A New Companion to Greek Tragedy (Routledge Revivals)

Andrew Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317808183
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia antigua

That the works of the ancient tragedians still have an immediate and profound appeal surely needs no demonstration, yet the modern reader continually stumbles across concepts which are difficult to interpret or relate to – moral pollution, the authority of oracles, classical ideas of geography – as well as the names of unfamiliar legendary and mythological figures.

A New Companion to Greek Tragedy provides a useful reference tool for the 'Greekless' reader: arranged on a strictly encyclopaedic pattern, with headings for all proper names occurring in the twelve most frequently read tragedies, it contains brief but adequately detailed essays on moral, religious and philosophical terms, as well as mythical genealogies where important. There are in addition entries on Greek theatre, technical terms and on other writers from Aristotle to Freud, whilst the essay by P. E. Easterling traces some connections between the ideas found in the tragedians and earlier Greek thought.

A

Abae [a′bē] A city in Phocis; site of a famous oracle of Apollo. The place mentioned before Abae at Soph. OT 898-9 is Delphi.

Acastus [aka′stus] Son of Pelias of Iolcus. When Peleus of Phthia was Acastus’s guest, Acastus’s wife fell in love with him, and, since he resisted her advances, falsely accused him of trying to seduce her. Thus there arose a feud between Acastus and Peleus, of which various accounts are given.

Achaea [akē′a] A region of the northern Peloponnese (also a region of Thessaly, mentioned only at Aesch. Pers. 488). Homer, however, uses ‘Achaean’ as his commonest word for ‘Greek’ (see Hellas). In tragedy ‘Achaean’ bears its strict sense at Soph. El. 701, but normally means ‘Greek’ or sometimes ‘Peloponnesian’; the ‘Achaean land’ of Eur. El. 1285 is apparently the Peloponnese.

Achelous [akelō′us] A large river of western Greece, thought of, when personified, as the father of all other streams and rivers. At Eur. Bacch. 625 the name is used to mean simply ‘water’.

Acheron [a′keron] One of the rivers of the Underworld. The name suggests achos, ‘pain, distress’. Those newly dead might be thought of as crossing Acheron on a ship, and at Aesch. Sept. 854-60 that ship is pictured as a theōris rowed by the arm-beats of mourners and carried down-wind by their sighs (see lamentation). Acheron can also be personified as a god of death.

Achilles [aki′lēz] The greatest of the Greek warriors at Troy. He was the son of Peleus, King of Phthia, and of the sea-nymph Thetis. As a boy he was brought up on Mount Pelion (or Ossa) by the wise Centaur Chiron (the ‘horse-father’ of Eur. El. 448-9; but the ‘tutor’ or ‘foster-father’ of Soph. Phil. 344 is Phoenix). Later, fearing that he would be killed if he joined the expedition to Troy, his mother took him to Scyros, where she left him, disguised as a girl, in the care of the King, Lycomedes. There he fell in love with the King’s daughter, Deidamia, and by her became the father of Neoptolemus. His identity was discovered, and he was forced to go to Troy.

The Iliad of Homer is the story of the Wrath of Achilles in the tenth year of the war. Thinking himself slighted by the Greek commander-in-chief, Agamemnon, he refuses to fight for most of the poem, and the Trojans, led by Priam’s son Hector, come near to victory. Achilles’ close friend Patroclus, however, borrows his armour, goes out to fight, and is killed by Hector. Achilles’ wrath is now turned against Hector, so he makes peace with Agamemnon and re-enters the battle. He succeeds in killing Hector, but finally allows Priam to ransom his son’s body.

Homer’s Achilles embodies the Homeric ideal of personal honour and martial prowess at its most fierce, proud and uncompromising. Some famous lines at Iliad 9. 312-13, in which he proclaims to Odysseus his hatred of duplicity, were evidently much in Sophocles’ mind when he wrote Philoctetes.

