TRAGOE´DIA
TRAGOE´DIA The purpose of this article is to sketch
the progress of Greek Tragedy from its origin to its maturity; and to give
some account of Roman Tragedy, which was derived from the Greek.
The Dithyramb.--The Dorian worship of the gods, and especially
of Apollo, had been accompanied from an early time by choral lyrics, to
which an artistic development was given by Alcman of Sparta (660 B.C.) and
Stesichorus of Himera (620 B.C.). It was reserved for a man of Aeolian
origin to perfect one particular species of the poetry which Dorians had
made their own. Arion, of Methymna in Lesbos, lived about 600 B.C. He gave a
finished form to the
διθύραμβος, or choral
hymn in honour of Dionysus. The
κύκλιος
χορός--i. e. the chorus which stood, or danced, round the altar
of Dionysus--received from him a more complete organisation, its number
being fixed at fifty. The earliest
κύκλιοι
χοροὶ of this kind were trained and produced by Arion at Corinth
in the reign of Periander. Pindar alludes to this when he speaks of Corinth
as the place where “the graces of Dionysus” --the joyous song
and dance of his festival--were first shown forth,
σὺν βοηλάτᾳ . . . διθυράμβῳ (
Olymp.
13.19). The epithet
βοηλάτης which is there
given to the dithyramb probably refers to the fact that an ox was the prize,
rather than to a symbolical identification of Dionysus with that animal. In
one of his lost poems Pindar had connected the origin of the dithyramb with
Naxos, and, in another, with Thebes. This is quite consistent with Corinth
having been the first home of the matured dithyramb. It is well known that
the dithyramb had existed before Arion's time. The earliest occurrence of
the word is in Archilochus (
circ. 670 B.C.), fr. 79:
ὡς Διωνύσοι᾽ ἄνακτος καλὸν ἐξάρξαι
μέλος |
οἶδα διθύραμβον, οἴνῳ
συγκεραυνωθεὶς φρένας--a testimony to the impassioned
character of the song. Herodotus speaks of Arion as not merely the
developer, but the inventor (1.23); and Aristotle made a similar statement,
if we can trust the citation in Photius (
τὸν δὲ
ἀρξάμενον τῆς ᾠδῆς Ἀριστοτέλης Ἀρίωνά φησιν εἶναι, ὃς
πρῶτος τὸν κύκλιον ἤγαγε χορόν:
Biblioth.
Cod. 239). But it was natural that the man who developed and
popularised the dithyramb should have come to figure in tradition as its
inventor. The etymology of
διθύραμβος is
unknown. Plato conjectures that its original theme was the
birth of Dionysus (
Legg. p. 700 B).
If this was so, at any rate the scope must soon have been enlarged, so as to
include all the fortunes of the god.
Earliest “Tragic Choruses.”--At Sicyon,
circ. 600 B.C.,
τραγικοὶ χοροὶ were in use. This date
coincides with the period at which Arion perfected the dithyramb; and we
find that these
χοροὶ had originally been
held in honour of Dionysus. The Sicyonians had diverted them from that
purpose, and had applied them to the cult of the Argive hero Adrastus, whose
adventures were celebrated by the choruses (Her. 5.67,
τὰ πάθεα αὐτοῦ τραγικοῖσι χοροῖσι ἐγέραιρον).
Cleisthenes, the tyrant of Sicyon, reclaimed these
χοροὶ for Dionysus. Two points in this account deserve
attention.
(1.) The epithet
τραγικοὶ is already given
to these choruses, although there was as yet no actor distinct from the
chorus. The
σάτυροι (=
τίτυροι,
“he-goats” ) were woodland beings, half man, half beast, who
attended on Dionysus, and who were conventionally represented with pointed
ears, budding horns, a snub nose, and a tail. Some allusion to the satyrs
was evidently involved in
τραγικός, as an
epithet of the chorus, and in
τραγῳδία, as
a name for their song. But it is hardly doubtful that these terms also refer
directly to the association of an actual goat with the Dionysiac worship. It
was the goat that suggested the conventional type of the
σάτυροι, not the latter that prompted the use of
the terms
τραγικὸς and
τραγῳδία. The choice of the votive animal is
sufficiently explained by the lower side of the nature ascribed to the god,
the side which would be most prominent in a rustic carnival. A goat was
perhaps sacrificed to Dionysus before the choral song began. But this does
not necessarily exclude another hypothesis--viz. that a goat was sometimes
the prize. When, in early times, the country people spoke of a
“goat-chorus,” or a “goat-song,” no doubt the
literal and the allusive meanings were blended; men thought partly of the
goat which was the sacrifice or the prize, partly of the goat-like satyrs
who formed the Chorus. The word
τραγῳδία
is often applied to the purely choral performance in honour of Dionysus,
when as yet there was no “tragedy” in the later sense. Thus
Plato remarks that
τραγῳδία had existed in
Attica before the days of “Thespis and Phrynichus” (
Minos, p. 321 A). Similarly Athenaeus (
630c) and Diogenes Laertius (
3.56) speak of the primitive
τραγῳδία which was performed wholly by a chorus.
(2.) Further, it appears that as early as 600 B.C.
τραγικοὶ χοροὶ were not necessarily restricted to the
worship of Dionysus, but could celebrate the fortunes of a hero such as
Adrastus. This illustrates the peculiar position of Dionysus among the
Hellenic deities. According to legend, his entrance into Greece had been
opposed; he had endured various insults and trials before his worship was
finally established. Dionysus alone was at once a god--superhuman in
might--and a hero who had striven like Heracles. The “tragic
chorus,” which sang the dithyramb, commemorated his
πάθη--the varying fortunes which had preceded
his final triumph. Such a chorus might change its theme to a hero who had
experienced like vicissitudes, but not to any other god. Apollo had long
been honoured with choruses by the Dorians. But there was no germ of drama
in the choral cult of Apollo, because there was no reminiscence of
suffering.
Transition from Lyric to Dramatic
“Tragedy.”--As the central idea of the Dionysiac worship
was a vivid sympathy with the fortunes of the god, a certain dramatic
element must have entered into it from the first. The energy of the
dithyrambic style would itself prompt the dancers to use animated gesture.
It would also be natural that their leader should enact the part of Dionysus
himself, or of a messenger from him--reciting some adventure, to which the
satyr-chorus would then make a lyric response. Greek tradition clearly
associated some such rudiments of drama with the primitive
τραγῳδία.
[p. 2.859]Thus Diogenes Laertius says: “In early
tragedy the Chorus alone
sustained the action
(
διεδραμάτιζεν); afterwards Thespis
introduced one actor, in order to give rest to the Chorus”
(3.56). Aristotle, too, states that tragedy was at first
“extemporary” (
αὐτοσχεδιαστική), and took its rise “from those who led
off the dithyramb” (
ἀπὸ τῶν ἐξαρχόντων
τὸν διθύραμβον:
Poet. 4). He refers to an
effusion, more or less unpremeditated, by the leader, as distinguished from
the hymn chanted by the Chorus.
