Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

278 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
then placed in an urn, from which the eponymous archon drew
out only 5. This system was intended to leave some part of the
decision making to the gods. Regrettably, there is no way of telling
to what extent the judges’ verdict was based on dramatic content
and structure and to what extent it was influenced by the quality
of the production. Several of what today are regarded as the finest
examples of Attic tragedy were not awarded first prize, including
Euripides’ Medea, which won third prize, and his Trojan Women,
which won second prize.
The victorious dramatist received a wreath and a small cash prize,
and the winning chorêgos was permitted to erect a column in his
own honor. Of the three tragedians whose works survive, the most
successful was Sophokles, who wrote 123 plays, won first prize 18
times, and never dropped lower than second place. From 449 b.c.e.,
the judges also awarded a prize to the best protagonist.
Tragedy
Although we know the names of about 150 Greek tragedians, we
have complete plays of only three, all of them Athenians. Of the
works of Aeschylus (525–426 b.c.e. ), the earliest of the three, we
possess only 7 out of about 73. Aeschylus introduced the second
actor, which enabled a dialogue between two actors to take place
on stage. He described his work as “slices from the great banquet
of Homer,” though his earliest surviving play is the Persians, a historical
drama that deals with the Persian naval defeat at Salamis in
480 b.c.e. Aeschylus’s masterpiece is the Oresteia, which was produced
in 458 b.c.e., when he was 67 years old. The Oresteia, the only
complete trilogy that we possess (its accompanying satyr play has
not survived), traces the fortunes of the house of Atreus from the
murder of Agamemnon by his wife Klytaimnestra through to the
acquittal of his son Orestes for avenging his father’s death. Aeschylus,
who fought at the battle of Marathon, allegedly met his death
when an eagle dropped a tortoise on his bald head in the belief that
it was a stone.
Aeschylus’s successor Sophokles (495–406 b.c.e. ) is also represented
by only 7 tragedies, out of about 123. His introduction of
the third actor enabled more complicated dramatic interchanges to
take place. This also had the incidental consequence of reducing the
chorus to the role of spectator. His most celebrated drama, Oedipus
the King, traces Oedipus’s discovery of the fact that he has inadvertently
killed his father and married his mother.