Apuleius - The Apologia

Salve!

May the Gods forgive me for such a hiatus. The current author in the sights of Legendum couldn’t be any more of a radical departure from the austere fare we have been enjoying of late.

Apuleius (125-180 CE), a distinguished writer, orator and would-be Platonist philosopher was a native of North Africa, most probably a native Berber and son of a leading figure in the town of Madaurus in the Roman province of Numidia. His chief fame derives from the Golden Ass (or Metamorphoses), perhaps the only extant Roman novel – although since we don’t really have any other novels or novel type texts from the same era, it’s a term which for me has some diificulties. Nevertheless I think that we are in for a treat with this tale of magic, adventure and mystery. You thought Magical Realism was South American in origin…well you may have to think again.

Apuleius

He is the author of a number of other works, in particular the Apologia and the Florida. The former of the two works is the record of a declamation or defence speech delivered by Apuleius himself as a vindication against the accusation of magic or more accurately the use of magic charms rituals and philtres in order to obtain the hand of a rich matron in marriage. The Apologia can be found online relatively easily and I thought it useful to dip into these works to gain some more background on the author as well as a feel for the 2nd Century milieu in which he flourished. I have just finished the Apologia and about to embark upon an investigation of the Florida before tackling the Golden Ass, but I am going to focus on the Apologia for this introductory blog post.

The Apologia (or A Treatise on Magic as it is often known) gives an insight into Apuleius and his character as well as his dextrous use of quotations from Homer, Plato and many other classical authorities to illustrate and add colour and conviction to his expostulations. From my cursory reading of the text he comes across as an educated and most eloquent and witty defender of his reputation as well as that of his wife Pudentilla. However, it is also fair to say that he is at times verbose, slightly priggish and a bit of a show off.

Despite these character traits it is clear that his case is a strong one and on the face of it he appears to have been the relatively innocent victim of a vindictive case brought against him out of jealousy and rivalry. What we have before us in the final shape of the text is surely not a verbatim transcript of the speech as given in court with its dramatic flourishes and stage directions rather a skilful melange of the actual defence speech prepared by Apuleius before delivery plus his notes and embellishments and the official transcript of the recorder. One can imagine Apuleius in his well-appointed and rather smart little tablinum, stylus in hand, relishing the success and pondering over a phrase, or quotation with which to enhance his work.

The twin arts of the skilled rhetor and the auctor have been expertly blended to create a tour de force not only of self justification but also as some scholars assert but also of damnatio or counterblast against his would be accusers. As in the middle ages, both the crime and accusation of witchcraft was a very serious matter and it must have been a great risk to bring such a case against an individual. In the ancient world there is at least one attested case of crucifixion of a malicious accuser of sorcery. Apuleius clearly won his case as his later activity proves. The fate of his accuser is not known, though at one point Apuleius mentions that 10 years exile from the city might have been appropriate.



Late 3rd Century Theatre at Sabratha in Libya

The Apologia is a good place to start to get an idea of Apuleius the man and his style, which is often quite humorous despite the deadly serious nature of the trial. He employs ridicule and exaggerated expression to dismantle his opponent’s arguments and almost overreaches himself hence the humour of literary excess and hyperbole – overegging it for a future audience or readership perhaps. He has a habit on occasion of getting carried away, three or four examples where one would suffice to drive home the point. You get the sense upon reading this text that Apuleius quite likes the sound of his own voice and the display of his learned erudition as a Platonist and a natural scientist...a sort of long haired Numidian amateur Leonardo occasionally whipping out his pocket mirror to admire his rather handsome and dashing appearance, or as he would have us believe, to follow the advice of Socrates and look at his own image to hold it up to 'philosophical examination'. I bet he mussed his hair up with just a touch of panache (and possibly pomade for the ladies) before entering the court that day!

With the Apologia we get a taste of the eloquence and the slightly purple efflorescence of the skilled advocate...who could make us believe almost anything with his erudite 24 carat narration. Something we will doubtless be able to trace in the fantastic arabesques of the Golden Ass.

Vale!

Electra Unchained

I have concentrated on reading the Sophocles version and the translation I have worked with is that of Hugh Lloyd Jones (Loeb Classical Library – Harvard 1994). It is clear that the dramatist has focussed all the serious attention on Electra in this version.  Electra seems more fleshed out than the Aeschylus incarnation taking centre stage but also with very human flaws and ambiguities – it’s not all black and white and this could be said of the other characters too, particularly the pietas scenes of and libation prayer to Apollo of Clytemnestra l.634 ff.