Thespis, a native of Icaria in Attica, flourished about 536 B.C., in the later years of Peisistratus. He was a
trainer and leader of dithyrambic choruses, who made an improvement in the
mode of performance. Hitherto the leader, who recited an adventure of
Dionysus, had addressed the Chorus, and had been answered by them. Thespis
now set apart a person specially for dialogue with the leader. As this
person had to reply to the leader, he was called “the answerer,”
ὑποκριτής--which became the regular term
for an “actor.” This was another step towards drama; but how
far it went we do not know, because we do not know what the
δράματα of Thespis (as Suidas calls them) were
like. The alleged fragments of Thespis in Plutarch, Clement of Alexandria,
Pollux, and other writers, are spurious, as Bentley has shown (
Phalaris, pp. 289 ff., ed. Dyce). Everything would
depend on the manner in which the part of the new
ὑποκριτὴς was adjusted to that of the coryphaeus. If the
latter was made virtually a second actor, then Thespis might fairly be
regarded as the founder of drama proper. If, on the other hand, the dialogue
remained comparatively unimportant, and the whole performance continued to
be essentially lyric, then Thespis had merely modified the tradition--though
in a fruitful way. The latter view seems the more probable. The ancients
themselves were divided: some regarded him as the
πρῶτος τραγικός: others, as merely improving on Sicyonian
tradition (Suidas). Bentley maintained that Thespis composed only pieces of
a humorous character; Welcker, that he produced serious tragedy also.
Neither view admits of proof. Horace (
Ars Poet. 276) has
given currency to the notion that Thespis went about the country with a
strolling company, and acted his plays on a waggon. The fiction may have
been suggested by the “jests from a waggon” which were
associated with the processions to Eleusis (
ἐξ
ἁμάξης ὑβρίζειν). When all the evidence has been sifted,
Thespis remains to us a famous name, and little more. That he made an epoch
in the gradual development is beyond question. But, in the light of such
imperfect knowledge as we possess, Aeschylus, not Thespis, must be regarded
as the true founder of Tragedy.
The Period between Thespis and Aeschylus.--(1) Choerilus, an
Athenian, is said to have gained his first dramatic victory in 523 B.C., and to have been active for some sixty years
afterwards. Pausanias (
1.14.2) refers to him
as
δρᾶμα ποιήσαντι Ἀλόπην. Alope was a
hapless maiden whom her father Cercyon put to death; and Pausanias quotes
the play for some genealogical details about Triptolemus. Here, then, we
have a tragedy, connected, by subject, with Eleusis, but not directly with
Dionysus. Choerilus is said by Suidas to have composed 160 plays. Only a few
words are extant. The view that he excelled in satyr-drama rests on a verse
of an unknown poet,
ἡνίκα μὲν βασιλεὺς ἦν
Χοιρίλος ἐν σατύροις, quoted by Marius Plotius Sacerdos
(
circ. 300 A.D.), in the third book of his
Ars Grammatica, where he treats of metres.
The phrase
ἐν σατύροις, however, may have
referred to Dionysiac choruses generally, and not to satyr-plays as
distinguished from tragedies. (2) Pratinas, a native of Phlius, is said by
Suidas to have contended against Choerilus and Aeschylus “in the 70th
Olympiad,” i. e. at some time between 500 and 497 B.C. If the
first year of the Olympiad is meant, the date would be the spring of 499
B.C. The tradition that he was the first to write satyr-plays is founded on
the words of Suidas,
πρῶτος ἔγραφε
σατύρους: but it can be traced further back, if
“Pratinae” be read for “Cratini” in a note on the
Ars Poetica (230) by Helenius Acron, the
commentator on Terence and Horace (
circ. 190 A.D.).
The satyr-plays of Pratinas were presumably intended to preserve the old
type of satyr-chorus, now threatened with extinction by the new
improvements. Such an effort would have been natural for one whose native
place was not far from Sicyon. Among the scanty fragments of Pratinas, which
are almost wholly lyric, the most considerable is a passage of 20 lines from
a
ὑπόρχημα (Bergk,
Poet.
Lyr. 953 ff.: cf. Nauck,
Frag. Trag. p. 562). Suidas
says that he wrote 60 plays, of which 32 were, satyric dramas; unless, with
Boeckh, 32 should be altered to 12 (
λβ᾽ to
ιβ᾽). (3) Phrynichus, an Athenian, is
said to have gained the tragic prize first in 511 B.C., and for the last time in 476 B.C. His tragedy on the Capture of
Miletus must have been produced soon after the date of the event (494 B.C.):
it is uncertain whether the title was
Μιλήτου
ἅλωσις (Her. 6.21), or
Πέρσαι. Eight other of his plays are known by titles, but only
a few verses remain (Nauck,
Frag. Trag. 557 ff.). According
to Bentley's conjecture, the
Phoenissae (on the
same subject as the
Persae of Aeschylus) was
the play produced in 476 B.C., when Themistocles
was his choregus. In the
Thesmophoriazusae of Aristophanes
the tragic poet Agathon says of Phrynichus that the comeliness of his person
was matched by the beauty of his dramas (5.166). His lyrics, in particular,
were admired for their simple grace and sweetness. It seemed as if the birds
had taught him to warble (Ar.
Av. 748 ff.) These lyrics had
probably more of an Ionian than of a Dorian or an Aeolian stamp. He was. the
most popular tragic poet of his time: the audiences to whom Aeschylus made
his earlier appeals are described as having been “brought up in the
school of Phrynichus” (
παρὰ φρυνίχῳ
τραφέντας, Ar.
Ran. 910).
Aeschylus, a native of Eleusis in Attica, was born in 525 B.C. About 499 B.C.
he was already exhibiting tragedy, but it was in 484 that he first gained
the prize. The great change which he introduced consisted in adding a second
actor, and in making the dialogue more important than the Chorus (
τὸν λόλον πρωταγωνιστὴν παρεσκεύασε, Arist.
Post. 4). It may be conjectured that this
change had been made some years before 484 B.C.;
at any rate it was earlier
[p. 2.860]than the date of the
Persae, 472 B.C. So long as there was only
a single actor, that actor might, indeed, assume different parts in
succession, but there could be no drama in the proper sense of the word. If,
for instance, Phrynichus used only one actor in the “Capture of
Miletus,” that person might first appear as a messenger, relating
the calamity; the Chorus would express their grief; the actor might then
reappear as one of the victors or of the vanquished, and give occasion for
another choral strain. But the presentment of an action as passing before
the eyes of the spectators became possible only when a second actor was
added. Aeschylus also gave a new grandeur to the scenic accessories of
tragedy. He improved the masks, and introduced new costumes, of which we
shall speak presently. The introduction of scene-painting has also been
ascribed to him; but it is probable that his use of this aid did not go
beyond an elementary form. Aeschylus is essentially the creator of the
tragic drama as it existed at Athens during the 5th century B.C. In
comparison with Phrynichus and his other predecessors, Aeschylus stood out
as “the first of the Greeks” who had “built up” a
lofty diction for Tragedy, and who had made it a splendid spectacle. (Ar.
Ran. 1004 f.)
Sophocles was born in or about 495 B.C., and first
gained the tragic prize in 468 B.C., against
Aeschylus. He added a third actor. He also raised the number of the tragic
chorus from 12 to 15. Hitherto one of the ordinary choreutae had acted as
leader. One of the three additional men was now appointed coryphaeus; the
other two were destined to serve as leaders of
ἡμιχόρια when the Chorus was required to act in two
divisions (as it does in a passage of the
Ajax,
866 ff.). Aristotle mentions scene-painting (
σκηνογραφία) as an improvement distinctive of Sophocles. It
cannot be doubted that, though Aeschylus may have used some kind of
scenepainting at an earlier date, Sophocles was the dramatist who first made
a more thorough and effective use of it, so that it continued to be
associated with his name. (Cf.
