.C.E. The story, based on the Cyclic Epics and also the subject of earlier lost tragedies by Aeschylus and Euripides, goes as follows: On the way to Troy, the Greek expedition abandoned the warrior Philocteteson the deserted island of Lemnos because a snakebite had given him a malodorous wound that did not heal. A prophecy having declared that Troy could not be taken without Philoctetes and the bow of Heracles, then in Philoctetes’ possession, Odysseus and Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, are sent to bring Philoctetes to Troy. In the Sophoclean play, Odysseus is devious and unappealing, and he forces the noble and straightforward Neoptolemus to aid him in luring Philoctetes to the ship under the pretense of bringing him back to Greece. Neoptolemus feels unexpected sympathy for the stricken man and is moved both by Philoctetes’ joy at meeting another human being and by his anguish from the painful wound. When Philoctetes entrusts him with the sacred bow, he cannot betray this sick man and hand it to Odysseus. He finds, further, that he cannot continue as an accomplice to deception, for to do so would be to deny his own innate character, or physis. Agreeing instead to take Philoctetes home to Greece, in the face of Odysseus’s angry objection, Neoptolemus shows the true nobility of his nature; a timely epiphany of Heracles redirects events back to their traditional course, sending all three heroes back to Troy. Thus, Sophocles upholds the conservative, aristocratic view that heredity (physis) is a more important determinant of character than environment (nomos); the sophistic movement of the late fifth century B.C.E. argued that the opposite was true, and the debate continues even today.

Oidipous epi Kolōnōi (Oedipus at Colonus, 1729), the final tragedy of Sophocles’ long career, was produced posthumously in 401 B.C.E. The play is a gentle, melancholy approach to death, reflecting the poet’s advanced age and his inevitable confrontation of his own mortality. Oedipus,a blind old beggar attended by his loving daughters, at last arrives in the grove outside Athens where his peaceful death has been prophesied. He is greeted by the Attic king, Theseus, symbol of Athenian humanity. Because Oedipus has been endowed with special powers, he is sought by both sides in the developing conflict between Eteocles and Polyneices. Creon and Polyneices both attempt to secure the old man’s talismanic aid, but he angrily rebuffs these villains. He meets a heroic and mystical death, accompanied only by good Theseus.

Though the play lacks the structural compactness of Sophocles’ finest works, the figure of Oedipus provides unity. Moreover, Oedipus at Colonus contains some of Sophocles’ finest lyric poetry, in particular the famous “Ode to Athens,” the poet’s eloquent farewell to his city. No truly tragic situation, such as that of Oedipus Tyrannus, is to be found here; rather, the poet presents a sequel to the earlier play, in which a great soul who has suffered as no other finds special favor in the eyes of the gods. In death, he finds both strength and peace, the hope of all men of deep religious faith.

Sophocles, then, moves from an early era of Aeschylean influence to find an identity of his own in the restrained language, spare imagery, and coherent structures of his best plays. The dominant theme of his tragedies is a relentless faith in the ultimate justice and wisdom of the gods. Even Oedipus, that most miserable creature among mortals, finds ultimate solace in the special favor that comes through acknowledging the wisdom of Zeus.

Euripides

One tradition holds that Aeschylus fought at Salamis, that Sophocles performed in the youth-chorus that celebrated the victory of Salamis, and that Euripides as born on the very day of that celebration. Although the tradition is probably not accurate with regard to Euripides’ birth (dated about 485 B.C.E.), it does underline the generational gaps that separated the three great tragedians: Euripides is very far removed from the immediate memory of the Persian Wars. The conservatism and deep religious faith of Aeschylus and Sophocles yield to the intellectual restlessness of Euripides, and the rise of sophism makes itself felt even in the tragic theater. The plays are full of passion but also of rationalism. Characters are closer to the ordinary human level. The catastrophes and joys of mortals are no longer viewed as part of an important divine plan for the cosmos: Euripides has deep uncertainties about the gods and their universe. The poet’s doubts encompass not only religious issues but also the life of the Athenian polis. Unlike Sophocles, Euripides was withdrawn and somewhat alienated from the state. He produced plays for more than ten years before winning first prize, and he achieved four victories in his career as a playwright. His plays were controversial and disturbing, and he never achieved the popularity of his predecessors. He died in Macedonia, far from Athens.

Euripides has a surviving corpus of eighteen plays. The Euripidean corpus is large, relative to the extant corpus of Aeschylus or Sophocles, and it is possible to examine Euripides’ greatest plays alongside those of lesser caliber.

