The following represents a mix of ancient Greek, Latin, and modern English technical terms pertinent to this course. Many of them will figure on quizzes, in discussions, and so on. I will add to this as occasion demands.
Terms in Greek or Latin are italicized. Note that Greek and Latin plurals don't always conform to English usage.
agon. In Greek drama, an on-stage debate scene, one often modeled after courtroom or political debate, between two characters.
amoibaion. In Greek drama, amoibaion is choral dialogue, i.e., antiphonal song involving a character and the chorus.
alastor. Greek: a spirit of revenge, sort of like a masculine version of one of the Furies. Oedipus sort of becomes one in the Oedipus at Colonus.
anagnorisis. Greek, "recognition." By "recognition," Aristotle mostly means the discovery of one's own or another's true identity, thus a "change from ignorance to knowledge, producing love or hare between persons destined by the poet for good or bad fortune" (p. 72). For Aristotle, recognition is one of two elements (the other being reversal) necessary to the best sort of tragic plot. But Aristotle's notion of recognition can also blend in with a higher self-knowledge in terms of a character's recognizing and coming to terms with her/his fate, as in the case of Oedipus.
archon. Greek word for "official" or "magistrate." At Athens, one of nine chief officials.
Areopagus. He boule he tou areiou pagou, "The Council of the Hill of Ares," AKA the Areopagus Council, originally functioned as the aristocratic "upper house" of the Athenian state in the early archaic period. By Solon's time its legislative functions were largely replaced by the new council (boule) of the 400. In 461, its oversight (veto power?) over assembly decrees seems to have been removed completely. After that point, it had oversight over certain murder trials (intentional homicide) and other things (mistreatment of the sacred olive trees). In Aeschylus' Eumenides, the "Hill of Ares" provides the setting for the trial scene. The jury that Athena empanels for that trial is to be imagined as the creation of the Areopagus Council.
ate. Greek for "delusion" or "ruin." In Greek tragedy, the two are virtually the same thing. See also "tragic formula."
associative poetics. Much in evidence in Aeschylus, it's the juxtaposition of dramatic action (whether action prior to drama on stage or part of that drama) with dramatic action, dramatic theme with dramatic theme, poetic image with poetic image, based often on only a limited number of shared elements — sort of like the way that thought of one thing can remind you of another thing.
EXAMPLE. The fire signals in Aeschylus' Agamemnon convey the news of Troy's fall from Troy itself to Argos. But they do more. The fire itself connotes destruction, and the red color of the fire connotes killing. Thus the very image of fire poetically "communicates," or associates, the destruction and killing at Troy with what is to take place at Argos. The red "welcome" carpet functions similarly. The imagery of the signals and carpet poetically associates the doom awaiting Agamemnon with earlier crime (hubris) in which he is involved or implicated: the murder of Iphigenia, the impious violation of temples during the destruction of Troy.
bacchanal. Can refer to a female worshipper of Dionysus (as such translates Greek bakkhē) or to a Dionysian revel.
bacchant. Same as bakkhē.
bakkhē, bakkhos. Female worshipper of Dionysus. A male worshipper would be called a bakkhos.) The term comes from the cry, Io bakkhe! A male worshipper would be called a bakkhos. Bakkhos (often written as as "Bacchus") is also a name of the god himself.
blood-guilt. In tragedy, the very special crime of killing someone related to oneself by blood.
Bromios (Bromius). A name (Greek) for Dionysus.
catharsis, katharsis. Greek, "cleansing," "purification," "purgation." According to Aristotle, a tragic audience member's vicarious experience of pity and fear produces a catharsis, a "cleansing" of those emotions from the psyche. But what exactly is meant by that remains somewhat mysterious.
choregia, choregus. At Athens, the choregia was a duty imposed by the state on a wealthy citizen. Designated a choregus, his job was to fund and organize the production of drama or dithyramb at a dramatic festival. If his chorus (i.e., production) won, he would receive special recognition.
chorus. See khoros.
coryphaeus. The "chorus leader," that particular chorus member whose job during episodes (dialogue sections) is to participate in dialogue with speaking characters or to insert brief comments into dialogue between characters.
