The three greatest tragedians of Greece are Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Even the rebellious titans cannot shake him (the tragedy “Chained Prometheus”).
Ancient Greek comedy
The number of actors did not exceed three, although each of them played more roles than in the tragedy. And the choir played a huge role in the comedy. The peculiarity of the latter was that the luminary of the choir spoke on behalf of the author himself, setting out his main thoughts that he pursued in the comedy. The actors danced for part of the performance. The costumes of the comedy actors were different from the costumes of the tragedy actors. The actors' masks were supposed to emphasize the funny and ugly in the exposed hero (they had bulging eyes, mouth to ear, etc.).
The actors' figures were given an equally ugly appearance. Poets took the plot from myths, refracting them satirically.
ancient greek dance theatrical
Comedy writers
The first comedian is Epicharmus. For him, the gods played jester roles. From three famous representatives of Attic political comedy - Cratinus, Eupolis and Aristophanes - the latter was the largest.
In his comedies he waged a fierce struggle against democracy. He caricatured Socrates and Euripides. He often parodied Euripides. Menador is one of the most outstanding comedians of this time. Depicting real life, Menander's everyday comedy abandoned dancing and singing.
This list can include such famous ancient authors as Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Aristotle. They all wrote plays for performances at festivals. There were, of course, many more authors of dramatic works, but either their works did not survive to this day, or their names were forgotten.
In the work of the ancient Greek playwrights, despite all the differences, there was much in common, for example, the desire to show all the most significant social, political and ethical problems that worried the minds of the Athenians at that time. In the genre of tragedy Ancient Greece no significant works were created. Over time, the tragedy became a purely literary work intended for reading. But great prospects opened up for everyday drama, which flourished most in the middle of the 4th century BC. e. It was later called “Novo-Attic comedy.”
Aeschylus
Aeschylus ( rice. 3) was born in 525 BC. e. at Eleusis, near Athens. He came from a noble family, so he received a good education. The beginning of his work dates back to the war of Athens against Persia. From historical documents it is known that Aeschylus himself took part in the battles of Marathon and Salamis.
Rice. 3. Aeschylus
He described the last of the wars as an eyewitness in his play “The Persians.” This tragedy was staged in 472 BC. e. In total, Aeschylus wrote about 80 works. Among them were not only tragedies, but also satirical dramas. Only 7 tragedies have survived to this day in full; only small pieces have survived from the rest.
The works of Aeschylus show not only people, but also gods and titans who personify moral, political and social ideas. The playwright himself had a religious-mythological credo. He firmly believed that the gods rule life and the world. However, the people in his plays are not weak-willed creatures who are blindly subordinate to the gods. Aeschylus endowed them with reason and will, they act guided by their thoughts.
In Aeschylus' tragedies, the chorus plays a significant role in the development of the theme. All choir parts are written in pathetic language. At the same time, the author gradually began to introduce into the narrative outline pictures of human existence that were quite realistic. An example is the description of the battle between the Greeks and Persians in the play “The Persians” or the words of sympathy expressed by the Oceanids to Prometheus.
To enhance tragic conflict and for a more complete action of the theatrical production, Aeschylus introduced the role of a second actor. At that time it was simply a revolutionary move. Now, instead of the old tragedy, which had little action, a single actor and chorus, new dramas appeared. In them, the worldviews of the heroes collided, independently motivating their actions and actions. But Aeschylus' tragedies still retained in their construction traces of the fact that they originated from a dithyramb.
The structure of all tragedies was the same. They began with a prologue, which set up the plot. After the prologue, the choir entered the orchestra to remain there until the end of the play. Then came the episodes, which were dialogues between the actors. The episodes were separated from each other by stasims - songs of the choir, performed after the choir entered the orchestra. The final part of the tragedy, when the choir left the orchestra, was called “exodus”. As a rule, a tragedy consisted of 3–4 episodies and 3–4 stasims.
Stasims, in turn, were divided into separate parts, consisting of stanzas and antistrophes, which strictly corresponded to each other. The word "stanza" translated into Russian means "turn". When the choir sang through the stanzas, it moved first one way and then the other. Most often, the choir’s songs were performed to the accompaniment of a flute and were always accompanied by dances called “emmeleya”.
In the play “The Persians,” Aeschylus glorified the victory of Athens over Persia in the naval battle of Salamis. A strong patriotic feeling runs through the entire work, i.e. the author shows that the victory of the Greeks over the Persians is the result of the fact that democratic orders existed in the Greek country.
In the work of Aeschylus, a special place is given to the tragedy “Prometheus Bound”. In this work, the author showed Zeus not as a bearer of truth and justice, but as a cruel tyrant who wants to wipe out all people from the face of the earth. Therefore, he condemned Prometheus, who dared to rebel against him and stand up for the human race, to eternal torment, ordering him to be chained to a rock.
Prometheus is shown by the author as a fighter for the freedom and reason of people, against the tyranny and violence of Zeus. In all subsequent centuries, the image of Prometheus remained an example of a hero fighting against higher powers, against all oppressors of a free human personality. Very well said about this hero ancient tragedy V. G. Belinsky: “Prometheus let people know that in truth and knowledge they are gods, that thunder and lightning are not proof of rightness, but only evidence of wrong power.”
Aeschylus wrote several trilogies. But the only one that has survived to this day in its entirety is the Oresteia. The tragedy was based on tales of terrible murders of the family from which the Greek commander Agamemnon came. The first play of the trilogy is called Agamemnon. It tells that Agamemnon returned victoriously from the battlefield, but was killed at home by his wife Clytemnestra. The commander's wife not only is not afraid of punishment for her crime, but also boasts of what she has done.
The second part of the trilogy is called "The Hoephors". Here is the story of how Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, having become an adult, decided to avenge the death of his father. Orestes' sister Electra helps him in this terrible matter. First, Orestes killed his mother's lover, and then her.
The plot of the third tragedy - "Eumenides" - is as follows: Orestes is persecuted by Erinyes, the goddess of vengeance, because he committed two murders. But he is acquitted by the court of the Athenian elders.
In this trilogy, in poetic language, Aeschylus spoke about the struggle between paternal and maternal rights that was going on in Greece at that time. As a result, paternal, i.e. state, law turned out to be the winner.
In the Oresteia, Aeschylus's dramatic skill reached its peak. He conveyed the oppressive, ominous atmosphere in which the conflict is brewing so well that the viewer almost physically feels this intensity of passions. The choral parts are written clearly, they contain religious and philosophical content, and contain bold metaphors and comparisons. There is much more dynamics in this tragedy than in the early works of Aeschylus. The characters are written out more specifically, with much less generalities and reasoning.
The works of Aeschylus show all the heroics of the Greco-Persian wars that played important role when instilling patriotism among the people. In the eyes of not only his contemporaries, but also all subsequent generations, Aeschylus forever remained the very first tragic poet.
He died in 456 BC. e. in the city of Gel, in Sicily. On his grave there is a gravestone inscription, which, according to legend, was composed by him.
Sophocles
Sophocles (Fig. 4) was born in 496 BC. e. in a wealthy family. His father had a weapons workshop, which generated large incomes. Already at a young age, Sophocles showed his creative talent. At the age of 16, he led a choir of young men who glorified the victory of the Greeks in the battle of Salamis.
Rice. 4. Sophocles
At first, Sophocles himself took part in the productions of his tragedies as an actor, but then, due to the weakness of his voice, he had to give up performing, although he enjoyed great success. In 468 BC. e. Sophocles won his first victory in absentia over Aeschylus, which consisted in the fact that Sophocles' play was recognized as the best. In his subsequent dramatic activities, Sophocles was invariably lucky: in his entire life he never received a third award, but almost always took first place (and only occasionally second).
The playwright actively participated in government activities. In 443 BC. e. The Greeks elected the famous poet to the post of treasurer of the Delian League. Later he was elected to an even higher position - strategist. In this capacity, he, along with Pericles, took part in a military campaign against the island of Samos, which separated from Athens.
We know only 7 tragedies of Sophocles, although he wrote more than 120 plays. Compared to Aeschylus, Sophocles somewhat changed the content of his tragedies. If the first has titans in his plays, then the second introduced people into his works, albeit a little elevated above everyday life. Therefore, researchers of Sophocles' work say that he made tragedy descend from heaven to earth.
