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Sophocles (left) vs. Aeschylus (upper right) vs. Euripides (lower right)
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Last night's marquee Oscar match-up: director Clint Eastwood vs. director Martin Scorsese, Million Dollar Baby vs. The Aviator. Eastwood won, taking home a fistful of Oscars, including honors for best picture and best director.
Will humans remember Hollywood's best in the year 4505? Maybe. We still have records of the trio of tragedians who fought for the entertainment awards of ancient Greece. Back then, it was Aeschylus vs. Sophocles vs. Euripides vying for best tragic playwright. Who was the greatest of the great? Let's see what the records say.
Today's Knowledge
Ancient Greece's Tragic Trio
Three names in ancient Greek tragedy stand above all others: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. But only one truly captured the heart of the "Academy" voters of old Athens.
Aeschylus
Born in 525 BC, Aeschylus wrote some 90 plays. Sadly, only six or seven survive. His claim to fame: being the father of classical Greek drama--because before him, drama as we know it didn't exist. Oh sure, there were simple affairs in which a single actor spoke lines back and forth with a chorus. But Aeschylus was the first to add a second actor. All of sudden, you had lively conversations, arguments, and plots.
Every spring in Athens, playwrights competed for top honors at a festival for the god Dionysus. Each playwright got one day all to himself to present four plays to the audience: three tragedies and a "satyr play," a short, silly, and often vulgar comedy that cheered everyone up after all the tragic mayhem. The plays were performed outdoors, in the Theater of Dionysius at the foot of the Acropolis, in front of a vocal and critical crowd. The grand prize was a crown of ivy. Aeschylus won the ivy crown 13 times in more than 20 tries.
The tragedies he entered were often trilogies, like the Oresteia, which won him the top prize in 458 BC. Part one, Agamemnon, portrays the return home of the Greek king who sacked Troy. After greeting his smiling wife, he hops in the bathtub, where he is promptly hacked to death by said smiling wife and her lover. Part two, The Libation Bearers, concerns Agamemnon's son Orestes, who kills both mom and lover to avenge dad. Part three, The Eumenides, is literally a courtroom drama, with Orestes on trial for murder. The Furies--avenging spirits--are the plaintiffs. The god Apollo is the defense attorney. And the goddess Athena sits in judgment with 12 Athenian citizens.
Sophocles
If Aeschylus changed everything by putting a second actor on stage, Sophocles--born around 496 BC--saw and raised him by adding a third. This enabled playwrights to create even more complex situations. Like Aeschylus, he wrote prolifically, penning 123 plays, though again, all but seven are lost. Of the great tragedians, Sophocles had the best luck at the Dionysia. He won 24 times out of around 30 tries, and placed second in the ones that he didn't win.
Sophocles's most famous play is Oedipus the King. Aristotle considered it the perfect tragedy. Like the Oresteia, it concerns a family with enough issues to make even the best therapist throw away his notebook in despair. After hearing a prophecy that their baby son will eventually kill dad and sleep with mom, new parents Laius and Jocasta tell their servant to take their new child into the wilderness and leave it there to die. Fortunately, the boy is rescued and adopted by a couple who name him Oedipus.
Unfortunately, no one in a Greek tragedy ever escapes his fate. Oedipus kills a rude stranger on the road not knowing it's his father, and becomes king of Thebes and marries the man's widow, not knowing she's his mother. The gods punish this horrible behavior by smiting Thebes with a plague. Oedipus investigates, and gradually learns the full horror of what he's done. Basically, the play is a detective story in which the detective is also the criminal.
Euripides
Born around 485 BC, Euripides was the risk-taking young rebel who shocked the people and broke all the rules. Critics accused him of a lot of things: hating women, disrespecting the gods, making his heroes unheroic, and generally writing weird and complex plays. He's definitely the most modern and realistic of the ancient tragedians, famous for his psychological subtlety and for bringing mundane objects and scenes into the elevated realm of tragic drama.
His greatest play is probably The Bacchae, in which King Pentheus refuses to believe in the divinity of the wine god Dionysus. Poor Pentheus is punished horribly for this hard-headed skepticism. He's torn to pieces by his own mother, who has become one of Dionysus's most frenzied devotees.
Euripides wrote more than 90 plays, of which almost 20 survive. Despite his genius, he was too hot for many ancient Greek theatergoers to handle. He won first prize at the Dionysia only four times--and one of those was posthumous.
And the Winner Is . . .
With the best tragedy ever according to Aristotle, 24 Dionysia victories, and 6 second-place finishes, the ivy crown for best ancient Greek tragedian just has to go to Sophocles.
Jeffery Vail
February 28, 2005
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