City Dionysia. See "Dionysia."
crepidata. I.e., fabula crepidata, one of several genres of Roman drama, named from the crepida, the Latin word for the soft boot worn by actors performing Greek tragedy. Crepidatae (plural of crepidata) were tragic plays adapted and/or translated from Greek originals and on Greek-mythological subjects, for instance, Accius' Bacchae (compare Euripides' Bacchae) or Seneca's Phaedra, which retells the basic Phaedra-Hippolytus myth, and suggests debts to plays by Euripides. (Romans, though, did not regularly use the term crepidata; they preferred tragoediae, i.e., "tragedies.")
cultural translation. By "cultural translation" I mean the transference of a narrative (a myth), a theme, a motif, a genre (e.g., tragedy) from a source-culture to a destination-culture, say, the Oedipus-Antigone-etc. myth as originally handled in Greek sources like Sophocles' "Theban plays," and the same, basic narrative as handled in another time and place, say, World-War-Two France (Anouilh's Antigone). That will, I suggest, at some level involve an element of translation, literally, "carrying over" ("translation" from Latin trans-"across" and latus-"carried"), for instance, of a basic story line or myth-pattern.
So translation necessarily involves continuities, a reframing that preserves key elements of the old in the new. But just as translation from one language to another necessarily produces transformation, so, too, in cultural translation, the end-product as a whole is, at some level, something altogether different.
The question then becomes, how is it different? Is the new cultural framing like a different lens revealing hitherto unseen facets of the "translated" object? Or does the reframing involve transformation going to the very core of the object in question — to its essence?
Those are the kinds of "translations" we're principally concerned with in our course as we examine a genre — tragedy — "translated" from a classical-Athenian mode of handling to a Roman to a modern. . . .
Delphi, Delphic Oracle. Delphi, a Greek city about two hours west of Athens by car or bus, was where Apollo had his most famous oracle, or place of prophecy. (The word "oracle" can also refer to any prophecy given by the god.) At Delphi, worshippers, after purifying themselves, would pose questions to the god's priests. The Pythia (from Putho, another name for Delphi), that is, the priestess of Apollo, would then serve as the god's mouthpiece in responding to the question. Note that the Delphic Oracle and its prophecies loom large in ancient tragedy. Note also the two most famous sayings, the most famous in all Greek, inscribed on Apollo's temple at Delphi:
- "Know thyself!"
- "Nothing to excess!"
desis. Aristotle's term for "complication," the problem that tragic action seeks to resolve.
deus ex machina. Latin for, literally, "god from the machine/crane" (in Greek, mekhane), meaning the practice of lowering a god by crane down to the stage for the purpose of intervening in the action of a play. Hence its use as a term of literary criticism, where it means any artificial device or contrived plot turn designed bring about an otherwise improbable or impossible resolution to a plot complication.
dike. Greek for "justice," in Greek drama especially as a higher principle guiding human destiny. See also "tragic formula."
Dionysia. In Greek, Dionusia is a plural noun; it refers to any festival honoring the god Dionysus, for instance:
Greater Dionysia, aka City Dionysia, at Athens, the principal festival of the god. Founded by the tyrant Peisistratus (ruled off and on 561-527 BCE) and modeled on traditional Dionysian festivals celebrated in the countryside, it involved competitive performances of choral/dramatic poetry in the form of tragedy, satyr drama, comedy, and dithyramb. It took place in late March.; Non-Athenians participated in it and could attend performances, which took place in the Theater of Dionysus
Rural Dionysia. A group of festivals happening in the Athenian countryside during the month of December. Often involved competitive dramatic performances, though the main event seems to have been the phallic procession
Lenaea. Very old festival, held in February/March, and with dramatic competitions, from lenai, yet another name for female worshippers of Dionysus. From at least about 440 BCE on, performances were held in the theater of Dionysus. We know that tragedies and comedies were performed during it
Dionysus.Son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. God of wine, revelry, drama, etc. Aka Bacchus (Bakkhos), Bromios ("Roarer"), "The Bull," Iacchus. He was called "The Twice Born" (dithurambos) because he was born once from his mother, once from Zeus' thigh.
