Literature of Ancient Greece

The Theater
General:
The City of Athens was the heart of Greek theater
The Dionysia: A festival to Dionysus, the Satyr god of wine
Competition for playwrights
Included tragedies, comedies, and satyr plays
14,000 participants, including 1,200 actors and singers - 2nd after Olympics
Trag-oidia: “goat song”
The Golden Age of Greek Theater began in 486 B.C. and lasted about a century.
This accompanied the formalization of theater as Athens rebuilt after being sacked by
Persians in 480 B.C.
Also the year comedies entered the competition

Components:
Performed in a semi-circular space
Amphitheaters can still be found in North Africa, Europe, and the Middle East
Theatron: Where the spectators sat/ the 'watching place'
Orchestra: Semi-circular dance floor in front of the stage
Skene: Backdrop behind the stage
Mousike: Art of the Muses
Chorus: Consisted of between 12 (Tragedies) and 24 (Comedies) Members
The chorus members could represent anyone, but usually the general population of a story
Delivered their lines in song or in unison
Their parados (entrance) and exodos (exit) helped mark the beginnings and ends of scenes
Less important as more actors entered the picture
Masks:
Originated with the rituals of the cult of Dionysus
Increased the dramatic element by exaggerating expressions
Practical element: Large theater, made the actors appear bigger
1 actor could play multiple roles
The chorus members all wore one type of mask to make them look uniform + part of one organism
Aeschylus (525-456 B.C.)
Wrote about 80 plays, but only 6 survive
Most famous works: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, and the trilogy, Orestia
Themes: The disruption of what Aeschylus believed to be the underlying harmony of the world
Crimes against harmony: Destruction of the natural world, hubris, breaches in convention o
of war
Job of the gods to uphold harmony, yet what they expect of man isn't always clear
Aeschylus even allows the gods to tempt man into doing wrong at several points
National Pride and Divine Justice
Orestia: Tells the tragic story of the line of Agamemnon, Clytemnestra, and Orestes

Sophocles (496-406 B.C.)

Aeschylus focused on the city, but Sophocles focused on the individual with loyalties to clan + kin
Harkens back to an earlier age
Revolutionarily Introduces the first strong female character
Theme: A character's fatal flaw, which leads to his or her doom
Masterpiece: Oedipus Rex, the story of which is continued in Antigone and Oedipus at Colonus
Did not think democracy was so great, and wrote at a dark time in Athens (plague and Sparta)

Euripides (484-406 B.C.)

Themes: Questions the relevance, and even the existence, of the gods according the doubts of his
period.
“You are a god full of madness or an unjust god” - Heracles

According to Charles Freeman: “If, as Euripides suggests, the gods might actually abandon human
beings to their fate, the should not be allowed to do so unquestioned” (275).

Focus on the characters in their private struggles, and their relationships with others
Famous Works: Medea (about the abandoned wife of Jason), The Trojan Women, The Bacchae

Aristophanes (450-385 B.C.)

Master of Ancient Greek comedy
“Comedy” means a revel or riot
His plays were an outlet of criticism of the strictly regulated daily life of Athens
Ridiculed everything: Politicians, gods, philosophers, man-woman relationship, other dramatists
Mastered a marriage between “the most sophisticated wit and the most unbridled vulgarity”
Works: The Birds, Lysistrata, The Clouds, The Frogs

Philosophy
What does philosophy mean?
“Sophists” became popular in Athens in the fifth century A.D.
Term comes from “sophizesthai:” Making a profession of being inventive and clever
Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things”

Socrates (470-399 B.C.)

Didn't write down anything himself – We know about him mostly from the writings of Plato
Credited with being the founding father of Western Philosophy and inventing the Socratic Method
Socratic Method: Question/Answer style of teaching and learning in which the participants
dialogue and debate in order to uncover truths, beliefs, and definitions through reason and logic
Usually entails two people of differing views working together to reach an agreement
Stimulates critical thinking
Shifted philosophy from an understanding of the world to an understanding of self
Plato (428-347 B.C.)
Took up Socrates challenge to discuss and define the existence of Truth/truths
Came up with the idea of Forms, which he later left by the way-side
Definition: Entities, independent of the human mind, which are eternal and can be
comprehended with reason
Part of the unchanging, unseeable real world, of which this world is only a reflection
Goal of philosopher: Understand Forms
Soul: Capacity for Reason, Spirit, and Appetites
Foundation for his concept of an ideal Republic
Established the dialectic method of argument
Founded the Academy in Athens, for promising young men in the Greek world
− Attended by Aristotle