 But the paradox at the heart of this depiction is that she is a rebel but apparently one supporting male values. She is a transgressor but in the end all this wild flouting of a woman’s traditional role results in nothing more than resuming her place in the house of Atreus as a potential noble wife. Could she be both at the same time and be a satisfying character to an ancient audience? Or is this Sophocles playing with female emancipatory urges within the secure trope of the male heir (Orestes) resuming the reins of control and order in the end?

The play opens with Orestes and the Old Slave arriving in Argos in the early hours. The purpose of this interchange is to introduce the plan of faking Orestes death in a chariot race (a significant literary and mythic echo of the death of Myrtilus) and announcing it to the palace while he and Pylades his faithful sidekick prepare to kill Clytemnestra and Aegsithus while disguised as urn bearers of Orestes’ ashes. Orestes then leaves the stage not to reappear until the end – from now on the action focusses upon Electra and her transgressive acts of mourning and plans for revenge.

The chorus of Argive women are initially neutral and react cautiously to Electra’s outbursts of grief countering her transgressive outbursts by warning her that excessive mourning is inappropriate. The metre of anapaestic dimeter lends a chanting marching even drum-like warning to their words:

l.233-235 ‘all’oun eunoia g’audo

                  mater hosei tis pista

                  me/tik/tein s’a/tan a/ta/is

 

                   ‘Well, I speak as a well-wisher

                  Like a mother-in-law in whom

                  You can have trust, telling you

                  Not to create misery by means of misery’

 

       

However, they gradually warm to her cause and end up endorsing her acts outrageous as they are. Electra justifies her excessive mourning as an expression of respect and ‘pietas’ to the unjustly slain dead (her father Agamemnon). She also bewails her lot as having lost her rightful place as a noble woman in the palace of Argos.

 

 The chorus plays an interesting intermediary role or referee between Electra and her sister Chrysothemis who portrays the obedient daughter willing to compromise as a survival strategy under the new regime of the usurper Aegisthus. Her speech reveals her as an appeaser in Electra’s eyes.

l.335 ff

‘But as things are I think that in time of trouble I must lower my sails, and not seem to perform some deed, but do them no harm; and I would like you to follow suit.

‘but if I am to live in freedom, I must obey those in power in everything.’

Moreover in l.378 Chrysothemis warns Electra of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra’s plans for her should she continue her rebellious attitude:

‘all’eksero soi pan hoson katoid’ego

mellousi gar s’ei tode me lekseis goun,

entaitha pempsein entha me poth’heliou

phengos prosopsei,’

 

‘Well, I will tell you all I know!

If you do not leave off these lamentations,

They plan to send you to where you shall no longer see

The light of the sun,’

 

Electra is having none of this appeasement and remains resolute, almost reckless in her defiance of Aegisthus, daring him to come and dare to do what he is planning. It transpires that Chrysothemis is on her way to Agamemnon’s tomb to offer libations.

 

The libations are in fact an idea of Clytemnestra, prompted by dreams/nightmares, in which Agamemnon returns from Hades and plants his staff beside the hearth which grows into a fruitful bough. Fearing an adverse portent, Clytemnestra out of guilt tries to appease the dead. Here we see Sophocles painting a sympathetic picture of the queen trying to make amends with an act of piety.

 

Next we have Electra’s confrontation with Clytemnestra and one of the key themes at the centre of this play – that of justice and piety or rather the conundrum where one individuals pious act can be another’s outrage and revenge lust, and the justifications that opposing sides have for their acts. The two sides are both with their fault lines and we have a very blurred and ambiguous tone with Sophocles, making for a deeply fascinating drama with issues that still burn in our psyches to this day. How much evil is acceptable to preserve a life? The State? Is any kind of bloodshed justified whatever the reason? Is the best course expedience and to tow the official line? Do we trust the state to uphold justice? Or to take things into our own hands when the need arises and is most pressing?