dithyramb. In ancient Greece, choral poems originally honoring the god Dionysus. Dithyranbic choruses at the Athenian Greater Dionysia consisted of 50 boys or men dancing and singing in a circle.
ekkuklema. Greek for "stage trolley." In Athenian drama, the ekkuklema was used to roll corpses or other out onto the stage in order to reveal an indoor scene or tableau.
episode, epeisodion. Greek epeisodion means "additional entry" or "episode." Where Greek tragedy is concerned, an episode is any section of a play following the entry of the chorus (parodos), coming between stasimon choruses, and featuring dialogue between actors or between actors and chorus leader.
eponymous archon. At Athens, an official whose duties included overseeing the selection of finalists in dramatic competitions.
Erinys (plural, Erinyes). Translated as "Furies," (Latin Furiae) the Erinyes, daughters of night and associated with the Underworld (the world of death), were the ancient Greek goddesses of punishment. In tragedy, they can be thought of as springing up up to drive killers of blood relatives made with guilt.
eros. "Love," "desire," "lust," sexual or otherwise (greed, hunger, ambition, etc.), often overpowering, often irrational, often disastrous. Capitalized, "Eros" refers to the god of love/lust.
essentialism. The idea that a category can describe some fundamental core truth about a class of things, such that the category itself might as well be a real thing in its own right. Take "chair." The word "chair" can correctly be applied to any number of chairs out there, but is there some core essence shared by all chairs, such that they are all chairs before they are anything else? If we choose to think so, that is essentialism.
Think now of tragedy. There are any number of tragedies out there, but is it right to understand "the tragic" as a core, essential element of all tragedy? Or should we use the word "tragedy" to help us consider similarities and differences between dramas we study, though without making assumptions that there is that special something without which no tragedy is tragic?
Eumenides. The word "Eumenides," the "Kindly Ones" (i.e., those who we wish were kindly, though we fear them greatly), serves both as a title of one of Aeschylus' plays and as an alternative name of the Furies. It appears in Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, though not in Aeschylus' Eumenides.
exodos. The finale and choral "exit song" of an ancient Greek drama.
ethos. "Character," not in the sense of a dramatic character or role (Antigone, Oedipus), but of a dramatized personage's inner motivations, especially as that relates to her or his moral goodness or badness. "Character reveals moral purpose," says Aristotle (p. 64).
fabula. Fabula is Latin for "story," "myth," "fable," "play." For the two genres of fabula (Roman play) we're concerned with, see:
Greater Dionysia. See "Dionysia."
hamartia. Greek, "error," "mistake," "transgression." DOES NOT MEAN FLAW! The hamartia of a noble or lofty character is always what sets tragic action in motion.
heros. Greek word from which the word "hero." In ancient Greek religion, a heros was a deified spirit of a dead person, often understood as capable of protecting (or harming) the living. Oedipus becomes one in Oedipus at Colonus.
hubris/hybris (noun), hubristic (adjective). Greek: "insult," "arrogance," "outrageous or humiliating treatment." In high school English class we're told that hubris is "pride." Well, sort of. In classical Athens, hubris was any action (word or deed) infringing on the dignity of another; it could include giving someone a beating in public. In ancient Athenian tragedy, in relations between ordinary folk and royalty, or between humans and gods, hubris is anything contradicting the deference due one's betters or the respect due anyone. If the victim hopes not to lose face, she or he has always to retaliate; honor seems often to lie at the center of it all. See also "tragic formula."
hupokrites. Greek, literally, "answerer." It meant, though, "actor."