Euripides’ earliest surviving play is Alkēstis (Alcestis, 1781) of 438 B.C.E. Alcestisposes a problem of genre, because the hypothesis (a summary in the manuscript) shows that it was the fourth play in a tetralogy; it therefore took the position normally occupied by a satyr play. Further, the play has a happy ending and contains burlesque elements, especially in connection with Heracles, often a buffoon in comedy. It is, then, a very special type of tragedy, but the serious issues it raises leave no doubt that it is a tragedy. The play deals with Admetus, a man whose generous hospitality to the gods has earned for him a reprieve from death, provided that he can find another person willing to die in his place. His wife, Alcestis, has agreed to this supreme sacrifice, and she bids farewell to her family and home. In the meantime, the hero Heracles arrives, and Admetus, unwilling to be inhospitable, welcomes him to the household without explaining the current problems. Pheres, the father of Admetus, comes to the palace with funeral gifts, and he and Admetus argue: The rancorous discussion takes the form of an agon, a formal debate in which two characters follow a format of alternating long speeches, short speeches, and, finally, stichomythia, or alternating lines. Euripides was a master of this device, and it recurs often in his plays. Following the agon and the exit of the funeral procession, Heracles learns the truth and sets out to wrestle death for the prize of Alcestis. He succeeds, and a veiled Alcestis is returned to her husband.

The play shows a marked contrast with the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The gods have receded far to the background, and humankind is now the focal point. The main character of the play poses insuperable difficulties for the modern reader. Admetus not only is willing to permit his wife to die in his place, but he also grieves and expects sympathy because of his impending loss. This makes him a very unsympathetic character, and one wonders why Alcestis is willing to die for such a man. The problem finds no ready solution, but it is important to remember that Euripides inherited the character of Admetus from mythology and from earlier tragedy.

Euripides won only third prize with Mēdeia (Medea, 1781) of 431 B.C.E., but it is considered to be one of his masterpieces. Following the adventure of the golden fleece and the death of Jason’s uncle, Pelias, Jason and Medea have come to live in Corinth with their children. Jason has just become engaged to marry the daughter of Creon, the king. Medea is predictably furious at this turn of events, and her anger increases at the news that she is to be exiled. In a scene with Creon, however, she manages to have her departure postponed for a crucial twenty-four hours. A bitter confrontation with Jason follows, and Euripides once again shows his mastery of the agon. Aegeus, the king of Athens, enters in the next episode: Critics point to the contrived nature of this appearance and to its lack of relevance to the play, but it advances the plot in that it provides Medea with a much-needed place of refuge. Medea continues her plan by summoning Jason, pretending to a change of heart, and offering to send the children with gifts for the bride. Through all this, the chorus supports and abets the efforts of Medea. A messenger soon announces the deaths of Creon and his daughter, caused by the gifts of Medea, a poisoned robe and diadem. Medea now strikes her greatest blow, killing her children. Jason returns to find Medea on the roof, with the bodies of the children, intent on escaping to Athens in the magic chariot of her grandfather, Helius. Her final speech deals with the establishment of a cult for her children at Corinth, and later plays confirm Euripides’ fondness for cult-etiologies.

The tragedy derives from the conflict between Medea’s great passion and her rational, deliberate consideration: The victory of passion makes the situation truly tragic. Once again, the plans of mortals are the focal point, and no divine design is at work behind the scenes. The character of Medea alone contains the conflicting elements that cause catastrophe. Ultimately, Medea is repugnant as she stands gloating over the bodies of the children, and this creates a problem similar to that involving the character of Admetus in Alcestis. Even so, it is a tribute to Euripides’ skill that the audience remains in sympathy with Medea for a long time—until she becomes at once more than human and less than human.

Like Medea, Hippolytos (Hippolytus, 1781), of 428 B.C.E., tells the story of an erotically obsessed woman. The play begins with a prologue by Aphrodite: She has been spurned by the chaste Hippolytus, ho cleaves only to the virgin Artemis, and accordingly, she has planned a revenge that will begin with Phaedra, Hippolytus’s stepmother, falling in love with him. Hippolytus and his companions enter, and the audience witnesses his worship of Artemis and his deliberate and dangerous neglect of Aphrodite. Phaedra’s nurse informs the audience that her mistress is wasting away with a mysterious disease. In a scene of exquisite craftsmanship, the nurse manipulates an unwilling Phaedra into confessing her passion, and then speaks soothingly of “magic charms” that will solve her problem. Phaedra soon overhears the end of a conversation between the nurse and her stepson: Hippolytus angrily rejects a sexual proposition delivered by the nurse on behalf of Phaedra. The heroine now kills herself in despair, leaving for Theseus a note containing a false accusation of rape against Hippolytus. Theseus returns from abroad, reads the note, and denounces his son, calling on Poseidon to destroy him. Hippolytus, bound by an unwilling oath to the nurse, cannot defend himself, and a sea monster causes his chariot to crash, killing him; this disaster is narrated in an ornate, highly wrought messenger’s speech. At the close of the play, the dying Hippolytus is brought into the presence of his father, and Artemis, appearing ex machina, reveals the truth to Theseus and announces the foundation of a cult to honor Hippolytus. Hippolytus forgives his father and dies.

