I've looked at lyric poetry as a form of Greek verse, and now I will look at Greek epic poetry.
Surviving Greek epic poems generally follow what is known as the 'Epic Cycle' and relate the story of the semi-legendary, semi-historical Trojan War; including the events that happened before, the causes, some of the main battles, and the long aftermath. Many of the epic works survive today only in fragments and are essentially a distillation in literary form of oral traditions of telling stories from before the Ancient classical period. These stories are based upon Greek mythology and contain references to Greek gods and heroes, but are based upon historical events. 19th century archeology confirmed that the Trojan War had some basis in fact, and occured around the 12th century BC in the ancient city of Troy (Ilium), in modern-day Turkey.
The Epic Cycle includes the 'Cypria', the 'Iliad', the 'Aethiopis', the 'Little Iliad' (its later name), the 'Iliu persis', the 'Nostoi', the 'Odyssey', and the 'Telegony'. The 'Iliad' and the 'Odyssey' are the only poems that are completed, and they were both written by the ancient Greek writer Homer. Some scholars leave both Homeric epics out of the cycle, and use the title 'Epic Cycle' to refer to the non-Homer epic. However, I have placed Homer's epics within the cycle to denote the chronological order of events of the Trojan War.
Virgil and Ovid, Roman writers living centuries after Homer, also wrote about the Trojan War. However, they are not included in the Epic Cycle; that is seen as a solely Greek preserve.
The 'Cypria' begins the cycle, and is largely attributed to Stasinus, a semi-legendary ancient Greek poet. The poem comprises 11 books of epic dactylic hexameter verse and was probably composed around the 7th century BC. It is sometimes seen as a 'prequel' to Homer's 'Iliad', which the author was probably familiar with. The original text only survives in fragments, the rest is provided by a prose summary from the unknown 'Proclus' (possibly a grammarian from the 2nd century AD).
The poem begins with the decision of Zeus, the King of the gods, to relieve the Earth of the burden of population through war. The wars against Thebes ensue, but Zeus is still not content.
A wedding takes place between Peleus, a Greek warrior-hero and King of the Myrmidons, and Thetis, a sea nymph. The gods attend the feast and Poseidon, god of the sea and the brother of Zeus, gives Peleus two immortal horses as a present: Balius and Xanthus. Eris, the goddess of discord, was not invited to the feast because she would have caused mischief. Angered by the snub, she arrives with a golden apple from the Garden of Hesperides, a garden of nymphs in northern Africa. She calls the apple the 'Apple of Discord' and inscribes 'to the fairest' on it, before throwing it at the gods and declaring that it belongs to the most beautiful goddess. Hera, goddess of marriage; Athena, goddess of wisdom; and Aphrodite, goddess of love, all declare that the Apple belongs to them and descend into a jealous rivalry with each other.
Over the years Peleus and Thetis have seven sons, only one of whom survives infancy; Achilles. At Achilles' birth, Thetis is so worried over the fate of her only surviving son that she tries to make him immortal. She takes him to the Underworld of Hades, brother of Zeus and Poseidon and god of the Underworld, and dips him in the river Styx to make him invincible. However, she holds him by his heel, which does not enter the river. Thus, Achilles is invincible except for his heel. Peleus gives his son Xanthus as his horse when he comes of age and Achilles grows up to become perhaps the greatest warrior in the world.
Hera, Athena and Aphrodite remain furiously arguing over the Apple of Discord for many years. They ask Zeus to judge who amongst them is the fairest but he declines this offer, knowing he will win the enmity of the other two whomever he chooses. Zeus declares that Prince Paris, son of the King of Troy, will judge who is the fairest. Paris had recently shown his exemplary fairness in a contest where Ares, the god of war, had appeared in bull form and bested Paris' own prize bull. Instead of becoming angered, Paris had graciously awarded the prize to Ares. After bathing in the spring of Mount Ida before Troy, the goddesses appear naked before Paris and ask him to choose who is the fairest, and to give the Apple of Discord to the one he chooses.
Paris inspects the three goddesses, but thinks them all ideally, and equally, beautiful. The goddesses therefore try to bribe him to give them the Apple; Hera offers him power and to make him King of all of Europe in return for the Apple; Athena offers him wisdom and the greatest skill in war in the world in return for the Apple; and Aphrodite offers him the most beautiful woman in the world as his wife - this is Helen of Sparta, the wife of Greek King Menelaus - in return for the Apple. Paris, enamoured of Helen, accepts Aphrodite's gift and gives the Apple to her. Hera and Athena are furious at Paris for this, and swear vengeance against him and the Trojans in general. This event is known as the Judgement of Paris.
Paris then builds ships at Aphrodite's suggestion. Helenus, a Trojan warrior, foretells the future that stealing Helen will cause war, but Paris ignores him. Paris sets sail for mainland Greece with Aeneas, his cousin, and others. In Sparta the Trojans are lavishly greeted and entertained by many Greek heroes, including Tyndareus, Helen's father, and Castor and Polydeuces, Helen's brothers. The next day, King Menelaus departs for Crete, ordering Helen to entertain the guests for as long as they remain. Aphrodite brings Helen and Paris together during Menelaus' departure. Paris and his men then successfully storm Menelaus' palace and Paris takes Helen back with him to Troy as his wife. Some believe Helen went with Paris willingly - he is exceptionally handsome himself; others argue that she was taken by force.
Iris, a goddess messenger, informs Menelaus of Helen's theft at Crete. He returns to Sparta in rage and grief. He soon makes overtures to his elder brother, Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae who is gaining power over the other Greek kings and who some consider the High King of all of Greece. Menelaus pleads with his brother to gather all the Greek kings and plan an attack on Troy to regain Helen and avenge themselves against the Trojans. Agamemnon, who wants to expand his power further, agrees. They decide to bring together all the Greek king. First of all they decide to seek out all the former suitors of Helen, who are among the greatest warriors in Greece, and who all swore an oath to defend the rights of whichever one won her hand in marriage.
They seek out Nestor, King of Pylos and one of Helen's suitors. He was an Argonaut and was the eldest of Helen's suitors. Although he is too old to fight in battle, he agrees to send many Pylos men to Menelaus and Agamemnon's war and to go with them to provide advice. Menelaus and Agamemnon then seek out the rest of the suitors successfully, gathering all of them except for Odysseus, King of Ithaca.
Odysseus tries to avoid the summons of Menelaus and Agamemnon by feigning lunacy. He had heard a prophecy from an oracle that if he went to war, he would suffer a long-delayed return home. Not wishing to suffer leaving his home, wife and young son, he hooks a donkey and an ox to his plough - since they have different stride lengths they cannot plough togethe - and also sows his fields with salt. Agamemnon sends Palamedes, a Greek warrior, to the island of Ithaca to disprove Odysseus' madness. Palamedes places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plough. Odysseus veers away from his son, thus exposing his sanity. Afterwards, Odysseus finally agrees to go to war with the Greeks, but he holds a grudge against Palamedes for taking him away from his home forever after.
The assembled leaders offer sacrifices at Aulis, where the prophet Calchas warns them that the war will last ten years, and that they will not be able to win it without Achilles, the son of the King of the Myrmidons and perhaps the greatest warrior in the world. The Greek leaders travel to the land of the Myrmidons in mainland Greece. Thetis, Achilles' sea nymph mother, has heard a prophecy that Achilles will either live a long, uneventful life or he will achieve everlasting glory while dying young if he goes to war. Not wanting her son to go, she attempts to disguise Achilles as a woman so the Greek leaders will not recognise him. Odysseus manages to identify the woman as Achilles, because she is the only one of the women who shows an interest in the weapons hidden amongst the gifts the Greek leaders give to the women of the Myrmidons. Odysseus then sounds a battle horn and Achilles clutches a weapon to show his skill in arms and his disguise is lost. Achilles agrees to go with the Greek leaders to war, wanting the everlasting glory prophecised to him. The 'Cypria' ends here.