 

 

There is no clear winner in the ensuing war of words: Both put their cases eloquently but with their own biases. We hear of the ‘real’ reason for Iphigenia’s sacrifice – Agamemnon had angered Artemis by slaying a stag in her sacred grove and uttering a blasphemy to boot. It was divinely ordered slaughter…so for Electra that makes it alright unlike Clytemnestra’s slaying of her father, an act of lust and greed, mere human directives as matched against those of the gods – the highest evil and arrogance and therefore deserving of scorn and revenge.  There is another interesting aspect to these interchanges – they often have the tone of a teenage daughter railing against the hypocrisy of her parents – subtle and endearing overtones of generation gap which those of the audience with young grown up daughters would surely have identified with!

 

This is one of the endearing fascinations of the play, how through Sophocles imaginative and dextrous lines Electra displays so many different emotional and psychological levels of engagement as a headstrong young woman with the various characters, all the time holding our attention – she mesmerises as a convincing figure burning with righteous indignation and fury one minute, sobbing her heart out the next and finally bursting with joy when Orestes, deus ex machine like, reveals his true identity and brings her out of the pit of despair. She is a glittering multi-faceted jewel of young womanhood and at one point it looks almost as if Orestes wants her to rule with him by his side, her passions and freedom totally unrestrained…and yet…and yet the slightly unclear ending has Orestes and Pylades marching Aegisthus off to the hearth inside the palace to his doom…to restore male order to the house of Argos. The chorus end with the lines:

 

l.1508 ff:

 

‘ho sperm’ Atreos, hos polla pathon

di eleutherias molis ekselthes

tei nun hormei teleothen’

 

            ‘Seed of Atreus, after many sufferings

             you have at last emerged in freedom,

             made complete by this day’s enterprise!’

 

The seed of Atreus although referring to both Electra and Orestes seems to imply a male lead in its masculine allusions. Where does this leave Electra? Is she a transgressor merely to enable the male order to reassert itself – to return to a subservient role and married off to a noble suitor to continue the status quo of the palace? I think Sophocles felt that he had to cap her freedom with Orestes finishing off the deed as if to contain the dangerous excess of a young woman breaking the bonds of convention in her quest for justice. Within the confines of the drama it is exciting for Sophocles to explore the female energy unleashed in its various guises but as if to close the lid again upon such dangerous and transgressive thoughts and deeds he must have had the overriding impulse to contain and control such dangerous and potentially revolutionary energy or at least channel it into safer male agendas.  So although I personally don’t think of Electra as a ‘male order bride’…I do think that she has been ‘disarmed’ and rendered harmless to men at the end of the drama, for unchained, she would be too strong.

 

Euge!

Troy on Radio 4

Andrew Rissik - Troy, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jv52 from @BBCRadio4Extra via BBC iPlayer Radio

The History and Early Textual Scholarship of Sophoclean Manuscripts

The 1994 Loeb publication of Sophocles (Ajax-Electra-Oedipus Tyrannus, Edited and translated by Hugh Lloyd-Jones) contains as part of its introduction to the works an interesting digression on the texts themselves and how Sophocles has come down to us from the Classical era. I thought it would be worthwhile to provide a brief summary.

Ptolemy III Euergetes
 

The plays were originally composed and performed in the 5th C BCE. It is not entirely clear at this very first stage how many manuscripts would have existed. There must have been a few copies and the master copy of Sophocles’ own hand and perhaps the winning plays might have been deposited at a shrine or temple archive. Whatever the case is the plays were performed again throughout the 4th C BCE and the number of manuscripts must have increased with this activity. As they circulated the texts began to be amended and variants appeared according to the predilections of the particular theatre group or dramatist. This came to a head when the orator Lycurgus (396-323 BCE) issued a decree at some time between 338 and 326 BCE ordering an official copy of all the great tragedians be made and that all future performances should not deviate from this text. 
At the beginning of the 3rd C BCE Ptolemy I established the Library at

Alexandria and scholars were sent out to collect the works of the foremost Greek authors for archiving and classification for further study. Galen refers to Ptolemy Euergetes I (regnat 247-222BCE) who borrowed an official copy of Sophocles from the Athens in return for a security of 15 talents of silver – a huge sum of money for that time. For example during the Peloponnesian War, a 200 man trireme crew would be paid 1 talent or a month’s work – I suppose that for highly trained ancient marines it was probably a decent wage, especially if you take into account that it would been a dangerous job including combat duties on an ad hoc basis!
 In modern money it would be 12,000 pounds so a deposit of 180,000 pounds was pretty substantial amount to leave with the Athenian Treasury. He must have thought it a steal since that is effectively what he did when he failed to return it and forfeited the deposit. This text was duly housed in the Alexandrian Library and became the next link in the chain, the basis for an edition of the text of Aristophanes of Byzantium (c. 257-180 BCE). However, it is likely that even this ‘official’ version was probably already a modified text with the interpolations and amendments of the era in which it was transcribed (late 4th –early 3rd C BCE).

