Fifth-century Tragedy Research Articles

A Study of Elpis in Ancient Greek Literary Laments and Songs for the Dead: Hope and the Tradition of Greek Lament

Much of current scholarship aims at reconstructing ritual lamentation based on evidence from early Greek epic and lyric poetry and fifth-century tragedy. This paper, although it is an examination of a specific human emotion, elpis, within the corpus of early and classical Greek epic, lyric, and dramatic poetry that are thought to preserve the oral traditions of the genre, takes also into consideration the inscribed ancient Greek songs for the dead; that is archaic and classical epigrams and their later counterparts encountered, mainly, in the Greek Anthology. A study of elpis, a highly culturally dependent emotion, within these contexts will allow us to have a glimpse of the hermeneutic frames provided by each poetic genre, their performative contexts, and the expectation of the audiences, as well as of the general world-view that is shared by the poetic genres in question. In other words, a study of elpis in ancient Greek laments and songs for the dead will enable us to have a slightly clearer image of the evolution and the nature of this oral genre from archaic times until the Late Antiquity.

Andromache Karanika.Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece.

Voices at Work: Women, Performance, and Labor in Ancient Greece sets itself an ambitious agenda: to study work songs of Ancient Greece and explore how these informed early Greek poetics, while uncovering some lost voices of women singers and providing new information about the context of this genre, normally considered a lower species of the song culture. Although she focuses on the pre-Classical period, Andromache Karanika also provides some material from fifth-century tragedy and Hellenistic sources. Throughout, she argues—successfully—for genre fluidity. Work songs shared features with songs of lamentation, wedding songs, lullabies, children’s songs, and harvest songs. Using comparative material from modern Greece, she argues for generic overlap in performance venues too. For example, lamentation songs were/are not out of place at weddings. That there were common motifs and musical features in songs of different genres and that they were not confined to particular contexts is not surprising. It permits Karanika to make the important point that often women and individuals from the lower classes who sang their work songs in private provided lyrics that were reproduced or reformulated in public venues.

Aristotle, Actors, and Tragic Endings: A Counter-Response to Johanna Hanink

In "Tragedy as 'An Augury of a Happy Life'" ( Arethusa 41), I hypothesized that Aristotle's preference for sad over happy endings in tragedy might tell us more about the performance practices of fourth-century actors than about the tenor of fifth-century tragedy. In Arethusa 44, Johanna Hanink, while accepting the main thrust of the argument, disputed four of its "single points." This article addresses each of her concerns and offers additional evidence for the likelihood that Aristotle was misled about the nature of fifth-century tragedy by the universalizing emotionality of the professional actors of his time.

Theatre and Citizenship: The History of a Practice (review)