The next epic to fall in chronological order of the Epic Cycle is Homer's 'Iliad', which takes up the story nearly ten years later, near the end of the Trojan War. There have been many battles and huge losses from both the Greeks and the Trojans, but neither side has managed to prevail over the years and the war has ground to a stalemate. The 'Iliad' (which I will examine at length in another blog post), tells the story of Achilles' argument with Agamemnon, which leads to him taking his Myrmidon soldiers out of the war, before being reconciled to the war effort after Prince Hector, King Priam's eldest son, kills his close companion Patroclus. Achilles then rejoins the war and kills Hector in an epic battle. The 'Iliad' notes many of the battles between the Trojans and Greeks, but stops short of telling the end of the story, although there are glimpses of the end of the war told through prophecy.
After the Iliad comes the 'Aethiopis', which is sometimes attributed to Arctinus of Miletus, a semi-legendary Greek poet. The poem comprises five book of dactylic hexameter, although it is largely lost and survives only in fragments. It was probably composed around the 7th century BC. We are largely dependent on the the summary written much later by the grammarian 'Proclus'.
The 'Aethiopis' begins shortly after the death of the Trojan hero Prince Hector, with the arrival of the Amazon warrior Panthesileia who arrives to support the Trojans. She is glorious in battle against the Greeks, but is eventually killed by Achilles. The Greek warrior Thersites then taunts Achilles, claiming he had been in love with her, and Achilles kills him as well. Achilles is then ritually purified for the murder of Thersites, who was on the same side as him in battle.
Memnon, son of the Titans Eos and Tithonus, leads an Ethiopian contingent into war on the side of the Trojans. The Ethiopians wear armour made by Hephaestus, god of metallurgy. In battle Memnon kills Antilochus, a Greek warrior and son of Nestor, who was a great friend of Achilles. Achilles then kills Memnon, and Zeus makes Memnon immortal at Eos' request. In a rage over Antilochus' death, Achilles pursues the Trojans into the very gates of Troy. He enters the city in glory, but is then killed when Paris, assisted by Apollo, god of the sun, shoots an arrow at him that strikes his heel. Achilles' heel is his one area of weakness where he is not invincible, and the arrow in his heel kills him. Achilles' body is then rescued by Ajax, King of Salamis, and Odysseus, who carry it back to the Greek camp.
The Greeks hold a funeral for Antilochus, and then Achilles. Thetis, Achilles' mother, arrives with her sisters and the Muses to lament over Achilles' body at his funeral. Funeral games are held in his honour, and his armour and weapons are offered as a prize for the greatest warrior in the world. A dispute rages over Achilles' armour between Ajax and Odysseus, who both think they are the most deserving. The 'Aethiopis' ends with this feud unresolved.
The 'Little Iliad' is the next poem in the Epic Cycle. 'Little Iliad' is the later name the poem was given, and it is largely lost and exists only in fragments. It survives mainly in the summary of 'Proclus', written centuries later. It has been attributed to the ancient writers Lesches of Pyrrha, Cinaethon of Sparta, Diodorus of Erythrae and Thestorides of Phocaea. It comprises 4 books of dactylic hexameter, and was probably written in the late 7th century BC.
The 'Little Iliad' opens with the contest between Ajax and Odysseus over Achilles' armour. With the help of Athena, the arms are awarded to Odysseus. Ajax goes insane from the rejection, and attacks the Greeks' herd in his madness. Later, in shame, he kills himself and is buried without full heroic honours because of Agamemnon's fury over the lost Greek herd.
Calchas, the Greek prophect, prophesies that the city of Troy will not fall unless the Greeks recover the arrows of Heracles, the Greek warrior, from the hero Philoctetes, who was left behind on Lemnos when he was bitten by a poisonous snake. Odysseus and Diomedes go to Lemnos to bring back Philoctetes, who is healed of his wounds of Machaeon, a Greek physician.
Philoctetes then fights Paris in single combat and kills him. After Paris' death, Helen is fought over by Deiphobus and Helenus, Paris' brothers. Deiphobus wins and marries her, and the defeated Helenus angrily abandons Troy and moves to Mount Ida.
Odysseus ambushes Helenus and captures him. Helenus, who is also a prophet, reveals that Troy will not fall while it harbours the Palladium, the statue of Athena. Odysseus and Diomedes go into Troy disguised as beggars. They are recognised by Helen, who, wanting an end to the war, tells them where the Palladium is. After killing some Trojans, Odysseus and Diomedes return to the Greek army with the Palladium.
Athena then guides the Greek warrior Epeius to build a giant wooden horse. Odysseus devises a plan to enter the city of Troy: the Greeks will place their best warriors in the horse and then burn their camp, before the bulk of their army withdraws to the nearby island of Tenedos. Once the Trojans bring the horse inside their city the Greek warriors will come out of the horse and open the gates to Troy from the inside, letting the rest of the Greek army (who will return from Tenedos under cover of darkness) into the city.
The Greeks build the horse and hide their warriors within it. They then burn their camp and secretly withdraw to Tenedos. The Trojans see the Greek camp has departed and believe the Greeks have surrendered the war. They see the horse and believe it is a gift from the gods to celebrate their victory. The 'Little Iliad' ends here.
The 'Iliu persis' follows, and tells the story of the sack of Troy. It is sometimes credited to Arctinus of Miletus, but is largely lost. It is written in 2 books of verse in dactylic hexameter and was probably written around the 7th century BC.
The 'Iliu persis' ('Sack of Troy') opens with the Trojans discussing what to do with the giant wooden horse that the Greeks have left behind. Laocoon, a Trojan priest to Poseidon, rules against them bringing the horse into the city. Cassandra, Priam's daughter and Princess of Troy, agrees with him. Cassandra had been a favourite of Apollo, who gave her the gift of prophecy, but when she refused to sleep with him, he cursed her with the fate that no-one would believe her prophesies. Cassandra had prophesied that Paris, her brother, stealing Helen would bring about the destruction of Troy, but no-one had believed her. She had tried to warn him against going to Sparta, but he had ignored her. Later, she had treated Helen with hostility when she first entered Troy, knowing that her presence would cause war and later destruction, and this, coupled with her prophesies that no-one believed, had caused many Trojans to believe her to be mad.
Cassandra prophesied that the Trojan horse contained many Greek warriors, and if they let the horse into the city the Greeks would sack the city and kill many of them. She also predicted that Aeneas, her cousin and a Trojan warrior, would escape the city and later found a new, mightier Trojan city (Rome). However, no-one believed her. The Trojans mocked her and called her a madwoman. Many of the Trojans believe the horse to be a holy relic of Athena, and bring it into the city in a victory parade. Poseidon sends an ill omen of two snakes which kill Laocoon and his sons. Seeing this, Aeneas and his men leave Troy, believing the horse to be a danger (their story is later told in Virgil's 'Aeniad'). Cassandra attempts to set fire to the horse, but she is stopped by the Trojan people.
That night, the Greek warriors inside the horse emerge, and open the city gates to let in the Greek army, which has arrived back from Tenedos in darkness. A massacre occurs as the Greek army sweeps through Troy, ransacking it and burning it to the ground. Many Trojan heroes are taken unawares as they sleep, drunk from the festivities of the previous night, and are killed by the Greeks. Many of the high-ranking Trojan women are taken as captives by the Greeks, to be returned to Greece as concubines.
Menelaus kills Deiphobus and takes back his wife Helen, who he then escorts safely out of the city. Talthybius, the Greek herald, takes Astyanax, Hector's baby son, and throws him from the walls of Troy. Neoptolemus, Achilles' son, then takes Andromache, Hector's wife, as his captive and concubine. The Greeks decide to take Priam's daughter Polyxena back to Achilles' tomb, where she is sacrificed to placate Achilles' angry spirit.
King Priam takes refuge at the altar of Zeus in the main temple of Troy, but Neoptolemus enters and kills him. Priam's daughter Cassandra takes refuge at the altar of Athena, but Ajax 'the Lesser', the Greek king of Locris, drags her from the altar and rapes her. Cassandra is then taken as Agamemnon's captive and concubine.