THEATRUM) The external form of Attic tragedy was now complete.
Occasions on which Tragedy was acted at Athens.--We may next
consider the conditions under which tragedy was presented to the Athenian
public. Before the time of Peisistratus, the rural Dionysia (
τὰ κατ᾽ ἀγροὺς) afforded the only occasion for
the Bacchic choruses in Attica. It is conjectured that Peisistratus was the
founder of the Dionysiac festival called the Lenaea. This was held every
January in the
Λήναιον (so named from
ληνός, a wine-press), the precinct
sacred to Dionysus, on the S.E. slope of the Acropolis. The Lenaea witnessed
the exhibitions of Thespis, Choerilus and Pratinas, as well as the earlier
plays of Phrynichus and of Aeschylus. A regular contest (
ἀγὼν) for the tragic prize at the Lenaea seems
to have existed as early as the days of Thespis and Choerilus. The
institution of the Great, or City, Dionysia (
τὰ κατ᾽
ἄστυ) may probably be referred to the time immediately after
the Persian wars,
circ. 478 B.C. The Great Dionysia
then became the chief occasion for Tragedy; and in the middle part of the
5th century the Lenaea seems to have been exclusively the festival of
Comedy. About 416 B.C., however, we again hear of
Tragedy at the Lenaea. Thenceforth, down at least to the days of
Demosthenes, tragic drama accompanied both festivals; though it was more
especially associated with the Great Dionysia. At the Anthesteria, the
February festival, no drama was exhibited.
Trilogy and Tetralogy.--The form in which Aeschylus produced
his tragedies,--during, at least, the later part of his career,--was that of
the “trilogy,” or group of three. To these was appended a
satyr-drama (
σάτυροι, or
σατυρικὸν δρᾶμα), so called because the Chrous
consisted of satyrs attendant on Dionysus. We have seen that Pratinas was
the reputed inventor of the satyr-play, and that its object was to preserve
the memory of the “tragic” chorus in its earliest phase. A
mingling of seriousness and mirth was characteristic of the Dionysiac
worship. Tragedy represented one side of this mood, and Comedy the other.
The satyr-drama--true to its origin from the old
τραγικὸς χορός--was nearer to Tragedy than to Comedy, but
contained elements of the latter also; hence it was aptly described as
παίζουσα τραγῳδία (Demetrius,
de Elocut. § 169). The trilogy, or group of
three tragedies, and the satyr-drama, together made up the
“tetralogy.” It is not known that Aeschylus himself, or any of
the Attic dramatists, used the word
τριλογία or
τετραλογία. These
terms cannot be traced back beyond the Alexandrian age. But, whether the
Attic dramatists did or did not use these words, it is certain that they
composed in these forms. The origin of the trilogy has been conjecturally
derived from a custom, in the days when there was only one actor, that he
should give three successive recitations between the choral songs: but this
is doubtful. Nor is it certain, though it is very probable, that Aeschylus
was the inventor of the trilogy. His
Oresteia is the only
extant example. In that trilogy, the three plays form successive chapters of
one story. A trilogy which has this kind of unity has been called a
“fable-trilogy.” On the other hand the term
“theme-trilogy” has been used to describe three tragedies
linked, not by story, but by some abstract idea, such as that of Hellenic
victory over the barbarian. Thus, according to Welcker, the
Persae belonged to a theme-trilogy in which the
first play (
Phineus) related to the Argonauts, and the third
(
Glaucus) to the victory of the Sicilian
Greeks at Himera (480 B.C.). The “fable-trilogy” was the type
characteristic of Aeschylus. It has been attempted to show, from the
recorded titles of his plays, that his trilogies always had the unity either
of “fable” or of “theme.” But it is more probable
that, though he preferred fabletrilogies, he sometimes also produced
trilogies in which the plays were wholly unconnected. With regard to the
practice of the poets after Aeschylus, these points may be observed. (1) In
addition to the Aeschylean examples, ten tetralogies can be traced, ranging
in date from 467 to 405 B.C. Five of these belong to Euripides; the other
five, to minor tragic poets. (2) Suidas says that Sophocles “began the
practice of play contending against play, and not tetralogy against
tetralogy.” But it is known that Sophocles competed with
Euripides on at least two occasions when the latter produced
[p. 2.861]tetralogies, viz. in 438 and in 431 B.C. It cannot
be doubted that in each of these cases Sophocles, too, produced four plays.
To have competed with a single play against a tetralogy would have argued
sterility or arrogance. Sophocles continued to use the tetralogical form,
but the tragedies in his trilogy were usually unconnected, as those of
Aeschylus had usually been linked. The statement of Suidas is probably
founded on a statement of some older writer who was noticing a result of the
Sophoclean practice: viz., that the judges of the tragic prize, having to
decide between trilogies of unconnected plays, found it easier to pronounce
which one play was the best of all, than to determine which trilogy was best
as a whole. Thus, though tetralogies were still produced, the contest for
the prize would often be one of “play against play.” (3) There
is no proof that Sophocles, or any poet of his time, ever competed at the
Dionysia with one tragedy only. The year 340 B.C. is the earliest in which
it is proved that the tragic poets exhibited less than three plays each; and
in that year they produced two each. This is proved by a contemporary
inscription. (4) The conclusion is that tetralogy continued to be the rule
in Tragedy down at least to 400 B.C., and perhaps
somewhat longer. It was only by a tetralogy that the old Dionysiac chorus of
fifty persons was fully represented. The Aeschylean chorus of 12, and the
Sophoclean of 15, roughly symbolised a quarter of that number. Anything less
than a tetralogy would have seemed an incomplete tribute to the god. No
argument can be drawn from the case of Comedy. Comedies were always produced
singly.
The Actors.--In the time of Thespis, poet and actor were
identical. In the earlier years of Aeschylus and Sophocles it was still not
unusual for a poet to bear a part in the performance of his own tragedies.
Thus Sophocles is recorded to have played the title-rôle in his
own
Thamyris, and Nausicaa in his
Plyntriae. But, when the tragic drama had once been
matured, the art of the tragic actor became a distinct profession. According
to the degree of the actor's skill--which was tested by special trials--he
was classed as a player of first, second, or third parts. We must remember
that, until Aeschylus introduced the second actor, the principal performer
was not the single actor, but the coryphaeus, since the choral element was
more important than the dialogue. It was Aeschylus who, in Aristotle's
phrase, first “made the dialogue protagonist.” The protagonist
played the most important character of the piece, which was often, but not
necessarily, the character from which the piece was named. He might take
more than one part, if the leading person disappeared long before the end of
the play: thus in the
Ajax the protagonist
would play Ajax and Teucer; in the
Antigone,
the heroine, Teiresias, and Eurydice. The deuteragonist usually played the
person, or persons, most directly concerned with the principal
character;--as Ismene and Haemon in the
Antigone. The tritagonist took the smaller parts,--as, for
example, the part of a king, when, like Creon in the
Antigone, he was not the chief person of the play (Dem.
de Fals. Leg. § 247). The Athenian actor went
through an elaborate preparation. In the first place, great care was given
to the artistic training of the voice (
πλάσμα
φωνῆς), with a view to flexibility and strength. This was
demanded alike by the size of the theatres and by the fineness of the
Athenian ear. Deportment was also carefully studied. In Attic Tragedy the
movements were usually slow and stately: much, also, depended on statuesque
effects. As the masks excluded play of feature, it was all the more
necessary that the actor should have command of expressive gesture,
especially with the hands. Now and then, though not often, he was required
to dance (cf.