As in Medea, the tragedy derives from the central character’s failure to maintain rationality in the face of great passion, but the struggle of Phaedra—unlike that of Medea—is ennobling. Euripides had been soundly defeated several years earlier in his presentation of another play about Hippolytus in which Phaedra boldly approached Hippolytus herself, without the mediation of the nurse. In the later play, Phaedra’s hesitation and her willingness to die rather than succumb to passion elevate her character. In addition, the other characters in the play demonstrate different types of excess that also contribute to the tragic outcome: Hippolytus’s fanatical chastity and his hubristic rejection of Aphrodite speed his doom, aided by the quick temper of Theseus. The role of the two goddesses is problematic, for it appears that they use Phaedra as a pawn in a careless and petty contest between themselves. One solution is to view the goddesses as representatives of opposing forces in human nature, sexuality and chastity, rather than as literal depictions of actual deities.

Two other aspects of Hippolytus merit brief comment. The first is the loveliness of the choral lyrics, in particular the imagery of the inviolate meadow that is used to portray human chastity near the beginning of the play. Another is the misogynistic speech given by the angry Hippolytus on hearing the proposition of the nurse. Speeches such as this, and Euripides’ powerful depictions of female characters like Medea and Phaedra, led to accusations of misogyny against the poet himself, even in ancient times. It should be remembered that the speech of Hippolytus, while written by Euripides, does not necessarily reflect the poet’s personal views; moreover, the character of Phaedra is noble, human, and complex, not patently irredeemable.

Heklabē (Hecuba, 1782), f 425 B.C.E., is also dominated by a woman of great passion. In the aftermath of defeat, Troy’s great matriarch must suffer two additional griefs: Her daughter, Polyxena, goes heroically to death as she is sacrificed to the shade of Achilles, and the body of Hecuba’s son, Polydorus, is discovered in Thrace, where he has been betrayed and killed through the greed of the Thracian king, Polymestor. Hecuba has her revenge, blinding the king and killing his children. The play is often criticized for its failure to integrate its two parts, each of which contains a formal agon, or debate. An important development here is the taking over of some of the lyric by the characters, further diminishing the role of the chorus. Also worthy of note is Hecuba’s speech on the nature of human nobility: Euripides raises the old question of nomos versus physis, no longer adhering to Sophocles’ belief in the power of heredity, but leaving the issue open.

Andromachē (Andromache, 1782), of 426 B.C.E., which describes the fates of Andromache, Neoptolemus, Hermione, and Orestes in the years after the Trojan War, is more correctly criticized for disunity. Andromache as been living as captive with Neoptolemus, to whom she has born a son. Hermione, Neoptolemus’s childless legal wife, attempts with the aid of her father, Menelaus, to ruin Andromache while Neoptolemus is absent at Delphi. The attempt fails, primarily as a result of help from the aging Peleus, Neoptolemus’s grandfather. In the second half of the play, Orestes comes and claims Hermione to be his wife, and it is revealed that Orestes’ ambush has killed Neoptolemus. Thetis appears at the close of the play to complete the plot. Most interesting here is the virulent anti-Spartan feeling that emerges in the portrait of Menelaus, a reflection of Athenian chauvinism in the early years of the Peloponnesian Wars.

Another play of the same period is Hērakleidai (c. 430 B.C.E.; The Children of Heracles, 1781),which shows Alcmena and the children of Heracles still pursued by Heracles’ great enemy, Eurystheus, even after the death of the hero. The Heraclidae, as the children are known, find refuge at Athens with the gracious and humane king, Demophon. This, too, is an expression of Athenian patriotism from the early years of the Peloponnesian Wars. The play contains the narrative of a battle, in which the Heraclidae, led by Hyllus and the aging Iolaus, and augmented by Athenian aid, are victorious. Macaria, a daughter of Heracles, sacrifices herself in compliance with divine conditions, and, during the battle, the old Iolaus is miraculously rejuvenated. Eurystheus is captured and brought before Alcmena, but Athenian pleas for humanity fail, and in a Hecuba-like moment of rage, she demands his execution. He dies with a promise of proper Athenian burial.