Troy is destroyed and burnt to the ground by the Greeks, and all the Trojan heroes and warriors are killed and the women are either killed, raped, or taken as concubines. Athena, though an enemy of the Trojans, becomes furious with Ajax the Lesser because of the sacrilege he committed at her altar by raping Cassandra. She demands he be punished, and Odysseus orders that he be stoned to death for his crime. Ajax successfully manages to win enough support to avoid punishment, himself clinging to Athena's statue, but Athena vows revenge against him. The 'Iliu persis' ends with the Greeks victorious in Troy.
The 'Nostoi' ('return home') follows in the Epic Cycle. It is attributed to Agias or Eumelos, semi-legendary poets, but largely only remains in fragments. It comprises 5 books in verse of dactylic hexameter and was probably written around the 6th century BC.
The 'Nostoi' opens with the Greeks victorious in Troy and about to sail back to Greece. Athena is still angered by Ajax the Lesser's sacrilege during the sack of Troy, and Agamemnon remains behind to appease her. Odysseus also remains behind with Athena and Agamemnon, and is given Queen Hecuba, Priam's wife, as a concubine. Neoptolemus is visited by his grandmother, the sea-nymph Thetis, who tells him to remain behind and make many sacrifices to the gods to atone for killing King Priam at the altar of Zeus during the sack of Troy.
Diomedes and Nestor are the first Greeks to leave, and both return safely to Greece. Ajax the Lesser departs, attempting to escape Athena's wrath, but she calls upon both Poseidon and Zeus, who create a storm that hits his ships. He is shipwrecked and killed on the Kapherian rocks in eastern Greece. Menelaus departs with Helen soon after, but they encounter a storm and are blown off course and shipwrecked in Egypt, where they remain marooned.
After a few months Neoptolemus follows his grandmother's advice and returns home with the Myrmidons by land, slowly, paying penance to the gods as he goes. He eventually arrives home, where he is welcomed as a hero by his grandfather King Peleus, and is finally forgiven by the gods.
Odysseus decides to remain behind for a little longer, but Agamemnon decides to leave after believing he has adequately quenched Athena's wrath. He sets sail to depart home to Mycenae with his concubine, Cassandra. Cassandra prophecies that both she and Agamemnon will be killed by Agamemnon's wife and her lover when they return home. She also tells Odysseus that he will spend ten years wandering before he returns home to Ithaca. Both Agamemnon and Odysseus do not believe her.
As Agamemnon prepares to leave, the ghost of Achilles appears to him and corraborates Cassandra's story, telling him he will be killed by his wife and her lover when he returns home, but Agamemnon does not believe him either. Sure enough, when Agamemnon returns home he finds that his wife Clytemnestra has taken Aegisthus, a Greek warrior who refused to go to Troy, as her lover. Clytemnestra and Aegisthus then kill Agamemnon and Cassandra. Aegisthus declares himself King of Mycenae and rules for several years, before he and Clytemnestra are killed by Orestes, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra's son, who avenges his father.
Menelaus and Helen are marooned on an island off Egypt for several years before then manage to return home to Sparta.
Odysseus is the last to leave Troy. His concubine Hecuba goes mad at the thought of all her dead children and is turned into a dog by the gods so she can escape. She runs off across the beaches of Troy, and Odysseus lets her go. When Odysseus eventually does leave Troy he takes the longest by far to return to Greece. The 'Nostoi' ends where, and gives no account of Odysseus' later story.
Odysseus' ten-year journey from Troy to Ithaca is told in detail in Homer's 'Odyssey', which forms the next tale in the Epic Cycle. The Odyssey (which I will describe in another blog) tells the story of Odysseus' long return from Troy, where he encounters a cyclops, sorceresses, sirens, monsters and sea nymphs, before eventually returning home. When he arrives back in Ithaca he finds his wife Penelope, who has remained faithful to him, surrounded by suitors who want to marry her and claim themselves King of Ithaca. Odysseus and his son Telemachus successfully defeat the suitors and Odysseus reclaims Penelope and Ithaca.
The 'Telegony' ends the Epic Cycle. It is attributed to Eugammon of Cyrene, a semi-legendary Greek poet, although it only remains in fragments. It is written in two books of verse in dactylic hexameter and was written around the 6th century BC.
The 'Telegony' opens with the burial of Penelope's suitors, who have been killed by Odysseus and his son Telemachus. Odysseus has reclaimed Ithaca and Penelope, and now rules in peace. A few years later Odysseus travels to Thesprotia, the most westerly point of Greece, at the behest of the spirit of Tiresias, who he saw in the Underworld on his visit there during his travels. Tiresias told him to make sacrifices to the gods here, which Odysseus does. He then fights for the Thesprotians in a war against the neighbouring Brygoi. Ares attempts to destroy them, but Athena, ever Odysseus' champion, counters this. Apollo intervenes between the battling gods and the Thesprotians are victorious. Odysseus then returns to Ithaca.
Meanwhile, it transpires that Circe, the sorceress that Odysseus lived with for a year and who was his lover for a time, has given birth to his son, Telegonus, who has grown up with Circe on the island of Aeaea. Athena advises Circe to tell Telegonus the name of his father. She gives him a supernatural spear to defend himself which is tipped with the sting of a poisonous stingray made by Hephaestus.
Whilst Telegonus is out sailing a storm forces him onto Ithaca. Starving, he begins stealing Odysseus' cattle. Odysseus defends his property and fights Telegonus. During the fight, Telegonus stabs Odysseus with his spear, fulfilling Tiresias' prophecy that Odysseus would meet his death from 'out of the sea' (the poison of the stingray). As Odysseus is dying Telegonus recognises him as his father and laments his mistake. Telegonus brings Odysseus' body, Penelope and Telemachus back to Aeaea, where Odysseus is buried with full heroic honours and Circe makes the others immortal. Telegonus marries Penelope and Telemachus marries Circe.
In other versions of the story Telegonus sails with Odysseus to Aeaea before he dies, and Circes saves him from death. He, Circe, Telegonus, Penelope and Telemachus remain on Aeaea, where they live peacefully. Telemachus later marries Circe, but Telegonus is happy remaining unwed. Odysseus dies later, when he reaches a very old age, and is buried with full heroic honours. This fulfils Tiresias' other prophecy that Odysseus would die a 'gentle death', when he is in 'sleek old age'.
Thursday 24 April 2014
Thursday 17 April 2014
Ancient - Greek verse - lyric/ode
After studying Ancient Greek drama, I am now looking at Ancient Greek verse. I have already touched upon the type of verse sometimes used in tragedies, comedies and satyrs, but now I will look at Greek verse in more detail.
Greek lyric poetry is associated with the 7th-5th centuries BC, but continued into later centuries. Like Greek drama, lyric poetry is associated with the political, social and intellectual culture of Greek city-states; primarily Athens.
Many Greek lyrics were written as occasional poetry, verse composed for a public performance by a soloist or chorus to mark special occasions.The word 'lyric' derives forom the tradition of poetry put to music and sung with the accompaniment of the lyre.
Greek lyrics were written in a meter that was based on patterns of long and short syllables (in contrast to English verse, which is written in a meter based on stress). Iambic and trochaic meters, most commonly iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter, alternate long and short syllables. These imabic meters were thought to reflect the rhythms of Greek spoken by most ordinary people and so were usually used for dialogue in Greek plays during the Golden Age of Drama. Later lyric poets composed verse in a variety of metrical forms, including complex triadic forms of strophe, antistrophe and epode. The strophe and antisrophe would have a similar metrical pattern and the epode would take a different form.
Greek lyrics were generally divided into elegiac poetry and iambic poetry. Elegiac poetry was written in elegiac couples with a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. The hexameter line was a similar meter to the form used in epic poetry, and these poems often used military or didactic themes, also similar to epics. Iambic poetry was written in iambic trimeter and was frequently employed for poems of a less serious subject matter than elegiac poetry or epics.
