THEM. Tronsky

The historical development of the tragedy was very dramatic, the genre experienced a wide variety of changes, while maintaining its fundamental features.

The foundations of tragedy were laid in ancient Greek. The main theme of ancient Greek tragedies was (although there were also tragedies written on modern subjects - for example, Persians Aeschylus). The evolution and formation of the genre is clearly visible in the works of three great ancient Greek playwrights, considered the founders of tragedy:, and. Aeschylus was the first to introduce a second actor into tragedy (before him, there was only one actor and a chorus on the stage), enlarging the roles of individual characters (Prometheus, Clytemnestra, etc.). Sophocles significantly increased the dialogic parts and introduced a third actor, which made it possible to sharpen the action: the hero was contrasted with a secondary character seeking to deviate him from fulfilling his duty (Oedipus the King, Antigone, Electra, etc.). In addition, Sophocles introduced scenery into the ancient Greek theater. Euripides turned tragedy to reality, according to Aristotle, depicting people “as they are” (Poetics, Chapter XXV), revealing the complex world of psychological experiences, characters and passions (Medea, Electra, Iphigenia in Aulis and etc.).

In my essay, I would like to consider the problem of interpreting myth in Attic drama using the example of the myth of Atrid. But first, I would like to highlight some issues related to the emergence of such a genre in the ancient Greek world.

II. The origin of the tragedy.

The phenomenon of drama itself originates from primitive society and accompanies almost every ritual action. At that time, drama had not yet emerged from the general labor processes, magic, everyday life, and in general from the social sphere of the then culture. But already in the 2nd millennium BC, in the so-called Cretan-Mycenaean era, drama had the opportunity to turn into an independent theatrical and entertainment performance. But drama arose only in Greece, and not earlier than the 6th century. BC e., and took the form of tragedy and comedy. This happened precisely then because drama requires greater independence of the individual and a clash of personalities among themselves, and in Greece the ascent and establishment of a democratic system had just begun. The individual who freed himself from communal consciousness needed to learn to understand the creative forces of nature. For this, the cults of deities were useful, which combined these processes.

There have always been many such deities, and during the period of the democratic ascent of Greece, Dionysus turned out to be such a deity. The god Dionysus was nothing more than a generalization of the creative productive processes of nature and society. He was imagined to be embodied in every living creature, which was imagined to be torn to pieces and then resurrected. This greatly contributed to the emergence and growth of a dramatic understanding of life. Dionysian delight and orgasm destroyed all class barriers and the aristocratic nobility in their relationship with the new deity became on the same level as the lower strata of society. Therefore, the religion of Dionysus initially came into conflict with the “Olympian” gods; in the end, he won, was ascended to Olympus and recognized as the son of Zeus and the Theban Semele.

Rulers of the 6th century BC e., implanted the cult of Dionysus in their countries. For example, the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus established the festival of the Great Dionysius in Athens, and the first tragedy was staged under him. Another tyrant, Cleisthenes, who ruled in the city of Sikyon, handed over to Dionysus the holiday that had previously been celebrated in honor of the local hero Adrastus.

The path from the cult of Dionysus to classical Greek tragedy was difficult and long, but it was covered extremely quickly in Greece.

Aristotle speaks in his Poetics about the origin of tragedy from dithyrambs or phallic songs. The tragedy gradually grew and underwent various changes. Aristotle also talks about the origin of tragedy from satyr games. There is also a version about the origin of the tragedy from the cult of the dead, and in particular from the cult of the hero.

III. Ancient Greek theater.

Theatrical performances in Greece were widespread and festive. The ruins of ancient Greek theaters are amazing in their size. For example, the Theater of Dionysus in Athens is designed for approximately 17 thousand spectators.

Basically the theater consisted of three main parts:

1) orchestra, at the end of the 6th century. BC e., was a round, tightly compacted platform for actors and choir;

2) theater, seats for spectators;

3) skena, the building behind the orchestra where the actors changed clothes.

At the beginning of the 5th century. wooden benches for spectators were replaced with stone ones and were located in a semicircle along the slope of the Acropolis. The orchestra became horseshoe-shaped. In Hellenistic times, the choir and the artists no longer had an internal connection and therefore the actors played on a high stone stage, which was adjacent to the skene and proskenium with two projections on the sides - paraskenia . Seats for spectators surrounded the orchestra in a semicircle and were divided into 13 wedges.

The choir when staging the tragedy consisted of 12 and then 15 people. They were controlled by a luminary. The choir was divided into 2 parts and, through singing and dancing, portrayed people close to the heroes. The choir dressed in costumes corresponding to the theme of the performance. Of course, the main characters dressed the most colorfully. To increase the height of the actors, they used caturnas - shoes with thick soles like stilts. Also, the actors were forced to wear brightly colored masks made for a certain type of hero: old people, women, slaves, children, etc. Masks were convenient because they allowed the actor to play several roles at once in one tragedy. All female roles were played by men.

Athenian citizens at the end of the 5th century. BC e., received special entertainment money from the state to visit the theater. In exchange, they were given iron numbers indicating the location. The performance began in the morning and ended in the evening. It consisted of three tragedies and one satyr drama.

IV. Interpretation of the myth of Atrid in the works of three great tragedians:

1) Aeschylus

Aeschylus, a poet from the era of the formation of the Athenian state, is the founder of Greek tragedy. He is often called the "father of tragedy."

In the works of Aeschylus we see how the author’s traditional worldview is closely intertwined with the principles of democratic statehood. He firmly believes in the existence of divine forces that control people and often intrigue them. But on the other hand, the gods of Aeschylus become guardians of the legal foundations of the new state; he focuses the viewer’s attention on the responsibility placed on a person for his freely chosen behavior. Aeschylus is characterized by a manumental-pathetic style. It comes from the elemental foundations of life, which allows you to draw clear and very plastic images.

Aeschylus wrote about 70 tragedies and 20 satyr dramas. Only 7 tragedies and more than 400 fragments have reached us. The Oresteia is the only complete trilogy of Aeschylus that has come down to us. It consists of three parts: “Agamemnon”, “Choephora” and “Eumenides”. This tragedy tells us about the story that unfolded in the palace of Agamemnon after his return from the walls of Troy, about his murder by Aegisthus, the lover of Agamemnon’s wife Clytemnestra, and about the revenge of his son Orestes for the death of his father.

Clytemnestra is depicted here primarily as a weapon of the demon of the ancestral curse. She hates her husband, her daughter Electra, whom she keeps in the house as a servant, she hates her son Orestes, whom she frantically encourages Erinny to pursue... She is a very powerful, restrained and sensible woman, her intelligence and crime make her cynical at times. Aeschylus, however, showed that she is not alien to human experiences when, frightened by terrible dreams, Clytemnestra makes libations at the grave of Agamemnon and dreams of the modest lot of a common man. But still she is a negative character.

Another bright female character whom we meet in the first part of the trilogy is Cassandra. She was once Apollo's lover. God wanted to marry her, Cassandra agreed, on the condition that Apollo would give her the gift of prophecy. But, having received the gift, the girl abandoned God and, as punishment for this, Apollo deprived her of all recognition of the prophecy; no one believed her. Cassandra foresaw all the disasters of Troy and, approaching the palace of Agamemnon, her and his death. In a frenzy, she lets out wild screams, falls to the ground, hits it with her arms and legs, but after a few minutes she becomes silent and obediently goes into the house, knowing that death awaits her there. Among the characters of all Greek tragedies, there is no character more dramatic than Cassandra. It is surprising that it originated with Aeschylus, despite the fact that most of his heroes are extremely epic and lack a tragic edge.

2) Sophocles

The second great tragedian is Sophocles. He completed the work begun by Aeschylus of transforming tragedy from a lyrical cantata into a drama. The problems that concern Sophocles are related to the fate of one person. Apparently this is why he abandons the plot coherence of the trilogy. Sophocles' people for the most part act independently and determine their own behavior with other people. He rarely brings gods onto the stage and does not attach so much importance to the “hereditary curse.”

In his tragedy "Electra", Sophocles develops the theme of "Choephorus" by Aeschylus, namely the death of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus at the hands of Orestes. Electra, who was a minor character in Aeschylus, becomes the main character in Sophocles. Here she is written as a heroic girl. For many years she has been protesting alone against her mother and her lover. For this, he is constantly subjected to ridicule and humiliation on their part. Electra lives in the hope of revenge for her father and the return of Orestes. The heroic image of Electra, as in another tragedy by Sophocles, Antigone, is contrasted with the meek and submissive sister Chrysothemis. However, the author shows us Electra from the other side, when she, depressed by the false news of Orestes’ death and preparing to replace him in the role of avenger, cries over the urn with the imaginary remains of her brother. In accordance with the concept of the play, Sophocles deprived the image of Clytemnestra of the tragic greatness of Aeschylus, and on the contrary, exacerbated the vicious traits of her character.

Sophocles is of course inferior to Aeschylus in the severity of the problem. Although he also seeks divine order in the course of things. But unlike Aeschylus, who often questions the rightness of the gods, Sophocles still comes to the conclusion that the gods are fair. Therefore, he avoids raising questions in his work that make one think about the rightness of the gods. The artistic images of Sophocles are striking in their simplicity and monumentality. They are deeply human and their spiritual life is extremely rich. With the help of a variety of experiences, Sophocles shows different sides of the character's character. His heroes are always solid natures, almost never doubting their choice of behavior; their mode of action is predetermined by the main features of their appearance.

3) Euripides

Personality characteristics and a critical attitude towards myth - both sides of the same worldview were in sharp contradiction with the ideological traditions of Aeschylus and Sophocles. New trends in social life found a response in the work of the third great tragedian - Euripides. The ideological content and dramatic innovations caused condemnation among the conservative part of Athens, and was the laughing stock of all subsequent comedies of the 5th century. But later, in the Hellenistic era, Euripides became a favorite tragic poet. Therefore, 19 of his works have reached us, i.e. much more than Sophocles and Aeschylus combined. In addition, many fragments have survived, often giving an idea of ​​​​the overall picture of the drama. In the works of Euripides, a wide variety of problems were posed that were of interest to the public at that time, new theories were presented and discussed. Ancient criticism called Euripides “a philosopher on stage.” The philosophy of the Sophists had a great influence on him, but, however, the poet was not a supporter of this or that philosophical movement, especially since his own views were not distinguished by consistency and constancy.

In the tragedies of Euripides, people with great souls are depicted, who sometimes commit crimes, and the poet, like a deep psychologist, shows us all the painful suffering of such people.

V. Conclusion:

Each of the authors studied interprets this myth in its own way. Their task was to convey to viewers and descendants the ideas of a new democratic state. Aeschylus and Sophocles are the creators of ancient tragedy in classical form. They depicted significant issues of social life and human behavior. Conflicts between paternal and maternal rights, the state and clan, suffering in the name of duty, the problem of choice and responsibility for one’s behavior, we see all this in the tragedies of Sophocles and Aeschylus. The ideological content of the works did not diverge from their mythological interpretation. Aeschylus and Sophocles were confident that the world is controlled by higher divine powers, against the background of which there is justification for even such a terrible sin as matricide. But a new time is inexorably approaching, the era of Hellenism is approaching, in which people will greatly doubt the existence of this very divine power. Anticipating these changes in his work, the greatest poet, the most tragic of tragedians, according to Aristotle, appears, Euripides. He rejected the traditional mythological system and philosophy replaced mythology. Isolation of personality and a critical attitude towards myth - both of these trends in the new worldview were in sharp contradiction with the predecessors of Euripides, Aeschylus and Sophocles.

Greek literature gave the world many wonderful people and created a powerful platform for the development of all European culture. Ancient Greek myths are still being rewritten and studied, and, most importantly, their stories remain relevant at all times.

VI. Bibliography:

1) Agbunov M. “Ancient myths and legends. Mythological Dictionary" - M.: MIKIS, 1994 - 368 pages.

2) Aristotle “Poetics” http://rifma.com.ru/Poetika-1.htm

3) Losev A.F. “Ancient Literature”: a textbook for higher school; edited by A.A. Tahoe-Godi. – 7th ed., stereotype – M.: CheRo, with the participation of the editor. "Omega-L", 2005 - 543 pages.

4) Mertlik R. “Ancient legends and tales”: trans. from Czech – M.: “Respublika”, 1992 – 479 pp.

