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.

Aristophanes

Although the other writers of Old Comedy survive only in fragments, eleven plays by Aristophanes are extant. The last of these are really Middle Comedies , so the corpus of Aristophanes encapsulates the development of Old Comedy from its climax until its virtual conclusion. The Acharnians Aristophanes’ earliest surviving play, was the first of his several antiwar comedies. The play was presented in 425 b.c.e., by which time it had become clear that the Peloponnesian Wars would not end in an easy Athenian victory. The Periclean policy of bringing the farmers of surrounding areas to live within the walls of Athens had created crowded living conditions in the city and contributed to the spread of the plague. Aristophanes, who was always alert to the special hardships that war brought to the poor and the powerless, chose as his main character for this play Dicaeopolis, a peasant. When it becomes clear, in the prologue, that the Athenian Assembly will do nothing to bring about peace, Dicaeopolis declares his own personal truce, and so, fantastically, lives a happy life filled with the bounties of peace, while the war continues for everyone else. The chorus of Acharnian charcoal burners opposes Dicaeopolis, and this results in an agon over the issues and continuation of the war. To help his cause, the beleaguered protagonist obtains from the tragedian Euripides the costume of a beggar; this scene provides an opportunity for parody and criticism of Euripides’ lost play Telephus (438 b.c.e.), in which the hero appeared in the guise of a beggar. In the parabasis, where the chorus speaks directly to the audience on behalf of the playwright, Aristophanes lays claim to his own greatness, and chides the Athenian audience for their susceptibility to flattery; included is a poignant rebuke on the ill-treatment of the old.

It was traditional for the post-parabasis episodes to illustrate the major reversal of the play—in this case, Dicaeopolis’s private declaration of peace. Accordingly, Dicaeopolis sets up a marketplace through which he can resume free trade and enjoy commodities unavailable in wartime. He is visited by a Megarian, whose attempts to sell his own daughters confronts the audience with the painful consequences of the harsh blockade of Megara, initiated in 431 b.c.e. Dicaepolis is kind to the Megarian but less patient with the Sycophant who follows, a representative of the despicable class of men charged with the exposure of contraband goods. A Theban visitor provides the market with many kinds of delectable goodies, among them a Copaic eel, unavailable in Athens during the war. General Lamachus soon appears, a figure who represents the empty glory of war. He provides a stark contrast to Dicaeopolis as he prepares to go off to battle while the hero makes ready to attend a feast. In the denouement, Lamachus returns to the scene injured and in pain, while Dicaeopolis arrives home from the feast fed and tipsy, in the company of two naked flute-girls. The final scene of the play includes the customary emphasis on the erotic.

The Acharniansillustrates the complete structure of Old Comedy—prologue, parodos, agon, parabasis, and episodes. It also demonstrates the full range of Old Comic humor: sexual and scatological, slapstick, literary, and personal. The humor is carefully used to enhance the serious ideas of the playwright, allowing him to advise and chastise the polis with impunity. An element of very beautiful choral lyric also contributes to the whole. The plot is simple, and the episodes cohere only loosely, but the comedy is perfectly bound together by the eloquent message that war is evil, a bringer of unhappiness and deprivation, while peace provides life’s greatest joys. In this there is no ideological rigidity, but a clear-eyed emphasis on the sensual pleasures of food and sex and feasting: War is finally wrong because it deprives humanity of the most basic joys of life.

The Knightsis a political allegory. It opens with two slaves who complain that a new slave, called Paphlagon, has mesmerized their master, Demus, and now holds undue influence over the household. Paphlagon is a transparent persona for Cleon, the Athenian demagogue, and Demus, as his name indicates, represents the Athenian people. As the play progresses, a sausage-seller enters, competes with Paphlagon in many debates, and ultimately supplants his rival. Near the end of the play, Demus reveals that he is aware of the manipulations of the slaves, and shortly thereafter, he is miraculously rejuvenated as a man of the Marathon era of Athenian greatness. The sausage-seller, too, has changed, becoming a wise and sincere adviser. The play, which mercilessly attacks Cleon and his policies, thus closes with an optimistic hope for the future, provided that the polis jettison Cleon and act more sensibly than it has in the past.

Aristophanes met sound defeat with Nephelai (423 b.c.e.; The Clouds, 1708); he surviving play is a rewrite that was never performed. The extent of the revision is not known; it can be said with assurance only that the parabasis, which alludes to the failure of the original, must belong exclusively to the revision. The Clouds, which attacks Socrates and the new philosophical movements in Athens in this period, begins with the resilient Strepsiades, a poor man plagued by debts accrued through the horsey activities of his son, Pheidippides. Strepsiades proposes to escape his creditors by learning the sophistic ability to “make the worse argument appear to be the better.” Pheidippides initially refuses, so Strepsiades goes off to the Thinkery, a school where Socrates and his pale disciples study and meditate. The inmates of the Thinkery are depicted as sly ascetics involved in the study of trivial points of natural science, and Socrates appears in a basket, engaged in astronomical investigation. The philosophers deny the traditional gods, introducing new divinities, among which are the Chorus of Clouds. Through all this, Strepsiades proves to be a hopeless student, literal-minded and totally incapable of grasping abstractions. It is decided that Pheidippides, after all, should be the student, and for his benefit a great agon is staged, in which Unjust Reasoning, the representative of Socrates and sophism, defeats Just Reasoning, a conservative and old-fashioned educator. Pheidippides quickly becomes so adept at the new philosophy that he mistreats his father, all the while offering glib rationalizations for his behavior. In the Aeschylean tradition, the Clouds explain to Strepsiades that they have contributed to his delusion so that he might learn through suffering. He responds by going off to burn down the Thinkery, thus providing a very unorthodox ending to the comedy.

The major question raised by the play is in the portrait of Socrates. Aristophanes obviously wished to ridicule the philosopher in a manner that would be humorous, but there is much in the characterization that is inaccurate, and even dangerous: Plato has Socrates say in Apologia Sōkratous (399-390 b.c.e.; Apology, 1675) that Aristophones’ caricature contributed to the general misunderstanding of his purpose and character that eventually led to his accusation and trial. The scholarly controversy on these points is complicated, but it can be said that the comic playwright has attributed to Socrates many characteristics that he really possessed; the confusion of Socrates with sophism is incorrect, but Aristophanes wrote comedy, and some license must be allowed in the interests of adding humor to the presentation. It should be noted also that Plato showed Aristophanes and Socrates together in Symposion (388-368 b.c.e.; Symposium, 1701).

In Sphēkes (422 b.c.e.; The Wasps, 1812) Aristophanes reiterates the motif of the opposition of father and son, but here his target is the law-court system of Athens: Cleon had recently raised the wage paid to those serving jury duty, and, in the play at least, this has created a class of loafers who lived on jury wages. Philocleon (“loves Cleon”), the father, is such a man, as are his cronies, the Chorus of Wasps, so named and costumed because they love to convict; Bdelycleon (“hates Cleon”), the son, opposes his father’s vocation and has shut him up in the house, under guard, to keep him from the law courts. The early scenes in the play are taken up with various comic attempts by Philocleon to escape, and by the arrival of the Wasps, who wish to rescue their friend. An agon parodies the new jury system: In order to satisfy and amuse his father, Bdelycleon sets up a mock trial, in which one dog prosecutes another for stealing cheese, with kitchen implements serving as witnesses; names and other clues indicate that this is a parody of an action brought to court by Cleon in 425 b.c.e. After the parabasis, Bdelycleon attempts to elevate his father socially, teaching him new ways to dress and speak. The educational experiment backfires, and the audience discovers that Philocleon has misbehaved outrageously at a dinner party; he returns for a chaotic final scene of song and dance.

In 421 b.c.e., the deaths of Cleon and his Spartan counterpart, Brasidas, led to an uneasy peace, soon to be broken; Eirēnē (421 b.c.e.; Peace, 1837) reflects the doomed hopes of Aristophanes that the war had really ended. Trygaeus, an Attic farmer, desires peace, and he has conceived a scheme that matches that of Dicaeopolis in The Acharnians for its fantastical and ingenious nature: He will ride to heaven on a dung beetle and make a personal appeal to Zeus. The scenes of preparation and flight are filled with scatological humor, and the hero soon alights in Heaven, only to find that the gods have moved in order to distance themselves from the wars of the Greeks; Hermes alone receives Trygaeus. Peace has been imprisoned in a pit, and Trygaeus now enlists the aid of Hermes, as well as of the chorus, in freeing her. After a protracted struggle, accompanied by song, the group succeeds in retrieving the statue of Peace, along with her handmaidens, Opora and Theoria, who are played by actors. The parabasis grants an opportunity for Aristophanes to boast of his own skills, although it lacks several components of the syzygy, thus pointing the way to the eventual decline of the parabasis form. In the episodes that follow, Trygaeus bestows Theoria on the Athenian Council (the Boulé); an oracle-interpreter is unceremoniously thrown out; arms sellers fail while those who deal in more peaceful commodities succeed; and, finally, the play closes with the usual erotic union—in this case, joining Trygaeus and Opora. The play raises some important questions concerning Athenian stagecraft: Most scholars believe that the flight of the dung beetle was effected by means of the stage crane and that the “heavenly” scenes took place on the roof of the skene building, but the buried statue of Peace and its retrieval pose problems that are much debated.