The themes of Greek lyric broadly include politics, war, the heroic past, the gods, sports, money, drinking, youth, old age, death and both heterosexual and homosexual love. Greek lyrics often celebrate athletic victories (epinikia), offer religious devotion in hymns and dithyrambs, exhort soldiers to valour in paeans or commemorate the dead. Choruses of maidens (unmarried, virginal women) would often sing partheneias, or 'maiden-songs'; love poems would express unfulfilled desire and either proffer seductions or blame their former lover for a breakup; and sometimes invective poems would attack, insult or shame a personal enemy.
The earliest known Greek lyric poet was Archilochus, who excelled at the invective verse and largely wrote iamic poetry. He wrote in versatile and innovative forms of meter and was the earliest known Greek writer to compose verse entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences. Only fragments of his work remains, but the ancient Greeks revered him as one of their best writers, on the same level as epic poets Homer and Hesiod. The fragments of his work suggest he was an embittered adventurer and an archetypal poet of blame in the invective form. He presented himself as a realist to the point of bitterness in war and love. His invectives were said to have driven his former fiance and his father to suicide.
The most famous later Greek lyric poets are known as the Nine Lyric Poets, who were mainly writing in the 3rd century BC. The Nine are divided among those who composed choral verse for a group of people, and those who composed monodic verse for a soloist. The Nine are (in chronological order); Alcman (choral), Sappho (monodic), Alcaeus (monodic), Anacreon (monodic), Stesichorus (choral), Ibycus (choral), Simonides (choral), Bacchylides (choral) and Pindar (choral).
Alcman wrote mainly in dactylic tetrameter. His lyric verse has a light and pleasant tone. He describes festivals with rich visual descriptions, as well as describing the physical attributes of women with lots of allusions to colour and similies comparing them to nature. He paid specific attention to nature and wrote about mountains, forests and animals.
Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by other choral lyric poets such as Bacchylides and Pindar. His triadic structure allowed for novel arrangments of dactylic meter - the defining meter of Homeric epic - which allowed for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. Indeed, Stesichorus often wrote about epic stories in the lyric form; his verse often being concerned with Greek mythology, in particular the Trojan war.
Bacchylides composed verse similarly to Stesichorus. He used traditional epithets borrowed from epic poetry, and indeed he regularly wrote lyrics for a sophisticated social elite. However, he also had an innovative vocabularly and uses more lyrical compositions, such as compound adjectives. He is renowned for his use of imagery, using similies to compare people to nature. His lyrics abound with picturesque detail of moons, stars, suns, mountains and rivers. He wrote lyrics offered as a hymn and dance of devotion to the gods, and also heroic odes to honour Greek heroes.
Pindar composed lyric verse similarly to Stesichorus and Bacchylides, but his work is the best preserved of all of the Nine, and he is widely regarded as one of the best. He exalted lyric, choral poetry and articulated a passionate faith in what men, by the grace of gods, can achieve. His lyric verse is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and men. He reveres the gods in odes; they are the embodiment of power and are uncompromisingly proud of their nature and in defense of their position. Pindar subjects fortune and fate to divine will.
The gods are never depicted in a demeaning role in Pindar's odes, and traditional myth are changed if the gods are presented in a morally ambiguous way. Pindar's gods are above ethical issues and he makes it clear that it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards, unlike the gods, and so they do sometimes demean themselves in Pindar's verse. However, mythological heroes are usually the descendents of divine unions between gods and mortals, so they are often regarded as an intermediate group between gods and men. A hero may have a flaw, but his ultimate status is not diminished by an occasional blemish and instead rest on a summative view of his heroic exploits.
Pindar also wrote victory odes for the triumphs of athletes from the Olympic games. His odes capture the prestige and aristocratic grandeur of the moment of victory. They are usually composed in honour of boys, youths and men who have enjoyed recent victories, but older victories and lesser ones are also sometimes celebrated, usually as a pretext for addressing other achievements and issues.
Pindar's athletic victory odes usually begin with an invocation to gods or the Muses, followed by praise of the athletic victor or his family, ancestors or hometown. A narrated myth follows in the longest section of the poem, which usually exemplifies a moral, whle aligning the poet and his audience with the world of gods and heroes. The ode ends with eulogies of trainers or relatives who have won past events, as well as with prayers for hope for future success. These odes are usually triadic in structure with stanzas grouped together in threes. Each triad comprises two identical stanzas and a third stanza differing in length and meter but rounding off the lyrical movement. The shortest odes comprise of single triad, the largest comprise thirteen. A few odes are monostrophic (each stanza identical in length in meter). These odes seemed to have been composed for athletes' victories, whereas the triadic odes are suited to choral dances.
Simonides was the nephew of Bacchylides and a bitter rival of Pindar. He composed lyric poetry almost entirely for public performances, unlike previous lyric poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed lyrics for more intimate occasions, such as to entertain families and friends. He used compound adjectives and decorative epithets, yet also kept restraint and balance. His expression is clear and simple, relying on straightforward statement. Simonides wrote encomiums, a type of victory ode, that were similar to hymns, but were written for athletes and ordinary people, instead of just to gods or heroes. He differed from his contemporary Pindar because he championed a tolerant, humanistic outlook that celebrated ordinary goodness, and recognized the immense pressures that life places on human beings, instead of venerating the perfection of the gods. He was specifically adept a lively compositions suited to be put to dance. Simonides was also successful at dithyrambic competitions, where lyrics were offered up to the god Dionysus as part of a festival.
Ibycus composed lyrics with mythological themes and structured his verses in triads (units of three stanzas each, called strophe, antistrophe and epode), in the same vein as Stesichorus. He is also remembered for his poems about homoerotic love, and for exalting the ancient Greek social custom of pederasty whereby an adult man would have an official romantic or sexual relationship with an adolescent male.
The most famous monodic lyric poets were Sappho and Alceus. They both wrote in Aeolic verse with stanzas of four lines written in hendecasyllables (11 syllables). They both perfected their own versions of this stanza; Sappho's later became known as the Sapphic stanza, and Alceus' as the Alcaic stanza. They were contemporaries who both lived on the island of Lesbos.
Sappho's verse is often concerned with a female narrator telling of her infatuations and love for another woman. She used vivid imagery often associated with love poetry, such as the full moon in a starry sky or the solitary red apple at the tree-top. Her verse was deeply emotional and celebrates homosexuality between women. The word 'lesbian' derives from the island of 'Lesbos', in honour of Sappho. Alcaeus wrote a broad range of themes of lyric verse; including political songs about power struggles on Lesbos, love songs, hymns to the gods, commemoration of Greek heroes and drinking songs.
Anacreon is third monodic lyric poet. His lyrics were structured around the alternation of long and short vowel sounds, similarly to most other ancient Greek poetry. His verse touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, revelry, parties and festivals, disappointment and everyday life and people. His hymns were highly regarded, and were often written to honour the gods. He also regularly wrote drinking songs, usually to the wine god Bacchus and to Dionysus, the god of drinking and pleasure. However, it is perhaps too obvious to describe him as a drunk; he describes the more extreme forms of intoxication as only fit for barbarians.
Greek lyric poetry is associated with the 7th-5th centuries BC, but continued into later centuries. Like Greek drama, lyric poetry is associated with the political, social and intellectual culture of Greek city-states; primarily Athens.
Many Greek lyrics were written as occasional poetry, verse composed for a public performance by a soloist or chorus to mark special occasions.The word 'lyric' derives forom the tradition of poetry put to music and sung with the accompaniment of the lyre.
Greek lyrics were written in a meter that was based on patterns of long and short syllables (in contrast to English verse, which is written in a meter based on stress). Iambic and trochaic meters, most commonly iambic trimeter and trochaic tetrameter, alternate long and short syllables. These imabic meters were thought to reflect the rhythms of Greek spoken by most ordinary people and so were usually used for dialogue in Greek plays during the Golden Age of Drama. Later lyric poets composed verse in a variety of metrical forms, including complex triadic forms of strophe, antistrophe and epode. The strophe and antisrophe would have a similar metrical pattern and the epode would take a different form.