Hiketides (c. 423 B.C.E.; The Suppliants, 1781) a third play of the same period, also emphasizes Athenian justice and humanity, here embodied in the person of the Athenian king, Theseus. In the aftermath of the failed expedition of the seven against Thebes, the Argive king, Adrastus, wishes to have military support; the mothers of the dead Argive heroes wish to ensure the proper burial of their sons. Theseus will not aid Adrastus, but he will not surrender him to the Thebans either, and he also agrees to provide the suppliants with the funeral rites they seek. In doing these things, Theseus has the opportunity to defend his humane actions, and further, the very nature of democracy, in an agon with the Theban herald. In many ways, his enlightened leadership recalls that of Pericles, the Athenian statesman who succumbed to the plague at the very beginning of the Peloponnesian Wars. A battle narrative tells how Theseus forced the surrender of the Argive bodies for burial. Adrastus gives an eloquent funeral oration, stressing the importance of education in contributing to the greatness of the individual: Here Euripides, following the tenets of the enlightenment, chooses nomos over physis, a point of view that separates him from Aeschylus and Sophocles. As the funeral continues, Evadne throws herself on the pyre of her husband, Capaneus, adding a note of passion to contrast with the oratorical rationalism elsewhere in the play. The tragedy closes with an appearance by Athena, ex machina, who solemnizes a sworn treaty between Athens and Argos. Although Euripides is not a propagandist, Andromache, The Children of Heracles, and The Suppliants all reveal an attitude of high praise for Athenian values and ideals, reflecting the patriotic feelings of that city-state as it embarked on a lengthy conflict with its rival state, Sparta.

Hērakles (Heracles, 1781), play presented some time around 420 B.C.E., shows the great hero of mythology in two very different aspects: In the first half, he returns triumphant from his adventures to rescue his wife, Megara, and their children from the tyrant Lycus; in the latter half, Hera sends Lyssa, the personification of madness, to drive Heracles into a fury, during which he murders his wife and children. His situation on returning to a state of lucidity is analogous to that of Ajax in the play by Sophocles, but whereas the Sophoclean Ajax, bound by heroic notions of honor, had only the recourse of suicide, the more enlightened world of Euripides shows that Heracles can continue to live in spite of his grief, and at the conclusion of the play, he is led off by Theseus to Athens. Heracles also invites comparison with Sophocles in that it shows a once-great hero faced with total misery and distress, but here there is no deep religious faith in the ultimate wisdom of the gods, only a profound questioning of the vicissitudes of human existence.

In the same period, Euripides presented at one performance three plays dealing with the Trojan War, of which only the third, Trōiades (415 B.C.E.; The Trojan Women, 1782),has survived; fragments of the other two show that the three plays were only loosely connected and did not constitute an Aeschylean trilogy. The play is similar to Hecuba but is less unified, detailing an assortment of the traditional events connected with the fall of Troy: Polyxena’s death, the allotment of Trojan women to Greek warriors, and the death of Andromache’s son, Astyanax. In the middle of the play, Hecuba and Helen engage in a highly rhetorical agon. The audience also hears of the misery yet to befall the victorious Greeks, partly through the prophecies of Cassandra and partially through the prologue speeches of Poseidon and Athena. In 415 B.C.E., on the eve of the disastrous Sicilian expedition, Euripides wished to demonstrate to his audience the full horror of war, for victor and vanquished alike. Most interesting here is a prayer by Hecuba, in which she articulates Euripides’ searching doubt about the nature of the divine.

In 413 B.C.E., Euripides presented his Ēlektra (Electra, 1782) which contains a probable reference to the Sicilian expedition. It is not known whether the Sophoclean Electra was earlier or later than this play, but along with Aeschylus’s Libation Bearers, the two Electras provide an excellent opportunity to compare the three great tragedians as they treat the same myth. Euripides is innovative, adding a poor farmer of noble birth as a “husband” for Electra (the marriage is not consummated); here he shows his expertise with “low” characters and a less aristocratic viewpoint, which endows even a poor man with nobility. In his moral outlook, Euripides harks back to Aeschylus: The act of matricide is abhorrent, whatever the deed it may avenge. Though Electra’s bitterness is clear during her great agon with Clytemnestra, she and Orestes both are consumed with horror in the aftermath. The Dioscuri appear ex machina to ensure the traditional ending (Electra will marry Pylades; Orestes must go to the Areopagus), but in place of Aeschylus’s grand plan in which the gods find a way to justice, there is only Euripides’ questioning of the wisdom of Apollo, the god who motivated Orestes to commit matricide. Thus, Electra, like Heracles and The Trojan Women, shows Euripides to be an iconoclast, a restless and searching man who lacks the great religious faith of his predecessors.

