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reasons for Greek victory and Persian defeat during the Persian Wars.
THE CONCEPT OF MODERN TRAGEDY
persian and greece war
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Where did tragedy originate, and who decided that killing the main characters of a play was best way to communicate his plot? Tragedy was invented by the Greeks long ago. In the fourth year of the sixty-third Olympiad, or 525 B.C., the first great tragic playwright was born (“Aeschylus”). The playwright's name was Aeschylus, son of Euphorion ("Aeschylus"), and he wrote about ninety plays, though the number is uncertain, seven of which have withstood the tests of time (Kopff). His works have been incredible to the point that he earned the title "Father of Tragedy" (Kopff).
How did Aeschylus write such great tragedies? He looked at his surroundings in the world. His world was in Athens, Greece, and he saw the beginning of democracy, which came to be a theme of The Oresteia (Kopff). In the government in Athens, white males could be citizens with rights to vote. However, the Persians attempted a takeover of Athens, among other Greek city-states, and Aeschylus abandoned his work as a tragic poet to fight for the Greeks. Athens was one of only four cities to refuse to submit to the Persians, who were then provoked to attack at Marathon, outnumbering the Greeks three to one (Lacey 44). In a battle that shocked everyone, the Greeks pulled through and won the battle (Lacey 44). Thereafter, the Greeks who fought at Marathon were known as "hard as oak" (Lacey 44). The Greek continued to win battles at Salamis and Plataea, and they continued to shock everyone (Lacey 44). After the Persian War, the Greeks proposed one and only one explanation for their seemingly inexplicable victory: the Persians were not tough enough to fight (Lacey 45). Soon enough, this idea developed into the stereotype that the Persians are "those soft sons of luxury,"...
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...bly saw in the Persian war to develop his imagery and the stereotype of the Persians. However, he also contributed the most to the development of tragedy, which, in turn, influenced William Shakespeare to write his masterpieces. Aeschylus is responsible for an everlasting mark on the world of theater.
Works Cited
“Aeschylus and His Tragedies.” Theatrehistory.com. Web. 17 March 2014.
Flickinger, Roy C. The Greek Theater and Its Drama. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1918. Print.
Kopff, E. Christian. “Aeschylus.” Gale Virtual Reference Library. Gale Group, 2014. Web. 31 March 2014.
Lacey, Jim. “The Persian Fallacy.” Military History 29.2 (2012): 42-51. OmniFile Full Text Select (H.W. Wilson). Web. 31 March 2014.
Ley, Graham. Ancient Greek Theater. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991. Print.
A few of Euripides's most famous tragedies are Hippolytus, The Bacchae, Alcestis, and Medea. He displayed his first set of tragedies at the Great Dionysia in 455 B.C., but did not win his first award until 441. In fact, he won only five awards and the fifth of these was announced subsequent to his death. Medea won 3rd prize, Alcestis won second as well as The Trojan Women. Iphigenia at Aulis, Bacchae, and Hippolytus took 1st place. The Cyclops, the only complete satyr play that exists, was written early in Euripides' career. It is a funny version of Odysseus' encounter with the one-eyed beast, Polyphemus. And although this spirit of faith is difficult to recognize in many of Euripides' later plays, it never entirely fades. A few of his dramas, such as Helena, comes close to being a comedy. Even in The Bacchae, he mixes comedy with tragic. Thus, by dissolving the rigid structure of tragedy, Euripides created new forms of drama, as well as hybrids of existing
Aeschylus was the first of the tragedy writers. He took the theaters origins and focused less on reciting patterns, dealing more with the presentation of action. Born under tyranny, he grew up during the period in which the Persian empire was attempting to conquer Athens. Aeschylus was born in 525 B.C. His youth was most likely spent in the city of Pallene with his father, Euphorion, and his brother. It was a repressive time, under the rule of Peisis...
Beacham, Richard C. Later Stages and Stagings. The Roman Theater and its Audience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ Press, 1992.
Many people seem to be under the impression that the Aeneid is a celebration of Roman glory, led by the hero of fate Aeneas. I find these preconceived ideas hard to reconcile with my actual reading of the text. For starters, I have a hard time viewing Aeneas as a hero at all. Almost any other main characters in the epic, from Dido to Camilla to Turnus, have more heroic qualities than Aeneas. This is especially noteworthy because many of these characters are his enemies. In addition, Aeneas is presented as a man with no free will. He is not so much bound to duty as he is shielded by it. It offers a convenient way for hum to dodge crucial moral questions. Although this doesn’t necessarily make him a bad person, it certainly makes him a weak one. Of course some will argue that it takes greater moral conviction to ignore personal temptation and act for the good of the people. These analysts are dodging the issue just like Aeneas does. The fact is that Aeneas doesn’t just sacrifice his own personal happiness for the common good; he also sacrifices the past of the Trojan people, most notably when he dishonors the memory of his fallen city by becoming the men he hated most, the Greek invaders. The picture of Aeneas as seen in the end of the Aeneid bears some sticking resemblances to his own depiction of the savage and treacherous Greeks in the early books.