5) Tronsky I.M.; textbook; ed. 6th M.: KomKniga, 2005; 464 pp.

6) “Antiquity and modernity through the prism of the myth of Atrid”; compiler, author of entry. Articles and notes S. M. Pinaev. – M.: Shkola-Press, 1997 – 768 pp.

Attic tragedy

Just as the archaic era in Greece expressed itself in lyric poetry, the 5th century (BC), when Athens became the center of literary and poetic creativity, began to speak in the language of Attic tragedy and comedy. Tragedy (literally “song of the goats”) arose from a choral song, from a dithyramb sung by “satyrs” dressed in goat skins and depicting the constant cheerful companions of the god of wine Dionysus. Such “choirs of goats,” or satyrs, existed already in the 7th century. BC e. throughout Greece. Decisive in the birth of the Attic tragedy was the establishment by the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus of the national holiday of the Great Dionysius, thanks to which the popular cult of Dionysus now relied on the official support of the authorities. When the poet Thespis added an actor to the chorus, “answering” and conducting a dialogue with the chorus, the tragedy turned into a dramatic action. At first, the participants in the performance acted out scenes from myths only about Dionysus himself, but later the turn came to other myths. Only Aeschylus remained in the first half of the 5th century. BC e. bring before the audience also a second actor, and Sophocles a third, and the ancient “chorus of goats” was finally transformed into drama.

But the origin of Greek tragedy from choral song was reflected in the fact that in the future the choir played no less a role in the drama than the actors. This brings Greek tragedy closer to the modern opera or oratorio. The themes and plots of the tragedies were also not arbitrarily chosen, but borrowed from mythology.<Персы» Эсхила или «Завоевание Милета» Фриниха - редчайшие исключения, подтверждающие правило.

Like the epic poetry of Homer, Greek tragedy performed not only aesthetic functions, but also didactic and educational ones. Great tragediographers of the 5th century. BC e. They sought not only to interest the viewer, but also to frighten, shock, instruct, and show, using the example of the destinies of well-known heroes of myths, the operation of divine laws that govern people’s lives.

The Attic theater differed from the modern one, however, not only in what was shown, but also in the way it was arranged. The performances lasted only three days, during the festival in honor of Dionysus. They gave three tragedies in a row, and then a “satire drama” - another dramatized episode from mythology, but in a lighter, cheerful, funny light, which allowed the audience to relieve the tension from the tragedies. Each of the three dramatic poets who competed with each other these days brought to the attention of the audience the entire tetralogy, that is, a complete cycle of three tragedies and one “satyr drama.” The performance took place in the open air, on a round platform - an orchestra. The benches for spectators were carved right into the rocky slope of the Acropolis; It was this simple auditorium that was called theatron. In such a huge open theater it was impossible to see either the facial expressions of the actors or the details of the costumes, so the participants in the performance went on stage in long, formal robes and large traditional masks, which were supposed to indicate either the stage type of character (king, old man, woman - female roles men also played), or state of mind (joy, grief, arrogant grandeur, despair). It was necessary to enlarge the actor's figure and wear special high shoes - buskins. Standing on buskins, the tragic actor pronounced sublime monologues written in a language far from everyday. All this distracted the viewer from the routine of everyday life, filling the soul with solemnity and a feeling of great celebration. It was the theater that was the main event for the Athenians during the days of the Great Dionysius, celebrated in late March - early April.

Attic tragedy owes its unfading glory to three great poets of the 5th century. BC e.: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Vrypidus. The first of them, although he belonged to the aristocracy by birth, is closely connected throughout his work with the idea of ​​​​the emerging Athenian democracy. This is visible not only in the “Persians,” where eastern despotism and the tyranny of the Persian king Xerxes are defeated by the Athenians, but also in the most perfect work of Aeschylus, perhaps, in the “Oresteia”: the court established by Athena, the Areopagus, pronounces a sentence on Orestes and thus the oldest family law, the law of blood feud. Thus, the birth of new social forms coincided with and found expression in the birth of new aesthetic and artistic forms. In the tragedy “Prometheus Bound”, people who have mastered fire and other fruits of the then civilization, through the mouth of the tormented titan Prometheus, challenge the omnipotence of Zeus, represented here as a cruel, hateful tyrant. The author's sympathies and the audience's sympathy were on the side of the hero, a lover of humanity and a fighter against God.

Of course, Aeschylus, as was typical for people of his generation, still thought entirely in religious and ethical terms. As in Solon’s elegies, the boundaries of truth, justice, and good are outlined in most of his tragedies by a deity who rewards good and punishes evil. for violating his own established limits in the behavior of mortals. The inevitable law of fair retribution is manifested in the fates of almost all of Aeschylus’s heroes.

If for Aeschylus the will of the gods is, as a rule, fair, then for Sophocles it is, first of all, omnipotent, while its ethical meaning is hidden from mortals. The conflict of his tragedies is in the dramatic confrontation between man and inevitable fate. The unwritten laws established by the gods require that the dead body be buried so that the soul can find eternal peace in the underground kingdom of Hades, but a daring man, referring to the state laws he himself introduced, tries to prevent this, and then all possible misfortunes befall him one after another (the conflict between Antigone and King Creon in Antigone). Trying to fight the unknowable, to prevent the fulfillment of divine prophecies, the individual dooms himself to the inevitable retribution of fate (“Oedipus the King”). But since the will of the gods is omnipotent, the people who dare to resist it are bright and unusual: such are Creon and Oedipus. Majestic and powerful in spirit are those who in one way or another fight for their right to follow the unwritten divine regulations: the gallery of strong, unyielding and persistent heroines of the Attic tragedy is opened by Antigone and Electra in Sophocles. This increasing attention to the individual, independently making his life choices, undoubtedly reflected the increasing importance of the individual principle in the social system and culture of classical Athens. The close connection of Sophocles’s work with the circle of ideas and intellectual interests that dominated his hometown at that time is also evidenced by the fact that many of the dialogues of his heroes are built according to all the rules of the sophistic art of argument (remember, for example, the dialogue between Antigone and Creon). Sophocles's bright, dramatic tragedies more than once brought him awards in theatrical competitions of that time.

A new generation of cultural figures in Athens asserted itself on the dramatic stage in the work of Euripides, although he and Sophocles lived at the same time and, as far as we know, even died in the same 406 BC. e. In contrast to the traditionally minded Sophocles, who shares old religious beliefs and prejudices, Euripides is full of skepticism, even going so far as to outright fight against God. The gods of the youngest of the three great tragediographers are cruel and partial, but it is not they, but the uncontrollable impulses of the human soul that determine the destinies of people, throwing them from one abyss of suffering to another. For Sophocles, the will and authority of Apollo are indisputable, absolute - Euripides attacks the cult of the formidable god-soothsayer, calling Apollo himself vengeful and vindictive, like an ordinary mortal. Such different attitudes towards Apollo’s religion also had social roots. The conservative Sophocles, close to the aristocracy, remembers the former authority of both God himself, the patron of noble youth, and his Delphic sanctuary, which once controlled many aspects of the life of the Greeks. For the democratic circles of Athens, to which Euripides belonged, a passionate supporter of democratic Athens in its many years of confrontation with aristocratic Sparta, the temple of Apollo at Delphi embodied the ambiguous position of its priests during the Persian attack on Hellas.

The playwright also does not believe in the divine origin of laws and other norms regulating social relations and human behavior. Love, a product of human nature itself, forces Medea, and in another tragedy Phaedra, to reject family ties, prevailing customs, and traditions. Natural law conflicts with the law established by people. The poet denounces the prejudices that doomed Athenian women to a position close to slavery, and slaves to the inhuman attitude and contempt of their owners. The tragedy of “The Trojan Women” also sounds a protest against an offensive war, which brings suffering to both the victors and the vanquished; at the height of the Peloponnesian War, this position of Euripides demanded from him courage and loyalty to his convictions. Here again and again the creators of the Greek theater recognized themselves as educators of their contemporary society.

If the focus of Aeschylus’s attention is not on an individual hero, but on the action itself, the conflict of the drama itself, and therefore the main role is assigned not to the actors, but to the chorus, then Sophocles has already decisively broken with this tradition. Choral songs and lyrics receded into the background, the importance of actor's recitations, monologues, and dialogues increased noticeably. For Ajax, Antigone or Electra in Sophocles, the chorus serves only as a background. The psychological picture of the main roles became more and more expressive and clear. Euripides now acts as a real explorer of the secrets of the human soul. Such power of expression of love, anger, maternal passion, as in the monologues of Medea, is not easy to find in the drama of later times. The heroes of Aeschylus and Sophocles do not change at all internally throughout the entire action. Not so with Euripides: his heroes are familiar with painful hesitations, doubts, transitions from despair to determination, from self-confidence to weakness and impotent rage. Myth does not ask about the psychological motives of someone’s activity, just as neither the tragedies of Aeschylus nor the “History” of Herodotus ask about them. The tragedies of Euripides, like Thucydides' History, are realistic and look for the reasons for a person's actions in himself.

The dialogues also became more natural. In Aeschylus, the heroes utter either long, pathetic tirades or short, one-verse remarks. In Euripides' dialogues there is almost no stylization, no artificiality: the heroes speak as ordinary people speak, only those who are in great excitement or tormented by strong passions. From decade to decade, Attic tragedy developed towards increasingly entertaining, dynamic, intense intrigue, and unexpected plot twists. In Euripides' tragedies, viewers were treated to rapid changes in situations, unpredictable developments of action (of course, within the framework of some canonical requirements of the genre), and sudden recognitions and revelations. In his works, plots are often borrowed from lesser-known myths, interpreted very arbitrarily; a lot of realistic, everyday details and direct political allusions; the language is more familiar and natural. The tragedy of gods and heroes turned into a tragedy of people. Even the ancients said that Sophocles presented man as he should be, and Euripides - as he is. When Jason in Medea appears cowardly and base, and Electra, the king's daughter, is the wife of a poor peasant, the myth is destroyed, the sacred legend becomes a secular narrative.

Since tragedy was born from choral lyrics, from dithyramb, music always played an important role in Greek theater, even when the attention of authors and spectators was transferred from the choir to the actors. The tragedy consisted of two parts: lyric-orchestral, entrusted entirely to the choir and not directly related to the action, and stage, or mimetic, covering monologues and dialogues. Along with the actors, the choir also showed itself in this part in the person of its leader, called the luminary. The lyrical part was sung, the stage part consisted of recitation to the accompaniment of a flute. This is how colloquial speech, recitation to music, i.e. melodic recitation, and singing itself were combined. It should be remembered, however, that singing in ancient times was closer to melodic recitation than to today's vocals, and the recitations of ancient actors were more reminiscent of singing than modern conversations on stage. In addition, the stage part was preceded by fragments written in lyrical poetic meters, and the singing was accompanied by expressive gestures. In addition to purely speech and choral scenes, the classical Greek tragedy had the so-called komnos - a joint singing part of the soloist and choir, which continued the tradition of funeral songs: the plaintive lamentations of the actor were echoed by the refrain of the choir.

Tragic poets also had to be excellent musicians. They were especially famous for the beautiful, sweet-sounding melodies of the tragedy of Phrynichus. The lyrical and choral parts of Aeschylus are also distinguished by their freedom and variety of composition. But in Sophocles' tragedies the musical element does not play a significant role: music would only hold back the lively, dynamic development of the action. However, Sophocles also managed to achieve a rare perfection of melodic structure in the choral parts. Euripides, in a sense, restored music to its rights on stage, but not by strengthening the chorus, but by having the actors perform large solo arias; the choral parts had very little connection with the action of the drama, producing a purely musical effect. Euripides' solo arias, full of expression, required considerable virtuosity in performance, which led to professionalism and the identification of theatrical music as a special type of creativity.

Attic comedy

How the tragedy occurred is not yet entirely clear. But the genesis of comedy is generally mysterious. The first complete comedy to survive, Aristophanes' Acharnians, was presented to the public only in 425 BC. e. From the earlier comedies, only titles and a small number of passages have reached us. Aristotle was already unable to make any definite judgment about the origin of Attic comedy. Analysis of the structure of the surviving comedies shows that this new literary genre combined primarily a choral element and a dramatic element Comic choral songs originated in rural Attica, because the word “comedy” itself means “song of komos" - a festive village procession. The combination of these songs with dramatic scenes of cheerful, funny content gave rise to a new genre - comedy.