Reviewed by: Theatre and Citizenship: The History of a Practice Jim Williams Theatre and Citizenship: The History of a Practice. By David Wiles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011; pp. 268. The notion of what constitutes "citizenship," especially within a socioeconomic and cultural realm, remains ambiguous. This is exemplified in the current debate in the United States and some European countries regarding immigration and citizenship, and indirectly, in the persistent questioning of Barack Obama's origin of [End Page 198] birth. "Citizenship" remains a contested term that straddles the concept of individual rights, collective democracy, and local, state, national, and global communities. In Theatre and Citizenship: The History of a Practice, David Wiles uses the historicity of theatre to examine the political and social functions of "makers of theatre"—the contributions of artists and spectators to the prominent debate between individual rights and collective will, and their functions both in the public and private spheres. Through an extensive introduction and subsequent seven chapters, he makes the argument that theatre, manifested in the public sphere, functions historically as a political and social event that effectively promotes citizenship, albeit in different incarnations. Wiles supports his discussion by selecting prominent political/ cultural icons—Aristotle, Machiavelli, Thomas Heywood, Voltaire, and Rousseau—to address the thesis, "What is this thing 'art' that like food we have the right to consume? And is theatre primarily a mimetic representation, or is it a social event?" (2). Theatre and Citizenship builds on and further addresses issues touched on by Susan Bennett in her seminal text Theatre Audiences, and engages with the same context (although on a much larger scale) as S. E. Wilmer's Theatre, Society and the Nation. In the introduction to this intriguing text, Wiles first examines the concept of citizenship—often in the context of public performances—and then in following chapters demonstrates the mercurial manifestations of what it is to be a "citizen" throughout history. He starts out by tackling the plurality of definitions attributed to the concept of citizenship. He recounts the diversity of citizenship as a concept in its various incarnations throughout history, noting that national, cultural, and ethnic differences often lead—and still do to this day—to contradictory understandings. His initial proposition is to view citizenship through the lens of an "ideal republic" body politic as created by the Romans: "Citizenship is a function of the spatial unit to which the citizen belongs, and that unit can take different forms. . . . Of all these, it is the 'republic' that has been tied most strongly to the moral ideal of the 'citizen'" (7). According to Wiles, the republic "implies ownership of the res publica or 'public thing'" (8). He makes the argument that we are part of a social and cultural fabric via the language we use, the religion we practice, and the arts we engage in, and, as such, "it follows that our moral choices are rooted in cultural norms, and theatre must engage us not as individuals but as members of a community" (18). Wiles asserts that the citizen is indeterminate, which he bases on Étienne Balibar's contention that "the citizen is unthinkable as an 'isolated' individual, for it is his active participation in politics that makes him exist, but he cannot on that account be merged into a 'total' collectivity" (ibid.). Wiles proposes that it is this indeterminacy that warrants an examination of the public sphere, which is a "prerequisite of both theatre and citizenship" (208). In the proceeding chapters, Wiles explores the history of the public sphere and consequently the tension between the theatre spectator/practitioner as an individual citizen versus the citizen being part of and obligated to a collective citizenship. He discusses the contradicting perspectives of Aristophanes, Plato, and Aristotle regarding the function of the Chorus as representatives of a body politic, and observes that "fifth-century tragedy was a performance practice that built community, with shared pleasure in discussion comprising but one aspect of communal polis life" (47). In his discussion of the public sphere and citizenship in Renaissance London, Wiles identifies playwright Thomas Heywood, not Shakespeare, as actively engaging the working-class spectator. While "Shakespeare placed his spectators as citizens of a nation-state...

Tezeusz Demokrata

In the late sixth century and the fifth Theseus became a popular Athenian hero. The story of his synoikismos of Attica was already current before Cleisthenes’ new organisation of the Athenians, and was perhaps invoked as a precedent for that new organisation. Theseus as a democraticking in Euripides’ Supplices is unproblematic within the conventions of fifth-century tragedy, but it is remarkable that in the fourth century this came to be accepted as serious history: there are allusions in speeches early in the century, and by the time of the Athenaion Politeia (late 330’s) a detailed account had been worked out, presumably in one of the Atthides. Theseus the democrat may have been invoked in debates on the patrios politeia at the end of the fifth century (though there is no direct evidence that he was); and the particular interest in him in the years around 340 may have been stimulated by Euphranor’s painting in the Stoa of Zeus.

Toppling the Hero: Polyphony in the Tragic City

"Toppling the Hero" considers contemporary uses of the term "tragic," as well as the philosophical tradition concerning tragedy. Page duBois argues that the earliest theorist of tragedy, Aristotle, wrote belatedly, from a post-classical perspective on the democratic city and its political/religious rituals, and began a long tradition of misreading fifth-century tragedy, focusing on management of the individual through tragic catharsis in a new kind of state. DuBois considers subsequent readings of tragedy that place the tragic individual at its center, including those of Hegel, Freud, Lacan, and Judith Butler. Recent work by classicists on Greek tragedy reveals a genre that precedes and overwhelms familiar and comfortable postAristotelian models of genre, subjectivity, and psychology. DuBois argues that Greek tragedy ecstatically exceeds the tragic hero in its haunting by the slaves of ancient Greek society, in its access to mourning, and in its choral song that is of necessity collective, diverse, and heterogeneous.

