In the characters of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Antigone >and Medea, the ancient Greek playwrights Aeschylus, >Sophocles, and Euripides offer four distinctly different >views of the roles which women played in Greek society. >While women definitely played a role which was subservient >to the one played...

A mythological or legendary figure often of divine descent endowed with great strength or ability is called a hero; a man admired for his achievements and noble qualities. In early Greek plays, they are taller and larger than any other men. They were very strange and attractive, while an anti-hero i...

The word hubris is Greek for exaggerated pride or arrogance. In Greece it was punished swiftly by the Greek gods, and was believed to be a horrible sin. In the first part of the trilogy, Oresteia: Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Agamemnon is the epitome of hubris. He exudes his pompous pride so much throug...

Trilogies of Greek drama are sometimes based upon a reoccurring theme. In Aeschylus' The Orestia, the theme of the "curse on the house of Atreus" foreshadows the fate of the trilogies characters. The curse is based upon the revenge ethic. It is believed that justice and personal rev...

A) Moira is an ancient Greek word for a predetermined fate. It's meaning points out that everything does not depend on free will. There are certain things in life that one cannot control. Moira plays a central role in Sophocles' Oedipus because the play's conflict is between fate a...

"Destruction of power is unjust, destruction of corrupt power deserves justice." Disobeying the god of gods, Zeus, a mere titan with the power of foresight challenges the powers of the heaven that ultimately leads to his destruction. Prometheus Bound, a play by Aeschylus, portrays the ...

The story of Oedipus, one of the first examples of a literary tragic hero, is of a man plunged suddenly from prosperity and power to ruin and disrepute. We see him at the height and the depth of his worldly fortunes. Oedipus, whom in the first scene the Priest calls \"the first of men,\" to whom all...

Aeschylus's plays "Agamemnon", "The Libation Bearers", and "Eumenides" were all based on one parent child conflict that gradually manifested into one the best-known curses in Greek mythology. Tantalus, one of Zeus's many sons, started this havoc when he attemp...

Justice and Social Order in the OresteiaDemocracy, emerging in the city-state of Athens, allowed unprecedented power to her citizens. Among these new powers was the ability to legislate. Yet, legislation was not without its problems. First the citizens must agree upon what is just and unjust, and th...

In order to devise an accurate definition of what a myth really is, a handful of elements must be incorporated into one. A myth is not just a fictional story. A myth needs to follow certain guidelines in order to be categorized as such. Some rudiments of a myth would incorporate religion of any k...

PART I: Mythology: Man\'s Shelter From the Unknown Since the start of time nature\'s song has resounded throughout creation. It is an eerie song, one of life and death, inextricable disorder and soothing serenity. Alone in the wilderness, accompanied only by life\'s primordial symphony and the beat...

Tragedy was performed in Athens at the annual festival of Dionysus, the Great, or the City, Dionysia in late March. Competition was held on three successive mornings of the festival. Three tragic poets, who had been selected earlier in the year, each presented a tetralogy, consisting of three traged...