Thank you for visiting. This article is the fifth installment in a series explaining the original texts of Greek mythology.
So far we have looked at Hesiod’s Theogony, Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and the heroes handed down by Apollodorus. This time, I explain another important body of original texts that conveys Greek mythology — “Greek tragedy.” In 5th-century-BC Athens, myth performed in the space of the theater — there lies a deep drama, different from the epics, that gazes at human fate.
For an overview map of Greek mythology’s original texts as a whole, please see this summary article.
What Kind of Original Text Is Greek Tragedy?
| Item | Content |
|---|---|
| Date | 5th century BC Athens (drama competition at the festival of Dionysus) |
| Authors | The three great tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) |
| Surviving | About 33 plays among the three (only a small part of what was performed) |
| Character | Plays that use myth as material to question fate, justice, and human suffering |
Greek tragedy was drama performed as a competition at the festival honoring Dionysus, god of wine and theater. Taking as their material myths everyone knew, the poets carved into them the question “how should a human live?” It is the moment when myth deepened from a story handed down into a “stage for thinking.”
Those who bore it were the three great tragedians.
| Poet | Character | Representative work |
|---|---|---|
| Aeschylus (c. 525–456 BC) | Father of tragedy. Solemnly depicts the justice of the gods | The Oresteia trilogy |
| Sophocles (c. 496–406 BC) | Master of structure. Fate and human dignity | Oedipus Rex, Antigone |
| Euripides (c. 480–406 BC) | Vividly depicts human passion | Medea, The Bacchae |
Each is said to have written 90 or more than 120 plays, but only about 33 in all survive complete among the three. Even so, this handful of plays has kept shaping the skeleton of the world’s stories, from Shakespeare to modern theater and film.
Larousse Encyclopedia of Greek and Roman MythologyView on Amazon →
The Gods Make It More Fun! A Textbook of Greek MythologyView on Amazon →
The “Oresteia” Trilogy — Where Does the Chain of Revenge End?
Aeschylus’s “Oresteia” is the only surviving tragic trilogy. Its subject is the chain of blood-revenge piling up on the family of Agamemnon, the supreme commander of the Greek army in the Trojan War — the cursed House of Atreus.
Part 1, “Agamemnon” — the End of the Triumphant King
Agamemnon, returning in triumph after 10 years having taken Troy, is welcomed by his queen Clytemnestra. But behind her smile was a murderous intent. She had never forgiven her husband for, at his departure for war, killing their daughter Iphigenia as a sacrifice to gain wind for the fleet.
Clytemnestra throws a net-like robe over her bathing husband, immobilizes him, and slaughters him. The captive princess Cassandra whom Agamemnon brought back — a priestess cursed so that no one believes her even when she prophesies the truth — walks into the hall foreseeing even her own death, and is killed along with him.
Part 2, “The Libation Bearers” — the Son’s Revenge
Years pass, and the grown prince Orestes reunites with his sister Electra. Apollo’s oracle had commanded him to avenge his father. But that enemy is his own mother.
Orestes enters the hall in disguise, kills his mother’s lover Aegisthus, and finally turns his blade on his mother Clytemnestra. The mother pleads, “Behold this breast that bore and nursed you.” Orestes, hesitating for a moment, still obeys the oracle and kills his mother. Immediately after, in his eyes begin to appear the avenging goddesses, the “Erinyes,” who demand revenge for his mother’s blood. Orestes goes mad and flees.
Part 3, “The Eumenides” — the Birth of the Court
Orestes, pursued relentlessly by the Erinyes, flees to the Athenian goddess Athena. The solution Athena hands down is the heart of this trilogy: “This case will be decided by trial” — humankind’s first murder trial is held on the hill of the Areopagus.
Apollo stands for the defense, the Erinyes accuse, and the citizens of Athens serve as jurors. The verdict is tied. Finally Athena casts a vote for acquittal, and Orestes is saved. The defeated Erinyes too, by Athena’s persuasion, change into the “Kindly Ones (Eumenides)” who protect the city.
The endless chain of revenge — blood for blood — is broken by “law and the court.” Borrowing the form of myth, this ending, depicting the moment humankind steps out from revenge to the rule of law, is praised as the pinnacle of Greek tragedy.
”Oedipus Rex” — Fate and Human Dignity
Sophocles’s “Oedipus Rex” is often called “the most perfect tragedy.” Sophocles re-structured the myth of Oedipus we saw in Article 4 (the prophecy of killing his father and marrying his mother) as a “detective drama pursuing the truth.”
The story begins in plague-stricken Thebes. The cause is “the pollution of the former king’s murder.” The great king Oedipus vows to find the culprit without fail and sets out to investigate himself. But the warning of the blind prophet Tiresias, the testimony of Queen Jocasta, the confession of an old shepherd — the more clues gather, the more it is none other than himself who is cornered. The murderer of the former king was Oedipus himself, and the queen was his own mother.