The peloponnesian war was a difficult time for the people of Athens. Along with the general discomforts of war, the Athenians also experienced famine, disease, and political unrest. These factors influenced Aristophanes during his productions of Lysistrata and Acharnians. When performed Aristophanes made sure to include some political agenda lines as well as some comedy so as to keep it light. This form was used to undermine the support of democracy in Athens by showing the audience the folly of the current system and in places propose how it could be different.
* Scully, J & Herington, C.J., Aeschylus: Prometheus Bound (Oxford University Press, New York 1975)
The ancient Greeks and Romans made a variety of contributions to western civilization in the field of literature. Both of these ancient cultures produced a variety of literary works which have persevered the test of time and continue to be studied today. One of the biggest contributions of the ancient Greeks to literature came from an author, who still relatively little is known about, Homer. Homer, believed by many to have been blind, is credited with the authorship of two of ancient Greece’s most famous epic poems, The Iliad and The Odyssey. These two epic poems chronicle the final days of the Trojan War and the epic struggle Odysseus underwent on his sea voyage back to his home after the tragic war. These two epics have had a profound impact on western literature and continue to influence literary scholars and authors to this day. The following excerpt from Bio descries the impact of these ancient poems, “The Iliad and The Odyssey have provided not only seeds but fertilizer for almost all the other arts and sciences in Wester...
Aeschylus. Prometheus Bound. trans. David Greene and Richmond Lattimore. University of Chicago Press. Chicago. 1942.
Have you ever wondered what life was like before technology? The playwrights of ancient Greece had to do all that work without wikianswers. Ancient Greek Theatre was a big and celebrated occasion in that time period. The Ancient Greek play by Aeschylus, The Persians, was greatly influenced by the culture as well as the economic status of Greece, and the political leaders at the time.
This paper aims to study two significant playwrights, Sophocles and Euripides, and compare their respective attitudes by examining their plays in respect to plot and character structures. To achieve this goal, the paper is organized into two main sections. In the first section, we provide a brief biography of both Sophocles and Euripides. The second and last section includes summaries of Sophocles’ Electra and Euripides’ Electra which were based on same essentials and give an opportunity to observe the differences of the playwrights. This section also includes the comparisons that are made by our observations about the plays.
Aristotle defined tragedy in his respected piece Poetics that defined the tragedy and many other forms of literature. Many tragic heroes such as Oedipus Rex and Romeo and Juliet fit well into this mold of a tragic hero as defined by Aristotle. For example, they were flawed but well intentioned and their lives ended in a catastrophic death. Those plays, and many others in the genre, had all the elements of a tragedy: plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle. They were fantastic displays of misery that aroused pity and fear in the audience.
In Aristotle’s book, Poetics, he defines tragedy as, “an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and possessing magnitude; in embellished language, each kind of which is used separately in the different parts; in the mode of action and not narrated; and effecting through pity and fear” (Aristotle 1149). Tragedy creates a cause and effect chain of actions that clearly gives the audience ideas of possible events. The six parts to Aristotle’s elements of tragedy are: Plot, character, language, thought, spectacle, and melody. According to Aristotle, the most important element is the plot. Aristotle writes in Poetics that, “It is not for the purpose of presenting their characters that the agents engage in action, but rather it is for the sake of their actions that they take on the characters they have” (Aristotle 1150). Plots should have a beginning, middle, and end that have a unity of actions throughout the play making it complete. In addition, the plot should be complex making it an effective tragedy. The second most important element is character. Characters...
According to Aristotle, a tragedy must be an imitation of life in the form of a serious story that is complete in itself among many other things. Oedipus is often portrayed as the perfect example of what a tragedy should be in terms of Aristotle’s Poetics. Reason being that Oedipus seems to include correctly all of the concepts that Aristotle describes as inherent to dramatic tragedy. These elements include: the importance of plot, reversal and recognition, unity of time, the cathartic purging and evocation of pity and fear, the presence of a fatal flaw in the “hero”, and the use of law of probability.
In Greek tragedy, three masters were paramount. They were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. These three playwrights all wrote for the festivals of Dionysius, but none of the three were alike. Aeschylus writes about Athenian power, arrogance, and ancient rule. Sophocles accepts the gods as the way they are. He does not believe in the violation of cosmic order. Euripides questions spirit. He also faults the old way of doing things.
Greek Drama had three main categories The Comedy, Satyr Plays, and The Tragedy. The most popular of the three is The Tragedy, its themes are often such as loss of love, complex relationships between men and the gods, and corruption of power. These dramas taught the people of the city the difference between good and bad behavior and the ramifications of going against the gods. According to Aristotle, the perfect tragedy consisted of the downfall of the hero through a great misunderstanding, causing suffering and awareness for the protagonist meanwhile making the audience feel pity and fear. The prominent writer who Aristotle based his perfect tragedy theory was Sophocles, his drama Oedipus the King had all the elements of a perfect tragedy.