Iacchus. Greek, "He of the cry, Io! " I.e., Dionysus.
ideal type. Ideal type is not perfect type: the perfect student, martini, etc. Rather, an ideal type (in German, Idealtypus, an analytical concept invented by Max Weber, twentieth-century German sociologist) is "ideal" in the sense that it is an intellectual construct (it represents an idea of something, not an actual thing) mapping out key features of a category or classification (pizza, tragedy) by virtue of which individual instances merit being categorized as such — what it is, in other words, that makes a pizza pizza, what the essence of pizza is. We assemble that knowledge by studying instances (going to lots of restaurants, learning to recognize shared features of a range of clearly related things we'll start calling pizzas) and deducing from the knowledge thereby gained an idea of the essence of pizza. With that knowledge, we can then speak more insightfully of various pizzas and pizza-like things we encounter in the world. (Is stuffed pizza pizza? Why or why not?)
Similarly, what is the essence of tragedy? What gives value to any idea we form of what tragedy is? And how does that idea of what tragedy is help us evaluate individual instances of, and variations on, the genre?
io bakkhe! One the cries characteristic of the worship of Dionysus.
khorēgia, khorēgos. Literally, "chorus guidance/leadership," the khorēgia had nothing to do with being a chorus director. Rather, it was the public imposed duty or "liturgy" of paying for and (secondarily) organizing dramatic or dithyrambic productions. The producer-financier was the khorēgos. In classical Athens (ca. 500-ca. 300 BCE), an official called the King Archon imposed this very expensive office on men of the very wealthiest class. If you were a khorēgos and your production won a prize, you won that prize. The wealthy tended not to welcome being selected, but if selected, would spend lavishly.
khoros. Greek: "dance," "group of dancer-singers," i.e., a "chorus." The word could also refer to a dramatic production. Thus if a playwright in Athens were to be awarded a chorus, that meant he'd be able to have a play of his staged.
katharsis. See catharsis.
komast. In Greek, komastes. Male performer of/participant in a Greek komos. The early pictorial evidence shows them as dancers, often in costume, sometimes grotesquely padded. (Padded costuming later associated with comedy.)
komoidia. Greek for "comedy," the word means literally "revel song."
komos. Greek, pl. komoi. Evidently root of the word "comedy," in Greek, komoidia or "komos song," komos itself was:
- A drunken revel or procession, whether organized or impromptu.
- According to Aristotle (Poetics), word derived from kome, "country district." Komasts (participants in komoi) were, according to Aristotle, disgraced, proto-comic performers forced to wander country districts.
- On a mid-400s BCE inscription at Athens, the word for dramas (tragedies and comedies) performed in honor of Dionysus.
kommos. Not to be confused with a komos-"revel," the word kommos (two "m"s) comes from a root meaning to strike, i.e., to strike one's breast in lamentation. In Greek tragedy, a kommos is a sung lamentation scene featuring dialogue between a main character and the chorus.
koros. In Greek, koros refers to a state of "plenty" or "excess," whether of wealth, power, pleasure, or similar. In Greek tragedy and other poetry, koros can be imagined as a state of plenty such as can induce arrogance (hubris) and crime. See also "tragic formula."
Lenaea. See "Dionysia."
libation. A "libation" is a drink offering — often, though not always, of wine — to a god or to the dead. The liquid is poured on the ground, floor, or altar. At ancient Greek drinking parties, it was customary to offer three libations to three gods, the third being to "Zeus the Savior."
In Aeschylus' Oresteia, the blood libation figures prominently as a an image/motif.
lusis. Aristotle's term for "resolution," in tragedy, the untangling, usually through peripeteia, or "reversal," of some plot complication.
maenad. Female worshipper of Dionysus.
mekhane. In Greek, any stage "machine," especially the crane used to lower gods to the stage. The Latin term deus ex machina, "god from the machine," refers to just that.
messenger speech. One of the chief conventions of ancient tragedy, messenger speeches feature a character, often referred to simply as "M essenger," describing events offstage. That may seem undramatic, but the narratives can be vividly descriptive and suspenseful.
mimesis. Greek, = "imitation," it's the principal concern of Aristotle's and others' theories of tragedy, literature, art generally.
