Tragedy did not develop in a vacuum. It was an outgrowth of what was happening at the time in Athens . One hand, Greek religion (see Bullfinch's Mythology. It is in library) had dictated how people should behave and think for centuries. On the other, there was a birth of free thought and intellectual inquiry.
Athens in the fourth and fifth centuries BC was bustling with radical ideas like democracy, philosophy, mathematics, science and art. It boasted philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Democritus. There were the first known historians Thucydides and Herodotus. The scientists and mathematicians like Thales, Hippocrates, Archimedes, and later Euclid (euclidean geometry), Pythagoras (the Pythagorean theorem), Eratosthenes, Hero (the steam engine!), Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
In these respects -- a blossoming of free thought after years of religious dicta -- ancient Athens resembled Renaissance England, which not coincidentally spawned the next great era in theatre. In essence, the ancient Athenians had begun to question how nature worked, how society should work, and what man's role was in the scheme of things. Tragedy was the poets' answer to some of these questions -- How should one behave? How can one accept the injustices of life? What is the price of hubris? Read a soliloquy from a Greek tragedy, or from Hamlet or Macbeth, and what you will hear is these questions being asked.
Athens in the fourth and fifth centuries BC was bustling with radical ideas like democracy, philosophy, mathematics, science and art. It boasted philosophers like Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Epicurus, and Democritus. There were the first known historians Thucydides and Herodotus. The scientists and mathematicians like Thales, Hippocrates, Archimedes, and later Euclid (euclidean geometry), Pythagoras (the Pythagorean theorem), Eratosthenes, Hero (the steam engine!), Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
In these respects -- a blossoming of free thought after years of religious dicta -- ancient Athens resembled Renaissance England, which not coincidentally spawned the next great era in theatre. In essence, the ancient Athenians had begun to question how nature worked, how society should work, and what man's role was in the scheme of things. Tragedy was the poets' answer to some of these questions -- How should one behave? How can one accept the injustices of life? What is the price of hubris? Read a soliloquy from a Greek tragedy, or from Hamlet or Macbeth, and what you will hear is these questions being asked.
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