Eurípides y la retórica: <i>éthos</i> e <i>inventio</i> en el discurso de Helena (<i>Troyanas</i>, 914-96)

From the standpoint of the elements that link fifth-century tragedy with rhetoric and sophistic, it is possible to analyse the Euripides drama. In this sense, Troades , written around 415 b.C, offer the possibility to frame their agones inside the structure of dissoi logoi , through which the tragic characters argues their causes. The aim of this paper is to examine the Helens’ speech and the strategy of defense she performed in face of her accusers Hecuba and Menelaus, modelled through the ethos and inuentio .

Terence's Four-Speaker Scenes

IN THE NOW SUBSTANTIAL CORPUS OF MENANDER there are apparently no scenes involving more than three speaking characters, although mute extras are freely used (Gomme-Sandbach 1973: 16-19; Frost 1988: 2-3). The fragmentary nature of the texts makes it impossible to state categorically they contain no four-speaker scenes, but there is no indisputable example. Even less can we be certain Menander never wrote such scene, given we possess only small fraction of his total output. Nevertheless, the evidence is now strong Menander's normal practice, at least, conformed to of fifth-century tragedy rather than of Aristophanes (cf. Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 135-156; MacDowell 1994: 325-335). By contrast, in the four plays of Terence based on originals by Menander there are at least 18 scenes involving more than three speaking characters. The discrepancy is too great to be ascribed to chance; moreover, we know from the evidence of Terence himself or of Donatus in seven of the scenes in question Terence made changes to his Greek model. Whereas Leo (1912: 226, n. 3) assumed, on the basis of the Latin adaptations, New Comedy enjoyed the same freedom as Old Comedy, it is now clear the Latin adapters not infrequently added extra characters to their Greek models (Gaiser 1972: 1073-79). This had indeed been explicitly stated by the grammarian Diomedes, who contrasts Greek practice, reflected in Horace's dictum nec quarta loquipersona laboret (Ars P. 192), with Roman: atLatiniscriptores complures personas in fabulas introduxerunt ut speciosiores frequentiafacerent (Keil, Gramm. Lat. 1.490-491). Sandbach (1975: 197-204) discussed breaches of the three-actor in Latin adaptations of Menander, whether this is interpreted as weaker rule that not more than three actors should speak in any scene or as stronger rule that not more than three actors should be used in play. He showed all breaches of the rule, in either sense, may with varying degrees of probability be attributed to the Latin adapter rather than Menander, and cautiously concluded the evidence recommended a provisional belief he [Menander] usually observed the weak form of the rule and perhaps the strong form also (204). Sandbach was only concerned with Menander, but there are good grounds for believing other dramatists of the Greek New Comedy were normally, if perhaps not universally, subject to the same three-actor as Menander (Gaiser 1972: 1037-38). Of Terence's two plays based on originals by Apollodorus, the Hecyra contains no four-speaker scenes, the Phormio four; but in each case cogent arguments have been adduced for ascribing to Terence

