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List Of Ancient Greek Playwrights
*Thespis (c. 6th century BC): *Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BC): **''The Persians'' (472 BC) **''Seven Against Thebes'' (467 BC) **'' The Suppliants'' (463 BC) **'' The Oresteia'' (458 BC, a trilogy comprising ''Agamemnon'', '' The Libation Bearers'' and '' The Eumenides''.) **''Prometheus Bound'' (authorship and date of performance is still in dispute) * Phrynichus (~511 BC): **''The Fall of Miletus'' (c. 511 BC) **''Phoenissae'' (c. 476 BC) **''Danaides'' **''Actaeon'' **''Huzaifus'' **''Alcestis'' **''Tantalus'' *Achaeus of Eretria (484-c. 405 BC) **''Adrastus'' **''Linus'' **''Cycnus'' **''Eumenides'' **''Philoctetes'' **''Pirithous'' **''Theseus'' **''Œdipus'' * Achaeus of Syracuse (c. 356 BC) *Agathon (c. 448–400 BC) **''Aerope'' **''Alcmeon'' **'' Anthos'' or ''Antheus'' ("The Flower") **''Mysoi'' ("Mysians") **'' Telephos'' ("Telephus") **''Thyestes'' * Aphareus (4th century BC) **''Asklepios**'' **''Akhilleus**'' **''Tantalos**'' *Sophocles (c. 495–406 BC): **'' Theban plays ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thespis
Thespis (; ; fl. 6th century BC) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet. He was born in the ancient city of Icarius (present-day Dionysos, Greece). According to certain Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek sources and especially Aristotle, he was the first human to appear on stage as an actor playing a character in a play (theatre), play (instead of speaking as himself). In other sources, he is said to have introduced the first principal actor in addition to the chorus. He is often called the "Inventor of Tragedy". His name is the origin of the word "Wiktionary:thespian, thespian", meaning actor. Thespis was a singer of dithyrambs (songs about stories from mythology with choric refrains). He is credited with introducing a new style in which one singer or actor performed the words of individual characters in the stories, distinguishing between the characters with the aid of different masks. This new style was called Greek tragedy, tragedy, and Thespis was the most popular exponent o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theban Plays
Sophocles ( 497/496 – winter 406/405 BC)Sommerstein (2002), p. 41. was an ancient Greek tragedian known as one of three from whom at least two plays have survived in full. His first plays were written later than, or contemporary with, those of Aeschylus and earlier than, or contemporary with, those of Euripides. Sophocles wrote more than 120 plays, but only seven have survived in a complete form: ''Ajax'', ''Antigone'', '' Women of Trachis'', ''Oedipus Rex'', ''Electra'', ''Philoctetes'', and ''Oedipus at Colonus''. For almost fifty years, Sophocles was the most celebrated playwright in the dramatic competitions of the city-state of Athens, which took place during the religious festivals of the Lenaea and the Dionysia. He competed in thirty competitions, won twenty-four, and was never judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won thirteen competitions and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles; Euripides won four.. The most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electra (Euripides)
Electra, also spelt Elektra (; ; ), is one of the most popular mythological characters in tragedies.Evans (1970), p. 79 She is the main character in two Greek tragedies, ''Electra'' by Sophocles and ''Electra'' by Euripides. She is also the central figure in plays by Aeschylus, Alfieri, Voltaire, Hofmannsthal, Eugene O'Neill, and Jean-Paul Sartre. She is a vengeful soul in '' The Libation Bearers'', the second play of Aeschylus' '' Oresteia'' trilogy. She plans out an attack with her brother to kill their mother, Clytemnestra. In psychology, the Electra complex is named after her. Family Electra's parents were King Agamemnon and Queen Clytemnestra of Mycenae. Her sisters were Iphigenia and Chrysothemis, and her brother was Orestes. In the ''Iliad'', Homer is understood to be referring to Electra in mentioning "Laodice" as a daughter of Agamemnon. Murder of Agamemnon Electra was absent from Mycenae when her father, King Agamemnon, returned from the Trojan War. When he ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hippolytus (play)