Eur. Phoen. 316); hence his
professional training was incomplete without
ὀρχηστική.
Costume.--How the tragic actor was dressed before the time of
Aeschylus, we do not know; it is only a conjecture that the dress of the
Dionysiac priests may have been the model. Aeschylus introduced a type of
costume which remained in use throughout the classical period. Its chief
elements were the following. (1) A tunic, with stripes of bright colours,
sometimes richly embroidered with patterns of flowers or animals. It was
girt up high under the breast, and fell in long folds to the feet. The
sleeves reached to the hands. Such a tunic was called.
ποικίλον (Pollux). Women sometimes wore a purple robe, with
a long train (
συρτὸς πορφυροῦς). (2) Over
the tunic, or robe, an upper garment was worn;--sometimes the
ἱμάτιον, an oblong piece of cloth; sometimes a
mantle,
χλαμύς, which was cut in a circular
form, and fastened by a clasp on the right shoulder. The chlamys was often
very splendid. Some other varieties of garment, with special names, are
mentioned; but their nature is often uncertain. Padding was worn under the
costume, which was designed to exaggerate all the actor's proportions. (3) A
boot, which the Greeks called
ἐμβάτης, and
the Romans
cothurnus. The sole was wooden, and
the shape such as to fit either foot. The object of this boot--like that of
the high girdle--was to increase the actor's apparent stature; and the sole
seems to have varied in thickness from some two inches to as many as six, or
even more. Indeed, for an inexperienced actor, the difficulty of walking on
the
ἐμβάτης seems to have resembled that
of walking on stilts. We hear of clumsy actors falling; and the support
afforded by a long walking-stick was not disdained, where the part admitted
of it. (4) Masks. Thespis, according to the tradition, first used pigments
to, smear the actor's face, and afterwards adopted linen masks of a simple
kind. Masks suited to female characters are said to have been used first by
Phrynichus. The improvement made by Aeschylus seems to have been the
application of painting to the plain linen masks of the earlier period. In
the Alexandrian age, if not earlier, the workmanship of tragic masks had
become highly elaborate. Pollux gives a list, derived from that age, which
includes six types of old men, eight types of young men, and eleven types of
women. These various types. were distinguished by a regular system of
conventional traits, such as the colour of the hair, and the mode of wearing
it; the tint of the face; the expression given by the eyebrows; the shape of
the forehead, and even the line of the nose: thus a hooked nose (
ἐπίγρυπος) was
[p. 2.862]considered appropriate to the
ἀναιδής.
Each mask was known by a technical name: for example, the suffering heroine
was the
κατάκομος ὠχρά. [
PERSONA] A mask which did not
belong to any regular type, but was made for some exceptional part (such as
the horned Actaeon), was called
ἔνσκευον
πρόσωπον. In the tragic mask a peculiar device was used to raise
the height of the forehead. This was a cone-shaped frame (
ὄγκος), built up above the face, from which the
hair of the mask fell over the brows. The height of the
ὄγκος varied with the dignity of aspect
desired. (5) Special attributes. A king carried a sceptre; Hermes, a
herald's staff (
κηρύκειον); the bacchant, a
thyrsus, etc. Such an emblem was usually borne in the left hand, in order
that the right might be free for gesture: extant works of art show this (cf.
Baumeister,
Denkmäler, p. 1852; Ovid,
Amor. 3.1, 13). Warriors had swords, spears, etc. But, except
by indications of this nature, the dress was not adapted to the particular
part which the actor played. This will not appear strange if it is
recollected that Athenian drama was an act of Dionysiac worship. The tragic
costume was festal first, and dramatic only in a secondary sense, because,
at the Dionysia, art was merely the handmaid of religion. It is said that
Aeschylus took some hints from the splendid dresses of the hierophant and
the
δᾳδοῦχος at the Eleusinian mysteries.
(
Athen. p. 21 e, reading
ζηλώσας ἣν with Fritzsche; A. Müller,
Bühnenalth. p. 229.) This would have been quite
in the Aeschylean spirit; but the tradition can no longer be verified. In
satyric drama the costume of gods and heroes was the same as in Tragedy, but
the chiton was shorter, as livelier movement was required. Silenus, an
important figure in satyric drama, was dressed either in
“tights,” set with tufts of goat's hair, or in a tunic and hose
of goat's skin.
In the 5th century B.C. we find great actors specially associated by fame
with the poets in whose plays they excelled: as Cleander and Mynniscus with
Aeschylus; Cleidemides and Tlepolemus with Sophocles; Cephisophon with
Euripides. At a somewhat later period, it became usual for the three
competitors in tragedy to receive their protagonists from the archon by lot.
But that arrangement seems to have ceased before 341 B.C., when a protagonist played in one piece of a trilogy for each
of the three poets. Thus, by successive steps, the connexion between poet
and actor had become less and less close.
The Chorus.-In the development of Attic Tragedy
the treatment of the Chorus passed through several phases. Even after
Aeschylus had made the dialogue more important than the lyric element, he
continued to compose choral odes of a length which seemed excessive--or at
least archaic--to the next generation. In the
Frogs,
Euripides complains that his rival's Chorus used to inflict on the audience
“four strings of lyric verse, one after another, while the actors
were silent” (914,
ὁ δὲ χορὸς ἤρειδεν
ὁρμαθοὺς ἂν |
μελῶν ἐφεξῆς
τέτταρας ξυνεχῶς ἄν: οἱ δ᾽ἐσίγων). In the
Supplices of Aeschylus the Chorus follows up the
parodos with eight consecutive pairs of strophes and antistrophes; in the
first stasimon of the
Agamemnon there are six
pairs. Such a practice was tolerated, Euripides remarks, only because the
audiences of Aeschylus had been accustomed to it by Phrynichus. The
Aeschylean treatment of the Chorus bears, in fact, some impress of the still
recent period when the Chorus, and not the dialogue, had been
“protagonist:” the Chorus has lost its old primacy, but it
still claims a large share of attention. Here, as in other respects,
Sophocles represents a golden mean. Nothing could be more perfect than his
management of the Chorus, given the two conditions under which he
worked--viz., a matured drama, in which the dialogue necessarily holds the
first place; and secondly, the requirement that the Chorus should continue
to be an organic part of such drama. His choral odes have always a direct
bearing on the action, by commenting on what has passed, by preparing the
mind for what is to come, and, generally, by attuning the thoughts of the
spectator to successive moods, in harmony with the progress of the action.
Then they are always of moderate length, and often very short. Euripides
marks a third phase. The Chorus is now little more than an external adjunct
to the drama; the choral songs have often nothing to do with the action.