This first series of surviving Aristophonic comedies is followed by a gap; the next extant play, Ornithes (414 b.c.e.; The Birds, 1824) was presented soon after the initiation of the Sicilian expedition, which was to end in catastrophe for Athens. Though the play does not allude to this momentous political event, it is characterized by a mood of adventure, expectancy, and hope that perhaps reflects the feelings of the polis at that precarious moment. Two Athenians, Pisthetaerus and Euelpides, have fled their native city out of disgust with the litigiousness and polypragmosyne (“bustling busyness”) that characterized fifth century b.c.e. Athens. They meet a hoopoe, and after considering and rejecting a number of suggestions, they decide to found a bird city in midair. The Chorus of Birds enters, creating a spectacle with their individual costumes, and they engage in an agon with the interlopers. Pisthetaerus convinces them to join in his venture, and it is decided that he and Euelpides will take a magic herb and turn into birds. The parabasis intervenes, presenting a history of the world in bird terms and praising the freedom from legal and social restraints inherent in bird life. The play is unusually lengthy, and many episodes follow the parabasis. Pisthetaerus and Euelpides return to the scene, now attired in laughably incomplete bird costumes, and found their new city, Cloudcuckooland. The usual scoundrels flock to the founding rituals and are quickly dispatched, walls are constructed, and a plan emerges to exploit the location of the new city by blocking earthly sacrificial vapors from reaching the gods. Iris is captured and sent back to Zeus to inform him of the new turn of events. Various individuals enter seeking wings, symbols of release and freedom, and these are dealt with in different ways. Prometheus arrives to tell of Zeus’s consternation, and an embassy of gods—a stuffy Poseidon, a gluttonous Heracles, and a pidgin-speaking Triballian—comes to negotiate terms. Zeus agrees to give up Basileia, a personification of sovereignty, and the play closes with the expected union of Pisthetaerus and Basileia. The Birds is a play of exceptionally lovely choral lyric and close unity in spite of its length and variety.

Aristophanes presented two plays in 411 b.c.e., Thesmophoriazousai (411 b.c.e.; Thesmophoriazusae, 1837) and the more famous Lysistratē (411 b.c.e.; Lysistrata, 1837). Thesmophoriazusae returns to the parody of Euripides that served as a subordinate theme in The Acharnians. As the women of Greece prepare to attend their exclusive annual festival, Euripides becomes anxious that they will plan some retaliation for his ill-treatment of them in tragedies. He decides to infiltrate the rites, choosing the tragedian Agathon, a notorious effeminate, to serve as his spy. Agathon is rolled out on the ekkyklema, in the midst of composing, but he refuses the request of his colleague. Instead, Euripides’ relative, Mnesilochus, will embark on the dangerous mission. Accordingly, he is shaved and singed and clothed in feminine garb, with the aid of Agathon’s extensive wardrobe, in a scene of ribald humor. Mnesilochus attends the festival, and speeches against Euripides are followed by the impostor’s defense of the playwright, in which he confides that Euripides, at least, did not reveal some of the worst aspects of women and their intrigues. The women become suspicious, and they unmask the unwanted visitor; an attempt to hold hostage a wineskin fails, and Mnesilochus is placed in the custody of a foolish Scythian. In the episodes that follow the parabasis, Euripides attempts to rescue his kinsman by repeating famous rescue scenes from his plays: He plays Menelaus to Mnesilochus’s Helen, and Perseus to his Andromeda. At last, a pretty flute-girl distracts the Scythian, Mnesilochus escapes, and Euripides and the women are reconciled. Throughout, the play combines ribaldry and transvestism with sophisticated tragic parody and criticism.

Lysistratais the last of Aristophanes’ surviving antiwar plays, following The Acharnians and Peace. Its tone is at once more urgent and more conciliatory than those of the previous plays, because the war had by then been going on for more than fifteen years and the Sicilian expedition had ended in disaster. Lysistrata, an Athenian woman of strong will, intelligence, and initiative, leaves her home at dawn to meet with women of Athens and other Greek cities, including Sparta. Her dedication to peace is well received, but the women hesitate when they hear her plan: a sex strike. Her persistence, together with that of her Spartan friend Lampito, wins the day, and the women solemnize their agreement, groaning at the prospect of their own deprivation; an auxiliary plan will have the older women occupy the Acropolis, where the treasury is kept, in order to cut off the financial resources that make the war possible. The parados reveals an unusual feature, two opposing choruses of old men and old women, who enter quarreling. The theme of conflict extends into a debate between Lysistrata and the Proboulos, a government official, and then the choruses return, their arguments taking the normal place of the parabasis. The episodes that follow show the attempts of several women to escape to their husbands, and in one hilariously ribald episode a young matron, Myrrhine, teases her husband, Cinesias, and leaves him unsatisfied. The Spartan ambassadors arrive in sorry plight, and Lysistrata brings about a reconciliation, aided by the allegorical figure of Forgiveness. The play ends with a happy feast that consummates the new harmony, and even the opposing choruses unite in joy and mutual need.

The play is well written and compact, with all of its various elements contributing effectively to the whole. The focus on the feminine point of view again emphasizes the ramifications of war for the powerless and the disenfranchised: Men make policy, but women must sacrifice their husbands and sons and the joys of married life, and this is serious. The ribald element, far from undercutting the serious intent of the playwright, actually enhances it: The sexual eagerness of the deprived Greeks, both male and female, is a metaphor for the urgency of the need for peace. The opposed choruses contribute to the atmosphere of conflict at the beginning of the play, and their tender rapprochement prefigures the ultimate reconciliation of Spartans and Athenians. Aristophanes dares to speak well of the Spartans in this play, a courageous move indeed, and for this reason the play is said to be Panhellenic in its vision, but it is more than that: It shows through clear eyes the need that men and women have for one another, a need that is physical but also natural and dignified. Once again, Aristophanes advocates peace in the interests of retrieving the true joys of life.

In The Frogs the comic fun is tempered by an atmosphere of melancholy: Athens was on the brink of surrender, and Euripides was already dead; Sophocles died while the play was being written. In a reversal of the normal arrangement, the more humorous episodes precede the parabasis, and the agon comes later. Dionysus, the god of drama, longs for the art of Euripides and, accompanied by his slave, Xanthias, has undertaken to journey to the underworld and bring back the tragedian. Because Heracles had succeeded in a similar mission, the capture of Cerberus, Dionysus appropriates a lionskin and club, traditional attributes of the mythological strongman. A brief visit to Heracles underlines the hilarious contrast between the Heraclean and the Dionysiac. Dionysus continues his journey by crossing the Styx in the bark of Charon, while a chorus of frogs, perhaps unseen, sing a croaking swamp-song. On arriving in the underworld, the cowardly Dionysus soon encounters the main chorus of the play, a group of Eleusinian initiates, who sing a lovely hymn. Several episodes follow in which the Heracles disguise is met with varying reactions, inducing Dionysus to exchange clothing several times with Xanthias; in all this, Dionysus shows great cowardice. The servant of King Pluto, Aeacus, soon appears, intent on discovering which of the two is really a god by flogging, but when the issue remains in doubt, he sends the two into the palace. A partial parabasis follows, in which Aristophanes urges forgiveness for political offenders, and, knowing that the end is near, a spirit of dignity and fairness for Athens. The plot now changes, as the audience learns of a dispute between Aeschylus and Euripides for the underworld’s “chair of tragedy.” Dionysus, emerging in more dignified state from his earlier buffoonery, will serve as judge in a great agon between the two tragedians; Sophocles’ very recent death has kept him from playing a major role in the plan of the play, and his absence from the agon is gently excused. The remainder of the comedy is taken up by the contest, which treats first the general principles of tragic poetry and then the technical points of composing the individual parts of tragedy. Dionysus has great difficulty in arriving at a decision, even when the scales show Aeschylus to be far “weightier” than his rival. The play closes with the ultimate victory of Aeschylus, who is escorted back to the upper air to improve the public morals of Athens. Though Aeschylus wins the contest, Dionysus’s hesitation betokens a great affection for Euripides on the part of the comic playwright. Aristophanes parodied Euripides relentlessly, making of the tragedian a comic character on at least three occasions, but through his criticism there shines a deep awareness of the greatness of his target.