Man, with his spiritual world, mind, experiences and free will, became the main character in tragedies. Of course, in Sophocles' plays the heroes feel the influence of Divine Providence on their fate. His gods are as powerful as those of Aeschylus; they, too, can overthrow a person. But Sophocles’ heroes usually do not meekly rely on the will of fate, but fight to achieve their goals. This struggle sometimes ends in the suffering and death of the hero, but he cannot refuse it, since in this he sees his moral and civic duty to society.
At this time, Pericles was at the head of the Athenian democracy. Under his rule, slave-owning Greece achieved enormous internal prosperity. Athens has become big cultural center, to which writers, artists, sculptors and philosophers throughout Greece strove. Pericles began the construction of the Acropolis, but it was completed only after his death. Outstanding architects of that period were involved in this work. All sculptures were made by Phidias and his students.
In addition, rapid development occurred in the field of natural sciences and philosophical teachings. There was a need for general and special education. In Athens, teachers appeared who were called sophists, that is, sages. For a fee, they taught those interested in various sciences - philosophy, rhetoric, history, literature, politics - and taught the art of speaking before the people.
Some sophists were supporters of slave-owning democracy, others - of aristocracy. The most famous among the sophists of that time was Protagoras. It was he who said that it is not God, but man, who is the measure of all things.
Such contradictions in the clash of humanistic and democratic ideals with selfish and selfish motives were reflected in the work of Sophocles, who could not accept the statements of Protagoras because he was very religious. In his works, he repeatedly said that human knowledge is very limited, that out of ignorance a person can make one mistake or another and be punished for it, that is, suffer torment. But it is precisely in suffering that the best human qualities that Sophocles described in his plays are revealed. Even in cases where the hero dies under the blows of fate, an optimistic mood is felt in the tragedies. As Sophocles said, “fate could deprive a hero of happiness and life, but not humiliate his spirit; she could defeat him, but not defeat him.”
Sophocles introduced a third actor into the tragedy, who greatly enlivened the action. There were now three characters on stage who could conduct dialogues and monologues, and also perform simultaneously. Since the playwright gave preference to the experiences of an individual, he did not write trilogies, which, as a rule, traced the fate of an entire family. Three tragedies were put up for competition, but now each of them was an independent work. Under Sophocles, painted decorations were also introduced.
The most famous tragedies of the playwright from the Theban cycle are considered “Oedipus the King”, “Oedipus at Colonus” and “Antigone”. The plot of all these works is based on the myth of the Theban king Oedipus and the numerous misfortunes that befell his family.
Sophocles tried in all his tragedies to bring the heroes out of strong character and unbending will. But at the same time, these people were characterized by kindness and compassion. This was, in particular, Antigone.
The tragedies of Sophocles clearly show that fate can subjugate a person’s life. In this case, the hero becomes a toy in the hands of higher powers, which the ancient Greeks personified with Moira, standing even above the gods. These works became an artistic reflection of the civil and moral ideals of slave-owning democracy. Among these ideals were political equality and freedom of all full citizens, patriotism, service to the Motherland, nobility of feelings and motives, as well as kindness and simplicity.
Sophocles died in 406 BC. e.
Aristophanes was born around 445 BC. e.
His parents were free people, but not very wealthy.
Their creativity the young man showed it very early.
Already at the age of 12-13 he began writing plays. His first work was staged in 427 BC. e. and immediately received a second award.
Aristophanes wrote only about 40 works.
Only 11 comedies have survived to this day, in which the author posed a variety of life questions.
In the plays "Acharnians" and "Peace" he advocated ending the Peloponnesian War and concluding peace with Sparta.
In the plays "Wasps" and "Riders" he criticized the activities of government agencies, reproaching dishonest demagogues who deceived the people.
Aristophanes in his works criticized the philosophy of the Sophists and the methods of educating youth (“Clouds”).
Aristophanes' work enjoyed well-deserved success among his contemporaries. The public flocked to his performances.
This state of affairs can be explained by the fact that a crisis of slave-owning democracy has matured in Greek society. Bribery and corruption of officials, embezzlement and falsehoods flourished in the echelons of power. The satirical depiction of these vices in the plays found the most lively response in the hearts of the Athenians.
But in the comedies of Aristophanes there is also a positive hero. He is a small landowner who cultivates the land with the help of two
Reh slaves. The playwright admired his hard work and common sense, which manifested itself in both domestic and state affairs.
Aristophanes was an ardent opponent of war and advocated peace.
For example, in the comedy Lysistrata, he suggested that the Peloponnesian War, in which the Hellenes killed each other, weakened Greece against the threat from Persia.
In the plays of Aristophanes, the element of buffoonery is sharply noticeable. In this regard, the acting performance also had to include parody, caricature and slapstick.
All these techniques caused riotous fun and laughter from the audience.
In addition, Aristophanes put the characters in funny situations.
An example is the comedy “Clouds,” in which Socrates ordered himself to be suspended high in a basket so that it would be easier to think about the sublime.
This and similar scenes were very expressive from a purely theatrical point of view.
Just like tragedy, comedy began with a prologue with the beginning of the action.
It was followed by the opening song of the choir as it entered the orchestra.
The choir, as a rule, consisted of 24 people and was divided into two semi-choirs of 12 people each.
The opening song of the choir was followed by episodes, which were separated from each other by songs.
In the episodies, dialogue was combined with choral singing.
There was always an agon in them - a verbal duel.
In the agony, opponents most often defended opposing opinions, sometimes it ended in a fight between the characters and each other.
In the choral parts there was a parabase, during which the choir took off their masks, took a few steps forward and addressed directly the audience. Usually the parabase was not related to the main theme of the play.
The last part of the comedy, as well as the tragedy, was called exodus, at which time the choir left the orchestra.
Exodus was always accompanied by cheerful, lively dancing.
An example of the most striking political satire is the comedy “Riders”.
Aristophanes gave it this name because the main character was the choir of horsemen who made up the aristocratic part of the Athenian army.
Aristophanes made the leader of the left wing of democracy, Cleon, the main character of the comedy.
He called him Tanner and presented him as an arrogant, deceitful man who thinks only about his own enrichment.
Under the guise of the old man Demos, the Athenian people appear in the comedy.
Demos is very old, helpless, often falls into childhood and therefore listens to the Tanner in everything.
But, as they say, a thief stole a horse from a thief.
Demos transfers power to another rogue - the Sausage Man, who defeats the Tanner.
At the end of the comedy, the Sausage Man boils Demos in a cauldron, after which youth, reason and political wisdom return to him.
Now Demos will never dance to the tune of unscrupulous demagogues.
And Kolbasnik himself subsequently becomes a good citizen who works for the good of his homeland and people.
According to the plot of the play, it turns out that the Sausage Man was simply pretending to gain the upper hand over the Tanner.
21 BC e., during the period of peace negotiations between Athens and Sparta, Aristophanes wrote and staged the comedy “Peace”.
The playwright's contemporaries accepted the possibility that this performance could have a positive impact on the course of the negotiations, which ended successfully in the same year.
The main character of the play was a farmer named Trigeus, that is, a “gatherer” of fruits.
The continuous war prevents him from living peacefully and happily, cultivating the land and feeding his family.
On a huge dung beetle, Trigaeus decided to rise into the sky to ask Zeus what he intended to do with the Hellenes.
Unless Zeus makes any decision, Trigaeus will tell him that he is a traitor to Hellas.
Having risen to heaven, the farmer learned that there were no more gods on Olympus.
Zeus moved them all to the very high point firmament, because he was angry with people because they could not end the war.
In the large palace that stood on Olympus, Zeus left the war demon Polemos, giving him the right to do whatever he wanted with people.
Polemos captured the goddess of peace and imprisoned her in deep cave, and the entrance was blocked with stones.
Trigaeus called Hermes for help, and while Polemos was away, they freed the goddess of the world.
Immediately after this, all wars stopped, people returned to peaceful creative work and a new, happy life began.
Aristophanes ran through the entire plot of the comedy the idea that all Greeks should forget hostility, unite and live happily.
Thus, for the first time, a statement was made from the stage, addressed to all Greek tribes, that there was much more in common between them than there were differences.