Jocasta, grasping it all, takes her own life, and Oedipus pierces his own eyes with the clasp of her robe and casts away the light. The audience knows the ending from the start. Even so, you cannot take your eyes off the man who keeps walking toward the truth — the integrity of a person trying to know becomes, in itself, the march toward ruin. The power of this structure made the play immortal.
In his late years, Sophocles depicted, in the sequel Oedipus at Colonus, an ending in which Oedipus, at the end of his wandering, is welcomed by the gods on the outskirts of Athens and quietly vanishes — a salvation-like end for a man utterly tossed about by fate.
”Antigone” — the Law of the State, or the Law of the Gods?
Sophocles’s “Antigone” is the story of Oedipus’s daughter. After Oedipus’s death, his two sons, contending over the Theban throne, kill each other. The new king Creon decreed that the burial of Polynices, who had attacked the city, be forbidden, and his body left exposed.
The one who boldly defied this is his sister Antigone. Resolved to die, she buries her brother by sprinkling sand on him, and declares before the king, “I do not believe that your decree could override the unwritten laws of the gods.”
The law of the state, or the older law of the gods (the duty to bury the dead)? Creon shuts Antigone alive in a cave, but by the time he, frightened by the prophet’s warning, changes his mind, it is too late: Antigone has killed herself, and Creon’s son, her fiancé, and his queen follow her in death. The curtain falls on the lament of Creon, who has lost everything. This play, depicting the collision of power and conscience, remains a text of political philosophy to this day.
”Medea” — the Revenge of a Betrayed Woman
Euripides’s “Medea” depicts the “aftermath” of the Golden Fleece adventure we saw in Article 4. The witch Medea, who abandoned homeland and family to devote herself to the hero Jason, is cast aside by her husband in Corinth. Jason chose to remarry a princess.
Euripides depicted thoroughly, from the inside, Medea’s heart up to her resolve for revenge. She first burns the princess and king to death with a poisoned robe. And finally, as the means to wound Jason most deeply, she lays hands on her own two children. The soliloquy torn between love for her children and the spirit of revenge — “I know what I am about to do; but my fury is stronger than my reason” — is held to be among the finest scenes in all Greek tragedy.
At the close, Medea departs to the sky on a dragon-drawn chariot, and Jason is left behind having lost everything. This play, which rejected the “convenient ending” of the heroic epic and retold the myth from the side of the abandoned woman, is still staged around the world 2,400 years after its premiere.
”The Bacchae” — the Fate of a King Who Scorned a God
Euripides’s last great masterpiece, “The Bacchae,” is a story in which the very god who gave birth to tragedy, Dionysus himself, is the protagonist.
The young Theban king Pentheus suppresses the newly arrived rites of Dionysus as “disreputable frenzy.” The god appears before the king in human form, skillfully stirs his curiosity, has him dress as a woman, and lures him to spy on the secret rites of the maenads.
Found in the mountains, Pentheus is mistaken for a beast by the god-possessed maenads and torn limb from limb while alive. Moreover, the one who led them was his own mother Agave, who did not realize it was her son. Believing her son’s head to be a lion’s prey, she holds it up proudly, and returning to her senses, screams. No play depicts so harshly the terror of scorning a power beyond human reason.
The Meaning of Tragedy as an Original Text
Greek tragedy is an original text that questioned anew the “meaning” of myth without changing its “ending.”
Whereas the epics sang the glory of heroes, tragedy drew from the same myths universal questions: the birth of law that breaks the chain of revenge (Oresteia), the collision of fate and knowledge (Oedipus Rex), state and conscience (Antigone), the voice of the abandoned (Medea), and the hubris of reason (The Bacchae). Aristotle’s theory of “catharsis (the purification of emotion)” argued in the Poetics was also born from these plays. Turning myth into a “tool for thinking” — that is the greatest legacy Greek tragedy left to world literature.
To Learn More
Here are some related books. Reading them alongside this series lets you savor this world even more deeply.
A Collection of Greek Myths (Kodansha Academic Library)View on Amazon →
The World’s Loveliest Classroom of Greek MythologyView on Amazon →
Conclusion
In this article, I explained another original text of Greek mythology, “Greek tragedy,” following the masterpieces of the three great tragedians. How was it?
The “Oresteia,” which breaks the chain of revenge by law; “Oedipus Rex,” who is ruined pursuing the truth; “Antigone,” who is martyred for the law of the gods; “Medea,” the betrayed woman; and “The Bacchae,” on divine wrath — I hope you could feel how, in the theaters of the 5th century BC, myth was reborn into a stage that asks “what is a human being?”
With this, the five-article series on Greek mythology’s original texts is complete. I also explain the original texts of other myths and religions. For the full list, see the complete index of the world’s myths and religions.
I hope you’ll read the next article too.
📚 Series: The Original Texts of Greek Mythology (6/6)