This could hardly be avoided. The Chorus presented difficulties to a poet
who, like Euripides, was beginning a transition. When the gods and heroes
were handled in the new spirit, the old meaning of the Chorus was lost. It
is not a reproach to Euripides, it is rather a proof of insight, that he
modified the use of the Chorus in accordance with his dramatic aim, and in
perhaps the best manner which that aim permitted.
The Chorus was trained and equipped by the choregus whom the Archon had
assigned to the poet [CHORUS; THEARUM]. The tragic
chorus of fifteen entered the orchestra three abreast: this was the
arrangement called
κατὰ στοίχους (
“in files” ). The
αὐλητὴς
walked in front. The leader of the Chorus (
κορυφαῖος) walked third in the file nearest the spectators. The
two leaders of hemichoria were next to him--one in front of him, as second
man of the file, and the other behind him, as fourth. On reaching the
orchestra, the Chorus made an evolution to the right, so as to change from
three files, five deep, into three ranks, facing the actors, with five men
in each rank. This was the disposition
κατὰ
ζυγά. The file of five men who, on entering, had been nearest the
spectators, now formed the front rank: the coryphaeus was in the middle of
it, having on his right and left the half-chorus-leaders, who were thence
called
παραστάται. In dialogue between the
actors and the Chorus, the coryphaeus spoke for the Chorus. It is also
possible, though not certain, that he alone recited any anapaests which
belonged to the choral part. In the delivery of choral odes the strophe was
accompanied by a dance-movement towards the right, and the antistrophe by a
corresponding movement towards the left; while, during the singing of the
epode, the Chorus remained stationary. It would appear that, at least in
some cases, the functions of singing and dancing were divided; one part of
the Chorus executed the dance, while another sang. The dance proper to
Tragedy (
ἡ τραγικὴ ὄρχησις) was
technically called
ἐμμέλεια, a name
denoting stately movement in time to music:
[p. 2.863]as the
dance of Comedy was the
κόρδαξ, and that of
satyric drama the
σίκιννις. The
ὑπόρχημα--sometimes introduced in Tragedy,
either incidentally or in the place of a regular choral stasimon--was a more
lively dance, a kind of ballet, in which the best dancers appeared, adapting
their movements to the sense of the words sung by the other choreutae.
Sophocles often employs it to express sudden emotions of delight or
hope,--especially for the purpose of contrast, when a tragic catastrophe is
at hand. In a
κομμός, or lyric dialogue
between actor and Chorus, parts were sometimes assigned to single choreutae.
The verses with which the Chorus close a tragedy were not attended by
dancing, but were recited to a musical accompaniment. As a rule the Chorus
consists of persons belonging to the scene of the action. In such cases the
Chorus entered the orchestra, and left it at the close of the play, by the
entrance on the spectator's right hand. But the entrance on his left was
used if the Chorus represented strangers to the place, as in Aesch.
Suppl.; Soph.
Phil.; Eur.
Suppl.,
Ion, Iph. in Aul. With regard to the first song of the Chorus on
entering the orchestra (
πάροδος), the
extant plays illustrate three different cases. (1.) The play can begin with
this
πάροδος: as Aesch.
Suppl. and
Pers. (2.) The Chorus may enter to
the anaepaestic chant after the
πρόλογος:
as in Soph.
Ant. and
Aj. (3.) The Chorus may
enter silently, after the
πρόλογος, and
then begin the
πάροδος: as in Aesch.
P. V., Soph.
El., and often. In some
exceptional instances the drama required that the Chorus should enter, not
in regular procession, but singly or in small groups (
σποράδην); as in Aesch.
Theb. and Soph.
O. C. The costume of the Chorus was, like that of the
actors, conventional--a chiton, made shorter than the actor's, for
convenience in dancing--and a himation. If the Chorus represented mourners,
they could be attired in dark-coloured garments (cf. Aesch.
Cho. 19). Where the Chorus represented sailors (as in Soph.
Aj. and
Phil.) hats (
πῖλοι) may have been worn; in the
Bacchae of Euripides, the Chorus seem to have carried the
τύμπανα of Bacchants (5.58). But the
general type of costume remained the same, whatever was the special
character of the Chorus. Instead of the
ἐμβάτης of the tragic actor, they wore the half-boots called
κρηπῖδες, which were sometimes white.
In satyric drama the Chorus wore a closefitting dress (
σωμάτιον) representing the naked form, with a short apron
(or girdle) of goat's skin.
The Innovations of Euripides.--The unsparing satire of
Aristophanes, amusing and often instructive as it is, must not blind us to
the nobler side of the effort made by Euripides to maintain the place of
Tragedy as a living force in the spiritual life of Athens. A change was
coming over the old mental attitude of Athenians towards wards the popular
religion and the consecrated mythology. A large and increasing proportion of
the spectators in the theatre was now destitute of the training, musical and
poetical, which earlier poets could take for granted. The spirit of his age,
and the bent of his own genius, led Euripides to renounce much of the ideal
grandeur with which Tragedy had been invested by Aeschylus and Sophocles. He
made a step from typical towards individual portraiture, relying on the
delineation of human passion and human suffering in traits with which the
ordinary spectator could sympathise. He was not afraid of being homely, so
long as he touched the springs of natural feeling.
At first sight it might seem that, in a dramatist, such a conception deserves
nothing but praise. The praise awarded to it must, however, be tempered by
regard for the conditions under which the experiment was made. Euripides was
not the unfettered creator of a new drama. He inherited and maintained the
old framework of Attic Tragedy. He had still only three actors. He had still
a Chorus in the orchestra. His materials were still drawn exclusively from
the heroic myths. Such Tragedy could be great only so long as it was ideal.
Every step by which its persons were brought nearer to everyday life was a
step which increased the danger of burlesque. This fact is the element of
justice in the attacks made on Euripides by Aristophanes. Euripides gave a
signal proof of original genius, not only in the boldness of his conception,
but also in the degree of success with which he executed it. Nevertheless
his effort was foredommed to the measure of failure which attends on artists
who, in seeking an impossible conciliation, achieve only a clever
compromise. Euripides stands between ideal and romantic drama; his Tragedy
has lost the noblest beauty of idealism, without attaining to the full charm
of romance. But, just for that reason, it was through Euripides, rather than
through Aeschylus or Sophocles, that the tradition of Tragedy was derived in
the later periods of ancient literature.
We said above that the Aristophanic jests on Euripides, however unfair, are
often instructive. This is particularly true of the satire in the
Frogs. It shows us the points in which Euripides seemed
an innovator to those who were familiar with the older school of Tragedy.
One such point was his use of the prologue to introduce duce the persons of
the drama and explain its subject:--a clumsy and sometimes ludicrous
expedient, which is best excused by the plea that the spectators, no longer
familiar with the old mythology, required something in the nature of a
modern play-bill. Another novelty ascribed to Euripides is his practice of
dressing his suffering heroes in rags,--a detraction from their dignity
which probably struck Athenians all the more, because it was also a
departure from the conventional type of tragic costume described above. With
regard to the frequent use of the
deus ex
machina which has sometimes been made a reproach to Euripides, it
is only fair to distinguish between two classes of examples. In some
instances his
deus ex machina is really no
better than a mechanical expedient: this might be said of the
Andromache and of the
Orestes. But in some other cases the intervention is dramatically
warranted by the plot, as in the
Hippolytus and
in the
Bacchae. In respect to lyrics,
Aristophanes represents Euripides as having admitted the more florid style
which was becoming fashionable, and having thus destroyed the grave dignity
of the old choral song. The extant plays of Euripides indicate that there
was some ground for this charge: jingling repetitions of single words
[p. 2.864]are especially frequent; no fewer than sixteen
instances occur in 150 lines of the
Orestes.