The Great Library at Alexandria
 

It is at this point that we start to see the appearance of ancient scholarship on the work as a text with a commentary on Sophocles by Aristarchus (c. 216-144 BCE). In the Roman era, specifically during the reign of Augustus, Didymus ‘Bronze Guts’ (ca. 63 – 10 BCE?) came out with a variorum edition; essentially a mish-mash of different scholars material. He was a complier of the Aristarchus school and although not particularly original in his approach is valuable for his scholia on Sophocles. A much potted version of this work survives in later Byzantine manuscripts (scholia). 
Greek (Hellenistic ) scholarship continued on in much the same way with copies of the plays as well as commentaries and compilations of previous scholars works until some point in the 3rd C AD, when the versions were whittled down to a selected canon of  seven plays each of Aeschylus and Sophocles and ten of Euripides. The other texts and versions of plays start to become very rare after this date.
Byzantine scholarship seems to go through a dark age between the 7th and 9th Centuries CE and it is very probable that not much copying went on and the study of Sophocles petered out for a while. There is one exception; in the 9th C one manuscript of the seven plays was transcribed from the old uncial writing into the new-fangled (for the time!) miniscule script. There are about 200 medieval manuscripts and the majority of these contain only three plays of a later selection, Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus. Only three of the manuscripts come from this first Byzantine period of scholarship which lasted from the 9th C until 1204 when the crusaders of the Fourth Crusade ‘liberated’ Constantinople.

Manuscript in Greek Uncials

Adrianus Turnebus
 

One manuscript of the above period is the famous Laurentianus 32.9 (from the mid-10th C CE), preserved in the Laurentinian Library in Florence, known as ‘M’ in editions of Aeschylus and as ‘L’ in Sophocles texts. Apart from Laurentianus 31.10 (K) from the latter half of the 12th Century, the remaining Byzantine manuscripts are from periods later than the Crusader conquest. Of these there are various groups and it is here where the versions start to fan out into various trees.  The key groups are: - the Roman Family (r) and the Paris Family (a). Other manuscripts from the Paleologan Period (c.1261-c.1350) are known as ‘p’.
Modern texts of the 7 plays of Sophocles are based upon the medieval manuscripts occasionally supplemented with details from papyrus fragments (e.g. P.Oxy.2180 from the 2nd C CE)
We finally move into the print age with an indifferent Aldine edition (Aldus Manutius) in 1502 but the first decent edition was that of Adrianus Turnebus (Paris 1552-3) who based his text on manuscript Paris Gr. 2711, containing a recension of the Byzantine scholar Demetrius Triclinius; not the most accurate version but a step in the right direction.

From this time on there are more and more impressions in Europe and the first English printed edition was that of Peter Elmsley in 1823 based on Laurentinian manuscript L. The latest scholarly edition based on the latest and most accurate research is the Oxford text 1990 by Hugh Lloyd Jones and N.G. Wilson.
I cannot help but speculate on what might have been had Ptolemy III Euergetes returned the manuscript to its rightful place in the Athens treasury instead of ‘permanently borrowing’ it. What if anything at all of Sophocles would we have been left with? A sobering thought indeed!
Euge!

Aegisthus - Keystone Cop?

I have just finished reading the last of the three plays of Aeschylus’ Oresteia and although there is a sort of ‘happy ending’ in the air with the newly named Gracious ones (aka the Furies) obediently entering their generously appointed subterranean domains, Orestes acquitted of murder, the crowds at the Areopagus cheering and Athena triumphant; all this merriment, I cannot help feeling that there are a couple of odd things about the whole trilogy and more specifically the solidity of the plot framework upon which it rests.

Firstly, Aegisthus, himself the bastard fruit of a violent incestuous rape. To say that this chap has ‘form’ in the ignoble profession of rape, murder and adultery is an understatement to be sure. But more than that his presence (or absence) in the Oresteia seem s more crucial than is at first apparent. In the Eumenides during the trial scenes where the arguments for and against Orestes are being aired, we hear Orestes during his examination freely admitting to the murder of his mother but qualifying it by explaining that he was obeying the will or the oracle of the gods (Zeus), moreover Athena as his advocate declares to the jury that it is ‘not wrong’ to avenge a family blood crime and that such action is sanctioned by the gods. The fact that depending on which God sanctions it, it may either be a noble duty or terrible crime seems immaterial to the poor human pawns caught within the snares of its demands.