Greek lyrics were generally divided into elegiac poetry and iambic poetry. Elegiac poetry was written in elegiac couples with a line of dactylic hexameter followed by a line of dactylic pentameter. The hexameter line was a similar meter to the form used in epic poetry, and these poems often used military or didactic themes, also similar to epics. Iambic poetry was written in iambic trimeter and was frequently employed for poems of a less serious subject matter than elegiac poetry or epics.
The themes of Greek lyric broadly include politics, war, the heroic past, the gods, sports, money, drinking, youth, old age, death and both heterosexual and homosexual love. Greek lyrics often celebrate athletic victories (epinikia), offer religious devotion in hymns and dithyrambs, exhort soldiers to valour in paeans or commemorate the dead. Choruses of maidens (unmarried, virginal women) would often sing partheneias, or 'maiden-songs'; love poems would express unfulfilled desire and either proffer seductions or blame their former lover for a breakup; and sometimes invective poems would attack, insult or shame a personal enemy.
The earliest known Greek lyric poet was Archilochus, who excelled at the invective verse and largely wrote iamic poetry. He wrote in versatile and innovative forms of meter and was the earliest known Greek writer to compose verse entirely on the theme of his own emotions and experiences. Only fragments of his work remains, but the ancient Greeks revered him as one of their best writers, on the same level as epic poets Homer and Hesiod. The fragments of his work suggest he was an embittered adventurer and an archetypal poet of blame in the invective form. He presented himself as a realist to the point of bitterness in war and love. His invectives were said to have driven his former fiance and his father to suicide.
The most famous later Greek lyric poets are known as the Nine Lyric Poets, who were mainly writing in the 3rd century BC. The Nine are divided among those who composed choral verse for a group of people, and those who composed monodic verse for a soloist. The Nine are (in chronological order); Alcman (choral), Sappho (monodic), Alcaeus (monodic), Anacreon (monodic), Stesichorus (choral), Ibycus (choral), Simonides (choral), Bacchylides (choral) and Pindar (choral).
Alcman wrote mainly in dactylic tetrameter. His lyric verse has a light and pleasant tone. He describes festivals with rich visual descriptions, as well as describing the physical attributes of women with lots of allusions to colour and similies comparing them to nature. He paid specific attention to nature and wrote about mountains, forests and animals.
Stesichorus composed verses in units of three stanzas (strophe, antistrophe and epode), a format later followed by other choral lyric poets such as Bacchylides and Pindar. His triadic structure allowed for novel arrangments of dactylic meter - the defining meter of Homeric epic - which allowed for Homeric phrasing to be adapted to new settings. Indeed, Stesichorus often wrote about epic stories in the lyric form; his verse often being concerned with Greek mythology, in particular the Trojan war.
Bacchylides composed verse similarly to Stesichorus. He used traditional epithets borrowed from epic poetry, and indeed he regularly wrote lyrics for a sophisticated social elite. However, he also had an innovative vocabularly and uses more lyrical compositions, such as compound adjectives. He is renowned for his use of imagery, using similies to compare people to nature. His lyrics abound with picturesque detail of moons, stars, suns, mountains and rivers. He wrote lyrics offered as a hymn and dance of devotion to the gods, and also heroic odes to honour Greek heroes.
Pindar composed lyric verse similarly to Stesichorus and Bacchylides, but his work is the best preserved of all of the Nine, and he is widely regarded as one of the best. He exalted lyric, choral poetry and articulated a passionate faith in what men, by the grace of gods, can achieve. His lyric verse is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and men. He reveres the gods in odes; they are the embodiment of power and are uncompromisingly proud of their nature and in defense of their position. Pindar subjects fortune and fate to divine will.
The gods are never depicted in a demeaning role in Pindar's odes, and traditional myth are changed if the gods are presented in a morally ambiguous way. Pindar's gods are above ethical issues and he makes it clear that it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards, unlike the gods, and so they do sometimes demean themselves in Pindar's verse. However, mythological heroes are usually the descendents of divine unions between gods and mortals, so they are often regarded as an intermediate group between gods and men. A hero may have a flaw, but his ultimate status is not diminished by an occasional blemish and instead rest on a summative view of his heroic exploits.
Pindar also wrote victory odes for the triumphs of athletes from the Olympic games. His odes capture the prestige and aristocratic grandeur of the moment of victory. They are usually composed in honour of boys, youths and men who have enjoyed recent victories, but older victories and lesser ones are also sometimes celebrated, usually as a pretext for addressing other achievements and issues.
Pindar's athletic victory odes usually begin with an invocation to gods or the Muses, followed by praise of the athletic victor or his family, ancestors or hometown. A narrated myth follows in the longest section of the poem, which usually exemplifies a moral, whle aligning the poet and his audience with the world of gods and heroes. The ode ends with eulogies of trainers or relatives who have won past events, as well as with prayers for hope for future success. These odes are usually triadic in structure with stanzas grouped together in threes. Each triad comprises two identical stanzas and a third stanza differing in length and meter but rounding off the lyrical movement. The shortest odes comprise of single triad, the largest comprise thirteen. A few odes are monostrophic (each stanza identical in length in meter). These odes seemed to have been composed for athletes' victories, whereas the triadic odes are suited to choral dances.
Simonides was the nephew of Bacchylides and a bitter rival of Pindar. He composed lyric poetry almost entirely for public performances, unlike previous lyric poets such as Sappho and Alcaeus, who composed lyrics for more intimate occasions, such as to entertain families and friends. He used compound adjectives and decorative epithets, yet also kept restraint and balance. His expression is clear and simple, relying on straightforward statement. Simonides wrote encomiums, a type of victory ode, that were similar to hymns, but were written for athletes and ordinary people, instead of just to gods or heroes. He differed from his contemporary Pindar because he championed a tolerant, humanistic outlook that celebrated ordinary goodness, and recognized the immense pressures that life places on human beings, instead of venerating the perfection of the gods. He was specifically adept a lively compositions suited to be put to dance. Simonides was also successful at dithyrambic competitions, where lyrics were offered up to the god Dionysus as part of a festival.
Ibycus composed lyrics with mythological themes and structured his verses in triads (units of three stanzas each, called strophe, antistrophe and epode), in the same vein as Stesichorus. He is also remembered for his poems about homoerotic love, and for exalting the ancient Greek social custom of pederasty whereby an adult man would have an official romantic or sexual relationship with an adolescent male.
The most famous monodic lyric poets were Sappho and Alceus. They both wrote in Aeolic verse with stanzas of four lines written in hendecasyllables (11 syllables). They both perfected their own versions of this stanza; Sappho's later became known as the Sapphic stanza, and Alceus' as the Alcaic stanza. They were contemporaries who both lived on the island of Lesbos.
Sappho's verse is often concerned with a female narrator telling of her infatuations and love for another woman. She used vivid imagery often associated with love poetry, such as the full moon in a starry sky or the solitary red apple at the tree-top. Her verse was deeply emotional and celebrates homosexuality between women. The word 'lesbian' derives from the island of 'Lesbos', in honour of Sappho. Alcaeus wrote a broad range of themes of lyric verse; including political songs about power struggles on Lesbos, love songs, hymns to the gods, commemoration of Greek heroes and drinking songs.
Anacreon is third monodic lyric poet. His lyrics were structured around the alternation of long and short vowel sounds, similarly to most other ancient Greek poetry. His verse touched on universal themes of love, infatuation, revelry, parties and festivals, disappointment and everyday life and people. His hymns were highly regarded, and were often written to honour the gods. He also regularly wrote drinking songs, usually to the wine god Bacchus and to Dionysus, the god of drinking and pleasure. However, it is perhaps too obvious to describe him as a drunk; he describes the more extreme forms of intoxication as only fit for barbarians.
Monday 7 April 2014
Ancient - Greek drama/verse - play/mock epic/lyric - satyr/comedy
I'm continuing my research into writing categories, and staying in the
ancient section and looking at Ancient Greek drama. I looked at tragedy
and comedy in my last blog, now I'm looking at satyr plays, sometimes referred to as tragicomedies.