But the most important innovation made by Euripides in the lyric province
was the introduction of florid lyric solos (
μονῳδίαι), to be sung by an actor on the stage. Perhaps the
cleverest stroke in the
Frogs is the parody of such a
μονῳδία (1331 ff.), in the course of
which the hapless heroine describes herself as
λίνου
μεστὸν ἄτρακτον |
εἱειειειειειλίσσουσα χεροῖν.
After 400 B.C. Greek Tragedy declined. Numerous tragic poets appeared,
indeed, who won more or less applause from their contemporaries; but no one
of them rivalled the great masters. In the fourth century B.C. an ordinance
was made that some work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides should always
be produced at the Dionysia along with the new tragedies. Lycurgus (
circ. 330 B.C.) caused a standard text of those
three poets to be deposited in the public archives, with a view to guarding
against further corruption by actors; and this text afterwards passed into
the possession of Ptolemy Euergetes (247-222 B.C.). Down to about 300 B.C., Athens continued to be the chief seat of
Tragedy. Alexandria afterwards became so; and under the Ptolemies tragic
composition had many votaries. Among these were the seven poets who, in the
reign of Philadelphus (283-247 B.C.), were known as “the tragic
Pleiad.” It was in 217 A.D. that the edict of Caracalla abolished
theatrical performances at Alexandria.
Aristotle defines Tragedy as the imitation of an action which is serious,
complete in itself, and of a sufficient magnitude or compass. The instrument
of imitation is language, made delightful to the hearers, either (
a) by metre alone, or (
b) by metre combined with music. Further, this language is not
used in the way of narrative merely, but is conjoined with action on the
part of the speakers. The elements of Tragedy are six in number:--
μῦθος, the story;
ἤθη, the moral qualities of the persons;
λέξις, the verbal form;
διὰνοια, the thoughts or sentiments;
ὄψις, the presentation to the eye (under which Aristotle
includes not merely scenic accessories of every kind, but also gesture and
dancing);
μελοποΐα, musical composition.
In every tragedy there is
δέσις, a tying of
a knot, and
λύσις, a solution. The most
effective kind of
λύσις is that which is
introduced by a
περιπέτεια, a sudden
reversal of fortune for the persons of the drama; or by an
ἀναγνώρισις, the discovery of a previously
concealed relationship between the persons. The
ἀναγνώρισις may or may not be accompanied by a
περιπέτεια. A
μῦθος is said to be
πεπλεγμένος
when it involves a
περιπέτεια, an
ἀναγνώρισις, or both. It is
ἁπλοῦς when the
λύσις is managed without either. Again, a tragedy is
παθητικὴ when the chief person acts mainly under
the influence of
πάθος, a strong impulse of
the mind,--as Medea does. It is
ἠθικὴ when
the chief person acts mainly in accord with a deliberately formed purpose
(
προαίρεσις), as Antigone does. As to
the so-called “unities,” the unity of
action is the only one upon which Aristotle insists. The action
represented by tragedy must be
one; it must not
be a series of incoherent or loosely-linked episodes. About the unity of
place he says nothing at all. As to the
unity of
time, he says that Tragedy now seeks,
as far as possible, to confine the supposed action within the compass of a
single day, or nearly so: but the earliest form of Tragedy, he adds, did not
even do this; in it, just as in epic poetry, the time was indefinite. Viewed
as a composition, Tragedy consists of the following parts; which are, in
Aristotle's phrase, the
μέρη κατὰ τὸ
ποσόν, as distinguished from the six elements named above, which
are the
μέρη κατὰ τὸ ποιόν. All that
part of a tragedy which precedes the first choral song is called
πρόλογος. The part which comes between two
choral songs is an
ἐπεισόδιον (a term
probably derived from the reappearance,
ἐπείσοδος, of the single actor in primitive Tragedy). The
ἔξοδος is the part after the last
choral song. The
πάροδος is the first
utterance of the whole Chorus. The
στάσιμον
is “a choral song without anapaests or trochaics:”
i.e., not preceded by an anapaestic march, like
the
πάροδος, nor interrupted by dialogue in
trochaic tetrameters, such as that which the Chorus in the
Agamemmon (
ad fin.) holds with
the actors. The term
στάσιμον μέλος means
literally, a song by the Chorus “at its station” in the
orchestra. A
κομμὸς is a
θρῆνος κοινὸς χοροῦ καὶ ἀπὸ σκηνῆς, a
lyric lament, sustained partly by the Chorus and partly by an actor.
Tragedy is described by Aristotle as
δι᾽ ἐλέου καὶ
φόβου περαίνουσα τὴν τῶν τοιούτων παθημάτων κάθαρσιν,
“effecting, by means of pity and terror, that purgation (of the soul)
which belongs to (is proper for) such feelings.” The word
κάθαρσις involves a medical metaphor,
from the use of purgatives. Tragedy excites pity and terror by presenting to
the mind things which are truly pitiable and terrible. Now, pity and terror
are feelings natural to men; but they are often excited by unworthy causes.
When they are moved, as Tragedy moves them, by a worthy cause, then the mind
experiences that sense of relief which comes from finding an outlet for a
natural energy. And thus the impressions made by Tragedy leave behind them
in the spectator a temperate and harmonious state of the soul. Similarly
Aristotle speaks of the enthusiastic worshippers of Dionysus as obtaining a
κάθαρσις, a healthful relief, by the
lyric utterance of their sacred frenzy:--
ὅταν
ἐξοργιάζωσι τὴν ψυχὴν μέλεσι, καθισταμένους, ὥσπερ ἰατρείας
τυχόντας καὶ καθάρσεως (
Pol.
8.7).
Of the three great tragedians, Sophocles seems to have been on the whole the
favourite of Aristotle, who refers to him in the
Poetics
about twenty times, and in all cases, except three, with praise. The
Oedipus Tyrannus is cited in no less than ten places.
Euripides is defended against the critics who had complained that his plays
usually ended unhappily; this, says Aristotle, is right in Tragedy, and the,
proof is that Euripides, “although a faulty composer in other
respects, is found to be at, least the
most
tragic of poets” (
εἰ καὶ τὰ ἄλλα
μὴ εὖ οἰκονομεῖ, ἀλλὰ τραγικώτατὀς γε τῶν ποιητῶν
φαίνεται:
Poet. 13). By “most tragic”
is here meant, “exciting pity most strongly,” --“most
pathetic.” But in Aristotle's other notices of Euripides censure
decidedly predominates
[p. 2.865]over praise. Aeschylus is
named only thrice in the
Poetics: there are further three
citations of his plays without his name. Aristotle seems to regard him as
belonging to a period when the proper type of Tragedy had not yet been
matured. In this connexion it may be noticed that not only are the terms
“trilogy” and “tetralogy” absent from the
Poetics, but there is no indication in the treatise that
tragedies had ever been produced otherwise than singly. In one place, indeed
(100.24), there is a reference to “the number of tragedies set for one
hearing” (i. e. performed in one day); but nothing in the context
forbids us to suppose as many poets as pieces. The reason of this silence is
simply, doubtless, that the grouping of plays in representation was foreign
to the subject with which Aristotle was immediately concerned,--viz. the
analysis of Tragedy considered as a form of poetical art. Indeed, the scenic
aspect of drama generally receives comparatively little attention from him.
