Greek tragedy on the move : the birth of a panhellenic art form c.500-300 BC

Includes bibliographical references and index.

"What makes Greek tragedy Greek? The genre is one of the most important cultural legacies of the classical world, with a rich and varied history and reception, yet at first sight it appears to have its roots in a very particular place and time. The authors of the surviving works of Greek tragic drama--Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides--were all from one city, Athens, and all lived in the fifth century BC; unsurprisingly, it has often been supposed that tragic drama was inherently linked in some way to fifth-century Athens and its democracy. Why then do we refer to tragedy as 'Greek', rather than 'Attic' or 'Athenian'? This volume tells the story of tragedy's development and dissemination, which is inherently one of travel as tragedy grew out of, and became part of, a common Greek culture. Although Athens was a major Panhellenic centre, by the fifth century a well-established network of festivals and patrons encompassed Greek cities and sanctuaries from Sicily to Asia Minor and from North Africa to the Black Sea. The movement of professional poets, actors, and audience members along this circuit allowed for the exchange of poetry in general and tragedy in particular, which came to be performed all over the Greek world: tragic drama was thus a Panhellenic phenomenon even from the time of the earliest performances. The stories dramatized were themselves tales of travel--the epic journeys of heroes such as Heracles, Jason, or Orestes--and the works of the tragedians not only demonstrated how the various peoples of Greece were connected through the wanderings of their ancestors, but also how these connections could be sustained by travelling poets."-- Provided by publisher.