1.7 The Tragedy

It was Athens, the democratic city-state par excellence, who created and sponsored the tragedy, an art form that immediately received the place of honor, after Homer, on any other poetic form, not only among the Athenians, but among the Greeks in general. Plutarch recounts in his Life of Nicias that some of the Athenians captured in Syracuse in 413 lives were saved thanks to their ability to recite from memory Euripides. And this shows very well the dignity that the tragedy had reached. Its origins are obscure though. Lyric poetry finds its origin in the fact that men have always used the song during solemnity and especially in their relations with the gods. The lyric poetry, as the name indicates, was a poem that was accompanied by the sound of the lyre (and later by the flute). Often singing, specie is corale was, accompanying a dance or mime, and sometimes the dancers wore a mask to represent, for example, satyrs always associated with Dionysus. It is not surprising that the central deity was Dionysus, in this attempt made in Greece in the sixth century to put the lyric poetry, in an organic relationship with the ancient rites. Come Demetra, the goddess of fertility, Dionysus occupied a special place in the pantheon of the gods: virtually ignored by Homer, and not included among the Olympians, although he was the son of Zeus, Dionysus reached an eminent position in the official state religion, while remaining a popular god predominantly, the god of wine and revelry, dell'estasi, frenzy and orgiastic rites.

The combination of lyric poetry and Dionysian ritual formed the prehistory of the tragedy. What ensued, in fact, was neither a ritual dance, nor a choral celebration of the god, or a combination of the two, but something new and different, that is, the theater. At this point, therefore, i Greci, or rather the Athenians, invented the idea of ​​the theater, invented as well as many other social and cultural institutions that then remained as an obvious part of the heritage of the West.

The idea of ​​the theater resulted in dramas and actors through which private individuals, not equipped with any priestly authority or other, publicly examining the fate of man, and commented, not merely to sing hymns to the gods or to stage a ritual drama, as in the re-enactment of the myth of Demeter, who seems to have been the climax of the Eleusinian mysteries, but representing a poetic action that, despite the many elements tied to tradition, was a creation of the playwright. The Greeks approached the epic tragedy because this new creation was just as bold and revolutionary, with an efficacy destined to survive long in the company that had produced.

The tragedy was not a ritual drama, while maintaining close ties with religion, through an integral association with the holidays and then, because the Greeks were always Greeks, through the agonistic character of poetic production. Most of the tragedy was the first appearance at the Great Dionysia, or City Dionysia that were held in Athens in early spring and it was the most beautiful of the four annual festivals in honor of Dionysus, Athens. The first day was dedicated to a colorful ceremonial procession - culminating in the sacrifice of a bull and the solemn deposition of the statue of the god in the theater - and then in a contest hate dithyrambic choruses performed for ten, five men and five youths, each consisting of fifty elements and accompanied by flutes. The second day is accounted for five comedies c. Then came the competition of tragedies that lasted three whole days, each assigned to one of the competing playwrights, who had written for the occasion three tragedies, This is three one-act plays - they could be linked together to form a trilogy, but the link could be missing and it seems that this was most often the case - and a quarter of drama totally different kind, a grotesque satyr.

Active participants in these celebrations amounted to no less than a thousand men and boys, who had already spent a lot of time in practice, and the theater could hold 14 thousand spectators sitting on bleachers outdoors, which dominated the runway for dances, Call orchestra (a simple circular space) and, behind it, the stage with his simple backdrop and stage machinery. The festivities were repeated every year, Also during the Peloponnesian War, and always with new works. During the fifth century was introduced at several festivals rural children use to stage works already represented at the City Dionysia, but until the 386 never happened that a tragedy already represented, were shooting at the main festival. The authors of tragedies, year to year writing new dramas in the hope of the only representation at the City Dionysia. And for many playwrights hope this could be in vain, date of the rule represent only a playwright day, for three days in a row. The City Dionysia were a big communal celebration, exceeded only by the grandeur of the Great Panathenaic, held every four years in honor of Athena, the patron goddess of the polis. The highest official of the State, arconte epónimo, elected annually, presided over the preparations for the feast, and his duties included the selection of playwrights who were to enter the race. The costs of staging, not negligible, were supported in part directly from the public treasury, were huddled in part to the citizens of the wealthier classes, exactly as was done for control and for the financing of warships. The contest was decided by a jury of five members, chosen in a rather complicated passing the inevitable draw.

Aristotle says in the Poetics of the six constituent elements of tragedy, the most important is the combination of the facts. Because the tragedy is an imitation (mimesis) not of men, but of action. In his analysis, he stresses the need to take all the drama as a whole, being the larger whole of its parts, the largest share of music, of poetry and the individual characteristics, As can be essential for each of these elements. Only if you see or read a tragedy in one continuous session, if you can appreciate the right effect: the incessant tension, the high tone and poetic language, long speeches (complicated) e le odi, full of allusions and dark and oracular, the total concentration on the problems of human existence, the conduct of man and his destiny under the power and authority of God. All this gave the tragedy of his more high-quality religious, made more concrete by direct reference to the oracles, the prophecies and gods; dll'uso of myth as a normal source of those facts; the masks and costumes and dances which the Greeks were accustomed in their rituals.

Until the late fourth century, tragedy was regularly represented only in Athens, idrammi and all were evidently written for the races Athenians. There were no Athenian dramatists, free to join, also reported that sometimes the first prize, but there is no known author who has written an Athenian tragedy devoted to their city.

The lives of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides span the fifth century. Overall, they wrote 300 dramas, of which only 32 have come down to us.
Of the other 150 tragic authors, that you know the names, and in some cases have enjoyed considerable fame, there is now even a drama. There is reason to believe that the process of selection took place through the centuries has transmitted to us the best texts. The theater of Dionysus, that in the fifth century was still primitive, in IV was transformed into a magnificent amphitheater of stone, while it rose to similar to Delphi, Epidaurus and other cities of Hellas. Clearly, the Athens of the fifth century offered somehow the atmosphere in which this art could flourish.

The political allusions are not uncommon in the dramas, and some of them, as the Persians of Aeschylus, written less than ten years after the battle of Salamis, abandoned the realm of myth to take place in a contemporary setting. The great Dionysia was a celebration of community, religion an affair of the polis, and when touched playwrights political arguments, they never prospettavano the moral implications and practical policy issues, thus remaining political opinions private absolutely elusive.

The conditions of participation for playwrights shad imposed strict limits in the use of actors and chorus, in the choice of themes, in the structure of the plays, LRO in poetic language and meter (structure of the verse). Aeschylus introduced a second actor; Sophocles then he added a third, and hence the development of this art form was completed. The part of the choir was gradually limited, until Euripides in many of his dramas reduced it to little more than a musical interlude.

Often one gets the impression that Euripides, if he could, would have broken all the predetermined frame of the tragedy; could not do it and was a dramatist penthouse, but he also, like its predecessors, could fathom freedom with the myths and traditional beliefs, as well as the new problems raised by the company, as the new Socratic rationalism, or the humanity of the slaves, or liability and the corruption of power. And that was represented in Athens, in front of the largest gatherings of men, women and children, and even slaves, that they had never before brought together. The seats of honor in the theater were among the highest premiums that the state could assign, coveted by foreigners as distinguished from the same Athenians.

It seems impossible to determine what were the feelings of all of these viewers, many of whom attended regularly for three whole days and consecutive poetic dramas often difficult and complex.

After the Peloponnesian War, while remaining long been a popular form of art, las tragedy quickly became an art secondary, derivation, the work of the old masters who lived more than creations of new and vital.