At Iliad 18. 369-19. 39 Thetis procures fresh arms for Achilles from Hephaestus, to replace those worn by Patroclus. At Eur. El. 442-51, however, the arms of Hephaestus are brought to Achilles by Nereids when he is still a boy in Thessaly. Homer (Il. 18. 478-608) and Euripides (El. 452-75) both give elaborate, but different, descriptions of the decoration on his shield.

Achilles was killed before the end of the war by Paris with the help of Apollo; or by Apollo alone (the ‘Achilles heel’ is a much later addition to the story). His arms were then allotted by the other Greek leaders to Odysseus (see also Ajax (i)). He was buried at Sigeum, and Polyxena was sacrificed at his tomb.

Aeschylus wrote more than one play concerning Achilles, probably belonging to a connected tetralogy; and he is a character in Eur. IA.

Acraea [akrē′a] A title of Hera.

Acropolis [akro′polis] The word, meaning ‘upper city’, can be applied to any raised citadel, but is used chiefly of the citadel of Athens, on which the Parthenon and other temples were built.

Actaeon [aktē′on] A Theban prince and huntsman, son of Aristaeus and Autonoe (Fig. 3). He offended Artemis by boasting that he was better at hunting than she (this is according to Eur. Bacch. 337-40; the familiar story that he saw her bathing is not found until later). She therefore turned him into a stag, and he was torn apart on Mount Cithaeron by his own hounds. He is mentioned several times in Eur. Bacch., evidently because of the resemblance between his fate and that of his cousin Pentheus.

Actor [a′ktor] One of the seven defenders of Thebes; brother of Hyperbius.

actors The Greek for ‘actor’ is hypokritēs, of which the basic meaning is either ‘answerer’ (of the chorus?) or perhaps ‘interpreter, expounder’.

The speaking parts in any tragedy were shared between a very small number of actors (but see also extras), who were always male. The use of masks clearly made doubling easier, but great versatility must still have been required. We are told that the first actor (or protagonist) was introduced by Thespis; the second (or deuteragonist) by Aeschylus; and the third (or tritagonist) by Aeschylus according to some authorities, and by Sophocles according to others. This doubtless means that the tritagonist was first used in the period in which both Aeschylus and Sophocles were competing, i.e. 468-456; and that is borne out by the evidence of the plays, since the Oresteia (458) requires three actors, while the earlier plays of Aeschylus require only two (assuming that Antigone and Ismene do not belong in Aesch. Sept.). Of later plays, Eur. Alc. can be performed by two actors (but this need not mean that it was), while Soph. OC and Eur. Rhes. seem to require four (unless a single part could be divided between two). The indications are that, as far as possible, the protagonist always took the most important parts and the tritagonist the least important, with little or no type-casting.

At the earliest period the protagonist was the poet himself. Late sources tell us that this practice was first abandoned by Sophocles, but also claim to know the names of actors employed by Aeschylus, apparently as protagonists; thus it is uncertain whether Aeschylus performed in all his own plays. Euripides evidently did not act.

It is also uncertain how actors were selected at different periods; we hear of particular protagonists being selected by particular poets, but also of protagonists being chosen by the state and then assigned to the three competing poets by lot. It is clear in any case that each poet in any one year acquired his own set of three actors whom he used in all the four plays which he produced at the Great Dionysia. From 449 there was a prize for the best protagonist in each year as well as one for the best poet. From at least the late fifth century actors seem to have been more or less professionals, trained at the expense of the state.

For styles of acting we have little evidence. The thick-soled boot and high, narrow stage, which in their day must have severely restricted movement, were introduced later than the fifth century (see also masks), but the scale of gestures must always have conformed to that of the theatre, and the lines, even if not delivered at great volume, must have been very clearly articulated. The texts of the plays, while avoiding violence on stage, often suggest quite vigorous actions. Various anecdotes imply that naturalism was prized, but many acting conventions that would seem highly stylised to us have been regarded as naturalistic in their day; the conditional ‘naturalism’ which can be attained by opera singers may well be a good analogy (see also character).

adamant [a′damant] A legendary material of extreme hardness.

Adrasteia [adrastī′a] ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Plates and Figures
• Maps
• Preface
• Introduction
• Entries
• Bibliography