Old Comedy was inextricably bound to a particular time and place: With the surrender of Athens and the destruction of the Long Walls in 404 b.c.e., that time had passed away. Aristophanic comedy then became Middle Comedy , with the loss of the parabasis, the vast diminishing of the chorus, a loss of obscenity and political topicality, and the rise of stock slave characters. Of the two surviving plays from this period, Ekklesiazousai (Ecclesiazusae, 1837)is tentatively dated at 392 b.c.e. Praxagora, an Athenian matron, conspires with other women to infiltrate the Assembly and push through legislation that will put the women in charge, as in Lysistrata, and that will also set up a state of pure communism. Disguised as men, the women succeed in their purpose, and Praxagora later defends her policies to her husband Blepyrus in an agon. The new arrangements are borne out in a series of episodes that show, among other things, a handsome young man forced to make love to a series of hags before he can mate with his beloved, because love, too, has been communized. The play ends with a communal feast. Ecclesiazusae raises again the question of the relationship between Plato and Aristophanes, because communism and, to some degree, recognition of the abilities of women are both treated in Politeia (388-368 b.c.e.; Republic, 1701). Rather than posit a direct relationship between poet and philosopher, it seems best to assume that these ideas were being discussed in Athens at this time; in any case, it is not very wise to view Aristophanes as a serious theoretician of political systems.

The last surviving play of Aristophanes is Ploutos (388 b.c.e.; Plutus, 1651) in which Plutus, the god of wealth, is miraculously cured of his blindness. His new moral vision elevates the good to positions of wealth while the bad suffer the opposite fate. In lieu of choral odes, this play has only manuscript notations indicating the insertion of a song and dance to separate the episodes, and there is no parabasis. The play includes almost no obscenity or personal invective, and the main thrust of the plot is social allegory rather than political statement. The slave Carion is an officious manipulator in the mode of New Comedy. Plutus clearly shows Aristophanes’ movement away from the structures and the spirit of Old Comedy.

Fourth Century b.c.e.

Evidence shows that tragedy came to be performed widely in the Greek world in the fourth century b.c.e., especially in the Greek colonies of the west. Both in Athens and elsewhere, revivals of fifth century b.c.e. tragedy were performed, and this custom was institutionalized at the Greater Dionysia beginning in 386 b.c.e. Of plays written in this period, only fragments and titles remain, with the possible exception of Rhesus, which many scholars believe to be a fourth century b.c.e. tragedy, although it has been passed on in the corpus of Euripides. This play retells the Homeric spy tale of the Doloneia, and the killing of the Trojan ally Rhesus by Odysseus and Diomedes. The titles associated with the playwrights Meletus, Carcinus, Astydamas, and Antiphon show a tendency to rework the same mythological material perfected by the fifth century b.c.e. masters, with an emphasis on the blatant and theatrical. There was a trend also to borrow from the later plays of Euripides a stress on chance, intrigues, and recognitions; larger religious issues were ignored. Tragedy in this period was also characterized by a vastly diminished chorus with the music quite independent from the play, and great importance was vested in the actors and stagecraft, a sign of the decline of the art.

The only Middle Comedies that survive complete are the last extant plays of Aristophanes, discussed above, which are characterized by the omission of the parabasis, the independence of the choral element from the episodes, and the diminishing of political focus and personal attack. The most important and prolific writers of Middle Comedy were Antiphanes, Alexis, and Anaxandrides. The playwrights were no longer exclusively Athenian, and performances were given in many cities, although Athens remained a center of dramatic art. Although the plays do not focus on affairs of the polis, they include references to contemporary events and public policy. Personal invective, too, receded but did not vanish, and Middle Comedy includes attacks on public figures, philosophers, and others. Mythological travesties, especially involving Euripidean parody, were very popular, though this trend tapered off in the middle of the fourth century b.c.e. Middle Comedy also borrowed from Euripides, especially in his fondness for intrigue and recognition plots. The fragments show the seeds of the stock-character system that was to become so important in New Comedy. Finally, Middle Comedy dropped the obscene language of the Old Comic period and, with it, the phallic costumes.

The Hellenistic Age

The death of Alexander the Great in 323 b.c.e. is traditionally considered to mark the beginning of the Hellenistic era. From this time on, there was a rapid growth of new political and cultural centers outside Athens. The old polis structures had changed, and politics were now very remote from the personal control of the average citizen; this led to a turning inward and a new focus on the individual. There was also a sharpening of social contrasts, placing a new importance on social class. Finally, the unlocking of the East allowed the Greeks to become aware of a larger world, and there was a new source and flow of cultural exchange.

Menander, the only poet of New Comedy ho survives in nearly complete plays, epitomizes the spirit of the new age; indeed, the contrast between Old and New Comedy says much about the effects of these profound political changes on the average Athenian. Menander lived in turbulent times, but his plays contain few direct references to political upheavals, focusing instead on the hopes and concerns of the individual. Modern scholarship at one time depended on short fragments, combined with Roman adaptations of Menander’s plays, for knowledge of the poet; in the twentieth century, however, Egyptian papyrus finds broadened the picture with several very large fragments, and in 1959, a nearly complete papyrus of Dyskolos (317 b.c.e.; The Bad-Tempered Man, 1921; also known as The Grouch) was discovered.

The Bad-Tempered Man which is divided into five acts, begins with an informative prologue by the god Pan, whose rural Greek shrine provides the setting for the drama: An old grouch named Cnemon lives in a poorhouse near the shrine with his young daughter, while his wife and stepson, Gorgias, have moved to the city. Pan has arranged for a wealthy young man called Sostratus to fall in love with the daughter. The surly Cnemon is difficult to approach, but Sostratus finds a way to meet the girl. Gorgias’s slave tells his master what has happened, and Gorgias suspects Sostratus of trying to take advantage of their family because of their poverty. On direct meeting, however, Gorgias learns to trust the young man’s intentions, and Sostratus, though a wealthy fop, goes off to work in the fields in an attempt to convince Cnemon of his worthiness. Meanwhile, the family of Sostratus arrives to plan a sacrifice, preceded by an officious cook, a stock figure of New Comedy. In the third act, Cnemon rebuffs repeated attempts by the sacrificers to borrow utensils for their banquet, and the audience learns that Cnemon has fallen into a well. In the fourth act, matters reach a climax: Cnemon is rescued by Gorgias and, having learned a valuable lesson about his need for other people, agrees to allow Gorgias to find a husband for his daughter; Sostratus, sunburned from his fieldwork, is chosen. Act 5 adds a second betrothal, that of Sostratus’s sister to Gorgias. Cnemon at first refuses to attend the festivities (his conversion has not been total), but the cook and the slave harass him and force him to participate. This ending is unusual for Menander, but it contains some elements from the more traditional banquet scene, inherited from Old Comedy.

The plot of The Bad-Tempered Man is simple, and the events are probable, if not totally realistic; they are everyday happenings, and they follow one another logically. The setting is contemporary Greece, not necessarily Athens, and the problems of the play are private and domestic. Love provides the occasion for the plot. Social class plays an important role, although in the end the love of the young couple is shown to overcome social barriers, and Gorgias, a poor man, displays great nobility of character. The lesson in the end is that understanding, tolerance, and generosity are the keys to happiness in human relationships. All of this is very far from the Old Comedies of Aristophanes.

Significant fragments from other plays by Menander also survive. Epitrepontes (after 304 b.c.e.; The Arbitration, 1909) is a complex rape and recognition story, in which a young man, Charisius, returns from a voyage undertaken before the consummation of his marriage to discover that his wife, Pamphila, has given birth and exposed the child out of shame; deeply distressed, he moves to the home of a friend and hires a prostitute whom he never touches. Meanwhile, the child is discovered, and among its birth tokens is a ring that Pamphila grabbed from the hand of the unknown man who raped her during a festival. With the aid of the good-hearted prostitute, Pamphila soon recognizes that the assailant and father of her child, is, in fact, her husband. All ends happily, and Menander’s humanity stresses the basic love of the husband and wife. In Menander’s Perikeiromenē (314-310 b.c.e.; The Girl Who Was Shorn, 1909) Glycera, a young woman who lives with a braggart soldier, Polemon, is seen kissing a young man whom she knows to be her twin brother, from whom she was separated at birth. Polemon, misinterpreting this affection, cuts Glycera’s hair to stigmatize her, though he comes to regret his hastiness. At the end of the play, a citizen named Pataecus is discovered to be the father of the twins, and Glycera, now considered to be a citizen also, is reconciled and properly married to Polemon. Samia (321-316 b.c.e.; The Girl from Samos, 1909) deals with an exchange of infants and a series of misunderstandings that end with the reconciliation of all concerned.