The production of scenic effects (
ἀπεργασία τῶν
ὀψέων) is the affair of the stage-manager. The art of the
actor, again, is but slightly touched, since it lies outside of the poet's
domain.
The Didascaliae.--Aristotle compiled a work called
Διδασκαλίαι,
“Dramatic performances,” being a list of the tragedies and
comedies produced at Athens in each year. His materials were contemporary
records. In the 5th century B.C. it had been customary for the archon, after
each festival at which dramas had been performed, to draw up a list of the
competing poets, the choregi, the plays, and the protagonists, with a notice
of the order in which the judges had placed the competitors. This record was
preserved in the public archives. At some time between 450 and 400 B.C. it
became usual to engrave such a record on a stone tablet, and to set it up in
or near the Dionysiac theatre. Further, the choregus whose poet gained the
prize received a tripod from the state, and erected it, with an inscription,
in the same neighbourhood. Aristotle's compilation has perished, but its
nature is known from citations of it which occur in the Greek Arguments to
some plays, in scholia, and in late writers. There are altogether thirteen
such citations, five of which cite the
Διδασκαλίαι with Aristotle's name, and eight without it. They
are collected in the Berlin Aristotle (vol. v. p. 1572). About 260 B.C. the
Alexandrian poet Callimachus compiled another work of the same kind,
Πίναξ καὶ ἀναγραφὴ τῶν κατὰ χρόνους ἀπ᾽
ἀρχῆς γενομένων διδασκαλιῶν,
“A table and record of dramatic performances from the earliest
times.” He made use of Aristotle's
Διδασκαλίαι (Schol. Ar.
Nub. 552). Works of
a similar kind were written by Aristophanes of Byzantium (
circ. 200 B.C.), and by other scholars of Alexandria and of
Pergamum. Several of these writings were extant as late at least as 150 A.D.
This appears from Athenaeus, who was able to consult the
Διδασκαλίαι of Callimachus and Aristophanes, as
well as “the Pergamene records” (
Athen. p. 336 c). Among the authors of
the last-named was Carystius of Pergamum (
circ. 110
B.C.), who wrote
περὶ Διδασκαλιῶν. The
period covered by the extant fragments of
Διδασκαλίαι ranges from 472 B.C. (Arg. Aesch.
Persae) to 388 B.C. (Arg. Ar.
Plut.).
ROMAN TRAGEDY.
The first half of the 3rd century B.C. was the period at which the influence
of Greek literature began to be directly felt by the Romans. Tarentum was
the greatest of the Greek colonies in Southern Italy. After the fall of
Tarentum in 272 B.C., the intercourse between
Romans and Greeks became more familiar. In the First Punic War (263-241
B.C.) Sicily was the principal battle-ground; and in Sicily the Romans had
ample facilities for improving their acquaintance with the Greek language.
They had also frequent opportunities of witnessing Greek plays. Just after
the close of the war the first attempt at a Latin reproduction of Greek
tragedy was made by Livius Andronicus (240 B.C.). He was a Greek, probably
of Tarentum, and had received his freedom from his master, M. Livius
Salinator, whose sons he had educated. He then settled at Rome, and devoted
the rest of his life to literary work. It may be conjectured that most of
his plays were translated from the Greek. All of them, so far as we know,
were on Greek subjects. Among the titles are
Aegisthus, Ecus
Trojanus, Ajax, Tereus, Hermione. His Latin style appears to
have been harsh and crude. “Livianae fabulae non satis dignae quae
iterum legantur” is Cicero's concise verdict (
Brutus, 18, 71).
Five years after the first essay of Livius Andronicus, a Latin dramatist of
greater originality came forward (235 B.C.). Cn. Naevius was probably a
Campanian; and the racy vigour with which he could use his native language
entitles him to be regarded as the earliest Roman poet. Comedy was the form
of drama in which Naevius chiefly excelled; and he turned it to the purposes
of political strife, in a spirit similar to that of Aristophanes. But he was
also a writer of tragedy. His
Lycargus was akin in theme to
the
Bacchae of Euripides; while the titles of
his
Andromache, Ecus Trojanus, and
Hector
Proficiscens, show that, like Livius, he drew largely on the
Trojan cycle. At the same time he occasionally composed tragedies founded on
Roman history, or, as they were technically called,
fabulae praetextatae. The earliest
praetextatae on record are his; one of them was called
Romulus. In the scanty fragments of his
works we can recognise his ardour, his self-confidence, his somewhat
aggressive vigour, and his gift for terse and nervous expression, of which
the familiar “laudari a laudato viro” is a specimen.
The career of Naevius was drawing to a close when Q. Ennius came to Rome (204
B.C.). Ennius, a native of Rudiae in Calabria, was serving as a centurion
with the army in Sardinia, when Cato arrived there as quaestor. Ennius
followed Cato to Rome; acquired the Roman citizenship in 184 B.C.; and made his permanent abode on the
Aventine. Here we have to do with his work only so far as it concerned
Tragedy. Although his Annals and his Satires were more characteristic
products of his genius, he was also the most popular tragic dramatist who
had yet appeared; and it was due to him, in the first instance, that Roman
Tragedy acquired the popularity which
[p. 2.866]it retained
down to the days of Cicero. About twenty-five of his tragedies are known by
their titles. Two of these were
praetextatae,--one of which, called
Sabinae, dealt with the intervention of the Sabine women in the
war between Romulus and Tatius; while another, the
Ambracia, turned on the capture of the town of Ambracia in
the Aetolian war. The other pieces were on Greek subjects,--about one half
of them being connected with the Trojan war. His
Medea was translated from the play of Euripides, and the opening
lines, which are extant, indicate that the version was a tolerably close
one. They have a certain rugged majesty which agrees with Horace's
description of the style used by Ennius in Tragedy,--“In scaenam
missos magno cum pondere versus.”
M. Pacuvius, a nephew of Ennius by the mother's side, was a native of
Brundusium. He is thus the third instance (Livius and Ennius being the two
others) in which early Roman drama is associated with South Italian birth.
Pacuvius was born about 219 B.C., and lived to the
age of ninety. Of his tragedies, one, called
Paulus, was a
praetextata; twelve
more are known to have been on Greek subjects; and among these one of the
most celebrated, the
Antiope, was a translation from
Euripides. Some remarkable fragments of his
Chryses--a tragedy concerned, like his
Dulorestes,
with the wanderings of Orestes in search of Pylades--disclose the growth of
a Roman interest in physical philosophy, and also in ethical questions.
About 400 lines of Pacuvius are extant, but many of these are merely single
verses, preserved by grammarians as examples of strange words or usages.