Its dramatic element and comic scenes were also found outside of Attica: for example, in the Doric regions. There is information about realistic farces played out in Megara, with stable comic types reminiscent of the later commedia dell'arte. Here the gluttonous cook Meson, or pretending to be deaf, but in fact, Mill, who hears everything perfectly, performed in front of the audience.

The most prolific creator of such genre scenes can be considered the Sicilian Epicharmus (late 6th - first half of the 5th century BC). He also parodied myths and introduced a whole gallery of comic characters, such as the rude, uncouth peasant or the hanger-on chasing a good meal. But all these were just the beginnings of the comedy genre. The future belonged to Attic comedy, which, as already mentioned, combined dramatic scenes with cocky village songs. Another important, decisive moment was the appeal to subjects from the then political life of Athens. And today one is struck by the extraordinary ingenuity of Athenian comedians, the wealth of imagination, the power of caustic satire and the constant acute political topicality. Lyrics, politics, rough vulgar humor, obscenity, pathos - everything is mixed in ancient Greek comedy, ensuring its long life through the centuries.

These are the comedies of Aristophanes, the only creator of Attic, or more precisely, the so-called old Attic comedy, whose works have survived to our time not only in fragments, but also in their entirety. His predecessors, who boldly combined phallic jokes and obscenity with political satire, were Eupolis and Cratinus, who, together with Aristophanes, form the same triad of outstanding talents in comedy that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides form in tragedy. The old Attic comedy is based on many fantastic performances, reversals, and parodies. In his unpreserved comedy “Dionysalexandros”, Kratin portrays the matter as if the judge called upon to resolve the dispute between the three goddesses about which of them was the most beautiful was not Paris, but the god Dionysus himself. It was he who received the beautiful Helen from Aphrodite and took her to Troy; when the war began, he ran away, but was caught and given into the hands of the Achaeans, while Helen went to Paris. The attention of the Athenians was attracted not only by the bold parody of the epic legend and myth, but also by a direct political allusion to the first person in the state, Pericles: like Dionysus of the Trojans, so he involved the Athenians in the war. The image of Dionysus became only a mask under which Pericles, who was considered the culprit of the Peloponnesian War, was supposed to hide.

Thus, Attic comedy played out in allegories and symbols the real political dramas of the great city.

The edge of those comedies, the content of which we know, was usually directed against the leaders of the radical democratic group: Pericles, later Cleon and Hyperbole. It is not surprising that comedians eagerly praised the past both in politics and in art. Not only Aristophanes in “Frogs” praised the old Aeschylus, speaking with hostility about the innovator Euripides. And other comedy authors loved to bring characters from bygone eras onto the stage, contrasting them with those living today. In the “Laws” of Cratinus, Solon himself addressed the audience from the stage, calling on the Athenians to return to the ancient simplicity of morals. In the comedy "Demes" Eupolis seemed to call Miltiades, Aristides, the same Solon from the underground kingdom of the dead, who then descended again into the gloomy Hades.

The political focus of the old Attic comedy is clearly visible in the work of Aristophanes, who is close in his sympathies to the conservative Attic peasantry and the middle strata of the urban population, the demos. During the Peloponnesian War, which devastated fields and undermined trade, the comedian persistently promoted peace (the comedies “Acharnians”, “Peace”, “Lysistrata”). In Acharnanae, the oldest surviving comedy by Aristophanes, staged in 425 BC. uh, through the mouth of the hero, an ordinary Athenian citizen of Dikeopolis, the author mocked the belligerence of Athenian politicians and praised peace. Aristophanes' fantasy is bold and magnificent: Dikeopolis, fed up with the hardships of war, decides to conclude its own separate peace with Sparta. The God of Agriculture brings him from Sparta “samples” of the world in different bottles: here is a five-year world, a ten-year world, and a thirty-year world. Dikeopolis tastes from each bottle and finally chooses the most “delicious” world - thirty years old, for eight drachmas. After the prologue came the most important part in any Attic comedy - the agon, that is, the scene of an argument between two opponents. With skillfully selected arguments, Dikeopolis manages to convince the angry residents of the Attic community (deme) of Acharna, eager to take revenge on the Spartans for the devastated vineyards, of the correctness of his decision. The war continues, and Dikeopolis and his family enjoy the benefits of a peaceful life and conduct profitable trade with all Greek states. And so Dikeopolis is going to a feast, and the military leader Lamakh is going on a winter campaign. The first returns cheerful, drunk, and softened, the second returns wounded and beaten. Fantasy intertwines with reality, the topicality of what is shown on stage is beyond doubt among the audience, and now they themselves must reflect on their choice.

The anti-war theme is continued, as already mentioned, by the comedies “Peace”, where only through combined efforts people manage to bring out of captivity the much-desired goddess Eirene (Peace), and “Lysistrata”: here the cause of peace is taken into their own hands by women led by Lysistrata, who decide keep men away until they put an end to the terrible war.

But the most famous was the comedy “The Riders”, the satirical edge of which is directed against the Athenian demagogue, political leader of radical democracy, owner of the leather workshop Cleon. The almost completely deaf, decrepit, stupid old man, whom the arguing Tanner and Sausage Maker are trying to win over to their side with promises and persuasion, here bears the name Demos and personifies the Athenian people, deprived of traditional valor and becoming a victim of self-interested demagogues. In the end, the Sausage Man, by cunning and bribery, attracts the old man Demos to his side, the Tanner (Cleon) is disgraced and expelled, and Demos himself, having bathed in magical water, suddenly appears young, full of heroic powers and receives, in addition, thirty years of peace. Sober, prudent, moderate policies that promise people a calm and prosperous life are winning. At the same time, Aristophanes does not question the very foundations of the democratic structure of Athens, but only denounces the bad leaders of the people who drag gullible people into the abyss of war, and themselves profit from their misfortunes. Aristophanes was understood correctly: his comedy “The Horsemen” received the greatest award from Athenian audiences.

The comedian’s conservatism and his suspicious attitude towards any “innovations” that could shake traditional polis morality are even more noticeable in the comedies “Frogs” and “Clouds”. The author is irreconcilable with such “innovators,” be it the poet Euripides or the philosopher Socrates, who is presented as absurd and immoral, capable of teaching young people only crookedness and disrespect for elders. The son of the main character, Strepsiades, having listened to Socrates' reasoning, begins to beat his father, justifying his actions with sophistical justifications of permissiveness. And the father has no choice but to furiously set fire to the house of the harmful philosopher.

However, not only the son of Strepsiades, but also the entire Athenian society passed into the 5th century. BC e. the school of sophists, Socrates, and new poets. Generous comic fantasy, unbridled gaiety, noisy, full-blooded laughter receded, replaced by irony, a caustic grin, and a passion for lively, psychologically subtle intrigue, and not daring political attacks, beatings and outright obscenity. Instead of easy-to-guess political characters, everyday types who were just as familiar to the audience appeared on the stage: tipsy revelers, hangers-on, hetaeras, foreigners, cooks, flutists, doctors, etc. The new genre properties of comedy noticeably changed its form: the role of the chorus became much smaller , the agon disappeared, the choral parts gave way to simple vocal and dance inserts. This is how the middle and then the new Attic comedy was born.

Tragedy. Ancient tragedy names Athens as its first poet Euripides and points to 534 BC. as on the date of the first production of the tragedy during the “Great Dionysia”. This tragedy was distinguished by two significant features: 1) in addition to the choir, an actor performed, who made messages to the choir, exchanged remarks with the choir or with its leader (luminary). 2) the choir took part in the game, portraying a group of people placed in a plot connection with those who the actor represented.

The works of the first tragedians have not been preserved and the nature of the development of plots in the early tragedy is unknown, but the main content of the tragedy was the image of “suffering”. Interest in the problems of “suffering” and its connection with the ways of human behavior was generated by the religious and ethical fermentations of the 6th century, reflecting the formation of the ancient slave society and state, new connections between people, a new phase in the relationship between society and the individual. Problems - myths about heroes belonging to to the basic foundations of polis life, and constituting one of the most important parts in the cultural wealth of the Greek people. Aristotle: Tragedy underwent many changes before it took its final form. At an earlier stage, it had a “satirical” character, was distinguished by a simple plot, a humorous style and an abundance of dance elements; it became a serious work only later. He considers the source of the tragedy to be the improvisations of the “initiators of the dithyramb.” The decisive moment for the emergence of the Attic tragedy was the development of “passions” into a moral problem. The tragedy raised questions of human behavior using the example of the fate of mythological heroes.

However, drama as an independent work of art originated only in Greece, and, moreover, not earlier than the 6th century. BC, and was embodied in the form of tragedy and comedy. After all, drama presupposes greater independence of the human personality and a clash of personalities among themselves, as well as a clash of individuals with nature or society. This could only appear in Greece in connection with the rise and establishment of a democratic society. The individual who once stood out from the clan community had to master the elemental power of the clan and be able to internally understand the life-giving creative forces of the natural world. This is where the cult of such deities, which, of course, dates back to primitive times, came in handy, which was primarily a generalization of precisely these creative processes.

There were always a lot of deities of this kind throughout the entire territory of the primitive world. But during the period of the birth and rise of Greek democracy, Dionysus turned out to be such a deity, whose cult from the non-Greek areas of Thrace in the north, Asia Minor in the east and Crete in the south swept like a violent whirlwind throughout Greece during the 7th-6th centuries. BC.

This orgiastic cult captured the imagination of the Greeks of that time. The cult participants themselves represented themselves as Dionysus, who had another name - Bacchus, and therefore were called Bacchantes and Bacchants. And since Dionysus was nothing more than a generalization of the creatively productive processes of nature and society, he was thought to be embodied in every living creature, which seemed to be torn to pieces and then resurrected, like the deity himself. This undoubtedly contributed to the emergence and growth of various kinds of ideas about the struggle of one individuality with another, that is, the emergence and growth of a dramatic understanding of life.

Dionysian delight and orgasm by its very nature destroyed all barriers between people, and therefore the former clan and aristocratic nobility in relation to this new deity were already on the same level with the lower strata of the population. That is why the religion of Dionysus from the very beginning came into conflict with the former, aristocratic Olympian gods and quickly defeated them, and Dionysus himself now seemed to be the son of Zeus and was also placed on Olympus, to which he had previously had nothing to do. Consequently, the main source of Greek drama during the period of rising democracy was rooted primarily in the profound Dionysian reform of the former Olympian, and in particular Homeric, mythology. It is known that it was the rulers of the 6th century. BC. propagated the cult of Dionysus in their countries. So, for example, the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, who relied on democratic strata and pursued an anti-aristocratic policy, established the festival of the Great Dionysius in Athens, and it was under Pisistratus that the first tragedy was staged in Athens. Another tyrant, Cleisthenes, who ruled in the city of Sikyon, handed over to Dionysus the holiday that had previously been celebrated in honor of the local hero Adrastus.

The path from the cult of Dionysus to Greek classical tragedy as a work of art was very complex and long, although it was passed in Greece with incredible speed, just as the classical period of Greek literature itself passed incredibly quickly.

2. The forms that the main source of the tragedy took.

a) Aristotle speaks of the origin of tragedy “from the singers of praise.” The dithyramb was indeed a choral song in honor of Dionysus. The tragedy, therefore, arose from the alternating singing of the lead singer and the choir: the lead singer gradually becomes an actor, and the choir was the very basis of the tragedy. Based on the three great Greek tragedians - Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides - one can quite clearly establish the evolution of the chorus in Greek classical drama. This evolution was a gradual decline in the importance of the chorus, starting from those tragedies of Aeschylus, where the chorus itself is a character, and ending with tragedies and represented nothing more than a kind of musical intermission.

b) The same Aristotle speaks about the origin of the tragedy from the Satmra game. Satyrs are humanoid demons with strongly pronounced goat-like elements (horns, beard, hooves, unkempt fur), and sometimes with a horse's tail.