In addition, the idea was expressed about the unification of all tribes and the commonality of their interests. The comedian wrote two more works that were a protest against the Peloponnesian War. These are the comedies "Acharnians" and "Lysistrata".
In 405 BC. e. Aristophanes created the play "Frogs".
In this work he criticized the tragedies of Euripides.
As an example of worthy tragedies, he named the plays of Aeschylus, with whom he always sympathized.
In the comedy “Frogs,” at the very beginning of the action, Dionysus and his servant Xanthius enter the orchestra.
Dionysus announces to everyone that he is going to descend into the underworld to bring Euripides to earth, because after his death there was not a single good poet left.
After these words, the audience burst into laughter: everyone knew Aristophanes’ critical attitude towards the works of Euripides.
The core of the play is the dispute between Aeschylus and Euripides, which takes place in underground kingdom.
The actors portraying the playwrights appear in the orchestra, as if continuing the argument that began outside the venue. Euripides criticizes the art of Aeschylus, believes that he had too little action on stage, that, having brought a hero or heroine onto the stage, Aeschylus covered them with a cloak and left them to sit in silence.
Thus, Euripides condemned the stilted and indigestible language in which Aeschylus wrote his works.
About himself, Euripides says that in his plays he showed everyday life and taught people simple everyday matters.
Such a realistic image everyday life ordinary people and caused criticism from Aristophanes.
Through the mouth of Aeschylus, he denounces Euripides and tells him that he has spoiled people: “Now there are market onlookers, rogues, and insidious villains everywhere.”
Their competition ends with the weighing of the poems of both poets.
Large scales appear on the stage, Dionysus invites the playwrights to take turns throwing verses from their tragedies onto different scales.
As a result, Aeschylus's verses outweighed him, he became the winner, and Dionysus must bring him to earth. Seeing off Aeschylus, Pluto orders him to guard Athens, as he says, “with good thoughts” and “to re-educate the madmen, of whom there are many in Athens.”
Since Aeschylus returns to earth, he asks to transfer the throne of the tragedian to Sophocles during his absence in the underworld.
Aristophanes died in 385 BC. e.
From the point of view ideological content, as well as the entertainment value of Aristophanes’ comedy, is a phenomenal phenomenon.
According to historians, Aristophanes is both the pinnacle of ancient Attic comedy and its completion. In the 4th century BC. e., when the socio-political situation changed in Greece, comedy no longer had the same power of influence on the public as before.
In this regard, V. G. Belinsky called Aristophanes the last great poet of Greece.
The fifth century BC should be called the Golden Age of Ancient Greece. It is associated with the most famous names of poets, philosophers, politicians, sculptors, and architects. This was the time of the greatest rise in the national consciousness of the ancient Greeks and the time of the greatest trials for them. “To be or not to be Greece?” - this is how the question was posed.
In 500 BC. e. Greek cities in Asia Minor tried to free themselves from Persian rule and were subjected to severe repression.
Miletus, the richest and most beautiful city, was destroyed and burned by the Persians. Residents were killed or driven into slavery. This happened in 494 BC. e.
All of Greece was worried. The Persian ruler Darius gathered a huge army. The Greco-Persian War began. Mortal danger loomed over Greece, over its small, scattered city-states, which were often torn apart by petty feuds. Some couldn't stand it. The cities of Thessaly let the Persians through unhindered. Only Athens held firm. In the difficult days of the war, major commanders appeared, whose names the Greeks remembered and honored throughout their subsequent history, among them Miltiades, who won a brilliant victory over the Persians in the Battle of Marathon (September 13, 490 BC), Themistocles, who organized the construction navy, a major politician and diplomat, the Spartan king Leonidas, who heroically fought the Persians in the Thermopylae Gorge at the head of a detachment of 300 people. The outcome of the war was decided by the famous naval battle off the island of Salamis in 480. Later military actions (they lasted until 449 BC) could not change the situation. Greece has passed a difficult test.
Historians associate the name of Pericles with the classical period in history Greek culture, its especially lush flowering. This was the 5th century BC, a time when on the streets of Athens one could meet Sophocles and Euripides, Socrates and the young Plato, the historian Thucydides, greatest sculptor Phidias and many other figures of Greek culture, famous for thousands of years. Pericles, a native of Athens, a native of an old aristocratic family, intelligent, educated, became the head of the state. His reign was short-lived. In 422-429. BC e. he held the elected position of strategist (in 29, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, he died of the plague). But just in these years, Greece, after the victory over the Persians, spreading its wings wide, joyful and free from fears of its powerful neighbor, freely and freely devoted itself to spiritual activity, deploying the mighty forces of its brilliant people. And then the flourishing of Greek culture truly began, including its theater with the great names of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes.
How did this amazing and impressive art form come into being?
It is human nature to imitate. A child in a game imitates what he sees in life, a savage in a dance depicts a hunting scene or other elements of his simple life. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle derived all art, of which he was one of the theorists, from a person’s tendency to imitate (mimesis - Greek “imitation, reproduction, likeness”).
Greek theater was born from imitation; instead of a story about an event, the event itself was reproduced, in other words, the story was presented in the forms of life itself.
Aeschylus (525-456 BC)
Prometheus is the most noble saint and martyr in the philosophical calendar.
K. Marx
Prometheus! Mythical character in the ancient Greek pantheon. The Titan God, who gave people fire, contrary to the will of the supreme god Zeus, is the first in a string of real historical figures who died for ideas, for the search for truth, for the desire to increase human knowledge. Among them is Socrates, the ancient Greek philosopher who was executed in 399 BC. e. for teaching people to think independently, to reject dogmas and prejudices. Among them is the famous Hypatia of Alexandria, a woman scientist, mathematician, astronomer, stoned in 415 AD. e. Christian fanatics. Among them are the French publisher Etienne Dolet, burned in Paris in 1546, Giordano Bruno, burned in Rome in 1600, and many other sufferers, “martyrs in the philosophical calendar.”
The mythical character Prometheus became, as it were, the personification human impulse to progress, to truth and the fight for it. A wonderful, noble hero and martyr!
In the tragedy of Aeschylus, his story was depicted on the stage. He was brought to the mountains of the Caucasus, “to the far end of the earth, into the desolate desert of the wild Scythians,” chained to a rock with iron chains, and an eagle must now fly to him every day, peck out his liver, so that it would grow back again and again and forever proclaim he surrounds the surrounding area with his heartbreaking screams and moans. This was the verdict of Zeus.
One can imagine the state of the ancient Athenians gathered in the theater. For them, everything that happened on stage had the meaning of a ritual action. They believed the myth as reality. The choir expressed their feelings.
I shudder when I see you,
Those who are grievously tormented by a thousand torments!..
You don't tremble the angry Zeus,
You are wayward even now...
Aeschylus hardly believed unconditionally in the religious basis of the myth. Scientific thinking has already done enough big way in the consciousness of the cultural part of Greek society after the naive worldview of Homer. In the benefits that Prometheus bestowed on people, he, perhaps, symbolically depicted the historical path of mankind from savagery to civilization. On stage, Prometheus talks about this. Of course, the philosophical allegory is clothed here in the artistic concreteness of the image. The viewer saw before him not a naked idea, but a person in the flesh, vulnerable, tormented, thinking, loving.
Prometheus is a friend, benefactor, patron of people. And Zeus, what is he like, this supreme ruler of Olympus?
Zeus is the enemy of people, he planned to destroy
The whole human race and a new one to plant.
No one stood up for the poor mortals,
And I dared... -
says Prometheus. According to myth, Zeus sent a flood to the earth and destroyed the entire human race, except for one married couple, from whom the nations were reborn again. This myth later entered the Christian religion (the legend of Noah's Ark). In the legend of the flood, people were blamed: they were guilty of their death, and in the will of God, who doomed them to it, the highest justice was carried out - punishment for their vices. Aeschylus did not say a word about the reasons for Zeus’s anger at people, and his action towards them looks like a despotic act of an evil and capricious god.