The small corpus of Menander allows some conclusions about his plays. He was fond of preparing the audience for his complex plots by means of an informative prologue that usually followed several initial scenes, although the prologue of The Bad-Tempered Man actually opens the play. The audience is addressed directly in Menander not in the style of the Old Comic parabasis but rather in monologues and asides. The plays were customarily divided into five acts, with the climax coming in the fourth act. Menander’s plays are middle class in milieu, with an emphasis on money, especially as it influences choice of spouse. Events are controlled by chance, as in the later plays of Euripides. Menander’s realistic humanism and his depiction of Greek life and thought caused Aristophanes of Byzantium to ask: “Oh Menander, Oh life, which of you imitates the other?” Even more telling evidence of Menander’s great spirit is his own credo: “I am a man: nothing human do I deem alien from me.”

Other important writers of New Comedy are known mainly through Roman adaptations of their works. Philemon (c. 368-c. 267 b.c.e.), born in Syracuse and later made an Athenian citizen, employed the same type of plots as those of Menander, with the addition of some mythological burlesque. His plays are characterized by a moralizing tone, neat construction, surprise, caricature, and wit, and he often competed successfully against Menander. Diphilus (c. 360-c. 300 b.c.e.) was born at Sinope on the Black Sea, and his early plays deal with mythological burlesque, but most of the titles indicate middle-class comedy, and he was especially fond of recognition plots. His works are characterized by vivid imagery, concentrated action, and a love of spectacle. Apollodorus of Carystus, who began producing around 285 b.c.e., later became a favorite model for the Roman Terence. He favored plots of misconception and false assumption, and his plays stress family relations to the detraction of comic effect.

Greek New Comedywas performed in stone theaters, with two-story scene buildings, and convention determined that one direction led to the harbor and the other to the agora. The costumes lacked the phallus and padding of Old Comedy, and the masks were more realistic, with a characteristic wide mouth. The masks and wigs aided the implementation of an important stock-character system, which included young men, stupid and clever slaves, old men, parasites, matrons, prostitutes, pimps, cooks, and soldiers; the stock system in no way prevented the development of character, which was very important in New Comedy. The plots were complex, involving lost children, rape and intrigue, love, slaves, and recognitions, but the events were probable and causally logical, as opposed to Aristophanic flights of fantasy. The milieu was Greek middle class, but with an awareness of the outside world and frequent reference to travel and voyages. There was no chorus, although groups of revelers occasionally performed a choral function. Political references were rare, reflecting the loss of political control by the people. New Comedy lacks the political import, the vigorous freedom of speech, the choral lyric, and the pointed invective of Old Comedy, but its interesting plots and developed characters, its transcendence of time and place, make it the distinguished ancestor of European comedy.

Tragedy in the Hellenistic age was centered not at Athens, but at Alexandria, under the patronage of Philadelphus. The Pleiad, a selection of the best tragedians of the period, included Alexander Aetolus, Lycophron of Chalcis, Homer of Byzantium, Philicus of Corcyra, and Sositheus. Only nine fragments have survived, and the titles show some use of fifth century b.c.e. themes as well as the addition of a few new ones. Lycophron survives in Alexandra (third century b.c.e.; The Alexandra, 1806), a tragic fictional messenger’s speech, in which Cassandra prophesies the fall of Troy and later events. Other remains of the period include fragments of Exagoge (second century b.c.e.; The Exagoge, 1983) by Ezechial, a tragic depiction of events from Jewish history, and fragments of a Gyges drama that follows Herodotus.

The formal genre of New Comedy did not completely satisfy the needs of the audiences in the Hellenistic cities, and a thirst for variety, as well as a desire for coarse fun and more realistic scenes from everyday life, led to a wide variety of mimetic forms. The many surviving terms for other dramatic forms are bewildering, because these entertainments included speech and song, prose and poetry, monologue and scenic performance. The Maiden’s Complaint, a surviving solo song, tells of a woman who laments outside her lover’s door after a quarrel. The best-known practitioner of the solo speech was Sotades of Maronea, whose invectives aimed at Philadelphus eventually caused his death. Considerable remains of the iambic mimes of Herodas, called mimiambi, survive; these are “slices of life,” short scenes on a wide variety of subjects, probably recited rather than dramatically enacted. Evidence also shows that mimes of continuous plot, without masks, were performed in this period, and that female actresses appeared onstage.

Under the Roman Empire

Under the empire, tragedy rapidly declined, and those Greek tragedies that were written were intended for recitation rather than dramatic presentation. The mime was the most important dramatic form of the period, and much of it was improvisational. Philistion of Nicaea was a famous composer of mime from the time of Augustus. A papyrus survives that details a mime similar in plot to Iphigenia in Tauris of Euripides: A young Greek woman has fallen into the hands of barbarians near the Indian Ocean, and she is rescued by her brother. There is much making fun of the barbarians and their speech. Another mime depicts a scene between a woman who has attempted to poison her husband and a slave. Pantomime also flourished in this period, with a masked dancer acting out a story through his movements, to the accompaniment of an orchestra. Bathyllus of Alexandria won fame as a pantomimist in the early empire, especially for his comic dances.

Early Roman Dramatic Forms

Roman drama in its developed form is closely modeled on Greek drama; this is not surprising, because the Greeks had colonized Sicily and southern Italy, known collectively as Magna Graecia, from the sixth century b.c.e. Moreover, drama achieved such perfection at the hands of the Greeks that Hellenic influence on Roman drama was inevitable, even when Roman political power had eclipsed that of Greece. Even so, Italy had indigenous entertainment forms that are interesting cultural documents in their own right, and that also contributed, albeit in a small way, to formal Roman drama.

Fescennine versewas a merry, impromptu entertainment that grew out of wedding and harvest celebrations. An important element of this form was alternating song, sung by rival groups; the rivalry was good-natured but contained an abusive aspect that was probably apotropaic in origin. Fescennine verse was sometimes sung in meter, originally Saturnian, but later trochaic, and the flute provided accompaniment. Performers wore rudimentary masks, but Fescennine verse remained improvisational in nature and was never elevated to a literary form, though it was occasionally used in the celebration of military triumphs. Most scholars believe that the name “Fescennine” derived from that of an Etruscan town, and the etymology that connects it with fascinum, a term for procreative magic, has been soundly repudiated.

The Satura which is documented by Livy, was a country stage entertainment. Its name derives from the Satura Lanx, a mixed platter of food for offering to Ceres and Bacchus: The Satura was a medley of song, dance, and dialogue. Though it lacked a connected plot, it was not mere improvisation, with dramatic elements more developed than in Fescennine verse. It is likely that Satura would have evolved into Roman Comedy, had the influx of Hellenism not intervened with the import of New Comic models. For a time, the Satura was used as an afterpiece in the performances of formal Roman Comedies, but eventually the evolution of the Satura carried it in two different directions: It led, on one hand, to the development of literary satire, and on the other, to Italian mime, which eventually made a contribution to Roman Comedy.

The fabula Atellana(Atellan farce) is perhaps the most dramatic of the indigenous Italian forms. Originating in rural Campania, it flourished in the third century b.c.e. There was dialogue and music, and the masked performers acted out short plots based on country life. Cheating and trickery were important components of the plot, and riddles occurred often in the dialogue. The most distinctive feature of fabula Atellana was a set of fixed characters: Maccus, a fool; Pappus, a silly old man; Dossenus, a clever swindler; and Bucco, a glutton. The fixed characters retain their basic personalities, as in a Punch-and-Judy show, but their occupations, marital situations, and circumstances vary according to the plot. Nothing survives of the third century b.c.e. farce, but in the first century b.c.e., Novius and Pomponius elevated the fabula Atellana to a literary form, and these fragments are helpful in reconstructing the earlier farce.

The Italian popular mime, whose actors were called phlyakes “gossips”), descended from the old Doric farce that influenced Attic Old Comedy, and Epicharmus, a writer of this type of mime, is believed to have had some influence also on Old Comedy; phlyax, then, is not a wholly Italian form, but from its earliest beginnings was connected with activities on the Greek mainland and the Peloponnese. These mimes, skits without choruses, began in Sicily and Tarentum, later moving northward to Paestum and Campania and, finally, to Rome. Under the influence of Doric farce, they included travesties of mythology and also of daily life. The mythological travesties eventually evolved into tragic parodies, primarily under the influence of the frequent stagings of Athenian tragedies in the region, especially the plays of Euripides. Epicharmus first gave these mimes literary form, and fragments of his works survive, as do remains from Rhinthon of Tarentum (early third century b.c.e.), who specialized in tragic parodies known as hilarotragodia. The best evidence for the phlyakes comes from a great corpus of cartoonlike phlyax vases of the late fifth and fourth centuries, which vigorously depict the antics of the performers. Mythological figures such as Odysseus and Heracles are burlesqued, and one humorous vase depicts the arrest of Antigone—followed by the revelation that she is really a man. Travesties of daily life are represented, too, with bustling slaves, thieves, drunks, old men, and domineering wives. The vases show a padded, phallic costume similar to that of Greek Old Comedy, worn with tights and comical masks, and also a portable wooden stage. The peak years of the vases (350-330 b.c.e.) precede the fragments of Rhinthon. Therefore, while the old Greek farce was reaching literary perfection at Athens, it continued in a lower mode in Sicily and Southern Italy, remaining essentially at the level of farce.