The goat, like the bull, was closely related to the cult of Dionysus. Dionysus was often represented as a goat, and goats were sacrificed to him. Here was the idea that God himself was torn to pieces so that people could taste the divinity of Dionysus himself under the guise of goat meat. The word tragedy itself, translated from Greek, literally means either “song of the goats” or “song of the goats” (tragos - goat and ode - song).

c) It is necessary to recognize the folklore origin of drama in general. Ethnographers and art historians have collected significant material from the history of different peoples about the primitive collective game, which was accompanied by singing and dancing, consisted of parts of a lead singer and a choir or two choirs and initially had a magical meaning, because in this way they thought of influencing nature.

d) It is quite natural that in primitive religious and labor rituals those elements that later led to the development of separate types of drama or to vicissitudes within one drama were not yet differentiated. Therefore, a mixture of the sublime and base, serious and humorous is one of the features of these primitive beginnings of drama, which later led to the origin of tragedy and comedy from the same Dionysian source.

e) In the city of Eleusis, mysteries were given, which depicted the abduction of her daughter Persephone from Demeter by Pluto. The dramatic element in Greek cults could not help but influence the development of drama in the dithyramb and could not help but contribute to the isolation of artistic and dramatic moments from religious rituals. Therefore, in science there is a firmly established theory about the influence of the Eleusinian mysteries on the development of the tragedy in Athens.

f) The theory of the origin of tragedy from the cult of the spirit of the dead, and in particular from the cult of heroes, has also been put forward. Of course, the cult of heroes could not be the only source of tragedy, but it was of great importance for tragedy already in view of the fact that tragedy was almost exclusively based on heroic mythology.

g) Almost every tragedy contains scenes of mourning for certain heroes, so there was also a theory about the phrenetic origin of the tragedy (tbrenos - in Greek “funeral lament”). But frenos also could not be the only source of tragedy.

h) It was also pointed out that there was a mimic dance at the grave of the heroes. This point is also very important. i) At a certain stage of development, a serious tragedy separated from. funny satyr drama. And from mythological tragedy and satyr drama a non-mythological comedy was separated. This differentiation is a certain stage in the development of Greek drama.

3. Tragedy before Aeschylus.

Not a single tragedy has survived before Aeschylus. According to Aristotle, drama originated in the Peloponnese, among the Dorian population. However, drama received its development only in the much more advanced Attica, where tragedy and satyr drama were staged on the festival of the Great (or City) Dionysia (March - April), and on another festival of Dionysus, the so-called Lenaea (January - February) - mainly comedy; At the Rural Dionysia (December - January), plays that had already been performed in the city were staged. We know the name of the first Athenian tragedian and the date of the first production of the tragedy. It was Thespis who first staged the tragedy at the Great Dionysia in 534. A number of innovations and the titles of some tragedies are attributed to Thespis, but the reliability of this information is questionable. A contemporary of the famous Aeschylus was Phrynichus (approx. 511-476), to whom, among others, the tragedies “The Taking of Miletus” and “The Phoenician Women”, which gained great fame, are attributed. Later Pratin acted, becoming famous for his satyr dramas, of which he had more than tragedies. All these tragedians were eclipsed by Aeschylus.

4. The structure of the tragedy.

Aeschylus' tragedies are already distinguished by their complex structure. Undoubtedly, the development path of this structure was long. The tragedy began with a prologue, by which we must understand the beginning of the tragedy before the first performance of the choir. The first performance of the choir, or more precisely, the first part of the choir, is a parod of tragedy (parod in Greek means “performance”, “passage”). After the parod, the tragedy alternated between the so-called episodies, that is, dialogical parts (episodies means “entry” - dialogue in relation to the chorus was initially something secondary), and stasims, the so-called “standing songs of the choir”, “song of the choir in a motionless state” . The tragedy ended with an exodus, exodus, or final song of the choir. It is also necessary to point out the combined singing of the choir and actors, which could take place in different places of the tragedy and usually had an excited-crying character, which is why it was called kommos (copto in Greek means “I hit,” that is, in this case, “I hit myself in the chest.” "). These parts of the tragedy can be clearly traced in the works of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides that have come down to us.

Works of Aeschylus.

The first great Greek tragedian to gain worldwide recognition, Aeschylus, lived in Greece in the first half of the 5th century. BC, in that era, which both the Greeks themselves and all subsequent culture have always regarded as an era of greatest upsurge - social, political, ideological and artistic. Greece, which went through the decomposition of the communal-tribal system, created a state instead of tribal authorities: first an aristocratic and then a democratic republic

Aeschylus (525-456) came from a noble agricultural family. He was born in Eleusis, near Athens. Aeschylus wrote at least 80 plays - tragedies and satirical dramas. Only 7 tragedies have reached us in their entirety; only excerpts remain from the remaining plays. "Oresteia", "Prik.Prometheus". The range of ideas that Aeschylus puts forward in his tragedies is striking in its complexity: the progressive development of human civilization, the defense of the democratic order of Athens and its opposition to Persian despotism, a number of religious and philosophical issues - the gods and their dominion over the world, the fate and personality of man, etc. In the tragedies of Aeschylus, gods, titans, and heroes of amazing spiritual power act. They often embody philosophical, moral and political ideas, and therefore their characters are outlined somewhat generally. Aeschylus's work was religious and mythological. The poet believes that the gods rule the world, but despite this, his people are not weak-willed creatures subordinate to the gods. According to Aeschylus, man is endowed with a free mind and will and acts according to his own understanding. Aeschylus believes in fate, or fate, which even the gods obey. Tragedy "Chained Prometheus". Zeus is depicted here not as the bearer of truth and justice, but as a tyrant who intended to destroy the human race and who condemns Prometheus, the savior of humanity, who rebelled against his power, to eternal torment. The tragedy has little action, but it is full of high drama. In the tragic conflict, the titan wins, whose will was not broken by the lightning of Zeus. Prometheus is depicted as a fighter for the freedom and reason of people, he is the discoverer of all the benefits of civilization, and is punished for “excessive love for people.”

Historical basis and ideological meaning.

The historical basis for such a tragedy could only be the evolution of primitive society, the transition from the bestial state of man to civilization. The tragedy wants to convince the reader and viewer, first of all, of the need to fight against all tyranny and despotism in defense of the weak and oppressed person. This struggle, according to Aeschylus, is possible thanks to civilization, and civilization is possible thanks to constant progress. Aeschylus lists the benefits of civilization in great detail. These are, first of all, theoretical sciences: arithmetic, grammar, astronomy, then technology and practice in general: the art of construction, mining, navigation, the use of animals, medicine. Finally, this is mantika (interpretation of dreams and omens, bird fortune telling and fortune telling by the entrails of animals). Aeschylus demonstrates human strength in the broader sense of the word.

He paints an image of a fighter, a moral winner in conditions of physical suffering. The human spirit cannot be broken by anything, no suffering or threats, if it is armed with deep ideology and an iron will. Finally, this entire apotheosis of the struggle for freedom and progress of mankind is conceived by Aeschylus not in terms of an abstract narrative, but precisely as a story about the struggle with the supreme deity Zeus. This is not yet a direct criticism of religion, since it comes from Prometheus, who himself is a god and even a cousin of Zeus, but in any case it is a sharp criticism of the mythological Olympus: and Prometheus openly speaks of his hatred of all the gods who subjected him to such torture .

"Bound Prometheus" by Aeschylus, unlike his other tragedies, is striking in its brevity and insignificant content of choral parts. This deprives him of that broad and grandiose oratorical genre that is inherent in other tragedies of Aeschylus. There is no oratorio in it, because the choir does not play any role here at all. The dramaturgy of "Bound Prometheus" is also very weak (only monologues and dialogues). The only genre left that is superbly represented in tragedy is the genre of declamation.

d) Characters.

The characters of "Bound Prometheus" are the same as in the early tragedies of Aeschylus: they are monolithic, static, monochromatic and not marked by any contradictions.

Prometheus himself is a superman, an unyielding personality, standing above all hesitations and contradictions, not agreeing to any conciliation or conciliation. Prometheus regards what is happening as the will of fate (which he speaks about no less than six times in the tragedy: 105, 375, 511, 514, 516, 1052; the Oceanids also talk about this - 936). The image of Prometheus represents that classical harmony of fate and heroic will, which is generally a huge and valuable achievement of the Greek genius: fate predetermines everything, but this does not necessarily lead to powerlessness, lack of will, or insignificance; it can lead to freedom, to great feats, to powerful heroism. In such cases, fate not only does not contradict the heroic will, but, on the contrary, justifies and elevates it. This is Achilles in Homer, Eteocles in Aeschylus, but even more so is Prometheus. Therefore, the lack of ordinary everyday psychology in Prometheus is compensated here by the monolithic nature of the hero’s powerful deeds, presented, albeit statistically, but sublimely, majestically.

The remaining heroes of "Bound Prometheus" are characterized by one leading feature, quite immovable, but less significant than that of the main hero of the tragedy. Ocean is a good-natured old man who wants to help Prometheus and is ready to compromise, without taking into account the person to whom he offers his services. Io is a physically and mentally suffering woman, distraught with pain. Hephaestus and Hermes are mechanical executors of the will of Zeus, one against his own will, the other insensitive and thoughtless, like an unreasoning servant.

All these characters can be called characters in the figurative sense of the word. These are general diagrams, or mechanical embodiments of an idea or thought.

e) Development of action.

If by action we mean the transition from one state to another, opposite to it, as a result of the relationship of capable heroes, then in “Bound Prometheus” there is no action, and, consequently, no development of it.

What happens between the scenes of Prometheus being chained and overthrown consists exclusively of monologues and dialogues, which in no way move the action forward and in any case do not reverse it. The monologues and dialogues of "Bound Prometheus" are highly artistic, but they are completely undramatic.

The only driving motive can be considered only the future liberation of Prometheus by Hercules, which is predicted by Prometheus himself. But this is only a prediction, and, moreover, about a very distant future, and there are no hints of even the slightest signs of this liberation in the present in the tragedy.

f) Artistic style.

The mere fact that the protagonists of the tragedy are gods and even of the heroes there is only one Io and that these gods are presented in a serious manner testifies to the monumentality that is characteristic of all the tragedies of Aeschylus. As for the other main point of Aeschylus's style, namely pathetism, it is here significantly weakened by large lengths of ideological, theoretical and philosophical content and long conversations, often also of a rather calm nature.

There is pathosity primarily in the initial monody of Prometheus, where Titan complains about the injustice of Zeus, in the scene with the distraught Io, and, finally, in the depiction of the catastrophe in nature during the overthrow of Prometheus into the underworld. However, this pathos is too overloaded with rational content, namely criticism of the despotism of Zeus, and is devoid of those features of frenzy that we found in other tragedies of Aeschylus. But the monumental-pathetic style of "Bound Prometheus" is still evident. Its specificity lies in the general tone of the tragedy, which can be called laudatory-rhetorical. The entire tragedy "Bound Prometheus" is nothing more than a laudatory-rhetorical declamation addressed to its only true hero - Prometheus. Only such an understanding of the artistic style of this tragedy will help to comprehend all its lengths and its non-dramatic setting.

Indeed, Prometheus’s stories and conversations about the past, in particular about his good deeds, without moving the action forward at all, give the image of Prometheus an unusually deep meaning, elevate and saturate ideologically. In the same way, conversations with Oceanus and Hermes, again without developing the action at all, very expressively depict to us the stamina and willpower of Prometheus. The scene with Io immortalizes Prometheus as a sage and seer who knows the secrets of life and existence, although he cannot use these secrets.

In addition to the prophecy of his liberation, Prometheus here also talks a lot about the wanderings of Io with a long list of geographical points through which she has passed and must still pass. Prometheus is credited here with extensive geographical knowledge, which, undoubtedly, was then the latest achievement of science. This story, completely devoid of any drama and even the exact opposite of it, is nevertheless stylistically very important as an increasing depiction of the wisdom of Prometheus.

The choruses in Prometheus Bound are also undramatic. If you approach them from a declamatory-rhetorical point of view, you can immediately see how necessary they are to deepen the general monumental-pathetic style of the tragedy. Parod speaks of the Oceanids' compassion for Prometheus. The first stasim tells us how the north, and the south, and the west, and the east, and the Amazons, and all of Asia, and Colchis, and the Scythians, and Persia, and the seas, and even Hades cry for Prometheus - is this not enough to describe the personality of the main character in relation to everything around him? The second stasim - about the need to subjugate weak beings - and the third stasim - about the inadmissibility of unequal marriages - again emphasize the greatness of Prometheus’ work, which only he is capable of, but weak and downtrodden beings are not capable of.

