Ancient Greece

Lesson 7: Greek Drama

The Origins of Greek Drama

If there is one thing that we know to definitely have been invented for the first time in the city of Athens, then it is the art of dramatic performance.

The ancient Athenian theatre was probably as central to Athenian society as Hollywood is to modern Western society, and perhaps even more so (considering the fact that few other forms of entertainment existed at that time - there were no PC games and no internet back then)

Ancient Athenians even had dreams about the theatre.

In one story that has come down to us from the historian Diodorus Siculus, we are told that, before the battle of Arginoussae, the democratic hero Thrasybulus dreamt that he and his fellow Athenian admirals were acting in the role of the famous ‘Seven against Thebes’ in a production of one of Euripides' plays. (The Seven were a group of seven heroes who led an attack against the city of Thebes in Greek mythology). In the same dream, he saw the opposing Spartan commanders acting in another play of Euripides, that was titled “The Suppliant Women”. Based on this dream, Thrasybulus was said to have come to the conclusion that his forces would win the coming battle.

Traditionally, the invention of Greek drama was attributed to a man called Thespis. (It is from his name that the modern English word ‘thespian’, meaning an actor, is derived)

Thespis was supposed to have lived sometime in the late sixth century BC. Plutarch has preserved a story that when Thespis put on his first performance in Athens, the great Athenian statesman Solon (see the Origins of Athenian democracy above) went up to him and asked him if he was not ashamed to tell so many lies in public. Thespis boldly answered by saying that there was no harm in speaking or acting in the way that he did as long as it was all make-believe. It is said that the great Solon was not terribly impressed with this reply!!

The original meaning of the word ‘tragedy’ is uncertain.

One theory is that it comes from a Greek phrase that meant ‘song of goats’, and that this came about because the first dramatic performances were actually satyr plays. (Satyrs were mythological creatures that were half man and half goat – and they were invariably male, there seem to have been no female satyrs).