Ancient Greek Tragedy, The City Dionysia and Athenian Democracy

Of all creatures that have breath and sensation, we women are the most unfortunate. A man, whenever he is annoyed with the company of those in the house, goes elsewhere and thus rids his soul of its boredom. But we must fix our gaze on one person only. Men say that we live a life free from danger at home while they fight with a spear. How wrong they are. I would rather stand three times with a shield in battle than give birth once. Although this quote may appear surprisingly modern, it is not. This is a quote from an ancient Greek tragedy called Medea. Tragedy was, as you may know, one of the three main theater genres of ancient Greece, along with comedy and satire plays. Not only has Greek tragedy, like Medea, had a huge influence on modern theater, Greek tragedy also provides us with a window into the minds of the ancient Greeks and the moral themes which they thought worthy of exploring and, sometimes, with the quote I just read out, worth criticizing. So let's take a look at Greek tragedy. The origins of tragedy is one of those unsolved mysteries of the ancient world. Scholars have tried to put together the little amount of evidence that we have of its possible origins, but due to a lack of sources to begin with, and the questionable reliability of the sources that we do have, the picture is still kinda vague and we can't really say anything for certain. And me even trying to condense it into this video is already a slippery slope, but here we go anyway. According to historian Ruud Schodel, three innovations must have taken place for tragedy as we know it to exist. First, somebody created a new kind of performance by combining a speaker with a chorus and putting both speaker and chorus in disguise as characters in a story from legend or history. Second, this performance was made part of the city Dionysia at Athens. I will get back to what the city Dionysia was in a minute. Third, regulations defined how it was to be managed and paid for. One of the ancient sources that discuss the development of tragedy is a poetics from this guy called Aristotle, you may have heard of him. In his poetics, he tells us that tragedy evolved from an earlier ritual in praise of the god Dionysus called dithyrams. You can basically think of dithyrams as the singing of hymns for Dionysus, which also included some dancing. Further, ancient tradition seems to credit one man called Tespas with being the first person to act out certain scenes during these dithyrams, creating the genre of tragedy. The problem lies in the fact that there is a disturbing lack of contemporary evidence of the time of the invention of tragedy, which results in historians doubting the account of our main sources that we have. Further, some historians argue that we can't really say anything for certain about tragedy before its first mention in inscriptions around 502 to 501 BCE. One thing that we do know about the development of Greek tragedy is that the inclusion of the genre in a yearly festival in honor of the god Dionysus held in the city of Athens, called the Great or City Dionysia, contributed greatly to its development and popularity. It is at this festival in the city of Athens that Greek tragedy experienced its golden age during the 5th century BCE, and it's also from the city Dionysia that most of our fully surviving tragedies come from. Traditionally, the story went that the Athenian tyrant Pisotreus invented or at least extended an already existing annual festival to the god Dionysus and added a tragedy contest. But again, evidence is unconclusive whether or not this actually was the case, leading again to scholars doubting this development. There is way more to this discussion about the origins and development of tragedy, but for our collective state of mind, I would like to continue to something which we know a lot more about, and that is the city Dionysia itself. A few days before the city Dionysia began, the poet, together with their chorus and actors, would appear in a separate event we call a Proagon, where they would give a short presentation about the general theme of their tragedy. They would appear without their costumes and iconic tragedy masks. As there was a maximum of three actors in a tragedy, the mask where needed to change between characters and them appearing without them would give the audience a chance to get to know the actors as they would be fully clothed during the performances itself. The official start of the festival would be a sacrificial procession, or Pompeii, to the temple of Dionysus in the theater district. This procession would accompany a so-called worthy bull that would be sacrificed at the end of the procession. Included in the procession were the men who were paying for the tragedy performances, called the koregos. They were paraded in elaborate robes and some even wore golden crowns, which is kind of odd for a democracy. I will talk a bit more about the koregos in more detail in a short while, so keep this special treatment in the procession in mind for later. Anyway, next it was time for more political events of the festival. I won't get into all the ceremonies that were included, but here is one that stood out to me. From the period of the Athenian Empire, we know that before the tragedies began, the tribute collectors from Athens' allies were displayed in the theater of Dionysus. This aspect of the festival clearly shows that Athens used the city Dionysia to publicly display its power and wealth to the rest of the Greek world, especially if you consider that foreigners were also allowed to visit the festival. While there were other places in Attica to watch tragedies, like the several smaller rural Dionysia scattered all across Attica, the city Dionysia was by far the biggest, and with its estimate of 15,000 spectators, it was Athens' most visited yearly event. People gratefully made use of this occasion to make speeches for all kinds of things which they wanted to get the widest possible attention for. This included things like naming the honors they had received, or even to announce the freeing of a slave. From these ceremonies, we get the general idea that the city Dionysia was way more than just a religious event where you could watch tragedies, but that there were a lot of alternative political motives at play at the festival. After these speeches, there was the actual important part for our story, which was the tragedy contest, where three poets were selected to perform a series of three tragedies and one satire play. Comedy and dithyrams would also be performed at the festival, but that is of course not the focus of this video. In order to participate in the tragedy contest, a poet first had to apply to a specially appointed magistrate in charge of the festival. We do not know exactly how the magistrate went about choosing which poet could participate in the contest, but a passage from Plato suggests that the poet had to read out samples of their play to the magistrate. As stated before, tragedy was a performative art. As a result, it produced its own little conventions and quirks, so let's take