Ten Years After The First Tragedy example essay topic

Wars and the effects on ancient Greek theatre Grant Kohler Before the year 479 BCE, most of the innovations from the Greeks were art in its most common form and in the mathematics and sciences. Examples of this are Pythagoras in 525; he developed a throw about right triangles. It wasn? t until aproxiamtely 458 Bce that the first tragedy was created. Drama had existed before this, but in other forms. What we consider drama first began simply as a chorus of singers, usually singing in dactylic hexameter (verse in which 6 segments of 3 syllables, the first syllable of each segment stressed and leaving the last two unstressed), which is the same verse in which the Homeric poems are written in. later, in 534 BCE, Thespis revolutionized theatre by separating a person from the chorus to talk and sing to. They would sing to honor the god, Dionysis.

Wars were pretty much always being fought since the formation of Greece. It wasn? t until after the Battle of Platea in 479 BCE that something remarkable occurred. There was peace in all lands until 431 BCE. In those 48 years, not only did all forms of art and science flourish with creative changes, but the theatrics world completely flipped on its axis. People who encountered death daily now had time to think, and with this came the first tragedy. With the usual hoopla for the festival for Dionysis, the men would wear goat skins because goats were a symbol of fertility.

In 458 BCE, Aeschylus created the first tragedy, Ortesia. The word tragedy comes from the revelers wearing the skins. Trag os and ode, for goat and song respectively. Oretesia is like most of the early tragedies because it has been lost over time. Only a few of Aeschylus's plays remain extant today. Ten years after the first tragedy was written, the Greeks began work on the Parthenon, a great theatre.

Also in the same year came Sophocles, who is probably the most known of the Greek playwrights. His famous trilogy, the Oedipus cycle, consists of Oedipus the king, oedipus at colon us, and Antigone. Perhaps, you? ve heard of them. Then, in 431 BCE, The Pelopenisian war broke out, destroying the Athenian fleets and soldiers. However, the creative process of playwrights and other thinkers did not come to a haul t. From this period came Socrates, the great thinker, and in realm of theatre, Euripides and Aristophones.

Aristophones wrote comedy, like Lysistrata, which is a story about women refusing sex from their militant husbands to try and create oea ce. That play, like most others was influenced by the fighting surrounding the walls of Greece. From Euripides came more tragedies, such as Electra and the cyclops. Electra was a story of the ill-fated children of Agamemnon, a hero from Homer's Illiad. As you can see, the wars surrounding the Ancient Greeks brought out many effects and prolific playwrights, along with excellence in other fields. 1.

Kit to, H.D.F. The Greeks. London: Penguin Paperbacks, 1991 2. Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Cliffs Notes on Greek Classics. Nebraska: Cliffs Notes, 1988 3. Garranty, John A., et. al.

The Columbia History of the World New York: Harper & Row, 1972.