''Hippolytus'' (, ''Hippolytos'') is an Ancient Greek tragedy by Euripides, based on the myth of Hippolytus, son of Theseus. The play was first produced for the City Dionysia of Athens in 428 BC and won first prize as part of a trilogy. The text is extant. Euripides first treated the myth in a previous play, ''Hippolytos Kalyptomenos'' ( – ''Hippolytus Veiled''), which is lost, and survives only in fragments. What is known of it is based on echoes found in other ancient writings. The earlier play, and the one that has survived are both titled ''Hippolytus'', but in order to distinguish the two they have traditionally been given the names, ''Hippolytus Kalyptomenos'' and ''Hippolytus Stephanophoros'' ( – "Hippolytus the wreath bearer"). It is thought that the contents to the lost ''Hippolytos Kalyptomenos'' portrayed a woman, Phaedra, reduced to shamelessness by a god, and not given the dignity of being able to resist the spell that Aphrodite has placed on her. Athenians ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Herakles' Children (play)
''Children of Heracles'' (, ''Hērakleidai''; also translated as ''Herakles' Children'' and ''Heraclidae'') is an Athenian tragedy written by Euripides. In the year of 430 B.C., ''Children of Heracles'' was performed. It follows the children of Heracles (known as the Heracleidae) as they seek protection from Eurystheus. It is the first of two surviving tragedies by Euripides where the children of Heracles are suppliants (the second being ''Heracles''). Background ''Children of Heracles'' was written by Euripides. Euripides would eventually become the most famous playwright compared to Aeschylus and Sophocles. The majority of his plays oppose war. There are ninety-two plays written by Euripides. However, only nineteen plays have been recovered. In 430 B.C., the Peloponnesian War was just beginning and the relationship between the Spartans and Athenians was tense. The Athenians killed many Spartan envoys, as stated by the historian Thucydides. Euripides depicted the brutality he wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medea (play)
''Medea'' (, ''Mēdeia'') is a tragedy by the ancient Greek playwright Euripides based on a myth. It was first performed in 431 BC as part of a trilogy, the other plays of which have not survived. Its plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the kingdom of Colchis and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the world threatened as Jason leaves her for a princess of Corinth and takes vengeance on him by murdering his new wife and her own two sons, before escaping to Athens to start a new life. Euripides's play has been explored and interpreted by playwrights across the centuries and the world in a variety of ways, offering political, psychoanalytical, feminist, and many other original readings of Medea, Jason, and the core themes of the play. ''Medea'', along with three other plays, earned Euripides third prize in the City Dionysia. Some believe that this indicates a poor reception, but "the competition that year was extraordinarily keen"; Sophocles, o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcestis (play)
''Alcestis'' (; , ''Alkēstis'') is an Classical Athens, Athenian tragedy by the Classical Greece, ancient Greek playwright Euripides. It was first produced at the Dionysia, City Dionysia festival in 438 BC. Euripides presented it as the final part of a tetralogy of unconnected plays in the competition of tragedies, for which he won second prize; this arrangement was exceptional, as the fourth part was normally a satyr play. Its Ambiguity, ambiguous, Tragicomedy, tragicomic Tone (fiction), tone—which may be "cheerfully romantic" or "bitterly ironic"—has earned it the label of a "problem play." ''Alcestis'' is, possibly excepting the ''Rhesus (play), Rhesus'', the oldest surviving work by Euripides, although at the time of its first performance he had been producing plays for 17 years. Events prior to the start of the play Long before the start of the play, King Admetus was granted by the Moirai, Fates the privilege of living past the allotted time of his death. The Fates were p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euripides
Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him, but the ''Suda'' says it was ninety-two at most. Of these, eighteen or nineteen have survived more or less complete (''Rhesus (play), Rhesus'' is suspect). There are many fragments (some substantial) of most of his other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly because his popularity grew as theirs declinedMoses Hadas, ''Ten Plays by Euripides'', Bantam Classic (2006), Introduction, p. ixhe became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer, Demosthenes, and Menander.L.P.E.Parker, ''Euripides: Alcestis'', Oxford University Press (2007), Introduction p. lx Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philoctetes (Sophocles)