Finally, the geological catastrophe at the end of the tragedy again demonstrates to us the powerful will of Prometheus, capable of resisting absolutely everything, including all of nature and all the gods who command it. Thus, what is the development of action in “Bound Prometheus” is a gradual and steady intensification of the tragedy of Prometheus’s personality and a gradual declamatory and rhetorical increase in the general monumental-pathetic style of this tragedy.

g) Socio-political orientation.

The ideology of this tragedy, even taken in its abstract form, differs sharply from other tragedies of Aeschylus in its attitude towards Zeus. In other tragedies of Aeschylus we find enthusiastic hymns to Zeus, theological discussions about him, and in any case, constant veneration of him, some kind of directly biblical exaltation of him. In contrast, Zeus of "Bound Prometheus" is depicted as a tyrant, a cruel despot, a treacherous traitor, not omnipotent, a cunning and a coward. When we begin to delve into the style of "Bound Prometheus", it turns out that this attitude towards Zeus is not just some kind of abstract theory and not an accidental appendage to the tragedy, but is carried out in the most daring, daring and even rebellious form, with a revolutionary pathos, with educational conviction and journalistic fervor. This is undoubtedly an educational tragedy, this is an enthusiastic word of praise to the fighter against tyranny.

7. General characteristics.

Aeschylus is a champion of the enlightened aristocracy, which fights against the savagery and barbarism of old times in defense of individuals united in a single state - the polis. A moderately democratized aristocratic polis is for Aeschylus a constant subject of respect and protection. In religious and philosophical terms, Aeschylus also argues in the spirit of the cultural upsurge of his time, freeing his Zeus from all vices and shortcomings and interpreting him as the principle of world justice and constantly praising him.

However, Aeschylus' attitude to mythology is quite critical even without Prometheus. Fragment 70" says: "Zeus is the ether, Zeus is the earth, Zeus is the heavens, Zeus is everything and what is above this." In the "Oresteia" under the guise of Zeis and Dickey, absolute cosmic moralism is preached, which is even higher than individual mythological names. Here is a frank criticism of anthropomorphism. The ardent patriotism of an emancipated aristocrat and an Athenian citizen forced Aeschylus to trace his socio-political and religious-philosophical ideas to the most distant antiquity, finding them there already in a developed form and thereby justifying them with the entire direction of human history.

To characterize the monumental-pathetic style of Aeschylus, not only variations of its two main elements taken separately - monumentality and pathos - are important, but also different forms of their joint functioning in the general style of tragedies. This style, based on the elemental foundations of life, which the religion of Dionysus spoke about, also demonstrates one or another of their design or crystallization in very clear images, which cannot otherwise be called plastic. The main forms of manifestation of Aeschylus’s main monumental-pathetic style did not go beyond the archaic style in general, since everything individual in him, despite the brightness of its design, was always determined not by itself, but by the higher and very harsh laws of life.

An analysis of the artistic style of Aeschylus's tragedies reveals the great efforts of the great genius to depict the wild riot of the dark forces of hoary antiquity, but not just to depict, but to show their transformation and enlightenment, their new organization and plastic design. This occurs as a result of the development of the life of the emancipated polis. It is the polis that is the transformative and organizing force, thanks to which a person is freed from this primitive savagery. But this requires a strong and young, powerful and heroic policy of rising slavery, which, in turn, requires powerful heroes, endowed with the greatest heroic ability to fight the old and create the new. Only the polis, the ascending polis, explains to us in Aeschylus his new moralistic religion, his new civilized mythology, his new monumental-pathetic style and artistic design.

Aeschylus walked with his age along the path of ascending slave-owning democracy, which at first reflected the enormous power of the new class and its titanic efforts to create a new type of culture. Archaic mythology, monumental-pathetic style and titanism do not form an external appendage here, but are a single and inseparable whole with the socio-political life of a young rising democracy. Titanism of Aeschylus is,

ALONG with holidays and festive customs, public performances are of the greatest importance for understanding folk morals. It goes without saying that our description of the Greek theater will necessarily be limited to highlighting the features characteristic of Greek sexual life; the reader's knowledge of Greek dramatic art, at least of the surviving dramatic works, is assumed as a self-evident postulate of general culture. At the same time, a circumstance will emerge that will amaze many, although there is nothing unexpected in it for the connoisseur: on the Greek stage, the homosexual components of life are not only in no way ignored or obscured for any reason, but, on the contrary, play an important, sometimes a dominant role; therefore many facts relating to subsequent chapters will be mentioned or detailed here.

I. ATTICA TRAGEDY

From Aeschylus and Sophocles, seven completely preserved works have come down to us, and from Euripides - nineteen. First of all, they will not be discussed, but only those Attic tragedies that have been preserved in fragments. The complete tragedies are much more widely known than the fragments, so it seemed more important to me to give some information about the latter.

1. AESCHYLUS

Of the dramas of Aeschylus, known to us only from random quotes, we can mention the tragedy “Laius”, since here, judging by the content, it was about love for young men. It formed the initial part of the tetralogy, with which the poet won the first award in the 78th Olympiad (467 BC), under the Archon Theagenis; the second, third and fourth parts were represented by the tragedies “Oedipus”, “Seven against Thebes” and the satyr drama “The Sphinx”.

Unfortunately, only two minor glosses have survived from Laius; however, we are able to say something about its plot. There are many arguments in favor of the fact that Laius’s love for the young man Chrysippus, the beautiful son of Pelops, formed the background to the further tragic fate of the ill-fated king. According to many Greek legends, Laius was considered

the inventor of love for young men. To this we can also add the message that Pelops, the father who had lost his son, uttered a terrible curse to the kidnapper, which was secretly passed down by inheritance to the son and grandchildren of Laius, until the power of the curse was undermined by the death of Oedipus, who, after a life full of sorrows, was at the will of heaven was cleansed from sin. Here it is necessary to avoid the gross mistake that other people who are otherwise knowledgeable about antiquity make; the father's curse is caused not by the fact that Laius fell in love with the young man and became intimate with him, and therefore not by the “unnatural nature” of his passion, as one might assume, taking into account modern views on pederasty, but only and exclusively because Laius kidnaps and kidnaps the young man against the will of his father: what makes Lai guilty is not the perverted direction of his passion, but the violence he used. Abduction is undoubtedly, on the whole, the most common beginning of all sexual relations of primitive times, and we know that the abduction of women and boys as a religious ceremony can take place even in highly civilized times; but in like manner we find everywhere that abduction must remain imaginary, and that the use of real violence is condemned both by public opinion and by law. We will see that this view of Laius’ guilt is correct from a comparison of this plot with the form of kidnapping common in Crete, which will be discussed later.

Thus, we have the right to say that a separate theme of this tragedy of Aeschylus was the curse to which Laius, who violated the generally accepted norm, was doomed: the hero thought that he was forced to kidnap the boy, while he could ask for this wonderful gift freely and openly. The curse called upon his head contains a terrible irony: after his marriage, the king will be denied what was for him the main joy of his youth - his beloved youth. His marriage remains childless, and when, despite fate, he nevertheless gives birth to a son, a catastrophic coupling of fate dooms him to death at the hands of the heir he so passionately longed for. Guided by the blind rage of fate, the hand of the parricide takes revenge for the sinful violation of the boy’s free will, which Laius himself had previously committed. But death at the hands of his son is a consequence of the appearance of the terrible Sphinga; to free his country from this destruction, Laius goes to Delphi to ask for advice or help from the luminous god; on the way back he meets his unrecognized son, who sheds his father's blood. Suddenly, a new light illuminates the deep meaning of the riddle of the Sphinga, to which Oedipus answered: “A person at the dawn of life is fresh and full of joyful hopes, but at sunset he is a weak and broken creature.” One of these pitiable creatures was Lai, and the son who struck his father turned out to be the only person smart enough to solve the riddle. If someone is not touched by such tragedy, if - in accordance with modern views - someone sees Laius’s guilt in loving the son of Pelops - well, the poet did not write for him.

Elsewhere I have spoken of the widely held view that there is no trace of pederasty in Homer's poems, and it was only in the later era of degeneration that the Greeks found traces of it in Homer. In his drama “The Myrmidons,” Aeschylus shows that the bond of affection between Achilles and Patroclus was interpreted as a sexual relationship, and for the first time this happened not in an era of decline, but in the time of the most beautiful spring flowering of Hellenic culture. The drama contained an episode in which Achilles, gravely insulted by Agamemnon, angrily refrains from participating in the battle and consoles himself in his tent with Patroclus. The tragic chorus was represented by the Achilles Myrmidons, who eventually persuade the hero to allow them to participate in the battle under the command of Patroclus. The drama ended with the death of the latter and the hopeless grief of Achilles.

2. SOPHOCLES

Fragments surviving from Sophocles' dramatic works often speak of love for boys and young men.

This will not surprise those familiar with the poet's life. The great tragedian, whose male beauty is still eloquently testified by the famous statue in the Lateran better than other monuments, was endowed with extraordinary charm and comeliness as a boy. He excelled so much in dance, music and the hymn arts that a victory wreath was often placed on his black hair. When the Greeks were preparing for a holiday in honor of the glorious battle of Salamis, young Sophocles seemed such a perfect embodiment of youthful beauty that he was placed at the head of a round dance of young men - naked and with a lyre in his hands (see ????? ???????? ?? and Ath., i, 20).

The dazzling hero of the Iliad, Achilles, in the play The Worshipers of Achilles, which was most likely a satyr drama, appears before us in the guise of a beautiful boy. It is very likely that the action of the drama, of which a few meager fragments have survived, took place on the top of Pelion or in the cave of Chiron, the famous centaur and teacher of heroes. The beauty of the young man can be judged by the line: “He throws arrows with his eyes” [Sophocles, phragm. 151; translation? . ? . Zelinsky]. A longer fragment of nine lines (Sophocles, 153) compares love to a snowball that melts in the hands of a playing boy. It can be assumed that by this Chiron is hinting at his vague attraction to the boy. In the end, Thetis takes her son from his mentor (Sophocles, phragm. 157, where is the expression used in an erotic sense), and the satyrs try to console Chiron, who is experiencing the loss of his lover. It is likely that the satyrs who composed the chorus also acted as admirers of the boy; it has been suggested that at the end they had to retire “deceived and tamed.”

Known from the Iliad (xxiv, 257), the gentle son of Priam Troilus, whose youthful beauty was already admired by the tragedian Phrynichus,

Sophocles' drama of the same name acted as Achilles' favorite. All we know about the plot of the play is that Achilles mistakenly kills his pet during some gymnastic exercises. In other words, Achilles suffers the same misfortune as Apollo, who, as a result of an accident while throwing a discus, killed his beloved Hyacinth. Achilles mourned the death of Troilus; from his crying came the only verse in which Troilus is named????????? , or a boy who is not inferior in intelligence to his husband (Sophocles, phragm. 562).

There is no doubt that obscene expressions were found even in the dramas of Sophocles (for example, phragm. 388 ?????????; phragm. 390 ???????????; phragm. 974: ?????).

3. EURIPIDES

The story of Chrysippus, the young favorite of Laius, also served as the plot for the drama of Euripides. Named after the main character, the drama “Chri-sipp” was based on the personal experience of the poet himself. Among the most beautiful young men who attracted strangers to the streets of Athens in that era was Agathon, the son of Tisamenes. Aristophanes gives this Agathon a well-known witty characterization in “Women at the Thesmophoria”; he plays an important role in Plato's Symposium; Aristotle highly regarded him as a tragic poet. To his contemporaries he seemed to be a god who had descended from heaven and walked in human form on the earth. But many sought to achieve the love of this ephebe; its beauty led to the scene of jealousy between Socrates and Alcibiades, which is so charmingly described by Plato. They say that even the scoffer Euripides was bewitched by the extraordinary charms of this amazing handsome man, and that it was for him that he wrote and staged his “Chrysippus.” If this statement is true - and we have no reason to doubt it - we can conjecture that the hero of the play, Chrysippus, was created in the image of the beautiful Agathon, and that the poet created himself in the image of Laius. In Cicero (Tusc. disp., iv, 33, 71) we find a remark from which it is clear that at the basis of the drama lay lustful sensuality, and that the desires of Laius, seeking the favor of the young man, were revealed here quite clearly and openly. It must be understood that we are talking about a drama performed in public; Of course, both Euripides and the beautiful Agathon were present. At the end of the fifth century, in Athens, the famous poet sought in this way to win the favor of an outstanding young man, equally famous for his beauty and refined education.