These are the most important dramatic and predramatic forms of early Italy, but other phenomena merit brief mention here. Livy tells of Etruscan dances, accompanied by the flute, to which Roman youths later added dialogue and gestures. Gladiatorial contests, introduced from Etruria, can be said to contain basic mimetic elements. Finally, there are miscellaneous forms of casual mime, such as juggling, acrobatics, and animal imitation. The mimes and entertainments described above surely contained the seeds of drama that would have evolved into an indigenous Roman drama, had not the Greek drama, in its developed form, invaded Rome in the third century b.c.e. Even after the impact of Hellenization was fully felt and the development of these forms was short-circuited, many of them continued a vigorous existence, in the shadow of the drama imported from Greece.

The Pioneers of Roman Drama

The invasion of Hellenism into Roman life and letters was an event of enormous impact. During the period from 241 b.c.e. (the end of the First Punic War) to 70 b.c.e. (the consulship of Pompey), Rome rose to world power, completing the conquest of the Italian peninsula and extending its dominion in every direction. The result was an influx of wealth and ideas from all over the Mediterranean world. The Roman Flamininus declared Greece to be free in 196 b.c.e., but Greece and Rome continued their close contact, with Greek art, literature, and ideas flowing continually to Rome. Though the absorption of Greek culture by Rome was a profound process, it was also a slow one, because temperamental differences led to a certain initial resistance on the part of the Romans, the more conservative of whom tended to regard Greek culture as decadent, effete, and unmanly. Even so, the Hellenization of Roman culture continued in spite of this early distrust, and few cultural areas reflect this process more clearly than does Roman drama. Moreover, the new Hellenism made itself felt on dramatic forms quite early; in fact, the most significant historical event in the Hellenization of Roman drama occurred before the First Punic War, in 272 b.c.e.: In that year, the fall of Tarentum, a seemingly insignificant element in the conquest of Italy by the Romans, brought to Rome one Livius Andronicus, and with him, a knowledge of Greek tragedy and New Comedy that in time led to the domination of Roman drama by Greek models and the consequent suppression of all but a few of the native Italian dramatic forms.

Though Livius Andronicusarrived in Rome as a slave, following the fall of Tarentum, he was eventually manumitted, and in 240 b.c.e., when it was decided to expand the customary Ludi Romani (Roman Games) in honor of the victory in the First Punic War, Livius presented one tragedy and one comedy, both Latin adaptations of Greek originals, a fifth century b.c.e. tragedy and a New Comedy. The event established among the Romans a taste for such adaptations; in addition, a precedent was set for the use of New Comedy, rather than Old, as a model, with the resulting Latin comedies to be known by the term fabula palliata (literally, “a play in Greek dress”), because the Greek pallium, a cloak not worn by Romans, was retained onstage. At this point, a single playwright would often write both tragedy and comedy, though increasing specialization followed soon afterward. The remains of Livius are few, but it is known that the plays were adaptations and not mere translations. Of the tragedies, eight titles survive; they show a preference for Sophocles, and also for the Trojan cycle. There are also fragments of comedies with titles such as The Actor, The Gladiator, and The Virgin, many of which were translated in Remains of Old Latin (1936).

Gnaeus Naevius began producing plays in 235 b.c.e., showing more independence and originality than his predecessor. Seven titles of tragedies based on fifth century b.c.e. originals survive, and these show an emphasis on the Trojan cycle. Naevius’s native spirit asserts itself in plays called fabulae praetextae, tragedies based on historical Roman events; in fact, he invented the genre. Naevius’s many comedies included fabulae palliatae some of which mixed several Greek sources in one play (a phenomenon later known as contaminatio), as well as fabulae togatae, “plays in Roman dress,” which were original dramas performed in native Roman costume. Among his works, of which only fragments survive, all dating from the period c. 250-205 b.c.e., were Ariolus (The Soothsayer), Carbonaria (The Collier Maid), Colax (The Flatterer), Dementes (The Madmen), and Quadrigemini (The Quadruplets). The comedies are populated by parasites, braggart warriors, slaves, masters, and lovers, and a vigorous, coarse spirit abounds. Naevius recalls Aristophanes in his free use of political invective, but Rome in the third century was quite unlike the Athens of Aristophanes, and a comic gibe at the Metelli led to Naevius’s incarceration, though intervention by the tribunes later brought about his release.

The fragments of Quintus Ennius include two comic titles, a fabula praetexta called Sabinae (The Sabine Women), and some twenty tragedies. Of the latter, a number show Euripidean themes. Ennius’s tragedies demonstrate great originality in spite of their reliance on models, and their weight and passion caused them to be revived in the Augustan period. Also known for his Saturae (translated in Miscellanies, 1935) and the epic Annales (Annals, 1935), Ennius advanced the use of meter and language, and his tragedies mark an important stage in the development of Roman drama. Following Ennius, the writing of drama became specialized, and the composition of tragedy and comedy became separate skills.

Roman Comedy

Formal Roman comedies in the era of Plautus and Terence were, like their Greek precursors, always presented at state religious festivals. The most important of these were the Ludi Romani, in September, and the Ludi Plebei, in November, though the spring Ludi Megalenses and summer Ludi Apollinares also included dramatic presentations in the second century b.c.e. One play was presented each day, and it began at noon. Originally, the playwrights produced their own plays, but a system quickly evolved under which a producer/troupe manager purchased the play and then contracted with the appropriate aediles for its presentation. The actors, all of whom were men, were organized into a grex, or troupe, usually under the leadership of a freedman; the actors were often slaves, and even when this was no longer true, the profession of acting was generally held in low esteem among Romans; out of season, the troupe continued to earn a living as informal entertainers. There was some doubling up on roles by the actors but not as much as in Greek drama. The costumeof the actors, which gave the fabula palliata its name, consisted of a tunic with a Greek pallium, or cloak, worn over it: slaves wore no cloak, women wore a white or yellow chiton, soldiers wore military clothing, and country folk were distinguished by rough cloaks. Sandals or other informal footwear was worn, and wigs helped determine the age and sex of the character. There is some controversy on the matter of whether masks were worn in this period.

The Roman theaterbegan with a temporary wooden structure that faced a hillside on which the audience sat. In the middle of the second century b.c.e., a stone theater under construction was demolished by Senatorial decree; thereafter, temporary tiers of wooden seats were constructed for specific festivals, to be taken down and reconstructed when needed. These practices underline the Roman ambivalence toward theater, because they were based on the notion that a permanent theater might encourage loitering and have a detrimental effect on Roman social fabric. It was not until 55 b.c.e., under Pompey, that the first stone theater was erected at Rome. In Plautus’s day, the crowd sat on the slope, and a long, narrow wooden stage provided the place for the production. There was always an altar onstage, and at the rear was a simple building to house the dressing rooms. The front of this building, which was the backdrop for the play, had two or three doors, representing two houses and an alley between them. By convention, the actor’s right-hand side entrance represented the way to the harbor, and the left-hand entrance, the way to the forum; the stage itself stood for a city street. There was no curtain. These arrangements were enhanced by certain conventions: Events supposedly taking place within the houses could be made vivid by an actor emerging from a doorway and shouting back into the house, entrance cues to offstage actors were extended by comments about the creaking doorpost, and asides and eavesdropping were also used.

Music was more prominent in Roman Comedy than in its New Comic models; plays were accompanied throughout by the double-flute, except for the most prosaic dialogue, and all the actors could sing. This represented a marked change from the Greek New Comedies, which used musical intervals only to divide the five acts. The spectators at Roman Comedies of this period were a rowdy group drawn from every level of society; servants were used to keep order, but the crowd was noisy and easily distracted.