mos maiorum. Latin for, literally, the "way of the ancestors," this is an important Roman concept refering to an idealized past when Roman men and women lived that values that Rome was supposed to be about: courage, restrain, honor, patriotic self-sacrifice. Often, it was held up in contrast to a (supposedly) decadent present, for instance, to remind young people of the ideals they were to live up to. As presented by the trope of decline, the days of the ancestors were a kind of mythic golden age with which "we" have lost touch but could revive if only we could live in accordance with their ways.
muthos. Greek: myth, story, plot. Aristotle uses the word to mean "plot," i.e., the action of a story or drama.
nominalism. I.e., categories as mere names, not realities in themselves. Nominalism is the philosophical position that categories are merely conventional labels, not names of actual things apart from the instances collected in a category. The concept matters for our course because we'd like to know if, on the one hand, the "tragic" represents a core essence at the hear of any given tragedy (realism), or if instead the definition of tragic genre needs to be flexible, needs to treated be a way gaining a better purchase on things called "tragedies," and not as an immutable reality in its own right.
omophagia. Greek, "raw flesh eating." Sometimes attributed to Dionysus worship, it is not clear that this was ever actually done. See also sparagmos.
orkhestra. Dancing area in front of the stage of a Greek theater.
parodos. Either (1) "side path" through which performers would pass when entering or exiting the performing area of a Greek theater from either side, or (2) the "entry song" of the chorus in a classical Athenian drama.
parody, parodic, paratragedy, paratragic. Parody can be defined as "A literary composition modelled on and imitating another work, esp. a composition in which the characteristic style and themes of a particular author or genre are satirized by being applied to inappropriate or unlikely subjects, or are otherwise exaggerated for comic effect" (OED).
Thus we can think of styles that parody tragedy without actually being it, that is, that imitate it outside a noticeably tragic context, and do so with some sort of artistic point, perhaps comic and satiric, as per OED definition.
Styles of discourse parodying tragedy we call paratragic. Paratragedy is mostly associated with comic discourse aping the elevated and often emotive language of tragedy — think of a small-time crook trying to sound like Shakespeare.
But it can also be argued that paratragedy shows up in satyr drama, too, which resembles both tragedy and comedy without quite being either.
pathei mathos. A phrase used by the chorus in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, it means "learning through suffering." In Greek tragedy, characters often "learn through suffering," though sometimes they learn too late.
peripeteia. Greek, "reversal," according to Aristotle, that point in the plot of a tragedy when the fortunes of a character change from good to bad or vice versa.
perverse exaggeration. Another coinage of mine to describe a rhetorical feature fairly typical of Senecan and pseudo-Senecan tragedy: that of taking a sentiment, finding its potential to express something over the top, outrageous, or similar, and then exploiting that potential verbally for all its worth. Take, for instance, a made up, non-Roman example like the following: "STUDENT: Professor Snape, do you really hate students that much? SNAPE: Students? I eat them for lunch!" Well, no, he doesn't, but you get the point.
Perverse exaggeration will have been a rhetorical figure that, arguably, found a ready audience among Roman readers and viewers, whose culture seems to have felt a certain fascination with the extreme, the grotesque, the monstrous. In my PowerPoints, I identify instances of what looks like "perverse exaggeration" in Roman tragedy. Can you identify others? And what, in your view, is the point?
phallus/phallos. In terms of costuming, a representation, often grotesquely exaggerated, of the male sexual organ.
phallus pole. In Greece, during Dionysian processions, a tree-trunk representing a phallus and carried usually by costumed revelers.
pollution. Ritual pollution refers to the supernatural stain or blot left on one through any of the following:
- sex
- childbirth
- menstruation
- homicide
Typcially, those carrying pollution with them could not enter into sacred enclosures — temples and such. Before they might do so, they needed to be purified. Those marked as killers of men or women posed a danger to others in that they were regarded marked by the gods for destruction. Oedipus brings curse and pollution to Thebes because of his past acts.