In Helenē (Helen, 1782), of 412 B.C.E., Euripides expands on the unusual history of the Trojan War found in Stesichorus’s Palinode (early sixth century B.C.E.): Helen ever went to Troy, but a phantom was sent in her place, while she spent those years in Egypt. As the play opens, Helen’s stay in Egypt has reached a crisis. Her original protector, Proteus, is now dead, and his son Theoclymenus has courted Helen so aggressively that she now seeks refuge at Proteus’s tomb. An incorrect message reporting Menelaus’s death frightens her further, but the hero himself soon appears, shipwrecked on return to Greece, and a dramatic recognition occurs. With the aid of Theonoe, the king’s sister, the reunited couple contrive an escape by deception, and the Dioscuri appear ex machina to prevent Theoclymenus from venting his anger on Theonoe. The recognition (anagnorisis) and intrigue (mechanema) motifs look forward to the New Comedy of Menander. The controlling force in these events is not the gods or destiny, but a new component in the universe, chance (tyche).

Iphigeneia ē en Taurois (c. 414 B.C.E.; Iphigenia in Tauris, 1782), play of the same period, also employs motifs of recognition, deception, and escape. Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon, was surreptitiously rescued at Aulis, and she now serves as priestess to Artemis in the far-off land of the Taurians, where she is charged with the consecration of strangers for sacrifice. Orestes, driven by the Furies even after his trial, comes to this place on the orders of Apollo in order to obtain the cult statue of Artemis. Accompanied by Pylades, he is about to become a sacrificial victim when brother and sister recognize each other. Employing intrigue and deception, they escape the pursuit of Thoas with the statue in their possession. Appearing ex machina, Athena establishes the cult of Artemis.

Another of Euripides’ “tyche plays” is Iōn (c. 411 B.C.E.; Ion, 1781), lso of the same period, a drama of highly complex plot and recognition. Creusa, the daughter of Erechtheus, bore a son to Apollo, and the child was later taken by Hermes to serve as a priest at Delphi. Creusa was married to Xuthus, king of Athens, and their childlessness drove them to seek help at Delphi. The oracle induces Xuthus to accept Ion into his house as a son, but in its subtlety it miscalculates, for Creusa, thinking Ion to be Xuthus’s illegitimate son, flies into a rage and attempts to poison him. About to be executed, Creusa flees to the altar, where the priestess of Apollo brings forward the chest in which Ion was exposed as an infant; the tokens show that Ion is the son of Creusa, and Athena clears up the remaining details. The use of recognition tokens, once again, looks forward to New Comedy, and again, the predominant force in the universe, which interferes even with the plans of the gods, is chance.

Phoinissai (c. 410 B.C.E.; The Phoenician Women, 1781) and Orestēs (408 B.C.E.; Orestes, 1782) re Euripides’ latest surviving plays written before his departure from Athens to Macedon. Both exhibit an almost frantic attempt to pack as much material as possible into the plot framework. The Phoenician Women is yet another play built on the myth of the attack of the seven against Thebes: Included are an eleventh-hour attempt by Polyneices to avoid conflict; the necessary sacrifice of Menoeceus, the son of Creon; messengers’ speeches describing first the attack of the seven and later the double fratricide of Polyneices and Eteocles, which causes the suicide of Jocasta; the exile of Oedipus from Thebes; and Creon’s edict prohibiting the burial of Polyneices. A problem is posed by Antigone’s simultaneous plans to bury her brother and to join Oedipus in exile, but the conjecture that these lines are spurious is no longer widely accepted.

In Orestes, Orestes and Electra cower in the wake of the matricide. Orestes suffers madness, and the people of Argos are angry with the brother and sister. Menelaus, a possible champion, enters, but Tyndareus, father of Clytemnestra, persuades him to abandon Electra and Orestes; Menelaus accedes mainly out of personal cowardice, and his baseness of character serves to increase the audience’s sympathy for Electra and Orestes, who now are joined by the noble Pylades. In desperation, they attempt to kill Helen, but this fails, and they decide to seize Hermione, the daughter of Helen and Menelaus, as hostage. From the roof of the palace, they force Menelaus’s capitulation, but only the intervention by Apollo, as deus ex machina, can clear up this mess: Orestes will obtain justice at the Areopagus and marry Hermione. The play is complex and, in places, illogical, hinting at a slight decline during the poet’s last years in Athens.