Titus Maccius Plautus whose name indicates an early connection with theater, possibly as an actor of Atellan farce, was one of the two great masters of Roman Comedy. Of this prolific playwright, there are twenty surviving plays and substantial fragments of a twenty-first; all are fabulae palliatae, based on Greek New Comedies. The best of Plautus’s plays include Amphitruo (Amphitryon, 1694), the only mythological travesty in existence, the story of the title character’s impregnation by Jupiter (the result was Hercules) and her husband’s subsequent suspicion of her fidelity; Aulularia (The Pot of Gold), a character study of a miser, Euclio, whose stolen treasure of gold is restored to him in time to become his daughter’s dowry; Bacchides (The Two Bacchides), a hilarious double-deception play involving two young men, two fathers, and two prostitutes called Bacchis, with the identity of names leading to a misunderstanding, and the usual need of the sons to deceive their fathers; Captivi (The Captives), a more serious drama, in which confusion of slave and master plays an important role in a deception that has a noble motive, rare in Roman Comedy; Menaechmi (The Twin Menaechmi), in which the arrival of a long-lost twin brother leads to a merry round of confusion, ending in a happy recognition; Mostellaria (The Haunted House), a play dominated by the bustling slave Tranio, who attempts to keep his master out of the house where his son is reveling by claiming that it is haunted; Miles Gloriosus (The Braggart Warrior, 1767), in which the soldier of the title, who has purchased another man’s sweetheart, is foiled by the lovers, who continue to meet, aided by various forms of deception; Pseudolus, in which the title character, a clever slave, helps his young master to outwit an evil pimp, Ballio; Rudens (The Rope), a play with a romantic seaside setting, in which an evil pimp is outwitted and a young girl is restored to her father and her rightful citizenstatus; and Trinummus (The Three-penny Day, 1767), a quiet, family play in which a young man sells his father’s house, unaware that it contains a buried treasure. Of lesser quality are Asinaria (The Comedy of Asses, 1774), Casina (English translation, 1774), Cistellaria (The Casket, 1774), Curculio (English translation, 1774), Epidicus (English translation, 1694), Mercator (The Merchant, 1767), Persa (The Girl from Persia, 1774), Poenulus (The Carthaginian, 1774), Stichus (200 b.c.e.; English translation, 1774), and Truculentus (English translation, 1774).

Much of Plautine scholarship centers on the relationship of the playwright to his sources; in no case are both a Plautus play and its model extant. The Merchant, The Haunted House, and The Three-penny Day are based on plays of Philemon, and Casina and possibly also The Rope and The Braggart Warrior come from Diphilus. Stichus, The Two Bacchides, and The Carthaginian derive from Menander, while The Comedy of Asses is modeled after Demophilus. It is clear that Plautus was no servile translator and that he endowed the New Comic plots with his unique vis comica, or comic vigor. The Greek elements of the plays include the plots, the meters, the settings, the costumes, the clever slaves, the tragic echoes, and the general attitude toward life. On the other hand, there is much that is Roman and specifically Plautine: the use of language, the modification of the plots, the dialogue repartee, the severe treatment of slaves, the coarseness, the injunctions for the attention of the audience, and the specific references to Roman customs, institutions, and historical events.

The characters of Plautus’s comedies conform largely to the New Comic stock system, though there is less serious development and exploration of character than in Menander. The characters include the young man (adulescens), of either the exemplary or spendthrift type; the old man (senex), sometimes strict and sometimes liberal; the prostitute (meretrix), either greedy or sincere and affectionate; the pimp (leno), invariably evil; the kidnapped young girl (virgo), whose true identity is always discovered; the matron (matrona), usually a suspicious shrew; the slave (servus), either loyal or scheming; the braggart soldier (miles gloriosus); and the self-serving parasite (parasitus). The plots, usually occasioned by love, involve deception, trickery, mistaken identity, and false assumptions, with money an important motive. The humor, which often grows out of the plot, includes broad farce, extravagant caricature, wordplay, sarcasm, witty retort, satire, parody, and occasional obscenity. In all this, there are serious points as well: The sanctity of family life is upheld; there is great sympathy for certain characters; and, in general, self-sacrifice, loyalty, and love are rewarded, while greed and the worst vices are defeated.

The plays were written in meters adapted and transformed from the Greek. The basic meter of the plain dialogue and soliloquy (the diverbium portion) was the iambic senarius, with iambic and trochaic septenarii and octonarii used to show greater degrees of excitement. The cantica, or songs, were written in different meters, to be accompanied by the flute; divisions into five acts are a modern addition to the text. The language of the plays was based on that of daily life, with homely sayings and lower-class slang. In general, the plays have tremendous comic vigor and a natural sense of joy, enhanced by sure theatrical instincts, which overcome occasional problems of carelessness and loosely cohering plots.

Terence

Publius Terentius Afer, known as Terence, a manumitted slave born at Carthage in North Africa, was a member of the Scipionic Circle, a literary coterie organized around Scipio Africanus the Younger, for which Greek refinement and education were the standard. Terence’s comedies, as a result, are less boisterous, more refined, and closer to the Greek New Comedy models than were those of Plautus. All six of the plays were produced by Ambivius Turpio. Of these, the earliest is Andria (c. 166 b.c.e.; English translation, 1598) , in which a father, Simo, wishes his son Pamphilus to marry the daughter of Chremes, but Pamphilus loves an Andrian girl named Glycerium. The relationship between father and son is severely tested, but fate interposes a solution when Glycerium turns out to be, in fact, a daughter of Chremes; Pamphilus can both marry the woman he loves and honor his promise to his father. Very important here are the machinations of the slave, Davus. Hecyra (The Mother-in-Law, 1598) , first presented in 165 b.c.e., failed when the audience became distracted by a rope-dancing performance, and was revived, unsuccessfully, in 160 b.c.e. In this fairly serious treatment of married life, a bride has returned to her parents’ home during the absence of her husband, and a quarrel between her and her mother-in-law is suspected, though the real problem lies in the past of the bride and groom. The play has very little in it that is humorous. Heautontimorumenos (The Self-tormentor, 1598) f 163 b.c.e. has a double-strand plot (duplex argumentum), with two fathers, two sons, and two young women. After a good bit of trickery, deception, and mistaken identity, the sons are married, one to his lover and the other to a woman more conventional than his original choice. The play presents various thoughts on how to rear and discipline one’s sons, a topic to which Terence was to return in Adelphoe (160 b.c.e.; The Brothers, 1598).

Terence’s most successful play, Eunuchus (161 b.c.e.; The Eunuch, 1598) , is more boisterous and closer to Plautus than any of his other comedies. In this duplex argumentum plot, Phaedria loves Thais, a courtesan. Phaedria’s brother disguises himself as a eunuch in order to enter Thais’s establishment and ravish a new young girl there. The young girl is revealed to be freeborn, and the couple marry, while an arrangement is made for Phaedria and a soldier to share the favors of Thais. While the latter portion of the denouement is less than satisfying, the fine character of Thais is compelling. Phormio (English translation, 1598), of 161 b.c.e., is a well-constructed duplex argumentum in which the two strands are well-integrated, primarily through the character of the parasite Phormio. With his help, two young cousins obtain their young women, one through a phony court action and the other by a deception to gain the needed money. The Brothersof 160 b.c.e. tells of two brothers, Micio and Demea, and the antics of their sons, Aeschinus (Demea’s natural son, adopted by Micio) and Ctesipho (Demea’s son). Micio, the liberal father, is far more appealing than Demea and holds the sympathies of the audience through most of the play, especially as the audience learns that Demea’s Ctesipho is no real model, though strictly reared. Demea later appears to relent and change to Micio’s more genial style, but surprisingly, he draws out his new liberality ad absurdum, exposing the problems inherent in Micio’s approach to education. Many scholars consider this to be Terence’s finest play.

It has already been noted that the plays of Terence are close to their Greek models both in treatment and in spirit: Caesar referred to him as “Menander halved.” The plays, all of which are set in Athens, derive from the following sources: Andria from a combination of two Menander plays; The Mother-in-Law from a play by Apollodorus; The Self-Tormentor from a Menander comedy of the same name; The Eunuch from two Menander plays; Phormio from Apollodorus; and The Brothers from a Menander play and parts of a comedy of Diphilus. The practice of using more than one Greek model for a single play, called contaminatio, was apparently controversial in Terence’s day, though there was solid precedence for doing so.

The prologues of Terence’s comedies are unique because, instead of pleasantries and plot introductions, they take up literary matters, responding especially to criticisms of the poet’s work; in this, they recall parabasis passages from Aristophanes. Terence is especially concerned with the criticisms of his rival, Luscius Lanuvinus. To the accusation of contaminatio, he responds that he is guilty as charged, preferring to copy the “negligence” of Plautus, Naevius, and Ennius rather than the “diligence” of others. To the charge of using a Greek passage already translated by a previous Roman playwright, he replies that the passages involved centered on stock characters, such as the parasite and the soldier, which are common in comedy. The accusation of receiving help from his friends receives an aloof statement of pride in his literary relationships, though it is likely that the Scipionic members offered only advice, rather than substantial aid, in the writing of Terence’s plays. To Luscius’s attacks on his style, Terence responds by moving to the offense, inveighing against his rival’s literal translating. Also included in the prologues is information on the failure of the first presentation of The Mother-in-Law.

The characters of Terence’s plays are more subtle, humane, and refined than those of Plautus. There is more serious interest in relationships, especially that between fathers and sons. The stock characters are no longer caricatures: Slaves are treated fairly, soldiers boast more plausibly, parasites are more realistic, and prostitutes are more refined. The humor, consequently, is quiet, more socially satiric and less boisterous; the style is clear, correct, and refined, but Plautus’s theatrical instinct is lacking. The use of meter is more regular in Terence than in Plautus. Though Terence’s plays were, in general, too subtly artistic to hold the interest of his contemporary Roman audience, subsequent ages have found much to admire in his work.