In essence, this is where the political theme begins. The inhabitants of Attica, to which Aeschylus belonged, greatly valued their democratic order and were very proud of them. Therefore, willingly or unwillingly, the myth about the conflict between Zeus and Prometheus in the tragedy of Aeschylus acquired the symbolic character of criticism of autocracy; Prometheus throws grave accusations at Zeus. He is a tyrant. Zeus is “an unaccountable, stern king.” Prometheus helped him gain power, but Zeus immediately forgot about it. This is the logic of tyranny:
After all, all tyrants have a disease
Criminal distrust of a friend.
And Zeus ordered this friend to be chained to a rock. His will was carried out by Strength and Authority, personifying the idea of violence and tyranny in the tragedy. Hermes, the messenger of Zeus, arrogantly instructs Prometheus to humble himself. But he proudly refuses:
Be sure that I would not change
Your sorrows into servile service.
This is the holy of holies for the Athenian, proud of the consciousness of his freedom, political freedom. Of course, this applied only to free citizens of the policy. There was no talk of slaves. In the minds of a free Greek of that time, they were just sounding, living things, executors of the will of the slave owner.
Prometheus is the opposite of Zeus in everything. The latter is unfair and cruel. Prometheus is humane. When the old man Ocean, who felt sorry for him from the bottom of his heart, wants to ask Zeus for mercy for him, Prometheus, he dissuades him, fearing to bring trouble to his protector:
Although I feel bad, that’s not the reason
To cause suffering to others.
Everything in Aeschylus's tragedy truly screams against Zeus. Virgin Io, daughter of Inachus, who had the misfortune of attracting the loving heart of the supreme god, was persecuted by the jealous Hera. Zeus turned her into a cow, but Hera found out about this and sent the many-eyed Argus to watch her. Hermes, on the orders of Zeus, killed Argus. Then Hera sent a stinging gadfly to her, and poor Io, not knowing peace, wanders around the world. She also reached the Caucasus:
What is this edge? What kind of people? What kind of husband is this?
Chained to the rock with iron chains,
Under the storm of winds? For what sins
Is he punishing him?
It was Prometheus. She saw him chained to a rock. Prometheus predicts it future fate: for a long time she will have to wander around the world half-mad, enduring great suffering, but in the end, having reached the mouth of the Nile, “on the edge of the Egyptian land” she will calm down, giving birth to the “black Epaphus”, who will begin to “cultivate the land that waters the wide Nile " The story of Prometheus reveals the mythical picture of the world, as it seemed to the ancient Greek, a picture full of strange creatures and monsters: the one-eyed Arimaspians, who “ride horses and live by the golden-streaming waters of the river Pluto,” and the maidens of the Phorkiads, similar to swans, and the terrible Gorgons , three winged sisters with snakes in their hair (“none of the mortals, having seen them, can breathe anymore”), and vultures with a sharp beak, the silent dogs of Zeus, and the Amazons, “who do not love husbands.”
The world in the days of Aeschylus seemed still mysterious; huge and terrible places seemed to be outside the inhabited region.
The spectator, a contemporary of Aeschylus, listened with a shudder to the prophecies of Prometheus, for him it was a true reality, he involuntarily became imbued with sympathy for Prometheus and for the unfortunate and persecuted maiden Io (she appeared on stage with horns on her head) and at the same time, trembling, of course, and, with a cold heart, he felt hostility towards the cruel and tyrannical Zeus, when Io’s cries rushed from the stage:
Oh, for what a grave sin, Zeus, you
He sentenced him to a thousand torments?..
Why, frightening with a terrible ghost,
Are you torturing a crazy girl?
Burn me with fire, hide me in the ground,
Throw me as food for the underwater creatures!
Or my prayers
Don't you hear, king?
The question arises: how could the playwright so boldly, so openly condemn the God in whom his compatriots sacredly believed? The Greeks feared their gods, made sacrifices to them, arranged libations and incense in their honor, but the gods were not for them a model of behavior and a standard of justice. Moreover, according to their ideas, they were not omnipotent; over them, as well as over people, hung the formidable shadow of fate and three terrible Moiras, carrying out the action of a mysterious and inevitable fate (“Necessity!”) - “Three Moiras and Erinyes that everyone remembers.”
Choir
Is Zeus weaker than them?
Prometheus
He cannot escape his fate.
The fate of the gods is perhaps worse than that of humans, they are immortal, and if they are condemned to suffer, like Zeus’s grandfather and father, who were cast into Tartarus, then they will suffer forever. Therefore, when Io, complaining about his fate, calls for death, Prometheus sadly answers her:
You couldn't stand my suffering!
After all, I am not destined to die.
This is Aeschylus' Prometheus. The image of this rebel as the idea of rebellion, protest against tyranny, excited more than one generation of heroes. He was sung by the English revolutionary romantics Shelley and Byron, his features are recognizable in
the character of Milton’s Satan (John Milton. “Paradise Lost”).
Aeschylus is one of the founders of theatrical performances. He's almost at his source. The theater has not yet revealed all its stage capabilities. Then everything was much more modest. These days, there are dozens and sometimes hundreds of actors on the Stage. Aeschylus introduced a second actor, and this was considered a great innovation. Two actors and a choir are the performers. The actors pronounced long monologues or exchanged short remarks, the chorus essentially expressed the reaction of the audience - often sympathy and compassion, sometimes a timid murmur - after all, the gods were acting.
Sophocles (496-406 BC)
Creon. One morning I woke up as the King of Thebes. But God knows if I ever dreamed of power.
Antigone. Then you should have said no.
Creon. I couldn't. I suddenly felt like a master who refuses to work. It seemed dishonest to me. And I agreed.
Antigone. Well, so much the worse for you.
Jean Anouilh
Quote from a play by a 20th century French author. The title of the play and its plot are identical to the tragedy of the great Greek playwright. Two plays, and millennia between them. What connected the authors of such different eras? Duma on personality and state.
Jean Anouilh reflects on the enormous responsibility of the person who takes on the load state power.
Sophocles was concerned with another question: are there limits to state power over an individual, what individual rights cannot be ignored under any circumstances, and what should state power be? These questions find an answer in life itself, in the reality that is presented on stage, in the speeches and actions of the characters in the play. The tragedy raises serious political and moral questions.
Sophocles - singer strong natures. This is Antigone in his trilogy about King Oedipus. She can be killed, executed, but she cannot be forced to act contrary to her moral principles. Her will is unbending.
Two brothers, Eteocles and Polyneices, fought each other over power. Eteocles became the legal ruler of Thebes. Polyneices turned to a foreign power and, with the help of the enemies of his homeland, wanted to seize the throne, taking it away from his brother. In the battle of Thebes, both brothers died, simultaneously plunging swords into each other. Creon became the ruler of Thebes. He ordered that Eteocles be buried with honors, and Polyneices, as a traitor, be left without burial, to be devoured wild animals and birds. Under penalty of death, anyone was prohibited from violating this order.
Creon acted like a patriot. For him, the homeland is above all, the interests of the state are above all other, personal interests. “He who honors his friend more than his fatherland, I don’t value that at all,” he solemnly proclaims. And it was quite in the spirit of that political and moral ideal, which every Greek professed, including Sophocles. And yet he, Sophocles, condemned the actions of his hero and contrasted him, the all-powerful sovereign, with a young, weak, but possessed enormous power the spirit of the Theban, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices Antigone. She resisted Creon's orders and performed the burial ceremony for her brother. For this she should be executed. Creon is adamant.
Before the audience there is a political dispute between Creon and Antigone. She accuses him of violating the unwritten but strong law of the gods. Antigone's fiancé makes the same accusation against him, youngest son Creona Gemon. Creon defends his rightness, declaring that the power of the sovereign must be unshakable, otherwise anarchy will destroy everything:
...Anarchy is the worst of evils.
It kills cities and houses
Plunges the fighters into ruin,
Those fighting nearby are separated.
Order is established by obedience;
You should support laws.
In his defense of the uncontrollability of state power, Creon goes to the extreme. He states:
The ruler must be obeyed
In everything - legal and illegal.
Gemon cannot agree with this; he reminds his father that the gods gave man reason, “and he is the highest of blessings in the world.” In the end, Gemon throws a grave accusation at his father: “It is not a state where one reigns.” In democratic Athens, this statement of the young man found the most lively response. Creon, passionately, completely exposes his tyrannical program of action: “But the state is the property of the kings!” Haemon retorts with irony: “It would be great if you ruled the desert alone!”