praetexta. I.e., fabula praetexta, a genre of Roman genre, named from the toga praetexta, a garment worn by Roman high officials on ceremonial occasions. Praetextae (plural of praetexta) were plays on Roman historical (or at times legendary-historical) topics. Early praetextae (by which I mean mostly the period of the 100s BCE) very often seem to have treated an act of heroism by a recentaly deceased personage; as such, they seem to have played an important in the Funeral celebrations of "great men" (for instance, Marcus Claudius Marcellus' victory in single combat with the Gallic chieftain, Viridomarus, in 222 BCE, an event commemorated in Naevius' Clastidium). But they also could treat events from the early, and mostly legendary, history of Rome, as, for instance, in a play like Accius' Brutus, which told the story of the Republic's foundation.
proagon. At Athens, before a dramatic contest was to take place, each competing dramatist would advertise his production by presenting his cast before the public and saying a few words in the proagon.
prologue, prologos. Prologos, in Greek, literally "pre-speech" or "pre-speaker." Where ancient Greek or Roman drama is concerned, "prologue" can carry any of the following, related meanings:
- That section of a play preceding chorus's entry song, the parodos
- A speech or speeches at or near the very beginning of a play, and devoted to establishing situation, providing background, etc. In Euripides, such prologues are frequent and are at times spoken by a character whose sole function in the play is that, e.g., Aphrodite in the beginning of Hyppolytus
- The speaker of such a prologue
realism. The philsophical position that names of categories (as opposed to of individual things) are names of real things. The concept matters for our course because one way to understand genre is as some sort of an essence inherent in a genre like tragedy. So, is there some essential something at the core of tragic drama, and therefore any individual drama worthy of the name tragedy? If so, what is it?
Rural Dionysia. See "Dionysia."
Salamis. An island near Athens. The Straits of Salamis was where the Battle of Salamis, in which Greece defeated the Persian fleet, was fought (480 BCE). Aeschylus' Persians is basically about the Battle of Salamis, or "Salamis" for short.
satyr. Mythical beast, usually male, combining features of horses (or goats) and human beings. Satyrs were closely associated with Dionysus; dancers dressed as satyrs might take part in Dionysian processions. Satyrs also formed the choruses of satyr dramas.
satyr drama. A form of tragedy, and perhaps the origin of tragedy, that featured fun, frolic, and a chorus of satyrs. At the Classical Athenian Greater Dionysia, satyr dramas typically formed part of a single playwrights offering of four plays (tetralogy) in the tragic competition. It came last at the end and lightened the mood. (Because humorous, satyr drama resembles comedy, though it is perhaps better thought of as funny tragedy.)
Semnai Theai. At Athens, the Semnai Theai, the "Revered Goddesses," were worshipped at a spot near/under the Areopagus Hill. They were associated with the just punishment of crime. In Aeschylus' Eumendides, it is the name given to the Furies once Athena has recruited them to carry our their old function in behalf of her city (Athens). Only now, they fulfill that function within the context of state-organized punishment and deterrence of crime.
Senecan formula. The phrase is mine, but the idea isn't. By "senecan formula" I mean a thematic structure that could be thought of as a Roman-Imperial update of the "tragic formula" associated mostly with the drama of Aeschylus, but also to a degree with that of Sophocles and Euripides, too.
So, drawing once more on C. J. Herington ("Senecan Tragedy." Arion 5 [1966]: 422-71. Print), and quoting from my own Phaedra study guide, by "Senecan formula" I mean a three-part schema for relating action to theme as follows:
- THE CLOUD OF EVIL, which can coincide with a given play's prologue, in which an atmosphere of horror and dread is carefully cultivated.
- THE DEFEAT OF REASON BY PASSION, often concentrated in the second act, where in several plays a main and a more subsidiary character discuss/debate a course of action that would represent surrender to anger, lust, that sort of thing — though really, it's REASON debating PASSION, with (for the purposes of the tragic plot) victory disastrously won by the latter.
- THE EXPLOSION OF EVIL, potentially quite violent, is the catastrophic endpoint toward which the action is inexorably drawn once passion overcomes reason. Here, "the shockwave of evil races outwards, prostrating both the wicked and the noble" (Herington 456).