Drama and Ritual Once Again: Notes toward a Revival of Tragic Theory

1 COMPAKATIVE i ama Volume 29Summer 1995Number 2 Drama and Ritual Once Again: Notes toward a Revival of Tragic Theory Michael Hindert In the current wake of theoretical turbulence in criticism propelled by such movements as post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, new historicism, cultural studies, and related projects, little is left today of one of the grandest and most interesting syntheses of the first half of the century: the ritual approach to tragic drama. Sparked by Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and supported by turn-of-the-century classicists and anthropologists , the theory of tragedy's origin in Greek ritual gave rise to numerous studies attempting to define the genre in relation to its ancient religious roots.1 Today, however, it is impossible to claim—as Nietzsche did—an undisputed tradition that Greek tragedy originated in Dionysian ritual and that understanding Dionysian myth was the key to unlocking tragedy's secrets.2 A remark made by Brian Vickers is characteristic of the sharp disagreements in the area: "This whole complex of false ideas, so widely disseminated, must finally be abandoned not merely be183 184Comparative Drama cause there is no actual evidence for any of its assumptions . . . but because it would make the plays appallingly repetitive, as identical as matchboxes."3 The latter part of Vickers7 charge undervalues the ability of adherents of the ritual approach to produce interesting and varied readings of particular plays. But his critique of the historical evidence is trenchant. My own view is that it is worth revisiting this debate in order to gain new ground: this essay purports to undertake that task. Earlier Approaches. It is fair to ask why earlier adherents of the ritual approach found it so difficult to gather adequate evidence to substantiate their case. One answer is that the evidence at best was never more than fragmentary. Aristotle's testimony could be brought to bear (but then the extent of the corruption of his text remained an issue).4 Several remarks by Plutarch could be adduced, as well as gnomic descriptions of the Eleusinian mysteries gathered from ancient sources. In addition, scattered depictions could be cited from friezes and vase paintings suggesting Dionysian poses during dramatic performances. But actual knowledge of fifth-century tragedy remains so scanty that these studies perforce were speculative. The major impetus for the dissemination of the ritual theory can be traced to Jane Ellen Harrison and Gilbert Murray's work at Cambridge. Harrison was a colleague of Sir James George Frazer and developed her ideas in the years during which Frazer was compiling his massive synthesis of dying god mythology, The Golden Bough, which he began to publish in installments in 1890. Harrison's Prologemena to the Study of Greek Religion (Cambridge, 1903) drew from these sources and offered a persuasive argument that ritual held priority over myth as the key to Greek religious practice. In Themis (Cambridge, 1912), she further explored the hypothesis that the Year-Daimon rite was central to Greek religion as well as to Greek festivals and drama. Significantly, in a preface to that work, she described herself as a disciple of Nietzsche.5 As Stanley Edgar Hyman has observed, Harrison's Themis may be taken as the manifesto of the "Cambridge group."6 In addition to Harrison's own work, it contained a chapter by F. M. Cornford on the ritual origin of the Olympic games and the now famous "Excursus" by Gilbert Murray on the forms preserved in Greek tragedy. There Murray proposed that "historically the tragic hero is derived both from the Life Spirit—call him Dionysus or what you will—who comes to save the community with the Michael Hinden1 85 fruits of the New Year, and from the polluted Old Year, the Pharmakos or Scapegoat, who is cast out to die or wander in the wilderness, bearing with him the sins of the community."7 Murray accounted for the variety of tragic characters by arguing that tragedy grew out of a ritual that had adapted itself to the reception of heroic myths. Thus he adopted Nietzsche's contention that all the celebrated heroes of the Greek stage were essentially masks of the original hero, Dionysus, and...

III. Language and Stage Action

Although the career of Sophocles overlapped in its earlier years with that of Aeschylus and later on with that of Euripides, it is very hard to avoid over-simplifying the development of fifth-century tragedy into a progression from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides. The same simplification is found amongst ancient critics, for whom Sophocles is ‘the middle one’ in ways which go beyond mere chronology. Thus Dio Chrysostom (first/early-second century A.D.) in his comparison of the three tragedians’ versions of the Philoctetes story says of Sophocles that ‘he seems to stand midway between the two others, since he has neither the ruggedness and simplicity of Aeschylus nor the precision and shrewdness and urbanity of Euripides, yet he produces a poetry that is august and majestic (σϵμνήν δέ τινα καί μϵγαλοπρϵπἢ ποίησιν), highly tragic and euphonious in its phrasing, so that there is the fullest pleasure coupled with sublimity and Stateliness (μϵτἁ ὕψους καί σϵμνότητος)’ Approximately a century earlier the critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus also found a ‘middle’ quality in Sophocles’ style: between the ‘austere’ (Pindar, Aeschylus, Thucydides, etc.) and the ‘smooth’ (Sappho, Euripides, Isocrates, etc.) he located the intermediate, ‘well-blended’ (ϵὔκρατος) mode of composition, including Sophocles as well as Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and others. Of this intermediate style Dionysius says he is at a loss to decide ‘whether it is produced by excluding the extremes or by blending them’; but it is at any rate clear that it is defined principally by reference to what it is not.