So on the stage of the Athens Theater of Dionysus, in front of 17 thousand spectators, this great dispute of centuries unfolded.
Events proved Creon wrong. The soothsayer Tiresias appears to him. He is trying to moderate the king’s anger, not to execute someone who has already passed away: “Respect death, do not touch the dead. Or to finish off the dead valiantly.” The king persists. Tiresias tells him about the highest rights of man, which even the gods cannot trample, - in in this case right to burial. And this does not bother Creon. Then Tiresias, leaving, promises him the vengeance of the gods: “For this, the goddesses of vengeance, Erinyes, are waiting for you.”
Creon finally sees the light, he is afraid of the wrath of the gods. He orders the release of Antigone, but it is too late: in the crypt where she was walled up, they found two corpses, a girl who had hanged herself and Haemon who had stabbed himself. The tragedy ends with Eurydice, Creon’s wife and the young man’s mother.
The ruler of Thebes, crushed by misfortunes, curses his fate, his insane persistence. His political thesis about the unlimited and uncontrollable will of the monarch is also defeated.
Antigone, who rebelled, in essence, against the tyranny of state power, which suppresses everything reasonable and fair, personifies in Sophocles’ tragedy the idea of the greatness of the individual, the illegality of suppressing his rights.
This is how the playwright’s contemporaries in his homeland of Athens understood the play.
More than two thousand years have passed, and the problem of the prerogatives of the state and the individual has not yet found a final solution in the world. These days French writer Jean Anouilh brought it up for discussion again, using ancient myth. He writes a play with the same name - "Antigone".
The same characters. Again Creon and Antigone, and again they argue heatedly. True, here Creon complains about the burden of state power, about its terrible responsibility, power that he, Creon, accepted without joy, out of necessity. To this Antigone answers him: “I can say “no” to everything I don’t like, only my own judgment matters to me. You, with your crown, with your guards, with all this pomp, can only kill me.”
“Creon. But, Lord! But try to understand at least for a minute, you little idiot, someone needs to say “yes”, someone needs to steer the boat - after all, there is water all around, all around there is a lot of crime, stupidity, poverty, and the rudder is where especially shakes. The crew does not want to do anything, they only think about what to plunder from the common property, and the officers are already building themselves a small comfortable raft - only for themselves, with a reserve drinking water to take your bones away from here. And the mast is cracking, the wind is tearing the sails, everything is about to go to pieces, and they only think about their own skin, about their precious skin, about their little needs.
Think about whether there is time to deal with the subtleties, to look for an answer to the question “yes?” or “no?”, asking yourself whether the payment is too expensive and whether you will remain human after all this. You take a piece of board, steer straight into a giant wave, roar the command at the top of your lungs, instead of obeying, shoot straight into the crowd, at the first one who comes forward. Into the crowd! There are no names here. Maybe it will be the one who gave you a light yesterday, smiling. He doesn't have a name anymore. And you too, chained to the steering wheel. No names. There is only a ship and a storm, do you understand that?
Antigone. I don't want to understand. Let this be clear to you. I am beyond understanding these things. I’m where you can say no and die.”
As we see, the problem in both ancient and modern tragedy is the same - the individual and the state, but the roles have changed. Antigone, in essence, eliminates herself. She does not want to take on or even understand the complexity of state problems; her determination to die is just a refusal to participate in common affairs. In Anuya’s play, the tragedy of the whole situation is felt - the state is perishing, it, like a boat in a stormy ocean, is wrecked, and Creon will not save him, because he is alone, no one supports his efforts, no one thinks about public interests - everyone is on his own.
Anouilh symbolically depicts the modern bourgeois state. It is on the edge of an abyss, people are divided, the selfish interests of each individual become the centrifugal force that tears society apart.
This gloomy feeling of close and inevitable death is not present in the tragedy of the ancient author. Truth and justice triumph there, and this triumph lies in the defeat of all moral and political principles Creon, therefore the tragedy itself is optimistic, which cannot be said about Anouilh’s play.
Greek tragedy is usually called the "tragedy of fate." According to the ideas of the ancient Greeks, people's lives are predetermined by fate. She rules over everyone. It can neither be avoided nor averted. Running away from her, a person only goes to meet her, as happened with Antigone’s father Oedipus (the tragedy “Oedipus the King”). Sophocles built his plays on the opposition of human will and destiny. The curse of the formidable wife of Zeus, Hera, hung over the family of Oedipus. The curse of the goddess is accomplished. Antigone's brothers die, she herself dies, but she passes away proudly, unconquered, defending her moral creed. And this is her strength, her human dignity. And this is how man will remain in all the tragedies of Sophocles - strong and proud, no matter what misfortunes, by the will of evil fate, befall him. In the tragedy "Antigone" the choir sings:
There are many miracles in the world,
The man is the most wonderful of them all...
...His thoughts are faster than the wind;
He learned his speech himself;
He builds cities and avoids arrows,
Severe frosts and noisy rains;
He can do everything; from any misfortune
He found the right remedy for himself...
In essence, all of Sophocles' tragedies are a hymn to man.
The man is wonderful. He asserts his high dignity both by his will and moral principles, which he strictly follows. Antigone goes to her death, but does not waver at all in her determination to defend human rights. Oedipus, who out of ignorance committed the murder of his father, and also out of ignorance became the husband of his own mother, is essentially completely innocent. The gods are to blame, the cruel Hera, who cursed the family of Laius, the father of Oedipus, for three generations and sent this misfortune to the head of the unfortunate scion of the cursed family. And yet Oedipus does not absolve himself of guilt and blinds himself. All his subsequent suffering becomes atonement. Redemption through suffering.
Euripides (480-406 BC)
“Agamemnon. How quiet!.. If only there was a bird or the splash of the sea.”
Euripides
This is how Euripides' play Iphigenia at Aulis begins. Warm, southern night. Agamemnon’s words are not just information about the weather, they are already the beginning of the play and the beginning of a tragedy, a great human tragedy, when the question arises of putting to death a young being who has barely blossomed for love and life.
In a small harbor in Aulis, in a narrow strait between the island of Euboea and the shores of Boeotia, ships from all over Greece gathered to march on Troy to rescue from captivity the beautiful Helen, the wife of Menelaus, who had been taken away by Paris.
The sea is calm. Not the slightest breeze. The sailboats are motionless: there is no wind, no movement of ships. The gods do not give the go-ahead for a trip to the shores of Troy.
What do they want, why are these formidable gods of Olympus angry? We turned to the soothsayer Calchas. The old man revealed the will of the gods. Artemis, the beautiful and proud maiden goddess, sister of Apollo and daughter of Zeus, patroness of animals and huntress, is angry with the leader of the troops of Agamemnon - he killed the sacred doe, her doe, and at the same time boasted that he shoots more accurately than the goddess herself. For this insolence she demands a sacrifice, and this victim should be Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia.
The most diverse desires, motivations, hopes, dreams, fear, anger collide and weave into one ball: the feelings of the father and duty to the army of Agamemnon, dreams of happiness and the terrible reality of Iphigenia, the suffering of her mother, the noble impulse of the warrior Achilles, unwittingly drawn into the conflict , the inexorable desire of the troops to carry out their campaign and, therefore, to sacrifice the unfortunate girl, the selfish desire of Menelaus to definitely return his unfaithful wife and, therefore, interested in making a terrible sacrifice - and behind all this is the evil will of the gods.
Agamemnon complied and sent for his daughter, demanding her arrival at the camp. To appease Iphigenia and her mother Clytemnestra, he resorted to deception, writing that Achilles himself wanted to marry her. The letter with the challenge left, but Agamemnon is not calm, because he is a father. He looks at the slave. Yesterday he would not have noticed his presence, today he sees him and thinks about him.
Slave! His age is inglorious.
He will live unnoticed.
Isn't this what happiness is?
How happy you are, old man!
How I envy you that you can
You will live a century in obscurity.
His position, Agamemnon, is different: he is “exalted by fate”, he rules the army, it is from him, and not from a common man, that the gods demand sacrifice, and what a sacrifice - their daughters! Agamemnon suffers. Having come to his senses, he sends a new message to his wife - not to come, not to bring his daughter. But the letter was intercepted.