The few fragments do not, of course, provide detailed information about the content of the tragedy. Euripides is of the widely held opinion that Laius was the first to introduce youthful love into Greece. Laius also seems to have resisted his passion, especially if we take into account the conviction of the Greeks

is that love is a kind of illness, it upsets the serenity of the spirit, and therefore it should be fought with the weapon of reason. Like Medea, resisting her love for Jason (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 720), Laius (Euripides, phragm 841) complains about that people know what is right, but do the opposite. Perhaps the drama ended with the death of Chrysippus, since Euripides wrote a tragedy; due to the inconsistency of tradition, we are not able to say more.

II. ATTIC COMEDY

Greek comedy is generated by overflowing pious delight, an expression of gratitude to Dionysus, the greatest destroyer of worries and giver of joy, the ever-young god of fertility of a generous, invariably self-renewing nature. Therefore, comedy abounds in obscenities, which are inextricably linked with the veneration of the spirits of fertility. Since comedy is a grotesquely distorted reflection of life, in Greek comedy sex life comes to the fore everywhere, appearing before us as a seething cauldron of witches, a monstrous orgy in which, stunning the viewer, as if around the gigantic axis of the grotesque phallus, endlessly confused sexual desires and all kinds of types of love pleasures. Love for boys has almost the same meaning in comedy as love for women. It goes without saying that Greek comedy, like all other types of poetry, is simply unthinkable without love for boys; This love is in no way the underside of the grotesque humor of Dionysian debauchery, but serves as one of the focuses on which Greek, especially Attic, comedy is concentrated. But, as already said, we will have to deal with distorted reflection. That is why the gentle speeches of the modest young man Eros, who turned into the rude Priapus, are not heard here. Harita, of course, will hide her face in shame, but science cannot ignore these facts in silence.

1. FERECRATE

From the unknown comedy of Pherecrates (phragm 135) an offensive saying has come to us. Reproaching Alcibiades for being too accommodating to men, the character of Pherecrates also vilifies him as a threat to women: “Alcibiades, who, it seems, was not a husband at all, has now become the husband of all wives” 36.

36 Wed Suetonius, "Caesar", 32 Cuno pater eum (sc Caesarem) omnium muherum virum et omnium virorum muherem apellat, Cicero, "Against Verres", and, 78, 192 at homo magis vir inter muheres, impura inter viros muheroula profem non potest

2. EUPOLIS

Eupolis of Athens is a more generous source for us. Its heyday occurred during the Peloponnesian War, and around 411 BC. he died fighting for his homeland at the Hellespont. He was one of the most subtle minds among the authors of Ancient Comedy, and for many years after his death the cheerful muse Eupolis enjoyed universal love due to her wit and charm. No less than seven of his comedies out of fourteen or seventeen (according to various counts) were awarded the first prize. In the fourth year of the 89th Olympiad (421 BC), Eupolis staged the comedy “Autolus”, a revised version of which was performed a second time ten years later. Autolycus was the son of Lycon and Rodia, a youth of such beauty that the admiring Xenophon (Symposium, i, 9) wrote about him like this: “... just as a luminous object that appears at night attracts the eyes of everyone, so here the beauty of Autolycus attracted the eyes of everyone to him” [translation by S. A. Sobolevsky]. This Autolycus was the favorite of Callias, famous for his wealth and frivolous lifestyle, who, in commemoration of the victory of the beautiful youth in pankratia at the Panathenaic Games in 422 BC. gave a feast in his honor, described by Xenophon in the famous “Symposium”. The life of Autolycus ended tragically: after the capture of the city by Lysander, he was executed by order of the Thirty Tyrants.

Only the following can be said with certainty about the content of the play: the love of Callias and Autolycus was presented here in an extremely unfavorable light, and even the parents of the young man, who took part in the feast, were showered with ridicule and dirt; The feast itself was ridiculed (Ath., ?, 216e; Eupolis, frag. 56: ????????? ???? ?? ????????? ??? ???? ??????? ? ??????? ???????; phragm. 61: ?????????? (masturbation)).

415 BC Eupolis presented a lively comedy at the city Dionysia Baptae (“Sprinklers”), where the private life of Alcibiades was cruelly ridiculed. In these sprinklers you should probably see Alcibiades' comrades organizing night orgies in honor of the goddess of debauchery Cotitto and imitating the dances of women at them; Voluptuous ablutions and cleansing played a prominent role here. From one passage of Lucian (Adv. Ind. , 27: “And you did not blush while reading this play”) makes it clear that the comedy was replete with obscenities.

The Flatterers (produced in 423 BC) was apparently entirely dedicated to the love of young men. Here Demos is depicted putting himself up for sale, and in fragment 265 we hear his complaint: “By Poseidon, my door knows no rest,” so many visitors are eager to look at him. Demos, the son of Pyrilampos, a wealthy Athenian and friend of Pericles, also appears as a famous favorite of Aristophanes (“Wasps,” 97; cf. play on words in Plato’s “Gorgias,” 481 d). The play also contains a conversation between Alcibiades and B. - a person unknown to us - where Alcibiades is ridiculed for some reprehensible innovations, especially since he himself boasts of them. Under?????????? the simplicity of Spartan meals was implied, while the expression “fry in a frying pan” hints at some luxury that Alcibiades was so keen on. But B., apparently, gives this word a sensual meaning: according to

Court, ????????? ? means “to have a penchant for boys” (????????? ???????), so Alcibiades has the opportunity to boast of another of his achievements: he taught people to start drinking early in the morning 37. The Athenians undoubtedly condemned those who began to drink in the morning; from this point of view, an interesting passage from Baton is in which the father laments that, under the influence of an admirer, his son became addicted to this bad habit and now cannot get rid of it. Pliny also names Alcibiades as the inventor of this innovation.

3. ARISTOPHANES

We will not discuss the significance of the comedian Aristophanes and his outstanding role in the history of Greek comedy, but will only briefly dwell on the historical background of individual comedies and their relationship. Within the framework of our topic, excerpts from the following comedies can be given:

(a) "Acharnians" (drama staged in 425 BC)

Here we find a phallic song (262 units):

Thales, friend of Bacchus,

Lover of nighttime debauchery,

Both boys and women!

Six years have passed. And here we go again

I pray to you when I return to the house. Enough grief, enough fighting!

Tired of the Lamahi!

[translation by A. Piotrovsky]

(b) "Women in the Assembly" (staged in 389 or 392 BC)

Lines 877 et seq. A grotesque scene of an amoebaic (alternating) song dispute between an old and young prostitute; the only such scene in all world literature.

OLD WOMAN Why don't the men come? The time has come.

Anointing your face with whitewash

And dressed up in a saffron skirt,

I sit in vain, purring a song,

I coo to catch a passerby.

O Muses, descend upon my lips,

Inspire the sweet Ionian song!

37 Frash. 351: - ?????. ???? ??????????, ?????????? ?? ??? ???????.

?. ?????? ? ...????? ??? ??????????..

?. ...?? ?? ?????? ??????? ?? ???? ????????

? ?????? ?? ????????????? ???? ??????? ?????.

?. ????. ??? ????? ????? ??? ?????? ?????? ?????;

?. ??????????? ?? ????? ?????????? ??? ????? ???.

About drinking in the morning Wed. Baton at Athenaeus, w, 193 p.; also commentary on Aristophanes' Birds, 131; Pliny, Natural. history, xiv, 143; Ath., 519 e.

GIRL Rotten! Hanging out of the window cheekily

And you think while I'm away, my

Enjoy some grapes? Song

Lure a friend? I will sing an answering song.

This joke is at least familiar to the audience,

Still entertaining and akin to comedy.

OLD WOMAN Hang out with the old man! Have fun with it!

And you, dear flutist, take the pipe

And play a song worthy of both of us.

FLUTIST plays. (Sings accompanied by a flute.)

If you want to know bliss,

Sleep, my friend, in my arms.

There's no point in young girls

There is sweetness in us, mature girlfriends.

Of the girls who wants

To be faithful and unchanging

A friend of your heart?

They flutter from one to another.

YOUNG WOMAN (sings accompanied by a flute.)

Don't scold young beauties!

The languid bliss of pleasure

Our lovely figure is breathing.

Breasts are a sweet flower.

You, old woman,

A coffin in lime, a corpse in rouge,

Death misses you.

OLD WOMAN Burst, you nasty girl!

Let your bed collapse,

You'll want to hug a little!

Let the snake lie in the pillows,

Let the snake lick you

You'll want to kiss me a little!

YOUNG WOMAN (sings.) Ah ah ah! I'm tired

Darling doesn't come.

Mother left the yard

We know where, we just can’t say.

(To the old woman.)

I conjure you, grandma,

Call Orthagoras if

You like to have fun yourself.

OLD WOMAN Quickly in the Ionian style

You will stop the itch of sin!

Or maybe you can adapt the lesbian way...

GIRL I'm having fun dear

You can't take it away! Hour of love

You won’t ruin mine, you won’t kidnap me!

OLD WOMAN Sing as much as you want! Bend like a caress! They will come to me first, and then to you.

GIRL They will come to your funeral, old man!

OLD WOMAN Old women don’t chase novelty! Are my years sad for you?

GIRL What else? Your blush, or what? Rubbing?

OLD WOMAN Why tease?

GIRL Why are you looking out the window?

OLD WOMAN I sing about Epigon, a faithful friend.

GIRL Rotten old age is your only friend!

OLD WOMAN Now you'll see your friend - he'll come to see me.

Yes, here he is.

A YOUTH appears in the distance

GIRL Leprosy! Not you at all

Here he is looking.

OLD WOMAN Me.

GIRL Skinny consumption!

Let him prove it himself. I'll leave the window.

OLD WOMAN And me. Look how noble she is!

YOUTH (wearing a wreath and holding a cup in his hand, he enters the orchestra and sings.)

If I could sleep with a young girl,

If I didn't lie with my snub nose at first,

Rotten old woman! Disgust!

This is unbearable for a free person!

OLD WOMAN (looks out the window.)

Even if you cry, lie down! Zeus is my witness!

You didn't get along with a fool, Hariksena.

The just law dictates,

We live by democratic rules.

I'll watch out for what he'll do now.

(Deleted again.)

YOUTH Send me, oh gods, that beauty,

To which I left the drinking bout, languishing.

YOUNG WOMAN in the window.

I deceived the damned old woman -

She disappeared, believing that I would leave too.

But here is the one I always remembered. (Sings.)

Oh come, oh come!

My dear, come to me!

Stay with me for a sleepless night

For sweet, happy games.

Passion endlessly attracts me

To your resin curls.

Limitless Desire

Burns with a languid flame.

Descend, I pray, Eros,

To have him in my bed

It turned out right away!

YOUTH (sings under the girl’s window.)

Oh come, oh come! Dear friend, hurry up

Open the doors for me! If you don’t open it, I’ll lie down here on the ground in the dust,

My life! I thirst for your breast, stroke it with my hot hand

And press your hip. Why, Cyprida, do I burn with passion for her?

Descend, I pray, Eros,

So that she is in my bed

It turned out right away.

Where to find the song and where are the words to convey the ferocity

My longing? Heart friend! I beg you, have mercy!

Open up and be gentle! You tore my heart apart.

My golden-winged concern! Daughter of Cypris!

You are a song bee! Weasel Harit! Joy! Smile of happiness!

Open up and be gentle! You tore my heart apart!

(He knocks furiously on the door.)

OLD WOMAN Why are you knocking? Are you looking for me?

YOUTH Not at all.

OLD WOMAN Did you knock on my door?

YOUTH I'm lost!

OLD WOMAN So why did you rush here with a torch?

YOUTH Was looking for friends from the deme of Onanists 38.

OLD WOMAN How?
YOUTH Look for the old nags yourself.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprida, whether you like it or not...

YOUTH We are still sixty years old

No need. We postponed them until tomorrow.

Those who are not even twenty are in use now.

OLD WOMAN It was like this under the old government, my dear!

Now it’s not the same - now the first move is ours.

YOUTH How do they play dice? The dice player is not with you.

OLD WOMAN If you're not a player, you'll be without lunch.