But hang on a minute...didn’t Clytemnestra kill Agamemnon for killing Iphigenia...his daughter, itself a horrendous and egregious case of infanticide – a blood crime requiring vengeance by the unspoken rules of honour – and a crime which must have burned in Clytemnestra’s breast and turned her against her husband? Or did it? Perhaps she considered like Agamemnon that since the victim was female it was a lesser crime than the killing of a man. This implication is further borne out in later statements made by Athena during the trial scenes to the effect that...the killing of a noble man (specifically Agamemnon) was a much more serious issue than a mere girl/woman? We must remember that Athena was herself ‘born of no woman’ but sprang out from the head of Zeus himself and is thus uniquely placed to make such pronouncements. Or is the ritual slaying of a daughter not a crime because Poseidon willed Iphigenia’s sacrifice for the sea to be calmed? Oh, she was an adulterer...oh well that’s alright then…the thinking seems to run...and what pushes Clytemnestra out of the ‘just’ category of blood vengeance is the fact that she and her lover plotted to kill Agamemnon...not for her revenge but at Aegisthus’ instigation who wanted the throne. He set fire to her murderous passions and once in full flame could not be put out save by the wisdom of the shining goddess.

The plays are awash with undercurrents of the squameous passions and furies of women gone bad/mad/vengeful… to be feared and avoided and ultimately to be forcefully controlled – or even buried underground.  Misogyny perhaps or more like gynophobia? Clytemnestra seems to be an even more powerful foe in death than she was in life when wielding the axe against the male branches of the house of Atreus. Witness the compelling scenes of Orestes’ flight to sanctuary hounded by the blood curdling Erinyes. We feel at the height of the drama that he might not make it – that the unrelenting furies will get their man.

 With the evil influence of Aegisthus removed from plot line, we would merely have a series of murders which are all ‘rational or at least justifiable acts of blood revenge’.  Without him, the trilogy would have probably run along the same lines to a similar denouement, i.e. that vigilante style revenge tit-for-tat honour killings would follow on one from the other ad infinitum until they could be resolved in a democratic way by lawful public jury trial. But perhaps then, Aeschylus could not have been able to load Clytemnestra with so much dramatic charge and make her the archetype of unjustified murder for lust or gain; sacrilegious reasons rather than acts of piety or fear of the Gods.

 Athena is laying both of these latter sanctioned motives to rest in the form of democratic trial by jury in plain sight, amongst the people, where men not Gods (albeit under her stern advocacy and guidance-more of that later) decide where justice and right shall be found and society move from chaos to law and order, its most violent crimes judged in the proper fashion. Even today we view the settling of blood feuds or vendettas to echo a more primal brutal, even lawless past. It is this past that Athenian democracy is setting out to tame to control and focus outwards like a cone of bad energy pointed firmly at future enemies rather than dangerously at its own citizens. Still, Athena warns that it could break out at any time to attack those who would be the enemies of this fledgling democracy to try to bring the times of the tyrants back for one last roll of the dice.

 So Aegisthus is crucial to the trilogy, like a tiny keystone in the centre of an archway holding the whole thing up, without him there would be no evil passions, unleashed in the form of Furies and later tamed as Eumenides, pacified, cajoled, threatened and working for us underground but still potentially dangerous to humankind..Like subterranean weapons of mass destruction. Without him there is no blue touch paper to all of this chaotic and unsanctioned bloodletting. – this unauthorized female chthonic violence and lust for blood.

All of which brings me to my second ‘odd thing’. Athena is divine advocate of reason, the trial by jury and when the verdict comes out in Orestes favour and the Furies are understandably livid with...well...fury, the goddess goes from mollification, reasoning, almost bribing and finally to a flash of divine anger and a thinly veiled death threat to get them to accept an ‘offer they can’t refuse’.

So much then for the democratic process of law and the art of persuasion by word not violence of the better more just course of action.  In this sudden outburst the key message of the trilogy is briefly overturned …we have come from the chaos of endless blood feud to the law and order of the court and the jury…only for the chief advocate to threaten to ‘do you in’ if you don’t just shut up and take what you are being offered. 