Terence and the Death of Comedy

and nearly a whole century before Latin literature reached maturity in the time of Augustus. The golden age of Roman comedy is thus quite clearly divorced from the golden age of Roman literature itself, but something more than a minor literary genre died with Turpilius. The very interest in stage comedy that had survived the change in conditions from Aristophanes to Menander and the change in culture from Greece to Rome died with a whimper late in the second century B.C. No further comedy of literary stature was written in antiquity, and the ancient tradition lay dormant until revived by the Italian humanists of our own fourteenth century. 1 What happened? Why did the Romans lose interest in stage comedy? The death of a genre is as common an occurrence in the history of literature as it is complex, and there can be no simple answer to such a question. Yet some of the responsibility must lie with Terence, the author who brought to Roman comedy both a peak of sophistication and an end of creative vitality. What was it about his achievement that brought the development of ancient comedy to a halt? Since all Roman drama, both tragic and comic, evolved from Greek forms, it may prove helpful to begin with the place of drama in Athenian culture. The constant, creative re-working of old myths that gave fifth-century tragedy its intellectual tension and vitality established drama as a legitimate medium for serious thought, and tragedy's profound appeal enriched the substance of Athenian comedy even as the comic poets parodied

The Growth of Telemachus

Although Telemachus is not the chief character of the Odyssey, his part in the plot is of considerable importance, and in one way he seems to be unique. For he is, perhaps, the only character in Greek literature who shows any development. All the other people who appear in Homer are already fully grown and, as characters, static. For in an epic it is the story which is of first importance, and the people can be adequately described by one major trait. In Greek tragedy, also, where no doubt character is of greater moment and occupies a larger proportion of the whole, we never see the characters growing as time passes. For there was a continual obstacle to the development of character on the tragic stage from a rather unexpected quarter—the Chorus. As H. C. Baldry says, ‘Because of the chorus, a fifth-century tragedy could not easily be a serial drama, leaping from incident to incident and place to place… such plays leave no scope for the development of character. The hero's nature may be revealed to the audience step by step, but in most of the extant tragedies it does not change.’

Ritual Elements in the New Comedy

The New Comedy as an art form is descended both from the Old Comedy and from fifth-century Tragedy. It is a middle style of the sort that Diderot called le genre sérieux. On the one side it made an expurgation of the Old Comedy by dropping the gross elements of the primitive ritual ⋯ϕέσεωςκ⋯μος which still survived in Aristophanes, the phallic dress, the ϒεϕυρɩομός in language, and the reckless personal satire, while it kept and emphasized the final Gamos, or union of lovers, and developed a more elaborate plot. On the other side it reformed Tragedy by getting rid of the supernatural stories and the stiff conventions. To quote some words of my own written in 1912, it ‘introduced all the simplifications and improvements which seem to a modern’—I meant a modern philistine—‘so obviously desirable. It developed an easy colloquial language, a flexible and unexacting metre. It left the Chorus quite outside the play, a kind of entr'acte, not worth writing down. It frankly abandoned religious ritual’—please observe that statement, which I now wish to correct—‘and heroic saga. It drew its material from the adventures and emotions of contemporary middle class life, and boldly invented its own plots.’ Menander in particular was considered in antiquity to have held a mirror up to life; a verse by Aristophanes of Byzantium asks.