The Ancient Greeks wrote an extensive amount of drama, and tragedy and comedy emerged as a form in the 6th century BC, along with mixes of tragedy and comedy such as satyr.
Ancient Greek tragedies, comedies and satyrs emerged in the 6th century BC, and were performed as part of a twice-annual festival in the city-state of Athens, as part of the festival of Dionysia, in the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. The festival of Dionysia was a celebration of the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine and the patron of drama. The early satyrs were adapted from the dithyramb, an ancient Greek hymn sung and dance in honour of Dionysus. They were often expressed in the form of lyric verse and sang, and included a chorus of satyrs.
Satyrs were characterised as a procession of all-male companions of the gods Pan and Dionysus, and often dressed as goats. The satyrs sang their dithyrambs, and the satyr play emerged from this song. Sometimes these dithyrambs were serious in tone, written in the prosaic iambic trimeter, and were meant to accompany tragedies, but later they became briefer and sometimes burlesque in tone. These brief versions of the dithyramb were written in trochaic tetrameter and forms of satyr and comedy emerged from them as a distinct form of drama. These dithyrambs were usually improvised, and are now largely lost.
During the Golden Age of Greek drama in the 5th century BC, the satyrs, along with tragedy and comedy, emerged as a more established form of drama. At the Dionysia festival three playwrights would offer a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and one satyr or comedy to be judged in a competition
Like tragedies, satyrs often featured the stories from Greek mythology and epics, and often contained similar elements of solemnity and stateliness. The tragic themes of heaven, fate, and the gods affecting human affairs were carried into the festivities of the satyrs. Tragic playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides were known to have written popular satyrs at the festival of Dioynsia
However, the seriousness of the tragedies were often diminished in comparison in the satyrs. Comedies and satyrs were often specifically performed to lift the spirits of the audience after the seriousness and melancholy of the trilogy of tragedies. They were short, half the duration of a tragedy, and the amusing effects of the plays often depended on the relation of the chorus of satyrs to the action of the plays.
The inclusion of both tragic and comic themes in satyrs has led to them often being described as tragicomedies.
Satyr plays usually took place in woods, the haunts of satyrs. They involved themes of brazen sexuality, pranks and merriment; in honour of their patron, Dionysus, who was the god of wine and fertility. The satyrs were often portrayed as bawdy, drunken, mischievous and often cowardly. In accordance with popular notions of satyrs their costumes were usually to with goats, including goat tails, goat ears and even a goat phallis. Sometimes they wore the skin of goats, deers or panthers, thrown over the naked body and coupled with a grotesque mask. The satyrs danced together in unison in choreographed formations that were often lively and acrobatic. They are concered with the sense, and are regularly seen smoking clay pipes and drinking wine to excess.
The Ancient Greeks wrote an extensive amount of drama, and tragedy and comedy emerged as a form in the 6th century BC, along with mixes of tragedy and comedy such as satyr.
Ancient Greek tragedies, comedies and satyrs emerged in the 6th century BC, and were performed as part of a twice-annual festival in the city-state of Athens, as part of the festival of Dionysia, in the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. The festival of Dionysia was a celebration of the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine and the patron of drama. The early satyrs were adapted from the dithyramb, an ancient Greek hymn sung and dance in honour of Dionysus. They were often expressed in the form of lyric verse and sang, and included a chorus of satyrs.
Satyrs were characterised as a procession of all-male companions of the gods Pan and Dionysus, and often dressed as goats. The satyrs sang their dithyrambs, and the satyr play emerged from this song. Sometimes these dithyrambs were serious in tone, written in the prosaic iambic trimeter, and were meant to accompany tragedies, but later they became briefer and sometimes burlesque in tone. These brief versions of the dithyramb were written in trochaic tetrameter and forms of satyr and comedy emerged from them as a distinct form of drama. These dithyrambs were usually improvised, and are now largely lost.
During the Golden Age of Greek drama in the 5th century BC, the satyrs, along with tragedy and comedy, emerged as a more established form of drama. At the Dionysia festival three playwrights would offer a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and one satyr or comedy to be judged in a competition
Like tragedies, satyrs often featured the stories from Greek mythology and epics, and often contained similar elements of solemnity and stateliness. The tragic themes of heaven, fate, and the gods affecting human affairs were carried into the festivities of the satyrs. Tragic playwrights Aeschylus and Euripides were known to have written popular satyrs at the festival of Dioynsia
However, the seriousness of the tragedies were often diminished in comparison in the satyrs. Comedies and satyrs were often specifically performed to lift the spirits of the audience after the seriousness and melancholy of the trilogy of tragedies. They were short, half the duration of a tragedy, and the amusing effects of the plays often depended on the relation of the chorus of satyrs to the action of the plays.
The inclusion of both tragic and comic themes in satyrs has led to them often being described as tragicomedies.
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| 6th century BC drawing of a satyr with a clay pipe |
Tuesday 1 April 2014
Ancient - Greek drama/verse - play/mock epic/lyric - comedy/romance/satire
I'm continuing my research into writing categories, and staying in the ancient section and looking at Ancient Greek drama. I looked at tragedy in my last blog, now I'm looking at comedy.
The Ancient Greeks wrote an extensive amount of drama, and tragedy and comedy emerged as a form in the 6th century BC, along with mixes of tragedy and comedy such as satyr (sometimes referred to as tragicomedy). These forms of drama were written into plays, and were often interspersed with forms of verse such as lyric and epic poetry.
Most of what modern scholars use to analyse this ancient Greek drama comes from the work of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, and in particular his Poetics. He wrote about 'poetry', which he meant as drama (comedy, tragedy and satyr) and verse (lyric and epic). Although the section of the Poetics that deals with tragedy was written at length, the section that deals with comedy has largely been lost, although Aristotle still mentions it. He describes comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind or blunder that is ultimately resolved and does not lead to disaster.
Ancient Greek comedies emerged in the 6th century BC, slightly later than tragedy, and were performed as part of a twice-annual festival in the city-state of Athens, as part of the festival of Dionysia, in the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. These early comedies, expressed in a the form of lyric verse and often sang, were used to celebrate the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine and the patron of drama. They were usually improvised but those that were written down before they were performed are now lost.
During the Golden Age of Greek drama in the 5th century BC, comedy, along with tragedy, emerged as a more established form of drama. In his Poetics, Aristotle writes that comedy took longer to establish than tragedy because people took it less seriously. At the Dionysia festival three playwrights would offer a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and one comedy or satyr to be judged in a competition. The comedy was regularly used to lift the spirits of the audience after watching the trilogy of tragedies. These 5th century BC comedies are regarded as Old Comedy (archaia).
The most important Old Comedy dramatist from the Golden Age was Aristophanes, and he is widely regarded as the father of comedy. Aristophanes remarked that, despite the fact that comedies were taken less seriously by most people, they were actually more difficult to write than tragedies and declared that his comic plays were written for an intelligent audience. Old Comedy was a complex and sophisticated dramatic form that incorporated many approaches to humour and entertainment, such as satire and burlesque, but often purposefully descended into farce. It accommodated light entertainment, puns, buffoonery, obscenities, absurd plots and invented words with hauntingly beautiful lyrics and a formal, dramatic structure.
Old Comedy began with a prologue; an introductory scene with a soliloquy from one of the actors, often expressed in verse and iambic trimeter, that explains the situation of the play that will be resolved. The chorus then arrive in the parodos, where they sing and dance and are involved in a skirmish with one of the actors, often expressed in verse and long lines of tetrameters. Symmetrical scenes then follow, with the parabasis, where the chorus directly addresses the audience and the argon, where the actors engage in anapestic tetrameter and their arguments about their ludicrous problems. Songs intersperse the symmetrical scenes, used as transitions between scenes while actors change costume, and comment on the action. Episodes then follow, which are largely sections of ridiculous dialoge in truncated iambic trimeter, often featuring minor characters.