a look at a few of these. First, the audience in the theater was seated in an area which is referred to as a coelon. However, this area is also referred to as a theatron. The big open space below the coelon was called the orchestra. This was the primary place for the chorus to perform. Speaking of the chorus, they could leave and enter the orchestra via two passageways to the side called the parodos. In the orchestra, there was also an altar called the timule. Of course, offerings could be made there, but it may also have been used as a platform for the chorus leader. Behind the stage, there was a structure where actors could rest and change clothing called the scenae. These architectural names are the source of many modern terms, like the word scene. There is one footnote to all of this. Since theaters were often rebuilt or modified, we don't really have a clear picture of how the theater looked for the tragedy performances during the 5th century BCE. For example, the seating area and the scenae were probably just made of wood during the Golden Age of Tragedy, so don't imagine these giant monumental structures during this period. It is even believed that the theatrical performances didn't even took place in the theater at all, instead being performed in the aqueduct until the 5th century when supposedly the structure there collapsed and they had to build a new theater. When we look at inventions made for the Greek theater, the Deux Ex Magna is probably the most famous. It literally means the god from the machine, and it was a giant crane meant to take Didi offstage. Another contraption designed for the theater was the Eke Clema. Since showing murder on stage was not really done in theater, the Eke Clema was a rolling card to bring out dead bodies from the scenae. While the city paid for the actors and the poet himself, the rest of the performance would be funded by someone we call a koregos. You know, the guy I told you to remember from earlier. Well, did you remember? The koregos was a wealthy Athenian citizen who paid for everything a good tragedy needed, including the chorus. Now, here's the interesting part. When a poet won the contest, the name of the koregos was included in the victory monument together with the name of the poet and the name of the tragedy itself. By this fact, and the special place in the sacrificial procession we talked about earlier, it is safe to say that the koregos was a very prestigious position within Athenian society. A wealthy Athenian citizen could basically buy himself prestige. Prestige which then could be used for political means. For example, the famous Athenian politician Thermostocles was koregos in 476 BCE. Another, maybe even more famous politician, Pericles was koregos in 472 BCE when he was just at the beginning of his political career, showing the city that he belonged among the wealthy elite. During his time as koregos, he funded a play about the victory over the Persians at the battle of Salamis. It turned out that one of Athens' most powerful politicians at the time, Thermostocles, had played a major part in winning the battle. It has thus been argued that the young Pericles wanted to show his support for Thermostocles. Whether or not that was his actual motive, we simply don't know. But Pericles certainly used the city Dionysia to promote himself and boost his political prestige. As we know, he would later become the most powerful man in Athens, overseeing at least part of the new construction on top of the Acropolis. After the tragedies were performed, a special jury elected the winner. This voting process was a complex one, but here's the simplified version. Each of the ten tribes into which the Athenian cynicism body was divided, would provide one juror. Their names were vetted, then sealed into a jar, and would only be opened in a theater just before the performances began. The judges would cast their vote and put their ballot into an urn. The first five ballots were drawn from the urn and publicly read out. If any of the tragedies had three or more votes, they won. If this wasn't the case, two more ballots were drawn and read out. If any of the tragedies had four or more votes at this point, it would win. If at this point no one had won, another ballot would be drawn and this would continue until a winner was chosen. The weird thing about this system is that roughly 18% of the time, the winner was not the production that had received the most votes. This element of chance would allow for the gods to interfere or something and cast their judgment. But there was an interesting alternative purpose for this randomness as well. If any of the poets felt like they had lost too much, or felt like they had no chance against the older and more popular poets, this small element of chance took away some of that fear. Still, the element of chance involved was small enough that the honor of winning the contest was not belittled, but still large enough to mediate the effects of making people insecure or angry. While we know of the existence of more than 300 tragedies, today we sadly only have 32 complete ones. These are split between the three so-called great tragedians. In chronological order, the first is Aeschylus, from who we have 7 tragedies, including the only fully surviving trilogy, the Oreasta. Next was Sophocles, from who we also have 7 surviving tragedies. And third is Euripides, from who we have 18 surviving tragedies, including the only fully surviving satire play, Cyclops. Most of these tragedies were about mythological events, with the large exception of Persians, which is about the battle of Salamis. Now, throughout this video, you may have wondered what the exact purpose was of Greek tragedy. Sure, it can be seen as a means of artistic expression by the poet, and a means of entertainment for the people of Athens, which is kind of true. But when we take a look at the fact that Greek tragedy was institutionalized in the city Dionysia, something else must be going on. Luckily for us, a lot of research has been done to this exact question. As you may be aware, Athens was a democracy. This was also true during the golden age of tragedy during the 5th century. Most people during this period were illiterate, and there wasn't really something present in Athens that resembles our modern education system. It has thus been argued that the tragedy performances, and to a certain extent, all public speeches, were a means for democratic Athens to educate its citizens. In the words of prominent historian Geoffrey W. Bakewell, It is at any time difficult to learn from the mistakes of others. Yet the Athenians sought to do so via tragedy, enlarging their humane sympathies and honoring their intellects with the plays staged each march in the theater of Dionysus. Time and again, they discovered that language, reasoned argument, and intellectual analysis, although flawed, nevertheless remained the best tools they had for understanding themselves and the complicated, dangerous world around them. This process, I argue, was the mental education that best prepared them to take up their political duties in assembly, council, and law courts.