With our over-obsession with the blood and gore of these plays (almost all modern renditions seem to ‘go to 11 on the volume control’ with the sex, gore and slashing aspects more than an original performance might have I suspect) we risk overlooking these hairline structural faultlines which may in turn afford us clues to some of the deeper and often contradictory currents at work in the masterful and innovative play triptych of the Oresteia.

 

Euge!

Bradfield College - The Amphitheatre

I think I mentioned this when we last met and floated the vague possibility of attending a performance there. I discover that the amphitheatre, originally built on a disused chalk pit under the directions of a former headmaster of the college, a Doctor Grey, in 1890, has been undergoing reconstruction and has just completed its final phase so it should be ready for a performance this summer 2014. I have sent an email to the headmaster to find out further details of the forthcoming performance.

 

You can read more about the reconstruction project and the amphitheatre here.

http://premierconstructionnews.com/2013/06/05/restoring-the-greek-theatre

The last time I was there was 1983 when I went with my Greek master and a colleague to see a performance of Antigone. I remember the experience as totally engrossing so if we can pull this off as a Legendum  daytrip for the summer – I think it could well be a highlight of the year! The college is in Berkshire just off the M4 near Reading and about 2 hours by car, so although not close, it is a feasible day trip distance. I will keep you posted with any developments as to more details and once they are known we can make some logistical plans to get us all there and back.

The date of the performance is around the middle of June this year, but I will give you more accurate info the minute I get it.

 Euge!

Aeschylus - Father of Greek Tragedy or Primus Inter Parents?

I trust you are all well in this gelid month of Poseidon.

Aeschylus (c.525 BCE – 456 BCE) is known to most us as ‘The Father of Tragedy’ for being the first Greek playwright whose individual works survive intact (only seven of his estimated output of seventy to ninety plays have survived) and also for adding many innovations to the tragedy format such as a second actor and possibly scene decoration (skenographia), some of which went as far as full chariot with real horses entrance scenes! Not only that but amped up costumes for the actors and platform boots to make the players literally larger than life. They must have caused quite a sensation.

But were there others before him to whom we should give the title?

Theatre was still in its infancy when Aeschylus began writing plays and there is evidence of earlier innovators, such as Thespis, who added an actor to stand  apart from the chorus creating the initial -albeit limited- dramatic dynamic.  There are problems even with identifying the origins of Greek Tragedy – it is still not completely accepted that they are a development from the dithyramb (a sort of early ritual dance with singing and flute accompaniment in honour of the god at festivals) as Aristotle states.

The school of thought that has Aeschylus as the puller-together of all the pre-existent disparate elements into the new synthesis can be traced from Wilamowitz’s 1889 Introduction to Greek Tragedy through to Gilbert Murray’s book on Aeschylus in 1940. Aeschylus seemed to have gone one further and added a second actor and in the process created the dramatic triangle (chorus, actor 1 and actor 2), an essential building block for realistic character interplay with the chorus taking a more backseat supporting role. This must have seemed a radical departure from the days where the dithyrambic performances were simply a chorus or two choruses with their ‘call and response’ strophe and antistrophe recitation to flutes and measured dancing.

It hasn’t been seriously challenged since then although I am sure it has been chipped at around the edges and we find that among recent scholars the doubts have resurfaced. However with the lack of epigraphical evidence we remain in the dark on these matters with speculation as our only recourse.

Thespis is the playwright credited with starting the ball rolling with the inauguration of the tragic performances at the Dionysia (the large festivals in honour of the God Dionysos held at Athens) in 534 BCE. Sadly we have nothing other than the titles (and even these titles may themselves be spurious inventions of another writer Heraclides) of his plays from the Suda, a 10^th Century Byzantine literary encyclopedia of the ancient world so it’s practically impossible to tell how much of an innovator he might have been and thus the real father of Tragedy.

There are other contenders for the title – although they seem to be even more shadowy figures than Thespis, victims of the ravages of time and the loss of their plays with only the most fleeting of references in other works. Choerilus (dates unknown but around the same time as Aeschylus?) is one and is credited in a life of Sophocles as being his one time opponent in the Dionysia competitions and a contemporary of Aeschylus. However, only two fragments of his works survive and those are obscure epithets rephrased in Aeschylus’s plays.