Other Writers

Caecilius Statius falls chronologically between Plautus and Terence, and indeed, his surviving titles and fragments show a transition to the more Hellenized comedy of Terence. He employed the standard stock characters, and later Latin writers speak of his strength in composing plots and his weakness in the use of the Latin language. Gellius’s side-by-side comparison of passages and aspects of Caecilius’s Necklace and the Menandrian model emphasizes the superiority of the latter. Other writers of palliatae in this period, of which little is known, include Quintus Trabea, Marcus Atilius (who wrote The Woman-Hater), Aquillius, Licinius Imbrex, and Terence’s nemesis, Luscius Lanuvinus. Terence was followed by Juventius, Valerius, and Sextus Turpilius, whose fragments show a strong Menandrian element. There were few attempts at the palliata after this time, though the plays of Plautus and Terence were occasionally revived. The fabula palliata had become so Hellenized that it was beyond the reach and tastes of the people of Rome.

Other Dramatic Forms

Fabulae togatae(native Roman comedies), which became popular after Terence, were much more Italian in character, as their name (“plays in Roman dress”) makes clear. Only fragments of this genre survive, but a few characteristics emerge: an interest in country folk as the butt of humor, a diminished emphasis on the cleverness of slaves, and a new prominence for women. The important authors include Titinius; Titus Quinctius Atta, reputedly highly skilled in depicting female characters; and, most important, Lucius Afranius (born c. 150 b.c.e.). Afranius was fond of Menander and brought back the Greek element to Roman Comedy once again, though in a very subtle way. The titles and fragments of togatae suggest a bourgeois Italian drama: Husbands and wives bicker, families go on holiday, and there are marriages, divorces, elections, and other reflections of Roman social and political institutions.

The late Republic saw other dramatic forms as well. The fabula tabernaria close to the togata, was the comedy of the tradesmen and their ways. Also in this period, the old fabula Atellana (see above) was raised to a composed and rehearsed literary form, with verse replacing prose, by Pomponius and Novius; the titles and fragments show the old characters (Maccus, Pappus, Dossenus, and Bucco) involved in a wide variety of situations, including rural farce, mythological burlesque, and middle-class comedy, and an element of vigorous obscenity persists. After the literary Atellana had run the course of a generation, it yielded to the mime, a form of Greek origin that came to Rome by way of the southern cities of Magna Graecia. At this time, the mime was popularized in a degenerate form, with real women taking the female parts. Typically, the plots involved the deception of a doltish cuckold by a woman and her paramour. A more reputable type of mime emerged in the age of Julius Caesar. The element of gesticulation became progressively more important in mime, and ultimately the form degenerated into the wordless pantomime, thus ending the history of Roman comedy.

Roman Tragedy after Ennius

The works of Marcus Pacuvius are represented by the survival of fragments and thirteen titles; of these, one belongs to a fabula praetexta(Roman historical tragedy), Paulus (after 168 b.c.e.), and twelve to tragedies based on works of Sophocles and Euripides. The fragments, and the comments of later Roman writers, indicate that Pacuvius was prone to elaborate phrasing and ornamental flourishes. His popularity was the result of his powerful characterizations and the universality of the reflections in his stage soliloquies. Cicero was especially impressed by his dramatic power.

Lucius Accius,a younger contemporary of Pacuvius, survives in a large number of titles and fragments. The titles of two praetextae, Decius and Brutus, survive, and the tragedies modeled on the Greek include Atreus, Andromeda, Medea, and Philoctetes. Several of these titles were translated in Remains of Old Latin. Accius was known in ancient times for his loftiness of style and the grandeur of his dramas. The plays contained excellent speeches, used as models for students of rhetoric. The remains of Accius allow certain conclusions about Roman tragedy in this period: The chorus, which was located on the stage rather than in an orchestra, came and went freely, intervening at suitable moments to participate in the dialogue or to provide a group of people when one was needed for any purpose. The usual meter of dialogue was the iambic trimeter, as in Greek tragedy, with anapests and cretics dominating the cantica, or songs. Tragedy persisted on the Roman stage in spite of the popular preference for lighter entertainments, primarily because of the interest and support of the Roman aristocracy, who found its ideas agreeable, especially the fear of tyrants; when the early empire brought about the decline of the old Roman families, and also of freedom of speech, tragedy faded from the stage into a strictly literary form. During its existence as a dramatic genre, Roman tragedy stayed close to fifth century b.c.e. Greek models, especially Euripides, and the fabula praetexta was a comparatively rare phenomenon.

Accius influenced the tragedies of the orator Gaius Titius, in the period of Cicero’s boyhood; other writers of tragedy include Atillius, Gaius Julius Caesar Strabo, Cassius, and Santra. In Cicero’s time, the tragedies of Pacuvius and Accius were revived during the peak years of the actor Aesopus. Roman figures famous in other spheres tried their hands at writing tragedy, including Asinius Pollio; Varius Rufus, who wrote a Thyestes; and Ovid, who wrote a Medea, but few traces remain of these efforts. From this point, Roman tragedy was an exclusively literary form, not written for stage presentation.

Mime in the Period of Caesar and Cicero

A brief history of the mime , from its origins in Magna Graecia to its decline into pantomime, has already been given. During the period of Caesar and Cicero, mime was very popular on the Roman stage, partly because of the scantily clad female performers, whose costuming caused the form to be known also as fabula riciniata. An important mime writer of Caesar’s day, Decimus Laberius was by social class a knight, or equestrian. His political outspokenness provoked Caesar to force him to appear onstage in one of his own mimes, in a competition with the newcomer Publilius Syrus; Caesar awarded the prize to Laberius’s rival but restored him to his equestrian status. There are forty-four known titles of Laberius’s mimes, some showing interests similar to those of Atellan farce, some common also to the fabula togata, and others resembling palliatae. A second mime writer of the same period was Publilius, Laberius’s rival in the competition commanded by Caesar. Proverbial lines from his plays, mostly iambic senarii, were gathered into a corpus of sententiae in the first century c.e.

The Early Silver Age

During the Silver Age of Latin literature, which lasted from the death of Augustus in 14 c.e. to the death of Hadrian in 138 c.e., many important changes took place in the Western world: The Roman Empire spread and became firmly established; trade and provincial administration led to many cultural contacts between Rome and its provinces; and the emperors became so powerful that their individual capacities to influence the literature and the arts were very great, in some cases leading to positive developments (most were well educated and interested in literature), and in some cases stifling the growth of learning and creativity through their absolutism and the free exercise of their whims. From the early Silver Age, there are only scraps of information concerning the history of the drama. Germanicus (15 b.c.e.-19 c.e.), the nephew and adopted son of Tiberius, wrote Greek comedies, of which no fragments survive. Formal drama had declined, opening the way for the coarse and popular mime: The mime in this period, though not intellectually or morally uplifting, was often praised for its “slice of life” authenticity. Under the reign of Caligula, Catullus was an important mime writer, and there survive two titles, Phasma (first century c.e.; the ghost) and Laureolus (first century c.e.), the latter a play about a bandit that was made notorious when a real-life criminal played the title role and reportedly was actually crucified onstage. The fabula Atellana also enjoyed a resurgence of popularity at this time, with an occasional line or phrase covertly directed against an emperor. Tragedy was carried on through the fabulae salticae and also through dramatic recitations. The fabula saltica was a form in which a dancer pantomimed a story, while a chorus supplied the story line. The salticae were often based on unsavory stories from mythology, such as the tales of Pasiphaë and Leda, but prominent poets, such as Lucan and Statius, were among the authors. Little is known about the dramatic recitations of tragedy, beyond the fact that Nero favored them as a personal amusement.

The writing of drama was no doubt stifled by the arbitrary actions of the emperors: One Mamercus Scaurus came into severe disfavor for a line in his Atreus (first century c.e.) that alluded to a ruler’s folly, and Caligula had a writer of Atellan farce burned in the amphitheater for an insult. Pomponius Secundus, a writer of tragedy, survived surveillance by the emperor Tiberius but was later attacked by a mob in the theater, for unknown reasons; he survives in a single title, Aeneas, probably that of a fabula praetexta.

Senecan Tragedy

Seneca a great writer, philosopher, satirist, and poet of the Neronian period, also wrote tragedies, of which nine survive. The plays of Seneca were written for recitation, between 45 and 55 c.e., and not for presentation on the stage; the long, elaborate speeches and scenes clearly unsuited for the stage make this obvious. Seneca’s favorite model was Euripides, a somewhat kindred spirit, but Aeschylus and Sophocles also provided source material on occasion. Seneca’s adaptations go well beyond mere translation to include major plot modifications as well as complete changes in spirit and emphasis. The plays are clever, rhetorical, and outwardly philosophical, but they never approach the profound genius and moving examination of the deepest problems in the human universe found in Greek tragedy of the fifth century b.c.e.

