The Greeks An Introduction to Their Culture, 3rd edition

presumed that Agamemnon walks up steps on to a low stage – otherwise the carpet would not have been visible to the front rows of ...

All plays consist of a number of episodes or scenes involving the principal characters, written in iambics (see p. 141), divided ...

order, whose traditional political prominence, however decreased, was formally extinguished with the reform of the Areopagus in ...

that it is unthinkable that any Elizabethan playwright could have dramatized the defeat of the Spanish Armada in such a way so s ...

worked out through the human action. In the midst of their song they invoke Zeus ‘whoever he is’ (l. 160), he who had overthrown ...

the wrong done to Agamemnon and Orestes’ just revenge which met with the gods’ approval. In the Oresteia, the myth serves as a v ...

Through the deeps, through wind-swept valleys of perilous seas That surge and sway. He is master of ageless Earth, to his own wi ...

end of the ode, it is clear that the chorus believe that the power of contrivance which is the subject of the song can lead to e ...

motion. That is not to say that it is a naturalistic play. That the palace servant who saved the infant Oedipus by giving him to ...

Oedipus from a shepherd in Laius’ household. Jocasta sees the truth and begs Oedipus to desist but ironically he misinterprets h ...

character, though it should be noted that he never uses the term ‘tragic hero’. As to the character of Oedipus, it is clear that ...

and to reinstate it as the central genre against the moral objections of Plato, who hadexcluded all poetry but encomia of famous ...

In the ensuing confrontation between husband and wife the egotistical Jason cuts a sorry figure. If only she had accepted things ...

Weknow the good; we apprehend it clearly, But we can’t bring it to achievement (ll. 380–381) Medea’s words amount to a chillingl ...

appalled and hesitates but no one doubts the reality of the threat of divine vengeance if he fails to act. Where Sophocles plays ...

they took flight after the final battle, had been given food and water for reciting some of his lyrics. (Life of Nicias, 29) Old ...

example, concerns an attempt to establish an ideal city in the sky (‘Cloudcuckooland’) where the inhabitants can rule by control ...

that, though a tanner, Cleon has never given Demos a pair of shoes, and he provides him with a pair as well as a tunic and a cha ...

The comparison entails a withering political analysis that is not wholly mitigated by the general air of mirth and absurdity or ...

wrestling and sport. Euripides has done harm by bringing on to the stage things better kept concealed, like the story of Phaedra ...