Iphigenia ē en Aulidi (Iphigenia in Aulis, 1782) and Bakchai (The Bacchae, 1781) were both written in the last years of Euripides’ life, in Macedon; they were produced in 405 B.C.E. at Athens, posthumously, by a son also known as Euripides. These plays are far superior to Orestes and The Phoenician Women. Iphigenia in Aulis a play of many reversals, describes events at Aulis, where the Greek fleet is becalmed by Artemis, who has demanded the sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter in order to provide favorable winds for the journey to Troy. On the pretext that Iphigenia is to be married to Achilles, Agamemnon has sent for his wife and daughter. A change of heart causes him to send a second message canceling the first, but this is intercepted by Menelaus, for whose adulterous wife the war will be fought. The brothers argue, but when Clytemnestra’s arrival is announced and Menelaus sees his brother’s despair, he argues against the sacrifice, and Agamemnon returns to his original position, believing that Iphigenia’s death is inevitable. A chance meeting between Clytemnestra and Achilles proves embarrassing, because Achilles knows nothing of the prophecy that he is to become her son-in-law. Mother and daughter soon learn the real reason that they have been summoned, and Clytemnestra lashes out at Agamemnon while Iphigenia begs for her life, declaring that it is better to live in shame than to die in glory. Achilles, meanwhile, is prepared to defend Iphigenia, because he cannot allow the misuse of his name and honor. The expedition to Troy is soon revealed as having a deeper significance than the mere retrieval of an adulterous wife—it is a battle against Asian despotism. Iphigenia now changes her position: She will die willingly, and she will not allow Achilles to incur the wrath of the Greek fleet in her defense. She goes off proudly to her death. The ending of the play is plagued with manuscript problems, but it is probable that Euripides followed the version in which Artemis miraculously rescues Iphigenia, substituting an animal in her place. The most interesting thing about the play is that, for the first time, there is true character development; there is no step-by-step evolution, but Iphigenia is shown in two separate stages of a psychological process; on a stage where consistency of character was highly valued, this was indeed an exceptional innovation.

The great era of Greek tragedy, and with it the career of Euripides, concludes where it began—with the worship of Dionysus: Euripides’ final play, The Bacchae draws from the mythology of that great god. Like most of the legendary stories of Dionysus, this one concerns itself with the initial resistance that greeted the introduction of Dionysus to the Greek world. Pentheus, king of Thebes, doubts the divinity of the new god, as do his mother Agave and her sisters; these women are the sisters of Semele, the mother of Dionysus. Appearing in the prologue, Dionysus explains that he will vindicate himself, coming to Thebes in human disguise. Pentheus is contemptuous of Tiresias and of his grandfather, Cadmus, both of whom readily follow the god. His annoyance gives way to shock and anger when he learns by messenger that his mother and aunts have taken to the woods, where they rage as frenzied followers of the very god they spurned, but he also reveals a deep curiosity, and even lust, to observe the women. He goes to the forest and hides in a tree, but, led by Agave, the women discover him and tear him to pieces. Agave returns triumphantly with the head of Pentheus on her thyrsus, and with slowly dawning horror, she returns to a state of lucidity and comes to understand what she has done. The ending of the play is incomplete, but it is known that Dionysus appeared once again, sending Agave into exile and promising future rewards to Cadmus. One interesting point here is that the chorus, which generally lost ground in the Euripidean era, becomes once again integral to the tragedy, and the play includes much choral lyric. The Bacchae shows Euripides once again dealing with the tension between the rational and the emotional; perhaps there is also an indication here that the old iconoclast flirted with mysticism at the end of his long life.

The surviving plays of Euripides, then, exhibit certain distinct characteristics that separate them from the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles. The individual parts of his plays stand out rather sharply, though this does not mean that the plays lack unity. These parts include the prologue, which tends in Euripides’ plays to be of the informative type, spoken by one character; the agon, a formally structured debate; the elaborate and rhetorical messengers’ speeches; and the endings, which often involve a deus ex machina who appears on the roof of the skene building (transported there by the “machine,” a stage crane), or a cult etiology. Although the chorus is no longer the dominant component of tragedy, generally the songs show some relevance to the episodes, with a few exceptions; the focus is on the episodes and the actors. Finally, the most remarkable quality of Euripidean drama is the brooding presence of his searching and restless intellect, which finds expression in plays of great form and craftsmanship.

Other Fifth Century B.C.E. Tragedy Writers

Modern knowledge of other writers of tragedy in the fifth century B.C.E. is limited to short fragments, comic lampoons, comments by Aristotle, and inscriptional evidence. The Hellenistic canon of tragic playwrights included, in addition to the three great masters, Ion of Chios and Achaeus of Eretria. Of the latter, almost nothing is known, but Ion was a writer of Aeschylus’s era who experimented with other types of poetry as well as tragedy. Agathon, a tragedian of the late fifth century, is known primarily through the parody of Aristophanes, who made the poet a main character in one of his comedies. Agathon was greatly influenced by the later dithyramb and also by Gorgias and other rhetoricians of the enlightenment. Aristotle praises him but criticizes his plays as having overly complex plots. An interesting phenomenon is Agathon’s Antheus, which Aristotle maintains had no mythic content; the story was entirely invented by Agathon.