The play ends with the exodus. Usually the majoy confrontation of the play (the agon) between the good and bad characters is resolved in favour of the good long before the end of the play. The rest of the play then deals with farcical consequences in a succession of loosely connected scenes. The exodus is thus usually a farcical anti-climax; the dramatic tension is released early, allowing for a holiday feeling through the rest of the play which allows the audience to relax in uncomplicated enjoyment to watch the spectacle. The ending usually saw the actors and chorus dance and sing and celebrate the hero's victory with a sexual conquest and a wedding, thus providing a joyous sense of closure.
The comic hero is resourceful and independent-minded. They have ingenuity and shrewdness but are often subjected to corrupt leaders and unreliable neighbours. Typically they devise a complicated and highly fanciful escape from an intolerable situation. Aristophanes used his comedies to parody the characters in the preceding tragedies, and other famous figures, both historical and mythological. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, such as the tragic playwright Euripides; leading figures in politics, such as the statesman Cleon; leading figures in academia, such as the philosopher Socrates; and mythological heroes, such as Heracles. Aristophanes used the conventions of comic burlesque to caricature the manner of the serious tragedies by treating famous subjects in a ludicrous way. The relaxation in standards of behaviour permitted during the holiday spirit, associated with the festival of Dionysus, led to Old Comedy being notorious for using an abundance of scatological and sexual innuendo, obscenties and crude jokes.
Similarly the masks worn by the actors in Old Comedy were often caricatures of real people, often distorted into still recognisable, but ridiculous, parodies. The actors' wore costumes that were deliberately bawdy; the male characters had tights with grotesque padding and phalluses in their crotches and the female characters, played by male actors, wore overly feminine long, saffron tunics, to highlight the obvious cross-dressing of the man. Costumes were also used to mock famous characters, such as Dionysus, the god of wine and festival, appearing onstage with the lion skin cloak that usually characterised Heracles, the legendary, serious Greek hero
Old Comedies are also categorised by self-mocking theatre, where members of the audience, other comic playwrights and the writer of the play themselves were frequently mocked. Audience members could be mocked for physical deformities, ugliness, diseases, perversions, bad manners, dishonesty, cowardice in battle and clumsiness. Foreigners, such as Spartans, Scythians, Persians, Boeotians and Megarians, would often appear in comedies, hopelessly mispronouncing Greek, and specifically Athenian, words and phrases. Other comic playwrights were mocked for their failures according to the writer of the play's own opinion, and Aristophanes regularly caricatured his comic rivals Hermippus and Eupolis in his plays. Writers also parodied themselves in their plays with self-mocking jokes.
Aristophanes took on the role of teacher (didaskalos) in his comic plays, and it was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the playwright during their address to the audience (the parabasis), usually at the beginning or end of the play. The Chorus were therefore elevated in Old Comedy, and were accompanied by musical extravaganza and greater expenditure on costumes, training and maintenance.
In the later 5th Century BC and later into the 4th Century BC, the form of comedy that scholars now refer to as Middle Comedy (mese), was developed. Middle Comedies diminished the role of the Chorus so they had a far lesser influence on the plot, and in particular public characters were not impersonated or personified onstage and instead the objects were general instead of personal. So methods of writing, political ideas, belief systems, personality traits and characteristics were mocked instead of poltical or mythological figures. Middle Comedies also started the tradition of using stock characters in plays, instead of historical, specific figures. So revellers, soldiers, philosophers, courtesans, cooks and parasites were produced as a representation of their profession, rather than as an actual famous character.
Less is known of Middle Comedy than Old or New Comedy; it is seen as a bridge between the two. Few full Middle Comedies remain; they mainly only in the fragments of the Middle Comedy playwright Athenaeus of Naucratis, who wrote with mainly early stock characters. However, there is some evidence that Middle Comedies were being performed in parts of southern Italy in this time, suggesting they had considerable literary and social influence.
New Comedy (nea) emerged in the late 4th century and 3rd Century BC. The three most famous and best known playwrights belonging to this genre is Menander.
Menander was the most accomplished New Comedy dramatist. He drew upon a vast array of dramatic devices, characters and situations
that the writers of Old and Middle Comedy had developed. New Comedies had prologues to shape the audience's
understanding of events, messengers' speeches to announce offstage
action, descriptions of feasts, sudden recognition and false endings. These
were all established techniques which the New Comedy playwrights exploited and evoked
in their own comedies.
Menander wrote supremely civilised and sophisticated New Comedy plays, characterised as mostly less farcical and satirical than the Old Comedies. The de-emphasis of the grotesque, whether in the form of choruses, humour or spectacle, opened the way for increased representation of daily life and the foibles of recognisable character types.
Menander's comedies were more about the fears of ordinary people, their personal relationships, family life and social mishaps rather than public, historical or mythological figures. Menander admired the tragic dramatist Euripides, and imitated his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions and his fondness for moral maxims, but in a humourous way. Menander departed from the Athenian setting or covered mythological themes and subjects that Aristophanes used in his Old Comedies; New Comedy plays were seldom placed in a setting other than their everyday world. Gods and goddesses were personified abstractions who rarely appeared in the plays and there were generally no miracles or metamorphoses.
Menander was a student of the philosopher Theophrastus, who wrote about thirty character types in his work The Characters. Theophrastus wrote that each type was said to be an illustration of an individual who represents a group, characterised by their most prominent trait. The character types were; Insincere, Offensive, Petty Ambition, Flaterrer, Hapless, Stingy, Garrulous, Officious, Show-Off, Boor, Absent-Minded, Arrogant, Complacent, Unsociable, Coward, Without Moral Feeling, Unsociable, Oligarchical, Talkative, Supersititious, Late Learner, Fabricator, Faultfinder, Slanderer, Shamelessly Greedy, Suspicious, Lover of Bad Company, Pennypincher, Repulsive, Basely Covetous Man, Unpleasant.
Menander drew from these stock characters for his plays. The cast of his plays included minor characters such as cooks or parasites who introduced familiar jokes and recognisable patterns of speech. A key stock character in his plays was the 'senex iratus', or the 'angry old man', who was a domineering parent who tries to thwart his child from achieving wedded happiness but who is often led into the same follies for which he has reproves his children; the bragging soldier who talked about the number of enemies he killed and how well he'd treat a woman; and the kind shrewd prostitute who hides her softness of heart behind a facade of toughness ('tart with a heart'). Menander gave stereotype characters a sense that they were character types. In his comedies, they were expected to react the way they were supposed to behave but some resist. These stock characters appear as rich unlayered humans in a new dimension. He used these stereotype characters to comment on human life and depict human folly and absurdity compassionately, with wit and subtlety.
New Comedies are more like romantic and situation comedies and comedy of errors than the burlesque and satirical Old Comedies. Menander introduced the 5-act that was been widely used in many later plays. Old Comedies had choral interludes but in New Comedies there was dialogue with song and the chorus was greatly diminished. The action of his plays had breaks, thus breaking up each act and allowing for a smooth and effective development of the play through the acts.
The Ancient Greeks wrote an extensive amount of drama, and tragedy and comedy emerged as a form in the 6th century BC, along with mixes of tragedy and comedy such as satyr (sometimes referred to as tragicomedy). These forms of drama were written into plays, and were often interspersed with forms of verse such as lyric and epic poetry.
Most of what modern scholars use to analyse this ancient Greek drama comes from the work of Aristotle, the ancient Greek philosopher, and in particular his Poetics. He wrote about 'poetry', which he meant as drama (comedy, tragedy and satyr) and verse (lyric and epic). Although the section of the Poetics that deals with tragedy was written at length, the section that deals with comedy has largely been lost, although Aristotle still mentions it. He describes comedy as a representation of laughable people that involves some kind or blunder that is ultimately resolved and does not lead to disaster.
Ancient Greek comedies emerged in the 6th century BC, slightly later than tragedy, and were performed as part of a twice-annual festival in the city-state of Athens, as part of the festival of Dionysia, in the Theatre of Dionysus Eleuthereus. These early comedies, expressed in a the form of lyric verse and often sang, were used to celebrate the Greek god Dionysus, the god of wine and the patron of drama. They were usually improvised but those that were written down before they were performed are now lost.