His brother reproaches him for cowardice, for betraying the common cause. But what a “common cause” this is - to return a dissolute wife who fled from her husband to him, Menelaus, who was unable to save her!
...I am not your helper in correcting the harlot,
To console my husband, leaving me to my share
Cry days and nights over the spilled children's blood.
Meanwhile, Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, daughter Iphigenia and his little son Orestes had already arrived at the camp. They are joyful, luxuriously, festively dressed: after all, there is a wedding coming up. Euripides as great master builds a tense chain of tragic collisions. Agamemnon is confused: what will he say to his daughter, how will he look into her eyes?
Hades will embrace her coldly,
He is her fiancé... Oh, how hard it is for me
Imagine her at her father’s feet:
- How? Are you going to execute me, father?
So here it is, the promised marriage! Oh come on,
God bless you and everyone you love,
Weddings are just as fun for everyone.
And little Orestes?.. After all, he will see
Death to my sister... Say it like a child,
Of course he won’t be able to, but he’s understandable
And people will be afraid of a loud cry
Little ones of the wordless...
Curse Paris and the libertine Helen,
And their criminal marriage is cursed!
Now Menelaus understood his brother’s great grief. Just now he was furious at Agamemnon’s defection, raging and hurling cruel and rude words - now he is full of compassion:
...only now
Measured the horror of being a murderer
Your children, and pity for the convicted woman
It pierced my heart deeply.
...Oh no, Atrid,
Let the troops leave. Let's drop this one
Unhappy land.
I am not your enemy, but again your brother...
Burn out in the crucible of compassion
And pour into another form - to me N
I’m ashamed, Agamemnon, no, not at all!
ABOUT! I'm not so ossified in evil,
So that my mind loses its rights over me...:
Euripides further draws his hero. He places it in front of his happy daughter. Iphigenia clings to her father, and her tender love, her joy both from the meeting and from the anticipation of the wedding is so out of time, so piercingly tragic! Euripides' skill in these psychological collisions is truly extraordinary. Agamemnon is confused, he does not know what to do:
Father…
You say you are happy, but you are sad.
- Worries, daughter, that’s why I’m a leader and a king...
- Father, let's go back to Argos, to our palace...
- Oh, if I were brave, oh, if I could.
He never found the strength to reveal the truth to his daughter and wife. He leaves. The truth is revealed in a new tragic collision. Clytemnestra meets Achilles. She goes to him boldly, joyfully - after all, he is almost her own, her daughter’s fiancé.
Achilles suspects nothing. We remember him from Homer's descriptions. In the Iliad he is bold, daring, cruel, vengeful, furious in both anger and love. Here, in Euripides, he is modest, shy and more like the young Telemachus, whom the same Homer described in the poem “Odyssey”. “I admire your modesty,” Clytemnestra tells him. "Who are you?" - asks the amazed Achilles. He is embarrassed by the beauty, the festive attire, and the incomprehensible friendliness of a woman he doesn’t know and wants to leave (“conversation with a woman is shameful for me”). In Ancient Greece, women were recluses. They lived in their own special chambers and rarely appeared in front of strangers. And this one, telling him that she is Agamemnon’s wife, even touches his hand. He jerks his hand away sharply: “Should I insult the king by touching his wife with my hand?”
Clytemnestra is completely captivated by the shyness and respectful timidity of the young man: “You are not a stranger, you are my daughter’s fiancé...”
"How?" - and the deception is revealed. This is the climax. Further events will go like an avalanche. Anger and sharp reproaches will fall on the head of the unfortunate Agamemnon.
We remember Clytemnestra from the descriptions of Homer in the Odyssey, from Aeschylus’ trilogy “Oresteia”, we remember her as a cruel and treacherous woman who, with a cold heart, prepared the murder of her husband. Nothing there forces us to somehow understand it and it evokes nothing but horror in us. Here, her accusations hurled at her husband sound murderous. We are on the side of Clytemnestra:
Do you remember the day when we raped
You, Agamemnon, took me as your wife...
In battle you killed Tantalus, who
My first husband and child were
My child from my mother's breast
You tore it off and sold it like a slave.
I was an exemplary wife for you...
Your royal house, how it blossomed with me!
You happily returned to your shelter
And he left calm... and found
Not everyone is such a faithful wife
The king can do it... There are many vicious wives.
The mother's grief is immeasurable. Euripides puts devastating words into her mouth. She is eloquent:
...Give away your child,
To ransom a minx, for trash
Exchange precious treasure...
And a dull threat that was clear to the viewer of the Dionysus Theater in Athens, where the play was staged during the author’s lifetime:
Tell me, Atrid, aren’t you afraid of Retribution?
After all, it’s just an insignificant reason -
And in Argos, among the orphaned
Her sisters and mother - you
You may receive a reception worthy of the cause.
The daughter joins the mother’s pleas. Iphigenia is not angry, does not threaten, does not reproach her father - she asks. She says that nature gave her “one gift of art - tears.” The bright world of life is dear to her:
It's good for a mortal to see the sun,
And it’s so scary underground... If anyone
He doesn’t want to live - he’s sick: the burden of life,
All torment is better than the glory of a dead man.
This recognition is the main thesis of philosophy ancient Greek. The earthly world with all its hardships, with all its troubles and sorrows is a hundred times more expensive than the afterlife existence of shadows, somewhere in the cold and darkness of Hades.
What does Agamemnon answer to the two praying women? What is the justification for his decision?
Hellas tells me
To kill you... your death pleases her,
Whether I want it or not, she doesn’t care:
Oh, you and I are nothing before Hellas.
The formidable power of the state rises above the individual. The individual is nothing before the state. Everything is subordinate to him, everything is subject to him. But this submission is voluntary, it does not burden the father’s heart, it is almost desired. Such is the subordination of the Greek to Hellas:
...if blood, all our blood, child,
Her freedom needs her to be a barbarian
He did not reign in it and did not dishonor his wives,
Atrid and Atrid's daughter will not refuse.
And he was right: Atrid’s daughter, Iphigenia, went to her death voluntarily. Achilles, having learned what cruel joke they played with his name, that he was used as bait, he was extremely indignant. Having barely recognized the girl and not having any feelings for her, he was ready to defend her in the name of honor, truth, and justice. His impulse is beautiful and noble. A grateful Clytemnestra hugs his knees. The cry of soldiers is heard in the distance, they demand the death of Iphigenia, threaten Achilles, and then the girl, who had previously watched what was happening in silence and fear, firmly and unshakably declared that she wanted to die for her homeland.
“Did you carry me for yourself, and not for the Greeks?” - she asks her mother. “I’m ready... This body is a gift to the fatherland.” And he boldly goes to execution. But a miracle happens. The messenger reports about him. As soon as the priest raised the knife, the girl disappeared, and in her place lay a doe, bleeding. The coryphaeus of the choir sings: “The virgin tastes life in the abode of the gods.” Everyone is happy. Clytemnestra also rejoices, but suddenly she becomes thoughtful and sad. The poison of doubt penetrated her soul:
And if this is empty and false nonsense,
To console me?..
According to myth, Iphigenia was taken to Tauris, where she became a ruler and made human sacrifices to the gods. There, her brother Orestes also met her and almost became another victim to the cruel gods. Euripides dedicated the tragedy “Iphigenia in Tauris” to this second part of the myth. Here only a shadow of doubt remained, darkening the luminosity of the finale: “What if this is empty and false nonsense?” Whose doubt is this, the God-fearing Clytemnestra or the skeptic author?
19 plays of Euripides have reached us. 19 plays have gone through storms and fires, wars and disasters for more than two millennia and have survived almost intact. This is the test of time.
Each of them is the fruit of a high genius, great moral culture, aesthetic taste. A lot of interesting and important things can be said about each of them.
Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides! Three great creators of Greek tragedy. They are not the same in style, in figurative system, but their main difference is in the heroes. On the stage of Aeschylus there are gods, conflicts of a cosmic order, and everything is grandiose, monumental.
Sophocles came down to people, but these are special people, unlike mere mortals, they are taller than human stature, they are ideal. But above them, as above the gods, is the mysterious and all-crushing power of fate and fate. There is no outcome from it, but the greatness of a person is manifested in the strength of his spirit.