Hercules furens (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; Mad Hercules, 1581)was based on Euripides’ Heracles, with a few modifications: The tyrant Lycus has proposed marriage to Hercules’ wife, Megara, in his absence (rather than threatening the lives of his sons); a lengthy description of the adventures of Theseus and Hercules has been added; and the killing of Hercules’ wife and children is imagined in dramatic portrayal rather than in messenger’s narration. Troades (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; The Trojan Women, 1581), based on Euripides’ The Trojan Women and Hecuba, drew also on two lost Sophoclean plays on the aftermath of Troy. Some scholars suggest that Seneca was, in addition, influenced here by Accius, the early Roman playwright, but there is no clear evidence of this. Phoenissae (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; The Phoenician Women, 1581), based on Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes, is preserved in somewhat fragmentary condition, but it is clear that Jocasta has not committed suicide in the immediate aftermath of Oedipus’s blinding, as she lives to attempt vainly to reconcile Polyneices and Eteocles. In Medea (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; English translation, 1581), modeled on Euripides’ play of the same title, the visit of Aegeus has been eliminated; a long passage on the magical powers of Medea has been added; and Medea’s children are not sent into exile, but Jason expresses his desire to keep them with him, and thus reveals his fatal vulnerability to his wife. Phaedra (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; English translation, 1581) looks back to Euripides’ Hippolytus, though not to the extant play, but to the unsuccessful earlier drama in which Phaedra confronted Hippolytus directly; in Seneca’s version, she also denounces him to Theseus in person and lives to clear Hippolytus in the end. The grotesque closing scene, in which the dead Hippolytus is reconstructed (with the exception of one piece of unknown anatomical identity), demonstrates the sometimes comical results of Senecan literality.

Seneca’s Oedipus (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; English translation, 1581) compares poorly with the Sophoclean masterpiece. Much space is devoted to the gruesome description of sacrifices and necromancy, in an attempt to replace the classic Sophoclean suspense with the establishment of a gloomy atmosphere. Jocasta and Oedipus face each other after the revelation of their kindred relationship, and Jocasta kills herself openly, again circumventing the Greek convention of the messenger’s speech. Seneca’s Agamemnon (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; English translation, 1581) also pales beside its famous predecessor. The watchman’s prologue is replaced by an appearance of the Ghost of Thyestes, in another attempt to set a spooky tone. Clytemnestra wavers in her resolve to kill Agamemnon, but Aegisthus convinces her to proceed. The purple carpet scene is replaced by a lengthy storm description, and the play climaxes with Electra’s daring rescue of her younger brother. Because several of these modifications are found also in Accius and Livius Andronicus, scholars have argued that they influenced Seneca, but the evidence is scarce, and a common post-Aeschylean Greek source cannot be ruled out. In his Thyestes (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; English translation, 1581) Seneca took up a legend popular among Roman writers, the cruel revenge of Atreus, who forced the unwitting title character to feast on his own dead sons. The Greek plays dealing with this material have not survived for comparison. Finally, Hercules Oetaeus (wr. c. 40-55 c.e.; Hercules on Oeta, 1581), a lengthy play that shows signs of reworking, either by Seneca himself or by another, derives from Sophocles’ The Women of Trachis. Here, Deianira loses her nobility to become a jealous shrew, Alcmena has been added as a character, and the deification has been incorporated into the play. It has been suggested that Ovid influenced Seneca in his treatment of this plot.

There are many weaknesses in Seneca’s tragedies: the artificial treatment of human nature, the pedantic use of a dramatically exhausted mythology, the monotony of character, the bombastic rhetoric, and the lack of straightforward dramatic depiction. Even so, Seneca’s plays contain some excellent speeches and interesting ideas, and the use of meter, both iambic trimeter and choral verse, shows polish and care. Most important is Seneca’s profound influence on postclassical Western drama, for Seneca provided the important link between Greek tragedy and the theater of the modern era.

Neronian Period Drama

Octavia the only extant fabula praetexta (historical tragedy), survives with the corpus of Seneca, but the appearance of Seneca himself as a character, and the very accurate and detailed prophecy of Nero’s death, argue convincingly that the play must be dated after the death of the emperor. Both the presence of ghosts and nurses and the meters imitate Seneca, but the repetition and the paucity of epigrams are uncharacteristic. The true author of the play remains unknown, and the date of composition is uncertain, though the years immediately following Nero’s death are most likely.

The play, set in Nero’s palace in 62 c.e., focuses on Octavia, the popular but ill-fated young woman who had already lost her father, the emperor Claudius, and her brother Britannicus, and had also been taken from her betrothed and forced to marry Nero, all through the machinations of Nero’s mother, Agrippina. Octavia now faces Nero’s plan to marry Poppaea and his consequent condemnation of Octavia to death, spurred by the spontaneous popular demonstration of support for the doomed empress; the death of Seneca is also a major event in the drama. The play ends with the lament of Octavia as she is led off to exile and death. Octavia is marred by endless repetition and grotesquely pedantic use of mythology.

In general, serious drama continued to be replaced by lesser forms in the Neronian period. In addition to the mimes, pantomimes, and fabulae salticae (discussed above), there was Nero’s personal ascent to the stage, described by Suetonius: The emperor appeared as Orestes, Oedipus, and the mad Hercules, probably reciting long passages rather than participating in full-length tragedies; in his farewell performance, he appeared as Oedipus in Exile, reciting in Greek iambics. Curiatius Maternus, an orator-turned-poet who appears in Tacitus’s Dialogus de oratoribus (c. 98-102; A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, 1754), wrote tragedies from the Greek in the Senecan mode, including a Medea and a Thyestes; two titles of fabulae praetextae also survive, Domitius and Cato. Juvenal and Martial mention the names of several other writers of tragedy, but about these little is known.

Statius and Minor Flavian Dramatists

Publius Papinius Statius primarily known as an epic poet, composed a libretto (now lost) for the actor Paris, titled Agave, which told the tragic story of Pentheus; the words of Statius were sung by a chorus, while Paris danced and pantomimed the tale. Much of the dramatic poetry of this period is lost, but there were a Scaeva (or Scaevius) Memor and a Canius Rufus, both of whom wrote tragedy, and there are traces of lost palliatae and togatae. Formal drama had essentially vanished from the Roman stage.

Bibliography

Beacham, Richard C. The Roman Theatre and Its Audience. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996. Traces the history of classical Roman theater, analyzing such aspects as staging, scenery, costuming, performance style, and the audience’s reaction to and influence on the nature and occasion of the performance. Particular attention given to Plautus and Terence.

Easterling, P. E. E., and B. M. W. Knox. Greek Drama: The Cambridge History of Classical Literature. Reprint. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Advances in recent scholarship are incorporated into this reprinted version of a classic text that offers a comprehensive survey of Greek literature from Homer to the third century c.e. Includes appendix of authors and works, a list of works cited, and an index.

Forman, Robert J. Classical Greek and Roman Drama: An Annotated Bibliography. Pasadena, Calif.: Salem Press, 1989. Introductory resource that includes individually authored bibliographies, an overview of Greek and Roman drama, and chapters covering playwrights such as Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Menander, Plautus, Seneca, Sophocles, and Terence. Within each chapter there are three sections, one covering translations and commentaries, the other two covering recommended criticism and general criticism.

Grene, David, and Richmond Lattimore, eds. The Complete Greek Tragedies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Provides new translations of Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Prometheus Bound, among several others. Includes introductions to the playwright, to Sophocles’ Theban trilogy, and brief critical commentaries preceding the other plays.

Hunter, R. L. The New Comedy of Greece and Rome. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Places the social comedy of Menander, Plautus, and Terence in its ancient context and considers its universal literary qualities.

Kelly, Henry Ansgar. Ideas and Forms of Tragedy from Aristotle to the Middle Ages. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Traces the shifting meanings given to tragedy throughout the ages, starting with Aristotle’s notions, via Roman ideas and practices, to the Middle Ages. Chapters include “Greek and Roman Poetics,” “Aristotle on the Tragic in General,” and “Modes and Subjects of Roman Tragedy.”

Ley, Graham. A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. In analyzing the surviving plays of the tragic writers Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and of the comedian Aristophanes, Ley explores the actor’s technique, the power and range of the chorus, the use of theatrical space, and parody in the plays.

Sutton, Dana Ferrin. Ancient Comedy: The War of the Generations. New York: Twayne, 1993. An overview chapter explores the origins of ancient comedy in Dionysiac festivals and the development of the comedic form. Subsequent chapters combine lively descriptions of the era’s rowdy plays with analyses of the historical context and the ubiquitous theme of intergenerational conflict.

Wiseman, T. P. Roman Drama and Roman History. Exeter, England: University of Exeter Press, 1998. Explores early Roman dramatic tradition and its role in creating and recycling the Roman past.