YOUTH I don't know what you're talking about. I'm knocking on this door!

OLD WOMAN First you must knock on my door.

YOUTH I don’t need a rotten sieve for nothing.

OLD WOMAN You love me, I know. You're surprised

That I am here, in front of the door. Let me hug you!

YOUTH Let me go! I'm afraid of your lover.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH of the notorious painter.

OLD WOMAN Who?

YOUTH Paints funeral vessels

It is for the dead. Go away! He'll notice you here.

OLD WOMAN I know what you thirst for.

YOUTH I know what you mean.

OLD WOMAN I swear by Cyprida, who chose me, I will not let you go!

YOUTH You're delirious, old man!
OLD WOMAN You're talking nonsense. I'll take you to my bed.

YOUTH Why did we buy hooks for buckets?

Wouldn't it be better to have these old pitchforks?

Lower them into a well and pull a bucket on them?

OLD WOMAN Don't mock me, dear, and come to me.

YOUTH Don't you dare force! You are the five hundredth

Contribute part of your property to the treasury first!

OLD WOMAN I'll make you do it! And, I swear by Aphrodite,

It’s nice for me to sleep with such young people.

YOUTH But I have no desire to lie with the old! I will never agree!

OLD WOMAN Witness Zeus, He will force you this is it\

38 Literally: “from the Anaflystian deme.” (Note per.).

YOUTH What is this here?

OLD WOMAN Law. He tells you to spend the night with me.

YOUTH What is in the law? Read it!

OLD WOMAN Read it!

“Women decided when a young man

He wants to sleep with a young girl, first

Let him press the old woman. And he will refuse

Snuggle the old woman and sleep with the young one,

In the legal right of older women,

Grabbing the tourniquet, drag the youngster duty free.”

YOUTH Trouble! I'm afraid of Procrustean tricks.

OLD WOMAN We will make you obey our laws!

YOUTH What if my fellow countryman or friend

Will he give me a ransom?

OLD WOMAN He is not authorized to dispose of the amount in excess of the sum.

YOUTH Can you be saved by an oath?

OLD WOMAN No influence!

YOUTH Should I say that I am a merchant?

OLD WOMAN You'll cry!

YOUTH So what should I do?

OLD WOMAN As I command, come with me.

YOUTH This is violence!

OLD WOMAN Diomedovo!

YOUTH Then heap wormwood on the wedding bed,

Place four bunches of vines, and the mourning

Tie a bandage and funeral

Take out the jugs and pour some water at the door!

OLD WOMAN Then buy me a grave wreath!

YOUTH Of course! If only you live to see the candle

And you won’t crumble like a pinch of dust.

A GIRL comes out of the house.

GIRL Where are you taking him?

OLD WOMAN My! I'm taking it with me.

GIRL Nonsense! He's not the same age as you.

Well, how can a young man spend the night with such an old woman?

You are fit to be a mother, not a mistress.

After all, if you follow the law,

Fill the whole earth with Oedipus.

OLD WOMAN You envy me, oh worthless creature!

And that's why you chatter! I'll take revenge on you! (Leaves).

YOUTH Savior Zeus, beauty, glorious is your feat!

Flower! You took me away from the witch.

For this mercy this very evening

I will repay you with a mighty, hot gift.

[translation by A. Piotrovsky]

4. ALEXID

Alexis was a native of Thurii in Lower Italy, living approximately 392-288. BC. and left, according to the Suda, 245 comedies.

The first of the comedies that interest us is “Agonida” (the name of the hetera). The meager fragments say nothing about its content, but cannot be

I doubt that Misgol from the Attic deme Kollit played a certain role in it. Some authors testify to Misgol's passion for boys, especially those who know how to play the cithara; yes, Aeschines says (Tim., i, 41): “This Misgol, son of Naucrates from the deme of Kollit, is in other respects a beautiful man in soul and body; but he always had a weakness for boys and some kifareds and citharists constantly hover around him.” Antiphanes (phragm 26, 14-18) had previously hinted at it in his “Fishermen”, and Timocles (phragm 30) - in “Sappho”. In “Agonida” (frag. 3) the girl says to her mother: “Mother, please don’t give me away as Misgol, because I don’t play the cithara.”

Fragment 242 (from the comedy “The Dream”): “This young man does not eat garlic, so that when kissing his lover, he would not inspire him with disgust.”

5. TIMOCLUS

In Timocles' comedy "Orestaucledes" a prominent role was played by love affairs with the young men of a certain Autocleides. This meant Autocleidus from Agnus, whom the orator Aeschines mentions in his famous speech against Timarchus (i, 52). The comedian's idea was approximately the following: just as the furies once pursued Orestes, so now a flock of heterae pursues the boy admirer Autocleid; This is indicated by at least fragment 25, which says that at least eleven heterae watch over the unfortunate person even during sleep.

6. MENANDER

Menander of Athens, son of Diopitus and Hegesistrata, lived from 342 to 291. BC, was the nephew of the aforementioned Alexis, the poet of Middle Comedy, who introduced Menander to the art of comedy. Already at the age of 21, Menander won, and although he won the first prize no less than seven times, he can be considered one of those poets who were more appreciated and loved by his descendants than by his contemporaries. We have already talked about his Androgyne, or the Cretans.

Fragment 363 describes the behavior kineda (cinaedus, libertine); the poet here deftly alludes to Ctesippus 39, the son of Chabrias, about whom they said that he even sold the stones from his father’s tombstone, just to continue to indulge in pleasures: “And I, wife, was once a young man, but I did not bathe five times for the day. And now I'm swimming. I didn't even have a thin cloak. And now there is. And there was no fragrant oil. And now there is. I will dye my hair, I will pluck my hair, and soon I will turn into Ctesippus."

39 About Ctesippus, see Diphilus, phragm. 38 (and, 552, Kock) and Timocles, phragm.. (n, 452, Kock); fragm. 480: ?????? , penis and a pet name for a little boy. Wed. Hesychius, s. v. ????????? ????????????? ??? ??? ??????, ?? ???????; Apollodorus, frag. 13, 8; ??? ??? ??????? ????? ????? ?????????? ???" ?????? ?????. Other sexual allusions, witticisms and obscenities from Attic comedy are collected by me in Anthropophyteia, vu, 1910, SS. 173, 495.

RETROSPECTIVE AND ADDITIONAL REMARKSABOUT TRAGIC AND COMIC POETRY

Ancient tragedy still rarely uses erotic motives; With the exception of Aeschylus's "Agamemnon", the theme of which is the murder of Agamemnon by an unfaithful wife, overcome by frantic jealousy, we can hardly point to a single tragedy whose core would be love, if we do not take into account the homoerotic motives already discussed. At first, it was believed that love stories with tragic endings were not suitable for allowing people to feel the sublimity of tragic fate at the festival of God, the giver of the highest delight.

Already Sophocles used love passion much more often, but only as an auxiliary motive: an example of this is Medea’s love for Jason in “The Colchis Women” or Hippodamia for Pelops in “Oenomaus.” As the main and only theme, love passion appears only in one of his dramas - in “Phaedra”, whose axis around which the entire action revolves was Phaedra’s irresistible love for her beautiful stepson Hippolytus, pushing the queen to commit a crime. This is the oldest example of a Greek love tragedy in the proper sense of the word. We have the right to assume that the brilliant depiction of demonic passion made a deep impression on the audience and served as a powerful incentive for the subsequent development of erotic plots. Not only did Euripides use the same motif in two dramas, one of which has come down to us, but, according to Pausanias (i, 22,1), it was the legend of Phaedrus and Hippolytus that was later known everywhere “even to non-Greeks, if only they knew Greek language". Euripides was especially willing to turn to erotic themes and thereby transformed heroic tragedy into a kind of “philistine drama” with an unhappy ending; Despite the fact that he quite often introduced characters from the heroic era into his plays, his heroes are his contemporaries, and the feelings and passions captured by the poet have become the common property of all mankind and are no longer associated with a specific historical period.

From that time on, eroticism reigned on the Greek stage, and Euripides and later tragedians never tired of depicting the omnipotence of love - the highest of bliss and burning passion - in more and more new variations, allowing the audience to look into all the depths and abysses of the greatest of mysteries called love 40 . Euripides was also the first who decided to present on stage the motif of incest in Aeolus (for fragments, see the Nauck collection, TGF 2, p. 365), the theme of which was the love of Kanaka and her brother Macareus with all its tragic consequences. Similar motifs were much more often used by later tragedians, and in this connection we must remember that not only the love of Biblida for her brother Caunus was represented on the stage, but also the love of Mirra for her father Cinyrus, and Harpaliki for her

40 Regarding erotic motives in Greek tragedies, see? Rohde, Dar Roman, 1900, S. 31, although Rohde does not take into account numerous homosexual motives

Father Klimen. Ovid is certainly not exaggerating at all (Tristia, ii, 381-408) when, after listing many erotic tragedies, he declares that lack of time will not allow him to name them all and that listing the names alone would take up his entire book 41 .

While Aristophanes (“Clouds”, 1372; “Frogs”, 1043 f., 1081), the main representative of Ancient Comedy, rebelled against the fact that thanks to Euripides, the image of love passions reigned on the stage, which became the main driving force and focus dramas (however, the comedies of Aristophanes himself, as we have already seen, also abounded in eroticism) - with the advent of the New Comedy, the situation changed here too. Just as in reality women increasingly emerged from the isolation that was obligatory for them in ancient times, so in comedy, the love of a man for a woman occupied an increasingly greater place. Gradually, love affairs and sentimental love became the main theme of comedies. Therefore Plutarch (see Stobaeus, Florilegium, 63, 64) is absolutely right when he says that “Menander’s poetry was connected by a single thread - love, which, like a common life-giving breath, is diffused throughout all his comedies.” However, even at this time, the sensual side of love remains the main one, for all the girls of the New Comedy, who are courted by passionately loving young men, are hetaeras. The belief still prevailed that marriage is the fulfillment of duty, and relationships with a heterosexual woman are a matter of love.

The fact that the ancient stage consisted of several actors and that female roles were played by men does not need proof.

Along with fantastic masks, wild inventions and jokes, ancient comedy is also characterized by the fact that the actors, as servants of the fertilizing deity, wore a phallus, mostly made of leather. After everything that has already been said about the cult of the phallus, this custom does not seem more strange; comedy grew out of songs performed during phallic processions.

If an actor was to play a naked character, then in this case a tight-fitting bodice was worn, usually with a false belly and breasts, on which the navel and nipples were clearly marked. Over time, the phallus appears to have been used less and less; in any case, we know of a considerable number of drawings on vases depicting stage performances in which the phallus is absent. Obviously, it was an integral attribute of Ancient Comedy, where in those scenes that used mythological motifs in a comic way, it emphasized the grotesqueness and aggravated the comedy of the situation. The chorus of the satyr drama wore an apron made of goatskin, from under which a phallus peeked out in front and a satyr's tail at the back.

A modern person would probably wonder whether the comedy, with its intensely erotic, often highly obscene scenes, was also attended by women and children. Surely it was not prohibited; perhaps spectators of comedy more often than respectable wives

41 Wed. his Ars Amatona, i, 283-340; Propertius, iii, 19; Virgil, "Aeneid", ?? , 442 ff.

citizens, there were heterae, but the presence of boys among them is attested quite definitely. Anyone who finds this strange or even outrageous must remember once again that the ancients had a completely naive attitude towards sexuality, that, seeing it as something self-evident, they did not surround it with a shroud of secrecy, but gave it religious veneration as a necessary precondition for universal existence. The last shoots of this religious feeling - albeit distorted to the point of grotesquery - are still discernible in comedy.

III. SATYROUS DRAMA. PANTOMIME. BALLET

Apparently, it is common knowledge that the execution of serious tragedies was followed by the so-called satyr drama, which, recalling the gaiety of the early holidays of Dionysus, satisfied the public's desire for coarser food and, through amusements and jokes, restored balance after the mental turmoil caused by tragic destinies. Such satyr dramas, of which only one has survived, Euripides' Cyclops, enjoyed great popularity down to the Alexandrian era, although very little can be said with certainty about their plots. Ancient Attic comedy found imitators for a long time; her life was supported by the “artists of Dionysus”, who, having settled on the island of Theos, spread “Dionysian customs” everywhere - at the courts of the kings, in military garrisons, in all cities and towns.