Euripides brought man down from the pedestal on which Sophocles had placed him. He showed him as he is in real life. He is not monolithic, this man, like Sophocles, is weak and contradictory, he fights with himself, with his feelings, passions and does not always win, but strives for the beautiful and suffers because he does not always find the strength to win, and we sympathize with him, as we would sympathize with a drowning person desperately struggling with a whirlpool, whom we cannot help. Euripides' tragedies contain enormous morally attractive force. Euripides is a philosopher. His plays are full of thoughts. Belinsky called him “the most romantic poet of Greece,” but his main strength was his incomparable skill in drawing human psychology. He is extremely bold and truthful in his depiction of human characters, movements, sometimes unpredictable and paradoxical; human soul. Of the playwrights of modern times, only Shakespeare can compare with him.
The myth of the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis was used by the Roman poet Lucretius (more on him later) in his famous poem“On the Nature of Things” as evidence of crimes committed in the name of religious prejudices. He wrote, drawing a terrible scene:
Silent in fear, she knelt to the ground...
The men lifted her trembling body into their arms
And they carried him to the altar. But not so that after the ceremony
While singing loud songs, go loudly to the glory of Hymen,
But so that she, immaculate, at the very threshold of marriage
It is disgusting to be killed by the hand of a father, like a sad victim,
To send the ships a happy trip to sea.
These are the atrocities that religion encouraged mortals to commit!
Aristophanes (445-385 BC)
In addition to tragedy, the ancient Greeks left humanity another variety theatrical performance- comedy. If in the first the audience was presented with soul-shaking events, great passions, high impulses that evoked awe and compassion, then in the second (comedy) all this: impulses, passions, and events - was reduced to the level of farce, that is, funny, pitiful, absurd, insignificant.
People tend to laugh. Aristotle even elevated this characteristic inherent in people to a dignity that distinguishes man from animals. People laugh at everything, even the dearest and closest ones. But in one case it is a kind, soft laughter, a laughter of love. This is how we sometimes laugh at the sweet weaknesses of our friends or literary heroes: over the simple-minded absent-mindedness of Paganel in Jules Verne’s novel “The Children of Captain Grant”, over the shyness of the most delicate Mr. Pickwick in Dickens’ novel “ Posthumous notes Pickwick Club", over endearing naivety good soldier A seamstress in the satirical epic of Jaroslav Hasek, over the knightly belligerence of the kindest Don Quixote of La Mancha, Cervantes. The comedy began with such good laughter. They usually laugh at a cheerful moment. On the days of the grape harvest, when summer ended and the harvest brought joy to the Greeks, they organized festive processions- something like carnivals, with mummers, with songs, dances, with funny jokes, simple-minded, rude, and sometimes downright obscene. The very name of the comedy came from the song of the carnival crowd (“komos” - crowd, “ode” - song). At the same time they glorified the god Dionysus, the god of fertility and winemaking.
People soon noticed that laughter can subvert, expose, and kill, but the means of this overthrow of opponents are, in essence, humane. In comedy there is no bloodshed; if they fight here, it is with baked apples, as in Rabelais’s comedy novel “Gargantua and Pantagruel.”
This property of comedy and comedy was noticed in ancient times by the philosopher Aristotle. “Funny,” he wrote, “is some mistake and disgrace that does not cause suffering to anyone and is not harmful to anyone.”
Thus, from jokes, cheerful ridicule, amusing clownery, disguises and disguises, Greek comedy was born and conveyed to us its artistic originality. It arose a little later than the tragedy. Its main author is Aristophanes, who lived and worked in Athens. He wrote 44 comedies. We reached 11.
The comedy of Aristophanes is far from harmless joke. She is evil, poisonous. From cheerful clownery and festive tomfoolery she borrowed only the techniques of parody, dressing up, and caricature. Aristophanes was, first of all, political thinker, his laughter was purposeful, emphatically tendentious. For stage performances, he took socially important and pressing topics and problems of his day that worried his compatriots.
Athens in those days was in a long and ruinous war with Sparta (Peloponnesian War). Both sides suffered. Why not, it seems, unite and live together as one family (after all, both the inhabitants of Attica and the Spartans belonged to a single tribe, with common language and culture)?
Aristophanes understood this and in comedies defended the cause of peace. In his comedy "Peace" ("Silence"), the choir representing the villagers sings:
O panhellenic tribe! Let's all stand up for each other,
Let us give up angry strife and bloody enmity,
The spring holiday is upon us.
In comedy, everything is, of course, comedic, that is, full of cheerful clownery. A certain peasant winemaker fattens a giant beetle, sits on it and goes to Olympus, to the gods. But there was only one Hermes left there. The rest of the gods, angry with people for their restless temper and eternal strife, left for the edge of the universe. Hermes remained to guard the God's Junk:
Pots, spoons, bowls, pans.
As we see, gods in comedy are also comedic.
The peasant finds a nymph named Peace on Olympus, descends to earth, and here she bestows him with all the benefits of a peaceful life. A peasant marries a beautiful villager named Harvest. The village choir performs a merry dance, and the peasant invites his wife to joyful, peaceful work:
Hey wifey, let's go to the fields!
Aristophanes is concerned about the changes that are taking place in the political life of his homeland. The unity of the people, which, as it seems to him, reigned in the days of Marathon and Salamis, that is, when Greece defended its freedom and independence in the fight against mighty Persia, has now been lost. Political intriguers and demagogues strive to use the oratorical platform and oratory for selfish purposes. Democracy is in danger, but democracy itself opens the way for political crooks who deftly juggle political slogans and all sorts of promises. Aristophanes' comedy "The Riders", staged in 424, is dedicated to precisely this. Two demagogues - the tanner Cleon (who really ruled Athens) and the sausage maker Agorakrit - challenge each other for the trust of the old man Demos, the people.
The action begins with a dialogue between two slaves. One of them says:
The people of Athens, the deaf old man,
At the market of the past he bought himself a slave,
Tanner, by birth of a flagonian. That,
A terrible scoundrel, a notorious scoundrel,
He was able to immediately discern the old man’s temper... and began to assent,
Feed with crafty words,
To butter up and flatter.
This is Cleon. The slaves challenge the market sausage merchant to outsmart the Tanner and become a ruler himself.
The demagogues Tanner and Sausage Man are vying with each other to court Demos.
Tanner. My people! I promise you
Feeding, drinking and treating is both in vain and empty.
Sausage maker. But I give you rubbing in a bottle,
So that you can lubricate the lichens and ulcers on your knees.
Tanner. oh my hair, people, sushi, blowing your nose, fingers!
Sausage maker, and oh my! And oh my!
(Both climb forward and push.)
The comedy ends with Demos being boiled in a boiling cauldron and his marathon youth being restored to him. He appears renewed, in the radiance of youth and beauty. The choir sings his solemn praise:
O praise! Oh, hello to you, king of the Hellenes!
And for us - jubilation and joy!
After all, now you are worthy of your homeland
And holy marathon trophies.
The renewed Demos now lives in “violet-crowned Athens,” in “primordial, sacred Athens.”
Aristophanes cares about moral purity people and believes that fashionable philosophical movements that appeared in Greece, and even new artistic movements, pose a great danger to the stability of the state. He places responsibility for dangerous innovations on the philosopher Socrates and the poet-playwright Euripides. He makes both the first and the second heroes of his comedies.
In the first, he sees a person shaking the moral foundations of society by preaching relativity moral values. In the second - a poet depicting human weaknesses, which, in his opinion, weakens and moral fortitude spectators, citizens of the Athens Republic.
Aristophanes' attacks on Socrates (470-339) were unfair. The essence of Socrates' teaching boiled down to the following: a person needs to cultivate a refined moral sense. The starting position should be a complete rejection of any dogmatic statements.
The person, as it were, threw off the entire burden of acquired concepts and ideas and found himself, like a newborn, in front of a host of unknown truths, accepting only one of them - that he knows nothing (“I know that I know nothing”). And the first task facing a person should be, according to the philosopher, the task of knowing oneself. Alas, the famous commandment of Socrates “Know thyself!”, at first glance the simplest and most accessible, turned out to be the most difficult, truly impossible to fulfill. The closest creature to a person - himself - turned out to be the most distant. The most incomprehensible.