The Satyr Play

The satyricon , an early precursor of tragedy, also led to the evolution of a separate form called the satyr play which was reformed and restored by Pratinas in the late sixth century B.C.E. By the fifth century B.C.E., the three tragic playwrights competing at the Greater Dionysia each regularly presented a satyr play after their tragedies; satyr plays were not performed at the Lenaea.

The most distinctive feature of the satyr play is the chorus of satyrs, lusty woodland creatures who were half man and half goat or horse. The plays are somewhat shorter than tragedies, and their lighthearted, burlesque tone must have provided a welcome emotional relief in the wake of three tragedies. Fragments of Aeschylus’s Promētheus Pyrphoros (472 B.C.E.; Prometheus the Fire Bearer) show that in this play Prometheus brings fire to man while the satyrs praise his new invention. Proteus, of which little is known, was presented at the end of Aeschylus’s great Oresteia trilogy in 458 B.C.E., and the Theban trilogy of 467 B.C.E. closed with The Sphinx. More substantial remains of The Drawers of Nets, part of a Perseus tetralogy, allow a glimpse at the genre: One fragment shows Dictys and another fisherman struggling to pull in an unusually heavy catch, the chest containing Danaë and her infant son Perseus. Another fragment, from later in the play, has Silenus attempting to woo Danaë, while Dictys is temporarily absent, by pointing out his own good qualities and amusing her child. The chorus of satyrs cheer him on, interpreting Danaë’s hesitation as a sign of hidden passion. These fragments show the charm and humor of the satyr play, and they also demonstrate Aeschylus’s tendency to extend the theme of the tragedies into the satyr play, so that all four form a unified tetralogy. The Spectators at the Festival has the satyrs planning to escape the service of Dionysus in order to participate in the Isthmian Games. Aeschylus was considered a great master of the satyr play.

From Sophocles, there are extensive remains of a satyr play called Ichneutae (c. 460 B.C.E.; English translation, 1919) in which the chorus of satyrs join Apollo in the search of his cattle, which have been stolen by the precocious infant Hermes. Attracted to a cave by the sounds of a new musical instrument, the lyre, the satyrs speak with Cyllene, the nymph guarding Hermes. The ending of the play is lost, but it probably contained a reconciliation of the two gods, and a reward and freedom for the satyrs; their servitude and desire for freedom were apparently regular features of the genre. Euripides occasionally used a tragedy with a happy ending in lieu of a satyr play (for example, Alcestis), but his work with this genre is also documented in one play of fairly substantial remains. Cyclops refashions Odysseus’s adventure with Polyphemus so that a chorus of satyrs serve as slaves to Polyphemus. Although the play is certainly a burlesque, it lacks the lightness and charm of the Aeschylean and Sophoclean fragments. The Cyclops behaves as he does out of an ideological adherence to crude, natural law rather than out of whim. Here, too, the highly individual intellect of Euripides separates him from his predecessors. Ion of Chios wrote a satyr play called Omphale, which showed the gluttonous Heracles of farce during his enslavement to the Lydian queen.

These fragments of satyr plays are supported by a large corpus of vase paintings depicting the antics of satyrs, but there is still much that is not known about the genre. In the Hellenistic period, the satyr play was revived by Lycophron of Chalcis; a few lines of his Menedemus, which lampooned the philosopher of that name, remain. Sositheus also wrote satyr plays in this period, and sources indicate that his works were an attempt to return to the original satyr play.

Political Comedy

Like tragedy, comedy was presented at the festivals of Dionysus, and it, too, must be viewed as having a religious and an Athenian state context. Comic playwrights competed both at the Greater Dionysia and at the Lenaea, with five poets each presenting one play; the Lenaea was thus dominated by comedy. Most of the arrangements for choosing the competitors and covering the costs, as well as the theatrical circumstances, were the same for comedy as for tragedy. Because it is playful in its use of dramatic illusion, comedy offers overt evidence of two of the devices of the Athenian stage: the mechane, or crane, used to deliver actors to the roof of the skene building and also, on occasion, to simulate flight, and the ekkyklema, a movable platform that could be used to present an entire tableau at once by wheeling it into view.

The situation of the actors was much the same in both comedy and tragedy, except that the “three-actor rule” was less rigidly enforced. Again, all parts were played by male actors, but the costuming was quite different. The clothing was that of the ordinary Athenian, but body padding in front and in back and a leather phallus for male characters added to the burlesque atmosphere. The chorus, sometimes depicted as people and sometimes as theriomorphs, numbered twenty-four rather than twelve or fifteen, as in tragedy.

