Editing Tragedy (section)

==Greek==
[[File:Dionysos mask Louvre Myr347.jpg|200px|right|thumb|Mask of [[Dionysus]]. Greek, [[Myrina, Greece|Myrina]], 2nd century BCE.]]
{{Main|Greek tragedy}}
[[File:Pompeii - Casa dei Vettii - Pentheus.jpg|thumb|''[[The Bacchae]]'', [[Greek tragedy|ancient Greek tragedy]] by [[Euripides]]]]
Athenian tragedy—the oldest surviving form of tragedy—is a type of dance-drama that formed an important part of the theatrical culture of the city-state.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Brown |first=Andrew |title=The Cambridge Guide to Theatre |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1998 |isbn=0-521-43437-8 |editor-last=Banham |editor-first=Martin |edition=Revised |location=Cambridge |page=441 |chapter=Greece, Ancient |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgeguideto0000banh/page/441}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Cartledge |first=Paul |title=The Cambridge Companion to Greek Tragedy |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1997 |isbn=0-521-42351-1 |editor-last=Easterling |editor-first=P. E. |editor-link=P. E. Easterling |series=Cambridge Companions to Literature series |location=Cambridge |pages=3–5 |chapter='Deep Plays': Theatre as Process in Greek Civic Life}}</ref>{{Sfn | Goldhill | 1997 | p = 54}}{{Sfn | Ley | 2007 | p = 206}}{{Sfn | Styan | 2000 | p = 140}}{{Sfn | Taxidou | 2004 | p = 104 | ps =: "most scholars now call 'Greek' tragedy 'Athenian' tragedy, which is historically correct".}} Having emerged sometime during the 6th century BCE, it flowered during the 5th century BCE (from the end of which it began to spread throughout the Greek world), and continued to be popular until the beginning of the [[Hellenistic civilization|Hellenistic period]].{{Sfn | Brockett | Hildy | 2003 | pp = 32–3}}{{Sfn | Brown | 1998 | p = 444}}{{Sfn | Cartledge | 1997 | pp = 3–5, 33 | ps =: [although [[Classical Athens|Athenians]] of the 4th century judged [[Aeschylus]], [[Sophocles]], and [[Euripides]] "as the nonpareils of the genre, and regularly honored their plays with revivals, tragedy itself was not merely a 5th-century phenomenon, the product of a short-lived [[Fifth-century Athens|golden age]]. If not attaining the quality and stature of the fifth-century 'classics', original tragedies nonetheless continued to be written and produced and competed with in large numbers throughout the remaining life of the [[Athenian democracy|democracy]]—and beyond it".}} No tragedies from the 6th century and only 32 of the more than a thousand that were performed in the 5th century have survived.{{Sfn | Brockett | Hildy | 2003 | p = 15}}{{Sfn | Kovacs | 2005 | p = 379}}{{Refn | group = "lower-alpha" | We have seven by Aeschylus, seven by Sophocles, and eighteen by Euripides. In addition, we also have the ''[[Cyclops (play)|Cyclops]]'', a satyr play by Euripides.  Some critics since the 17th century have argued that one of the tragedies that the classical tradition gives as Euripides'—''[[Rhesus (play)|Rhesus]]''—is a 4th-century play by an unknown author; modern scholarship agrees with the classical authorities and ascribes the play to Euripides.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Euripides |title=Plays VI |publisher=Methuen |others=J. Michael Walton, introduction |year=1997 |isbn=0-413-71650-3 |series=Methuen Classical Greek Dramatists |location=London |pages=viii, xix |chapter=Introduction |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/playssix0000euri/page/}}</ref>  This uncertainty accounts for Brockett and Hildy's figure of 31 tragedies.}} We have complete texts [[Extant literature|extant]] by [[Aeschylus]], [[Sophocles]], and [[Euripides]].{{Sfn | Brockett | Hildy | 2003 | p = 15}}{{Refn | group = "lower-alpha" | The theory that ''[[Prometheus Bound]]'' was not written by [[Aeschylus]] adds a fourth, anonymous playwright to those whose work survives.}} Aeschylus' ''[[The Persians]]'' is recognized to be the earliest extant Greek tragedy, and as such it is doubly unique among the extant ancient dramas.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Harrison |first1=Thomas |title=The emptiness of Asia : Aeschylus' 'Persians' and the history of the fifth century |date=2019 |publisher=Bloomsbury Academic |location=London |isbn=9781350113411 |page=13}}</ref>

Athenian tragedies were performed in late March/early April at an annual state religious festival in honor of Dionysus. The presentations took the form of a contest between three playwrights, who presented their works on three successive days. Each playwright offered a tetralogy consisting of three tragedies and a concluding comic piece called a [[satyr play]].{{sfn|Lucas|1954|p=7}} The four plays sometimes featured linked stories. Only one complete trilogy of tragedies has survived, the ''[[Oresteia]]'' of Aeschylus. The Greek theatre was in the open air, on the side of a hill, and performances of a trilogy and satyr play probably lasted most of the day. Performances were apparently open to all citizens, including women, but evidence is scant.{{Citation needed|date=June 2012}} The theatre of Dionysus at Athens probably held around 12,000 people.{{Sfn | Ley | 2007 | p = 33–34}}

All of the choral parts were sung (to the accompaniment of an ''[[aulos]]'') and some of the actors' answers to the chorus were sung as well. The play as a whole was composed in various verse metres. All actors were male and wore masks. A [[Greek chorus]] danced as well as sang, though no one knows exactly what sorts of steps the chorus performed as it sang. Choral songs in tragedy are often divided into three sections: strophe ("turning, circling"), antistrophe ("counter-turning, counter-circling") and epode ("after-song").

Many ancient Greek tragedians employed the ''[[Ekkyklema|ekkyklêma]]'' as a theatrical device, which was a platform hidden behind the scene that could be rolled out to display the aftermath of some event which had happened out of sight of the audience. This event was frequently a brutal murder of some sort, an act of violence which could not be effectively portrayed visually, but an action of which the other characters must see the effects for it to have meaning and emotional resonance. A prime example of the use of the ''ekkyklêma'' is after the murder of [[Agamemnon (play)|Agamemnon]] in the first play of Aeschylus' ''Oresteia'', when the king's butchered body is wheeled out in a grand display for all to see. Variations on the ''ekkyklêma'' are used in tragedies and other forms to this day, as writers still find it a useful and often powerful device for showing the consequences of extreme human actions. Another such device was a crane, the [[mechane]], which served to hoist a god or goddess on stage when they were supposed to arrive flying. This device gave origin to the phrase "[[deus ex machina]]" ("god out of a machine"), that is, the surprise intervention of an unforeseen external factor that changes the outcome of an event.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Chondros |first1=Thomas G. |last2=Milidonis |first2=Kypros |last3=Vitzilaios |first3=George |last4=Vaitsis |first4=John |date=1 September 2013 |title="Deus-Ex-Machina" reconstruction in the Athens theater of Dionysus |url=http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094114X13000827 |journal=Mechanism and Machine Theory |language=en |volume=67 |pages=172–191 |doi=10.1016/j.mechmachtheory.2013.04.010 |issn=0094-114X}}</ref>