Great people do not always find recognition among their contemporaries. The fate of Socrates is a vivid example of this.
This great folk sage (he did not write books, but only talked with everyone who wanted it) attracted the philosophical thought of his time to issues of social existence, calling for an understanding of moral truths in order to become good through knowledge of the essence of good. The very method of interviewing Socrates with his students was noteworthy. He never gave ready-made conclusions, but through leading questions led his interlocutor to an independent discovery of the truth. He called this method medical term- “maeutics” (from Greek - “midwifery art”). However, during the conversation it was necessary to reject many established opinions, which upon careful examination turned out to be false. It was this latter that irritated the top of Athenian society. In 399, Socrates was executed.
The philosopher courageously and proudly accepted death, leaving for centuries his noble image and example of noble service to the truth.
Aristophanes also ridiculed his other contemporary, Euripides. In the work of this playwright he saw a great danger to the ideological stability of Athenian society and took up arms against him with all the power of comedic art.
According to Aristophanes, art should teach, instruct, and educate viewers, just as a teacher instructs children and shows them the path to good:
“We must always talk about beauty.”
The comedy of Aristophanes is amazing! And not only by his skill, but by the great and incomprehensible providence of the future. The crisis of Greek civilization was just beginning. Signs of this crisis, barely visible to a shallow glance, emerged, and the great comedian began to sound the alarm, sensing impending trouble. Aristophanes constantly refers to the times of Marathon and Salamis, when Greece was strong in its unity, its will to victory, its heroic fusion of personality and society, their indissolubility.
The Greek orator Demosthenes soon began talking about the same thing from the rostrum.
I knew how to distinguish events at their origin, comprehend them in advance and communicate my thoughts to others in advance.
Demosthenes
This statement of the great orator of antiquity cannot but shock us, who know the future fate of his homeland, which he served with his extraordinary talent and his entire life. On October 12, 322, after a suppressed uprising, surrounded by enemies on the small island of Kalavria, in the temple of Poseidon, he took poison, giving his life to his homeland.
Orators in the days of Demosthenes were political figures. Their speeches ignited the audience. In democratic Athens, the resolution of important state issues often depended on their eloquence. Demosthenes, at the cost of great labor, achieved perfection in oratory. He had no equal in Ancient Greece, and his fame has survived to this day.
A great man, he did not think about it, about fame, he needed the art of convincing in order to thereby serve his dear Attica, his people, whom he both condemned and endlessly loved. His speeches were stern, courageous, restrained, but in this courageous restraint lived the conquering passion, unyielding will and insightful mind of a thinker.
In essence, he continued the work of Aristophanes. Both of them foresaw the coming finale of Greek society, saw the first signs of the beginning decline and tried in vain to prevent the destructive process of time. And it inexorably drew him towards disaster. And Demosthenes foresaw this (“Fear often attacks me at the thought of whether some deity is leading our state to destruction”), he constantly talked about “imported deadly diseases of Hellas.”
Amazing paradox! The Greek states were able to repel the invasion of the huge Persian power and emerge victoriously from the Greco-Persian War, but one hundred and fifty years later they would submit to the king of a small, semi-wild country - Macedonia. This king was Philip II, the father of the famous Alexander the Great. And it was not military or technical weakness that led Greece to death, but internal social and political processes.
“We now have much more ships, troops, money, supplies and everything that is used to measure the strength of a state than before. But all this becomes worthless, useless, invalid due to the fact that all this has become the subject of vile bargaining,” Demosthenes told the Athenian people. Historians of modern times have sought the reasons for the decline of Greek society in the defects of the democratic system, in the people’s succumbing to the promises of cunning demagogues. They could draw arguments from both Aristophanes and Demosthenes, who sharply criticized this pliability. But both Aristophanes and Demosthenes sought to awaken patriotic and freedom-loving feelings among the people, meanwhile, oppositional sentiments were brewing within Greek society, which the crafty Macedonian king used, bribing individual Athenian citizens and inclining them to monarchical ideas.
Demosthenes understood where history was going, and he considered Philip the main enemy of Greece. The passionate speeches of the speaker against Philip, warning his compatriots about the enormous danger hanging over them, were called philippics and became a household name (philippics - critical and abusive speeches). Not everyone agreed with him. Among the Greeks there were supporters of Philip, who believed that the power of this man would save the country from the instability and chaos of democratic institutions.
“What are you trying to achieve? - Demosthenes addressed them.
- Freedom.
“But don’t you see that Philip is her worst enemy, even by his title?” After all, absolutely every king and ruler is a hater of freedom and laws.”
In vain did Demosthenes inspire his fellow citizens to fight Philip. History went its own way.
At the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BC), Athens suffered a severe defeat. Philip II, king of Macedonia, conquered all of Greece. Started new era in her history.
Aristophanes - ancient Greek playwright, a comedian who gained the status of “father of comedy,” was born in Attica. The exact date of his birth, as well as the date of death, is unknown and is indicated approximately - 444 BC. e. (a number of sources indicate 448 BC). The biography of Aristophanes is rather meager, but he is the only representative of Attic comedy whose works, although not all of them, have survived to our time in their entirety, and not just in the form of excerpts. Their family was quite wealthy; its head, Aristophanes' father Philip, owned a plot of land on the island as a colonist. Aegina. It was this circumstance that explained the refusal of many of the playwright’s contemporaries to consider him a citizen of Athens, despite the fact that his family originated in the Athenian deme of Kidafin. In the same city, the future father of comedy received his education.
His creative abilities showed up early: at the age of 17, he was already composing poetry and music. IN at a young age His journey as a comedian also began: his first comedy, “The Feasting,” was written in 427 BC. e., then followed by the “Babylonians” (426) and the “Acharnians” (425). These plays were signed with the name of his friend Callistratus: Aristophanes himself was too young and unknown, and besides, he did not have money for a choir. Due to the satirical content of the “Babylonians” presented at the Great Dionysia, the ridicule of the hero, in whom the influential demagogue Cleon was clearly discerned, was brought to trial by the latter. The details of the trial have been lost in the centuries, but it is known that there were no serious consequences for the accused. Moreover, in the next comedy, “The Riders” (424), the image of the hero, for which Cleon served as a prototype, was written out so critically that Aristophanes had to play him himself: the actors refused, fearing the revenge of an influential politician.
The playwright remained just as brave, merciless, uncompromising, caustic in almost all of his works, and especially in those relating to the period early creativity. It is believed that he wrote a total of 44 comedies, of which only 11 have survived to this day in their complete form, including “Acharnians”, “Horsemen”, “Clouds”, “Wasps”, “Women at the Thesmophoria”, “Lysistrata” , “Frogs”, etc. Approximately 900 excerpts from other works have also been preserved, giving an idea of his work.
Gradually, Aristophanes devoted less and less space to politics and exposing the vices of the powerful, but his comedies never ceased to be received with a bang by the public, who called him a Comedian (like Homer, a Poet). They served as a reflection of the views of wealthy peasants suffering from protracted military operations (at that time there was a long Peloponnesian War) and politics ruling circles, who respected old traditions and were wary of everything new, fashionable trends, and did not tolerate empty chatter instead of concrete action. It was at the suggestion of Aristophanes that the word “demagogue,” meaning the neutral “leader of the people,” acquired the meaning in which we use it now.
It is known that Aristophanes had at least two sons - Arar and Philip, who also chose the field of writing comic works. It was Arar, under his own name, who presented to the public his father’s last two comedies - “Eolosikon” and “Kokal”, which in approximately 386 BC. e. died in Athens. In the second work they used storylines, which marked the beginning of a new type of comedy.
Today it is difficult to appreciate the work of the father of comedy, the brilliance of his satire, since many parallels, hints, and descriptions were understandable only to his contemporaries. Readers of later times were embarrassed by the indecency, frivolity, and coarse language of Aristophanes' comedies, but this is just a reflection of the mores of the era. However, the journalistic fervor of his works, flights of fantasy, lively humor, harmony artistic form enough to still not leave the European theatrical stage. Such recognized masters of words as Rabelais, Racine, Heine, Fielding, Shelley, Goethe, Feuchtwanger, Mayakovsky, were influenced by the work of the ancient Greek playwright.
