The three great Greek tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), including their major plays, dramatic innovations and the philosophical concerns of fifth-century Athenian tragedy

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to know the three great Athenian tragedians, their major plays, and their differences in form and theme. Strong answers can name specific plays and dates, identify the tragedian's distinctive contribution, and analyse a scene from at least one play in detail.

The answer

The three tragedians

Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides are the three Athenian tragedians whose plays survive in any number. The festival competitions of the fifth century BCE involved many other tragedians (Choerilus, Phrynichus, Pratinas, Ion of Chios, Agathon and others), but their work is lost except for fragments.

The surviving plays total around thirty-three: seven by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, nineteen by Euripides (including the satyr play Cyclops). The discrepancy is partly accident of preservation; Euripides was studied more in late antiquity, so more of his work was copied.

Aeschylus (around 525 to 456 BCE)

The oldest of the three. Fought at the Battle of Marathon (490 BCE) against the Persians; the experience shaped his sense of Athenian civic identity.

Major innovations

Added the second actor, enabling dialogue between characters. Earlier tragedy had been chorus plus one actor. The two-actor innovation transformed Greek drama into a dialogue form.

Surviving plays

The Persians (472 BCE, the earliest surviving play); Seven Against Thebes (467 BCE); The Suppliants (around 463 BCE); The Oresteia trilogy (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides, 458 BCE); Prometheus Bound (the attribution is disputed; possibly post-Aeschylean).

The Oresteia

A trilogy that follows the curse on the house of Atreus across three plays. Agamemnon returns from Troy and is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. Their son Orestes avenges Agamemnon by killing Clytemnestra. The Furies pursue Orestes; the Athenian court of the Areopagus ultimately acquits him. The Eumenides ends with the goddesses of vengeance being persuaded to become protective spirits of Athens. The trilogy is the canonical study of justice transitioning from vendetta to civic law.

Style

Grand, archaic, with extensive choral material. The chorus is dramatically central. The language is dense with metaphor and ritual cadence.

Sophocles (around 497 to 406 BCE)

The middle figure of the three. Lived through the high period of Athenian democracy and into the Peloponnesian War. Won the City Dionysia eighteen times.

Major innovations

Added the third actor; raised the chorus from twelve to fifteen; introduced painted scenery (skenographia).

Surviving plays

Ajax (around 442 BCE); Antigone (around 441 BCE); Oedipus the King / Oedipus Tyrannus (around 429 BCE); The Women of Trachis; Electra; Philoctetes (409 BCE); Oedipus at Colonus (produced posthumously, 401 BCE).

Oedipus the King

Oedipus, king of Thebes, learns over the course of one day that he is the murderer of King Laius (and his own father), and the husband of Queen Jocasta (his mother). The play observes a tight unity of time and place. The dramatic irony is sustained from the opening: the audience knows what Oedipus will discover. Aristotle treats Oedipus as the model tragic plot (Poetics, Chapter 13).

Antigone

After the death of her brothers Eteocles and Polynices on opposite sides of a civil war, Antigone defies King Creon's edict and buries Polynices. Creon orders her execution. Antigone hangs herself; Creon's son Haemon (her fiance) kills himself; Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself. The play is the foundational study of civil disobedience and the conflict between divine and civic law.

Style

Tight plotting, psychologically textured characters, a chorus integrated into the dramatic action, and an interest in the limits of human knowledge and the workings of fate.

Euripides (around 480 to 406 BCE)

The youngest of the three. Less successful in his lifetime (won the City Dionysia only four times in his lifetime, plus a posthumous fifth), more popular in later antiquity.

Major innovations

Naturalistic prologues (often a single character addressing the audience directly). Greater use of the deus ex machina. More psychologically textured female characters. Critical engagement with the inherited mythology, often showing the gods in unflattering light.

Surviving plays

Around nineteen, including Alcestis (438 BCE); Medea (431 BCE); Hippolytus (428 BCE); Andromache; Hecuba; The Trojan Women (415 BCE); Electra; Iphigenia in Tauris; Helen; The Phoenician Women; Orestes (408 BCE); Iphigenia at Aulis; The Bacchae (produced posthumously around 405 BCE); and the satyr play Cyclops.

Medea (431 BCE)

Medea, abandoned by Jason for the king's daughter, takes revenge by murdering her own children and the new bride. The play gives Medea sustained psychological argument with herself about whether to commit the murder. The chorus of Corinthian women is largely sympathetic, which complicates the audience's moral position. The play ends with Medea escaping in a dragon-drawn chariot (the mechane).

The Trojan Women (415 BCE)

After the sack of Troy, the Trojan women (Hecuba, Cassandra, Andromache, Helen) wait to be parcelled out as slaves. The play stages the price paid by the defeated. Performed in 415 BCE shortly after the Athenian massacre at Melos, the play has often been read as a critique of Athenian imperialism.

The Bacchae (around 405 BCE)

Dionysus, disguised as a stranger, comes to Thebes to enforce his cult. King Pentheus resists. Dionysus drives Pentheus's mother Agave and the other Theban women into a frenzy, and in the frenzy they tear Pentheus apart. The play is at once an examination of ecstatic religion, repression and madness, and a self-reflexive piece about theatre itself (the festival was a Dionysian rite).

Style

Psychologically textured, often deliberately uncomfortable, willing to centre women and outsiders, formally adventurous. Aristotle judged Euripides "the most tragic of poets" despite criticising his plot construction.

Common themes across the three tragedians

Fate and free will

Greek tragedy repeatedly stages the conflict between what is fated and what characters choose. Oedipus's failure to escape the prophecy is the canonical example.

The gods and humans

The gods appear directly in many tragedies (Aeschylus's Eumenides, Euripides's Bacchae) and indirectly throughout. Aeschylus presents the gods as ultimately just; Sophocles is more ambiguous; Euripides often presents them as cruel or arbitrary.

The household and the city

Many tragedies examine the conflict between household loyalty (oikos) and civic obligation (polis). Antigone is the classic study; the Oresteia ends with the establishment of civic justice over household vendetta.

Knowledge and ignorance

Oedipus's discovery is the canonical study. Greek tragedy often dramatises the cost of knowing what one previously did not.

Suffering and meaning

The tragedies repeatedly ask what suffering means and what humans can learn from it. Aeschylus's "wisdom through suffering" (pathei mathos) in Agamemnon is the foundational formulation.

Modern productions

Greek tragedy continues to be produced regularly. Contemporary Australian productions of note include:

• Belvoir's Medea (2012, directed by Anne-Louise Sarks), played by Blazey Best, framing the play through the perspective of the children.
• The Wharf Revue's various Greek adaptations.
• Patricia Cornelius's Big Heart (2014), drawing on Aeschylean structures.
• Simon Stone's adaptations including The Wild Duck (after Ibsen) and Yerma (after Lorca), which engage with the tragic tradition.

International productions of note include Peter Hall's National Theatre Oresteia (1981, in masks), Katie Mitchell's various Greek productions for the National Theatre, and Robert Icke's Oresteia (2015) at the Almeida.

Why these tragedians matter for HSC

If Greek theatre is your prescribed elective, you will probably study at least one play by Sophocles (typically Oedipus or Antigone) and one by Euripides (typically Medea). Strong essays place the play in the context of fifth-century BCE Athens and use specific scenes to analyse the tragedian's distinctive contribution.