''Philoctetes'' (, ''Philoktētēs''; English pronunciation: , stressed on the third syllable, ''-tet-'') is a play by Sophocles (Aeschylus and Euripides also each wrote a ''Philoctetes'' but theirs have not survived). The play was written during the Peloponnesian War. It is one of the seven extant tragedies by Sophocles. It was first performed at the City Dionysia in 409 BC, where it won first prize. The story takes place during the Trojan War (after the majority of the events of the ''Iliad'', but before the Trojan Horse). It describes the attempt by Neoptolemus and Odysseus to bring the disabled Philoctetes, the master archer, back to Troy from the island of Lemnos. Background When Heracles was near his death, he wished to be burned on a funeral pyre while still alive. In the play ''Philoctetes'', Sophocles references the myth in which no one but Philoctetes would light Heracles' funeral pyre, and in return for this favor Heracles gave Philoctetes his bow (seen in later ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Electra (Sophocles)
''Electra'', also ''Elektra'' or ''The Electra'' (, ''Ēlektra''), is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the ''Philoctetes'' (409 BC) and the ''Oedipus at Colonus'' (406 BC) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career. Jebb dates it between 420 BC and 414 BC. Storyline Set in the city of Mycenae a few years after the Trojan War, the play tells of a bitter struggle for justice by Electra and her brother Orestes for the murder of their father Agamemnon by Clytemnestra and their stepfather Aegisthus. When King Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War, his wife Clytemnestra (who has taken Agamemnon's cousin Aegisthus as a lover) kills him. Clytemnestra believes the murder was justified since Agamemnon had sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia before the war, as commanded by the gods. Electra, daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, rescued her younger brother Orestes from her mother by send ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Trachiniae
''Women of Trachis'' or ''The Trachiniae'' (, ) c. 450–425 BC, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles. ''Women of Trachis'' is generally considered to be less developed than Sophocles' other works, and its dating has been a subject of disagreement among critics and scholars. Synopsis The story begins with Deianeira, the wife of Heracles, relating the story of her early life and her plight adjusting to married life. She discusses how Heracles was not her first suitor, and her first suitor was actually the river god Aheloos. Deianeira tells how with Zeus' intervention, Heracles defeated Aheloos and took her as a wife. She is now distraught over her husband's neglect of her family. Often involved in some adventure, he rarely visits them. It has been fifteen months since she has last heard from Heracles, and Deianeira does not know where he is. She sends their son Hyllus to find him, as she is concerned over prophecies about Heracles and the land he is currently in claiming that it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ajax (Sophocles)
Sophocles' ''Ajax'', or ''Aias'' ( or ; , gen. ), is a Greek tragedy written in the 5th century BCE. ''Ajax'' may be the earliest of Sophocles' seven tragedies to have survived, though it is probable that he had been composing plays for a quarter of a century already when it was first staged. It appears to belong to the same period as his ''Antigone'', which was probably performed in 442 or 441 BCE, when he was 55 years old. The play depicts the fate of the warrior Ajax the Great, the second greatest hero at Troy (after Achilles), after the events of the ''Iliad'' but before the end of the Trojan War. Plot The play opens with a dialogue between Athena and Odysseus: After the great warrior Achilles had been killed in battle, there was a question as to who should receive his armor. As the man who now could be considered the greatest Greek warrior, Ajax felt he should be given Achilles' armor, but the two kings, Agamemnon and Menelaus, awarded it instead to Odysseus. Ajax became f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