Such a structure can, arguably, be said to operate (one way or another) in all three complete Roman plays that we'll have read. Whether it had anything to do with earlier Roman drama is, however, anyone's guess.
sententia. While the Latin noun sententia can simply mean the "sense" of an utterance, it has a technical meaning pertinent to the study of Roman tragedy. In the poetic and rhetorical stylistics of the imperial period (27 BCE onward), sententia comes to the fore as a term describing a short sentence dense with meaning and often dense, too, with irony. Take, for instance, the famous dictum of Arria, whose husband, Paetus, too cowardly to commit suicide to save his family's fortune, had to be coaxed with the words of his much braver wife, who said, Paete, non dolet, "Paetus, it doesn't hurt" (Pliny Letters 3.16). Of course, she was plunging his sword into her own breast at that moment, so the meaning of her utterance extends well beyond throse three short words: "Paetus, you miserable coward, an affront to your noble ancestors! If you can't find the courage to do the honorable thing, however painful — if your own wife, a mere woman, can, then what are people to think?"
Sententiae like that, common in prose of the period, were common, too, in verse. Look for passages in Seneca and pseudo-Seneca that seem to capture a lot of meaning in relatively few words — perhaps with some strikingly ironic word combinations. I've noted a couple in my PowerPoints; can you find others?
silen/Silenus, Papposilenus. Pretty much the same thing as a satyr. In satyr drama, (Pappo)silenus is one of the regular characters, an elderly satyr and father of the other satyrs.
skene. In a Greek theater, the "stage building" serving as backdrop to the stage platform. It could represent a palace, cave, etc.; it could offer entry to the stage through a door; its roof could serve as cliff-top, heaven, etc.
sophist, sophistic. Prior to the later 400s BCE, a sophist was a "wise man," one who stood out for sophia, wisdom or skill. By about 430, sophistes ("sophist") had come to refer to a professional (i.e., paid) teacher of subjects of interest to young men intending to enter public life. "Sophistic" was what a sophist did. These terms could carry negative connotations; to ordinary Athenians, they seem to have suggested instruction in the art of verbal deception. They matter to our course because ancient Athenian drama, especially the plays of Euripides and of Aristophanes, feature a great deal of debate and discourse generally imitating or evoking the sophists.
sparagmos. Greek, "tearing of flesh," "dismemberment." In sources, associated with the omophagia, raw eating (which see) of an animal like a fawn or panther, and supposedly practiced in association with the worship of Dionysus. But it is not clear that this was ever actually done.
stasimon. Stasimon (plural stasima) is a technical term defining a part of an ancient Athenian tragedy. It's a choral song (it's not spoken), one coming after the entry of the chorus and before its exit; it is sung by the chorus in common. Stasima, we know, weren't just just sung; they were danced to. As such, it constitutes a formal part of a tragedy. So, for instance, in Sophocles' Antigone, we speak of stasimon 1 (the "Numberless wonders / terrible wonders" chorus), stasimon 2, and so on.
stichomythia. In drama, dialogue consisting of speeches of one line or less assigned each character, producing a rapid back-and-forth.
suppliant drama. A drama in which a character or characters come to a city seeking aid and/or protection. There is often suspense involved: How will it all turn out? Aeschylus' Eumenides, Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Euripides' Cyclops.
supplication, supplicate, suppliant. Frequent in tragedy, supplication refers to the process of requesting aid or salvation from a mortal or god ("Save us, O Zeus!"). It often involves ritual elements: kneeling down before an intended source of aid, grabbing her or his knees, stroking the chin, approaching while bearing the symbols of supplication, often a tree bough with woolen fillets hanging from it. To "supplicate" is to engage in supplication. A "suppliant" is one who supplicates. Sophocles' Oedipus the King opens with a just such a scene of supplication.
tetralogy. The four plays, three tragedies and a satyr drama, that a finalist in the tragic competition would stage in a single day at the Greater Dionysia at Athens.