Much as Pacuvius was admired on other grounds, his Latinity was not
accounted pure by Cicero, who couples him with the comic poet Caecilius in
the censure, “male locutos esse” (
Brutus, 74, 258). Pacuvius was prone to coin new forms of words
(such as
temeritudo, concorditas), and carried
the invention of compound adjectives to an extent which sometimes became
ludicrous,--as in “Nerei repandirostrum incurvicervicum pecus.”
L. Attius was born at Pisaurum, a Roman colony in Umbria, in 170 B.C. The
forms Attius and Accius are equally well-attested; but in the Imperial age
the form with
tt became predominant; and the Greeks
always wrote
Ἄττιος (Teuffel,
Hist. Rom. Lit. § 119, 1). The aged Pacuvius,
having left Rome in ill-health, was spending the evening of his days at
Brundusium, when Attius, then a young man, passed through that place on his
way to Asia. Attius was entertained by Pacuvius, and read to him his tragedy
Atreus. The old man found it
“sonorous and elevated, but somewhat harsh and crude;” and
the younger poet, admitting the defect, expressed his hope that the
mellowing influence of time would appear in his riper work. The excellences
which Pacuvius recognised must have been present in the maturer writings of
Attius, whom Horace calls “altus,” and Cicero, “gravis et
ingeniosus poeta.” The harshness of his earlier style was due,
perhaps, to a youthful excess of that “nervous and impetuous”
character, as Cicero calls it (
de Orat. 3.58,
217), which afterwards distinguished him, and which Ovid expresses by the
epithet
animosus. Attius was far the most
productive of the Roman tragic dramatists. The extant notices and fragments
indicate, according to one estimate, about 37 pieces; according to another,
about 50. Two of these were
praetextatae;--the
Brutus, on the downfall of the Tarquins and
the
Aeneeadae, dealing with the legend of the Decius who
devoted himself at the battle of Sentinum. There are indications that Attius
was a student of Sophocles, though Euripides was probably his chief model.
Thus the verse in his
Armorum indicium (fr.
10), “virtuti sis par, dispar fortunis patris,” is translated
from
Soph. Ai. 550 f. Among
his other celebrated tragedies were the
Atreus, Epigoni, Philocteta,
Anstigona, Telephus. Cicero, in his youth, had. often listened
to the reminiscences of Attius (
Brutus, 28,
107). The poet, who was sixty-four at the date of the orator's birth (106
B.C.), must therefore have lived to an advanced age.
The period from 240 to 100 B.C. is the first period in the history of Roman
poetry and oratory. And the century from 200 to 100 B.C. marks the
flourishing age of Roman Tragedy, as cultivated by Ennius, Pacuvius, and
Attius. But Tragedy continued to be a favourite form of composition in the
later years of the Republic and in the earlier part of the Imperial age. It
became, however, more and more a literary exercise, less and less a form of
poetry which could appeal with living force to the mind of the people. In
the Augustan age C. Asinius Pollio wrote tragedies which seem to have been
acted. Virgil's well-known praise of them, as “sola Sophocleo digna
cothurno,” must be qualified by the criticism in the
Dialogus de Oratoribus (100.21), where Tacitus
observes that the harshest traits of earlier Roman tragedy were reproduced
in the style of Pollio ( “adeo, durus et siccus est” ). In the
same dialogue high praise is given to the
Medea
of Ovid and the
Thyestes of Varius (100.12). No
fragment of this
Medea remains, except a few
words quoted by Quintilian (12.10, 75). Of the
Thyestes Quintilian says that “it is comparable to any
Greek Tragedy” (10.1, 98); and in another place he quotes it
(3.8, 45). Two anapaestic fragments are also extant (Ribbeck,
Frag.
Lat. p. 195 f.). But for Ovid and for Varius, as for other less
famous poets, Tragedy was now a mere
πάρεργον, a field into which they might make occasional
excursions, not the province of poetry in which they sought to establish
their permanent renown. In the middle of the 1st century A.D. we have eight
tragedies on Greek subjects by L. Annaeus Seneca:
Hercules Furens,
Thyestes, Phaedra, Oedipus, Troades (
Hecuba),
Medea, Agamemnon, Hercules
Oetaeus; also part of an
Oedipus Coloneus (362
lines), and of a
Phoenissae (302). A
praetextata called
Octavia, which was formerly ascribed to Seneca, was certainly of
later origin. The parentage of the other tragedies has also been disputed,
but the results of recent criticism confirm Seneca's authorship. The general
characteristic of the plays is rhetoric of the most pompous and artificial
kind. A fertile and lively fancy is present; the psychology, too, is often
acute; but there is no depth either of thought or of feeling. As most of
Seneca's Greek models are extant, a comparison is instructive. It serves to
show how completely, in this latest age of Roman
[p. 2.867]Tragedy, the love of declamation had displaced all regard for the soul and
essence of tragic art. The pieces of Seneca were primarily designed,
doubtless, for recitation; but it is not impossible that, in Nero's age,
they were also acted; and certain scenic hints have been thought to point in
that direction (e.g.
Phaedra, 392 f.). The last
Roman writer of Tragedy who claims mention is Curiatius Maternus, whose
activity extended from the reign of Nero to that of Vespasian. He wrote both
tragedies (as
Medea, Thyestes) and
praetextatae (as
Domitius,
Cato); and his eminent reputation is attested by several passages
in the Tacitean
Dialogus (cc. 2, 3, 5, 11).
In looking back on the course of Roman Tragedy as a whole, we see, in the
first place, that for inspiration and material it was altogether dependent
on Greece. Euripides was more especially the master of the Roman dramatists,
because, in his hands, Tragedy had become less distinctively Hellenic, and
therefore more susceptible of imitation by those who were strangers to the
Hellenic spirit. In the plays of Euripides, the Chorus was already ceasing
to be an organic part of drama; and the Roman dramatists went only one step
farther when they banished the Chorus from the orchestra, leaving to it
merely an occasional part in the dialogue. Lyrics of a simple character,
with a musical accompaniment, served, indeed, to accentuate the more
impassioned moments of a Roman tragedy; but, save for these, the lyric
element of the great Attic drama had vanished. In dialogue the iambic and
trochaic metres were retained: yet even here the Roman imitation marred the
Greek original. Any foot possible for an iambic verse was now admitted in
any place except the last. The finer rhythms were thus destroyed. Quintilian
says, “Comedy is our weak point” (10.1, 99). But, so far as the
tragic fragments warrant a judgment, Roman Tragedy was, in style, much less
successful than Roman Comedy. Comedy had more in common with the
satura, and the
satura
is the one species of composition in which the Roman mind expressed itself
with a truly original force. [SATURA.] At the same
time it is clear that there were noble qualities in the Roman Tragedy of the
Republic. It was marked by earnestness and by oratorical power; the tones of
the statesman and of the soldier were heard in it; it imbued the youth of
Rome with the “fas et antiqua castitudo” (as Attius
says),--with the lessons of ancestral fortitude and prudence; it taught the
men who were conquering the world how they should work, how they should
suffer, and how they should rule. So long as Roman Tragedy was doing this,
it was living, though its spirit was not Athenian. But this moral and
political significance departed with the Republic; and then it was
inevitable that Roman Tragedy should descend to the place which it occupies
under the Empire. That noble form of drama which the Attic genius had
matured, and which is first made known to us in the majestic poetry of
Aeschylus, disappears from the ancient world in the rhetoric of Seneca.
[
R.C.J]
