Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
GREEK TRAGEDY
Greek tragedy
has its roots in a fertility ritual celebrating the life and death of Dionysus, the
god of the vine. Because goats were sacrificed in his honour, this ritual, in which a chorus
danced and sang, was called
trag-odia
, a goat-song. Around 520 BC an actor was introduced
who came and went, changing costumes and playing different roles in successive episodes.
Aeschylus
transformed matters by introducing a second actor and increasing the amount of
dialogue, while correspondingly reducing the size and role of the chorus. Thus tragedy
became drama, driven by exchanges of words and actions. That Aeschylus had fought at
Marathon and, probably, Salamis, may explain the urgency of his play,
The Persians
, the oldest
surviving Greek tragedy. Although a religious man who believed in the overwhelming power
of the gods, Aeschylus makes clear that it is man himself, through the free choices he makes,
who steps into the appalling conflicts of the tragic situation. His later work the
Oresteia
, a great
drama of revenge, focused on Agamemnon's return home from the Trojan War and his murder.
By now Aeschylus was using a third actor and also painted scenery, ideas taken from
Sophocles
, his younger rival.
Sophocles' innovation made it possible to present plots of considerable complexity. His was
a world of inescapable consequences - in his
Oedipus Rex
, for example, to be unseeing is not
enough, while
Antigone
presents the ultimate tragic conflict, between right and right.
The effect of the tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles was to leave their audiences with an
enhanced sense of pity or of terror. The unspoken moral was “You are in this too”, the cathartic
experience leaving everyone stronger - as though Athens, democratic, confident and imperial,
was preparing itself to meet the blows of destiny.
had obediently sacrificed themselves at Thermopylae and won the final mainland battle
at Plataea. Instead, many Greek city-states voluntarily placed themselves under the
leadership of Athens.
This Aegean confederation was named the
Delian League
, after the island of Delos
where the allies kept their treasury. Its first task was to protect the Greeks of Asia Minor
against a vengeful Xerxes. This was the opposite of the policy proposed by Sparta and
its Peloponnesian allies, which called for the abandonment of Greek homes across the
Aegean and the resettlement of Asian Greeks in northern Greece.
That typified the Spartan attitude throughout the Persian crisis, in which Sparta had
shown no initiative and acted only at the last minute. Its policy was provincial,
protecting its position in the Peloponnese rather than pursuing the wider interests of
Greece. Sparta persistently lacked vision, adventure and experience of the sea, believing
that what could not be achieved by land was impossible. Thus over the coming decades
Sparta lost prestige to Athens, which Themistocles had established as a maritime power
and whose imperial potential was realized under Pericles.
This was the
Athenian golden age
(see p.764), and indeed a golden age for all Greece.
The fifty years following Salamis and Plataea witnessed an extraordinary flowering in
architecture, sculpture, literature and philosophy whose influence is felt to this day.
Greeks of the time recognized the historical importance of their experience and gave it
realization through the creative impulse. Just as
Herodotus
, the “father of history”,
made the contest between Europe and Asia the theme of his great work, so
Aeschylus
,
who fought at Marathon, made Xerxes the tragic subject of
The Persians
and thereby
brought the art of drama to life. Indeed in the intoxicating Athenian atmosphere, the
458 BC
447-438 BC
431-415 BC
429 BC
Aeschylus produces
the Oresteia trilogy in
Athens.
Parthenon constructed,
the symbol of Athens'
Golden Age.
Peloponnesian War
marks the end of Athens'
ascendancy.
Death of Pericles brings
uncertainty to Athens.
