The Troublesome Reign of King Oedipus: Civic Discourse and Civil Discord in Greek Tragedy

Abstract

Greek tragedy was created under a unique and very unusual set of circumstances. What we today call Greek tragedy was not really ‘Greek’ but specifically Athenian. It articulated Athenian values, celebrated Athenian institutions, debated Athenian problems. Despite the undisputed artistic achievements of the great tragedians, the primary motives behind the creation and production of classical Greek tragedy were not artistic or literary, but social and political. Greek tragedies were contemporary and topical civic spectacles, and a central component of Athenian civic life and political discourse. Aristotle identified this ‘political’ aspect of classic Greek tragedy as its distinguishing feature by noting that ‘the earlier poets [Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides] made their characters talk “politically” [politikos], the present-day poets rhetorically’.