We also have Pratinas who was said to have competed against Choerilus and Aeschylus between the years 499 BCE and 496 BCE. Pratinus’ son Aristesias, who carried out the compiling and presentation of his father’s work after his death was well known for his satyr plays (the fourth element in the traditional tetrology format of plays and a hangover from the Dionysiac elements of the original frenzied if somewhat indecorous celebratory rites of the gods worship at the festivals) rivaling those of Aeschylus himself.

As it happens, the Oresteia is the only complete trilogy we have of an ancient Greek dramatist that is (almost)fully extant and that too had a satyr play ( the Proteus which is sadly lost apart from a couple of fragments) as was customary to complete the performance. The interesting point here is that Pratinas is listed in the Suda as being the first to write such plays, in turn derived from the original ritualized dithyrambs and if it is correct that tragedy grew out of the dithyrambic elements, this puts him in potential pole position for the title of Father of Tragedy. However we must be cautious with the Suda since a lot of its entries are often difficult to cross-reference in order to verify or are just basically incorrect.

As if two rival contenders weren’t enough we also have Phrynicus who was Aeschylus’ elder being born sometime around 530 BCE and had considerable career overlap (around 20 years) with the latter playwright. Aristophanes the comedic playwright mentions Phrynicus as his main rival in his play Frogs (908 f;1296 f) so who is not to say that  we could have a case of two writers at the top of their game, watching each other’s work, reacting to it, improving on it and trying to out- innovate each other? Phrynicus is also attributed as the first playwright to use real events from recent history and give them the dignified mantle of tragedy. He was also the first to introduce a female character into drama.

The historical event which Phrynicus decided to write about was the sack of the city of Miletus in 494 BCE as a tragic nadir to the events of the ill fated Ionian revolt against the Persians. Herodotus tells us (Histories Book VI.29) that Phrynicus was fined a 1000 Drachmas for ‘having reminded the citizens of their own misfortunes’, so horrific and realistic was the drama, leaving no bloodthirsty details out one can assume. Could Aeschylus have been inspired by this to write the Persians? I say this for two reasons; one that perhaps Aeschylus was in the audience and, like any professional passionate about perfecting his craft had one eye on the play and the other on the faces of the audience. What he saw must have electrified him.

The other reason is that he would have realized that Phrynicus had made a great discovery and a great mistake at the same time, in that real recent events have the ability to transform drama from mere entertainment into something altogether more powerful and significant, but more importantly to locate the tragedy too close to home was overkill or even politically dangerous – an artistic mistake which diminished the tragic impact and subtlety of emotion and psychological effect.

Wouldn’t it rather be more subtle to maintain the high tragedy and deep pathos of such recent events…but locate them in the breasts and hearthstones of the enemy? Surely this is where the genius of Aeschylus lies; in the perfect execution of this blinding insight in the shape of his masterpiece The Persians 472 BCE. Through his play the message resounds all the stronger ‘This is what happened to the Persians but it could so easily have been us’.

Tragically the play was to be more prophetic than either Aeschylus or the Athenians could have known…with the hubris and attendant retribution suffered by Athens as it went through the long drawn out years of mutually assured destruction of The Peloponnesian Wars.

We are in pure speculation territory here I hasten to add…in fact at its wildest shores! We are totally unclear as to who might have been borrowing from who or who was originally the traditionalist and who the innovator and for how much of their respective careers this would have been the case for either artist since surely, the creative mind and sensibility, the times and fashions themselves, would surely have been ever changing for both men. Is it the fact that because we have more work surviving on one writer of a period that we decide to crown him or her as the epitome of that period let alone its leading light?

It does worry me though that in future millennia..archeologists or literary archivists of the far future may be describing (insert mediocre but highly popular mass selling author here!) as The ‘Father of Ancient British Literature’...merely based on his/her surviving works as opposed to the 3 surviving 5-line fragments of an obscure minor writer called James Joyce.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of gaps in early Greek tragedy and we should bear that mind. I suppose though that the title ‘one of the fathers of Greek Tragedy’ sounds a bit too ‘open relationship’ plus the fact that there is only room at the top for one with these sorts of monikers. One thing is for sure, Aeschylus was certainly worthy of such a title but we cannot rule out the possibility of such a conclusion for Phrynicus too.

 Don't forget this Sunday evening on BBC Radio 3...the second part of the Oresteia..The Libation Bearers!

Euge!