theates. Greek: "viewer," "spectator," "audience member."
theatron. Root of the English word "theater," Greek theatron means literally "viewing instrument." It originally referred only to the audience-seating area in a theater, later, to the theater as a whole.
thiasos. Term for a formally organized group of Dionysus' worshippers or followers — like a congregation.
thumele. The "altar" typically set in the middle of the orkhestra of an ancient Greek theater, and often made use of in the action of a play.
tragic cycle (cycle of suffering/violence/retribution, etc.). The idea, prominent in (though not confined to) Greek tragedy, that misdeeds engender further misdeeds/misfortune, whether in the form of vengeance prompting further vengeance, or by visiting the sins of the ancestors on descendants. Not infrequently, the committing of a misdeed is understood as punishment for some previous misdeed — "crime begets crime."
tragic formula. Drawing on C. J. Herington, I use the term "tragic formula" for a series of interrelated concepts prominent in Athenian tragedy (especially Aeschylus) and in non-tragic, archaic Greek poetry. You can think of that as a kind of archaic Greek precursor to the Aristotlian notions of tragic reversal (peripeteia).
Important to note is that we should not approach 1 through 4 below as some sort of linear causation string, a kind of tragic checklist. Rather, it all represents a constellation of inextricably linked states, each always already implied by the other:
- Koros, excessive wealth, power, good fortune, etc. such as can breed:
- Hubris, errant disregard (evidenced through word or deed) for the rights, status, etc. of another (mortal or god) whose rights, status, etc. matter. That can — and in Greek tragedy, typcially does — take the form of a violent act necessitating some sort of countervailing violence.
- Ate, the delusion that enfolds us when we commit acts that must lead to our ruin. Alternatively, the word refers to ruin itself.
- Dike, "justice," understood here either as the process correcting for that which has grown "unduly great," or else as the ideal of a balanced human or unversal order, and thus the justification for tragic action. Which calls into question whether tragic justice is truly "just"? Do the ends justify the means? Does the punishment fit the crime?
tragoidia. Greek for "tragedy," the word appears derived from "goat song."
thyrsus. Long stalk of fennel (like a very long celery stalk), or arguably a sturdier vegetable, topped with bunched ivy, and wielded by Dionysus and his maenads.
trope of decline. By the "trope of decline," I mean a thematic motif present already in early Greek literature (Hesiod especially), though one prominent in Roman literature and clearly highly resonant for Roman audiences. The "trope of decline" involves the partly mythological, partly ideological conceit that "our" age (i.e., the Roman "now"), an age of moral, political, etc. corruption and chaos, represents a devolution from a better past.
Mythologically, the "trope of decline" is mostly the same thing as the "four (or sometimes five) ages of humanity":
- THE GOLDEN AGE, when Kronos-Saturn still reigned, and human beings lived long, trouble-free lives without the need of technology (agriculture, seafaring), politics, or warfare — when people and gods still freely interacted. Think of it as humanity's childhood.
- THE SILVER AGE, still a good time, though not as good as the previous.
- THE BRONZE AGE, a time that saw strife come to the fore, though also heroism and nobility.
- THE IRON AGE, always understood as OUR age, a time of political and social strife, struggle to survive, moral chaos.
In Roman literature, this myth of the ages can be (as it clearly is in pseudo-Seneca's Octavia) coupled with a notion of Roman history as decline from an ideal past (the "good" kings Romulus, Numa, Servius; Republican heroes like Brutus and Cincinnatus, even a "good" emperor like Augustus) to a decadent present ruled by passion, and forgetful of Roman values — an age like that of Nero. . . .
tyrant, tyranny. While this is a term familiar in modern usage, its ancient resonances deserve mention. For the ancient Greeks and Romans, tyranny (turannis) couold count as any or all of the following:
- A ruler holding unusual or extraordinary power, a sovereign whose word cannot be overridden
- A ruler with no really valid claim to sovereign or supreme power, but holding it by force
- A ruler exercising rule in a capricious, paranoid, or cruel fashion