The dramatization of stories from a shared heritage helped to nurture and preserve a cultural identity through times of hardship and war.īut beyond its social and political importance, Greek drama also held a religious significance that made it a sacred art. Ancient Greek myth - the theme of most tragedies - not only touched members of the audience individually, but drew them together as well. In fifth century B.C., Athens theater represented an essential public experience - at once social, political, and religious.įor Athenians, theater served as an expression of public unity. Sophocles' Oedipus Trilogy forms part of a theater tradition that encompasses much more than just entertainment. By the end of the fifth century, Sparta had starved Athens into submission, and the power of the great city-state ended.
Military skill and luck kept Athens wealthy for a time, but the rival city-state Sparta pressed for dominance during the long Peloponnesian War (431- 404 B.C.). They sought to solve their agricultural problems by reaching outward to more fertile lands through their conquering army and navy forces.
Athenians often fought neighboring city-states for farmland or cattle. Their land, like most of Greece, was rocky and dry, yielding little food. In the fifth century, Athens had reached the height of its development, but Athenians were vulnerable, too. The wealth of Athens also assured regular public art and entertainment, most notably the Festival of Dionysus, where Sophocles produced his tragedies. Its army and navy dominated the Aegean after the defeat of the Persians, and the tribute money offered to the conquering Athenians built the Acropolis, site of the Parthenon, as well as the public buildings that housed and glorified Athenian democracy. Here, too, democracy took root and flourished, with a government ruled entirely by and for its citizens.ĭuring the fifth century B.C., Athens presided as the richest and most advanced of all the city-states. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle wrote and taught in Athens, and their ideas gave birth to Western philosophy. The Athens Sophocles knew was a small place - a polis, one of the self-governing city-states on the Greek peninsula - but it held within it the emerging life of democracy, philosophy, and theater. Ritual and Transcendence in the Oedipus Trilogy.The Power of Fate in the Oedipus Trilogy.Summary and Analysis: Oedipus at Colonus.
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