The extant comedies of Aristophanes show an extremely formalized structure. They begin with a prologue followed by a parodos, as in tragedy, followed by the usual alternation of choral songs and actors’ episodes. Most of the plays contain an agon, or debate. The most important and distinctive structural feature of comedy is the parabasis in which the chorus addresses the audience on behalf of the playwright, often commenting on contemporary political issues. Both the parabasis and the agon are characterized by an interlocking internal structure called the epirrhematic syzygy. Through the history of Old Comedy, the chorus gradually declines in importance, and the parabasis eventually disappears. The closing scenes of comedy often contain a symbolic marriage, with a strong erotic element.

The history of Greek Comedy has been divided, since the Alexandrian period, into three phases: Old, Middle, and New Comedy; the term “Old Comedy” refers to the political comedy of the fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E. Old Comedyis characterized by the structure discussed above, by its political (that is, relating to affairs of the polis) subject matter, and by a unique brand of humor that combines obscenity and scatology with personal invective and tragic parody and criticism. The plots are simple and fantastic. Old Comedy is a unique product of a particular time and place, and it gives testimony to the vitality and freedom of speech that characterized Athens in its proudest moments.

Cratinus

The ancient canon of comic playwrights included Cratinus, Eupolis, and Aristophanes. In addition, the names of three of the very earliest Old Comic playwrights, Magnes, Chionides, and Ecphantides, are known. Magnes’ titles show the use of theriomorphic choruses, and the fragments of Ecphantides reveal a claim to comedy superior to that of old Megarian farce, but Cratinus is the first playwright who emerges with any real clarity. Cratinus who flourished between 450 B.C.E. and 423 B.C.E., was especially fond of lampooning Pericles, the great Athenian leader. In The Nemesis, he presented Pericles as Zeus, intent on carrying out disastrous schemes; in Dionysalexandros (pr. c. 430 B.C.E.), a burlesque of the judgment of Paris, he attacked Pericles as well as his mistress, Aspasia, and Pericles’ oddly shaped head was a subject of humor in The Chirones. His obscene attacks were not, however, limited to one target: He also inveighed against foreign cults, in The Thracian Women, and against the sophists in The Panoptae. The fragments show a combination of personal attack, mythological burlesque, and a strong fantasy element. Aristophanes attacked Cratinus in the parabasis of Hippēs (424 B.C.E.; The Knights, 1812) for becoming old and drunk and unskilled at the comic art, but Cratinus rejoined with spirit in the following year with The Pytine (pr. 423 B.C.E.), in which he depicted himself as married to Comedy, who is jealous of his new mistress, Drunkenness. The judges awarded him first prize for this brilliant self-parody.

Eupolis

Between Cratinus and Eupolis a group of names and fragments allow only a glimpse at Old Comedy in its developing stages. Crates was a relatively tame comic writer who abstained from personal invective but made a contribution to unity and clarity of plot in Old Comedy. Teleclides restored the attacks on political figures to the genre, and also criticized poetry in his plays. Hermippus carried his criticism of Pericles’ mistress Aspasia from the comic stage into the law court. Plato Comicus, a contemporary of Eupolis and Aristophanes, criticized individual politicians and treated more general political issues as well; fragments of Phaon also show a more whimsical, fantastic side. Pherecrates criticized the movement of the New Music and also wrote several plays named for hetaerae, or prostitutes, which seem to point to the concerns of Middle and New Comedy. Phrynichus (not to be confused with the author of The Capture of Miletus) presented a play similar to Aristophanes’ Batrachoi (405 B.C.E.; The Frogs, 1780), in which the merits of Sophocles and Euripides were compared.

Eupolis was a patriotic Athenian, interested in political affairs and not prone to fantasy. In The Taxiarchs, he attacked Pericles, under the guise of Dionysus, for cowardice, and the demagogue Cleon was the target of The Golden Age. The attack on Hyperbolus in The Lad caused a rift between Eupolis and Aristophanes, who accused him of plagiarizing from The Knights. Eupolis’s anger at the sophists is characterized by attacks on individuals and groups rather than on the intellectual movement as a whole, as far as can be determined from the fragments. Eupolis’s last play, The Demes, was written in the wake of the Sicilian disaster, and it contemplates the future of Athens in melancholy tones; the Athenian past, on the other hand, is glorified, as its former leaders (Solon, Miltiades, Aristides, and Pericles) are shown in the underworld, and the plot revolves around the summoning of these men to return to Athens and solve the great problems that plagued the city in 412 B.C.E.

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