During the Golden Age of Greek drama in the 5th century BC, comedy, along with tragedy, emerged as a more established form of drama. In his Poetics, Aristotle writes that comedy took longer to establish than tragedy because people took it less seriously. At the Dionysia festival three playwrights would offer a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and one comedy or satyr to be judged in a competition. The comedy was regularly used to lift the spirits of the audience after watching the trilogy of tragedies. These 5th century BC comedies are regarded as Old Comedy (archaia).
The most important Old Comedy dramatist from the Golden Age was Aristophanes, and he is widely regarded as the father of comedy. Aristophanes remarked that, despite the fact that comedies were taken less seriously by most people, they were actually more difficult to write than tragedies and declared that his comic plays were written for an intelligent audience. Old Comedy was a complex and sophisticated dramatic form that incorporated many approaches to humour and entertainment, such as satire and burlesque, but often purposefully descended into farce. It accommodated light entertainment, puns, buffoonery, obscenities, absurd plots and invented words with hauntingly beautiful lyrics and a formal, dramatic structure.
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| Aristophanes |
The play ends with the exodus. Usually the majoy confrontation of the play (the agon) between the good and bad characters is resolved in favour of the good long before the end of the play. The rest of the play then deals with farcical consequences in a succession of loosely connected scenes. The exodus is thus usually a farcical anti-climax; the dramatic tension is released early, allowing for a holiday feeling through the rest of the play which allows the audience to relax in uncomplicated enjoyment to watch the spectacle. The ending usually saw the actors and chorus dance and sing and celebrate the hero's victory with a sexual conquest and a wedding, thus providing a joyous sense of closure.
The comic hero is resourceful and independent-minded. They have ingenuity and shrewdness but are often subjected to corrupt leaders and unreliable neighbours. Typically they devise a complicated and highly fanciful escape from an intolerable situation. Aristophanes used his comedies to parody the characters in the preceding tragedies, and other famous figures, both historical and mythological. He caricatured leading figures in the arts, such as the tragic playwright Euripides; leading figures in politics, such as the statesman Cleon; leading figures in academia, such as the philosopher Socrates; and mythological heroes, such as Heracles. Aristophanes used the conventions of comic burlesque to caricature the manner of the serious tragedies by treating famous subjects in a ludicrous way. The relaxation in standards of behaviour permitted during the holiday spirit, associated with the festival of Dionysus, led to Old Comedy being notorious for using an abundance of scatological and sexual innuendo, obscenties and crude jokes.
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| Comedy mask |
Similarly the masks worn by the actors in Old Comedy were often caricatures of real people, often distorted into still recognisable, but ridiculous, parodies. The actors' wore costumes that were deliberately bawdy; the male characters had tights with grotesque padding and phalluses in their crotches and the female characters, played by male actors, wore overly feminine long, saffron tunics, to highlight the obvious cross-dressing of the man. Costumes were also used to mock famous characters, such as Dionysus, the god of wine and festival, appearing onstage with the lion skin cloak that usually characterised Heracles, the legendary, serious Greek hero
Old Comedies are also categorised by self-mocking theatre, where members of the audience, other comic playwrights and the writer of the play themselves were frequently mocked. Audience members could be mocked for physical deformities, ugliness, diseases, perversions, bad manners, dishonesty, cowardice in battle and clumsiness. Foreigners, such as Spartans, Scythians, Persians, Boeotians and Megarians, would often appear in comedies, hopelessly mispronouncing Greek, and specifically Athenian, words and phrases. Other comic playwrights were mocked for their failures according to the writer of the play's own opinion, and Aristophanes regularly caricatured his comic rivals Hermippus and Eupolis in his plays. Writers also parodied themselves in their plays with self-mocking jokes.
Aristophanes took on the role of teacher (didaskalos) in his comic plays, and it was conventional in Old Comedy for the Chorus to speak on behalf of the playwright during their address to the audience (the parabasis), usually at the beginning or end of the play. The Chorus were therefore elevated in Old Comedy, and were accompanied by musical extravaganza and greater expenditure on costumes, training and maintenance.
In the later 5th Century BC and later into the 4th Century BC, the form of comedy that scholars now refer to as Middle Comedy (mese), was developed. Middle Comedies diminished the role of the Chorus so they had a far lesser influence on the plot, and in particular public characters were not impersonated or personified onstage and instead the objects were general instead of personal. So methods of writing, political ideas, belief systems, personality traits and characteristics were mocked instead of poltical or mythological figures. Middle Comedies also started the tradition of using stock characters in plays, instead of historical, specific figures. So revellers, soldiers, philosophers, courtesans, cooks and parasites were produced as a representation of their profession, rather than as an actual famous character.
Less is known of Middle Comedy than Old or New Comedy; it is seen as a bridge between the two. Few full Middle Comedies remain; they mainly only in the fragments of the Middle Comedy playwright Athenaeus of Naucratis, who wrote with mainly early stock characters. However, there is some evidence that Middle Comedies were being performed in parts of southern Italy in this time, suggesting they had considerable literary and social influence.
New Comedy (nea) emerged in the late 4th century and 3rd Century BC. The three most famous and best known playwrights belonging to this genre is Menander.
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| Menander |
Menander wrote supremely civilised and sophisticated New Comedy plays, characterised as mostly less farcical and satirical than the Old Comedies. The de-emphasis of the grotesque, whether in the form of choruses, humour or spectacle, opened the way for increased representation of daily life and the foibles of recognisable character types.
Menander's comedies were more about the fears of ordinary people, their personal relationships, family life and social mishaps rather than public, historical or mythological figures. Menander admired the tragic dramatist Euripides, and imitated his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions and his fondness for moral maxims, but in a humourous way. Menander departed from the Athenian setting or covered mythological themes and subjects that Aristophanes used in his Old Comedies; New Comedy plays were seldom placed in a setting other than their everyday world. Gods and goddesses were personified abstractions who rarely appeared in the plays and there were generally no miracles or metamorphoses.
Menander was a student of the philosopher Theophrastus, who wrote about thirty character types in his work The Characters. Theophrastus wrote that each type was said to be an illustration of an individual who represents a group, characterised by their most prominent trait. The character types were; Insincere, Offensive, Petty Ambition, Flaterrer, Hapless, Stingy, Garrulous, Officious, Show-Off, Boor, Absent-Minded, Arrogant, Complacent, Unsociable, Coward, Without Moral Feeling, Unsociable, Oligarchical, Talkative, Supersititious, Late Learner, Fabricator, Faultfinder, Slanderer, Shamelessly Greedy, Suspicious, Lover of Bad Company, Pennypincher, Repulsive, Basely Covetous Man, Unpleasant.
Menander drew from these stock characters for his plays. The cast of his plays included minor characters such as cooks or parasites who introduced familiar jokes and recognisable patterns of speech. A key stock character in his plays was the 'senex iratus', or the 'angry old man', who was a domineering parent who tries to thwart his child from achieving wedded happiness but who is often led into the same follies for which he has reproves his children; the bragging soldier who talked about the number of enemies he killed and how well he'd treat a woman; and the kind shrewd prostitute who hides her softness of heart behind a facade of toughness ('tart with a heart'). Menander gave stereotype characters a sense that they were character types. In his comedies, they were expected to react the way they were supposed to behave but some resist. These stock characters appear as rich unlayered humans in a new dimension. He used these stereotype characters to comment on human life and depict human folly and absurdity compassionately, with wit and subtlety.
New Comedies are more like romantic and situation comedies and comedy of errors than the burlesque and satirical Old Comedies. Menander introduced the 5-act that was been widely used in many later plays. Old Comedies had choral interludes but in New Comedies there was dialogue with song and the chorus was greatly diminished. The action of his plays had breaks, thus breaking up each act and allowing for a smooth and effective development of the play through the acts.
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