Along with this, farce became increasingly important, and, if we have the right - and we, perhaps, have the right - to believe Polybius (xxxii, 25; cf. Athenaeus, x, 440), together with these countless actors, singers, dancers and the like “Ionian debauchery and immorality” permeated everywhere. In the era of the Roman Empire, dialogical parts of tragedies and comedies were still performed, until they were gradually replaced by pantomime, the impact of which was entirely determined by sensual charm 42. Through continuous exercise and a strict, measured lifestyle, pantomime actors achieved complete control of their bodies and, thanks to the flexibility of their limbs, performed every movement with perfect grace. Of course, the most beautiful and graceful actors worked in this field. “In the obscene scenes that added piquancy to this type of drama, seductive charm combined with luxury and shamelessness knew no bounds. When the beautiful young man Bafill danced, Leda - the most daring of mimic actresses - at the sight of such a perfect art of refined seduction, felt like an ordinary uncouth beginner. (L. Friedlander, Roman Life and Manners, Engl. Transl., ii, 106).

42 Regarding the continuous tradition of dramatic performances, see Dio Chrysostomos, XIX, b. 487; Lucian, De saltat., 27.

Performances based on mythological subjects were especially popular; a detailed description of such a mythological ballet can be read in Apuleius' Metamorphoses (x, 30-34). A tall wooden model of Mount Ida, planted with bushes and living trees, was erected on the stage; Streams ran down from its top; goats wandered in the thickets, shepherded by Paris, a beautiful young man in a Phrygian dress. Here comes a handsome youth, like in a picture, who, except for a short cloak on his left shoulder, is completely naked. Falling over his shoulders, his head is crowned with beautiful hair, from which emerge two golden wings, tied with a golden ribbon. This is Mercury; dancing, he glides across the stage, hands the golden apple to Paris and with gestures announces to him the will of Jupiter, after which he gracefully leaves.

Then Juno appears - a beautiful woman with a diadem and scepter; Minerva quickly enters behind her, wearing a shining helmet, holding a shield in her hand, and shaking a spear. The third stands behind her. An inexpressible charm permeates her entire being, and the color of love spreads across her face. This is Venus; the impeccable beauty of her body is not enviously hidden under clothes, she walks naked, and only a transparent silk veil covers her nakedness. “The daring wind either lifted the light veil, so that the flower of youth was visible, then its warm breath pressed the veil tightly to the body, and all the sweet forms clearly appeared under the transparent cover” [translation by M. A. Kuzmin].

Each of the three maidens who represent the goddesses walks with her retinue. Juno is followed by Castor and Pollux; Juno appears in calm majesty to the lovely sounds of flutes, promising the shepherd royal power over Asia with noble gestures if he gives her the reward for beauty. Minerva in warlike attire is accompanied by her two usual companions and squires - Fear and Horror, who perform a dance with drawn swords.

A crowd of Cupids flutters around Venus. Smiling sweetly, in all the splendor of her beauty, she stands among them, delighting the eyes of the audience. You might think that these round, milky-white, gentle boys are real Cupids; they carry lighted torches before the goddess, as if she were going to a wedding feast; the goddess is surrounded by lovely Graces and beautiful Charites in their dizzying nakedness. They mischievously shower Venus with bouquets and flowers and, having paid homage to the great goddess of sensuality with the first fruits of spring, spin in a skillful dance.

Here the flutes emit sweet Lydian melodies, and every heart is filled with joy. Venus - she is more charming than any melody - begins to move. She slowly raises her leg and gracefully moves her body and shakes her head; each of the enchanting poses harmoniously echoes the sweet sounds of the flutes. The numb Paris gives her an apple as a victory reward.

Juno and Minerva leave the stage dissatisfied and angry, and Venus rejoices in victory, performing a dance with her entire retinue. After this, a high stream of wine mixed with saffron shoots out from the very top of Ida, filling the entire theater with a sweet fragrance. Then the mountain descends and disappears.

Lucian wrote a very remarkable work about pantomime and its favorite dances, from which it is clear (“On the Dance,” 2 and 5; see also Libanius, “On the Dance,” 15) that of the numerous mythological subjects, it was the erotic ones that were especially popular. Of course, even then the reaction made itself felt in the person of pedants hiding under the mask of philosophy, one of whom - a certain Kratok - makes the following speeches in Lucian’s dialogue: “Is it really possible, Likin, my dear friend, a real man, moreover, not alien to education and involved in philosophy to a certain extent, is able to abandon the desire for the best and his communication with the ancient sages and, on the contrary, find pleasure in listening to the flute playing and admiring the pampered person who exposes himself in thin clothes and amuses himself with dissolute songs, depicting dissolute sissies, the most lascivious ones in ancient times - various Phaedras, Parthenopes and Rhodopes - accompanying their actions with the sound of strings and chants, beating out time with their feet? And below: “Only this was still missing. So that I, with my long beard and gray head, sit down among all these sissies and distraught spectators and, in addition, begin to clap my hands and shout out the most inappropriate praises to some wretch who is breaking down without any need” [translation by N. Baranov].

Among the subjects mentioned in this passage from Lucian there are also those related to incest, for example, the love affair of Demophon (erroneously called Acamant by Lucian) and his sister Phyllida, the love of Phaedra for her stepson Hippolytus or Scylla for her father Minos. Of course, there was no shortage of homosexual motives in Greece. Of the plots associated with boys and staged in the form of a ballet, Lucian names the legend of Apollo and Hyacinth. The enumeration of the scenes played out by pantomime takes Lucian several pages; we see that almost all the erotic motifs of Greek mythology (the number of which is amazingly large) were used by pantomime.

Under the mythological cover, the theater also staged love scenes with animals. The most famous of these pantomimes is “Pasiphae” (Lucian, De saltat., 49; Suetonius, Nero, 12; Martial, Book of Spectacles, 5; Barens, Poetae Latini Minores, v, p. 108). As the legend says, Poseidon, angry that he was bypassed during the sacrifice, inspired Pasiphae, the wife of the Cretan king Minos, with an irresistible passion for a bull of rare beauty. The famous architect Daedalus came to her aid, creating a wooden cow and covering it with real skin. Pasiphae hid in the empty womb of a cow and thus combined with a bull, from whom she gave birth to the Minotaur - the famous monster, half-bull, half-man. (Ovid, Ars amatoria, ii, 24: Semibovemque virum semivirumque bovem.)

That such scenes were not unheard of in the Greek theaters of the imperial era is evidenced by the fact that the mythological plot and accessories were discarded and copulations between man and animal took place on stage. in puns naturalibns. The plot of Lucian’s “Lukia, or the Donkey,” as is known, is that through witchcraft Lucius turns into a donkey, which, however, retains

human mind and feelings. At the end of the adventures of the donkey man, the love story of a noble lady from Thessalonica is told. Lucian tells this story in some detail; We can only give a brief account of the episode, which in itself is well worth reading, and must refer the curious reader to the original text. (Asinus, 50 units)

This noble and very rich lady heard about the amazing abilities of the donkey, in which, of course, no one sees a bewitched person. She comes to look at him and falls in love with him. The woman buys him and henceforth treats him as a lover. However, the joys of this amazing love couple do not go unnoticed, and a decision is made to put the rare gift of the donkey on public display. The public will be presented with the spectacle of a donkey having marital intercourse with a criminal sentenced to death.

“Finally, when the day came on which my master was supposed to give the city his holiday, they decided to take me to the theater. I entered in this way: a large bed was arranged, decorated with an Indian tortoise and trimmed with gold; I was laid on it and a woman was ordered to lie down next to me. Then, in this position, they put us on some kind of device and rolled us into the theater, placing us in the very middle, and the audience screamed loudly, and the noise of clapping their hands reached me. A table was placed in front of us, laden with everything that people have at luxurious feasts. We had beautiful slave cupbearers with us and served us wine in golden vessels. My warden, standing behind me, ordered me to have dinner, but I was ashamed to lie in the theater and afraid that a bear or a lion would jump out from somewhere.

Meanwhile, someone passes by with flowers, and among other flowers I see leaves of freshly picked roses. Without hesitating for long, jumping off the bed, I rush forward. Everyone thinks that I got up to dance, but I run from one flower to another and pick and eat roses. They are still surprised at my behavior, but the guise of a beast has fallen off me and has completely disappeared, and now the old donkey is no longer there, and before us stands the naked Lukiy, who was inside the donkey.”

It took a long time to calm down the deceived public. Lucius, rejoicing that he has become a man again, considers it a duty of decency to pay a farewell visit to the noble lady who loved him so much when he was a donkey. She kindly receives Lukius and invites him to stay for dinner.

“I decided that it was best for me to go to the woman who was in love with me when I was a donkey, believing that now, having become a man, she would seem even more beautiful. She received me with joy, apparently fascinated by the extraordinary nature of the adventure, and asked me to have dinner and spend the night with her. I agreed, considering it worthy of blame after having been loved in the form of an ass, to reject her and neglect my mistress now that I had become a man.

I dined with her and rubbed myself heavily with myrrh and crowned myself with lovely roses, which saved me and restored me to human form. Already late at night, when I had to go to bed, I get up from

at the table With I proudly undress and stand naked, hoping to be even more attractive than the donkey. But as soon as she saw that I had become a man in all respects, she spat on me with contempt and said: “Get away from me and from my house! Get away to sleep!”

- “What have I done so wrong to you?” - I asked. "I swear by Zeus,

She said, “I loved not you, but your donkey, and I spent my nights with him, not with you; I thought that you managed to save and preserve the only pleasant and great sign of a donkey for me. And you came to me, turning from this beautiful and useful creature into a monkey! And immediately she called the slaves and ordered them to drag me out of the house on their backs. So, driven out, naked, decorated with flowers and perfumed, I lay down to sleep in front of her house, hugging the bare earth. At dawn I ran naked to the ship and told my brother my ridiculous adventure. Then, since a fair wind blew from the direction of the city, we immediately set sail, and a few days later I arrived in my hometown. Here I made a sacrifice to the savior gods and gave offerings to the temple for the fact that I escaped not “from under a dog’s tail,” as they say, but from the skin of a donkey, having fallen into it due to excessive curiosity, and returned home after a long time and with such difficulty" [translation by B. Kazansky].

At the festival of the “great Dionysius”, established by the Athenian tyrant Pisistratus, in addition to lyrical choirs with the obligatory dithyramb in the cult of Dionysus, also tragic choirs performed. Ancient tradition calls Thespis the first tragic poet of Athens and points to 534 BC. e. as on the date of the first production of the tragedy during the “great Dionysius”.

This early Attic tragedy of the late 6th and early 5th centuries. was not yet a drama in the full sense of the word. It was one of the branches of choral lyricism, but was distinguished by two significant features: 1) in addition to the choir, an actor performed who made messages to the choir, exchanged remarks with the choir or with its leader (luminary); while the choir did not leave the scene of action, the actor left, returned, made new messages to the choir about what was happening behind the stage and, if necessary, could change his appearance, playing the roles of different persons in his various parishes; unlike the vocal parts of the choir, this actor, introduced, according to ancient tradition, by Thespis, did not sing, but recited trochaic or iambic verses; 2) the choir took part in the game, portraying a group of people placed in a plot connection with those whom the actor represented. The actor's parts were still very small in quantity, and he, nevertheless, was the bearer of the dynamics of the game, since the lyrical moods of the choir changed depending on his messages. The plots were taken from myth, but in some cases tragedies were also written on modern themes; Thus, after the capture of Miletus by the Persians in 494, the poet Frinich staged the tragedy “The Capture of Miletus”; the victory over the Persians at Salamis served as the theme for the “Phoenicians” of the same Phrynichus (476), which contained the glorification of the Athenian leader Themistocles. The works of the first tragedians have not survived, and the nature of the development of plots in early tragedy is unknown; However, already with Phrynichus, and perhaps even before him, the main content of the tragedy was the image of some kind of “suffering”. Starting from the last years of the 6th century, the production of tragedy was followed by the “drama of satyrs” - a comic play on a mythological plot, in which the chorus consisted of satyrs. Tradition names the first creator of satyr dramas for the Athenian theater as Pratina from Phliunt (in the northern Peloponnese).

Interest in the problems of “suffering” and its connection with the ways of human behavior was generated by the religious and ethical fermentations of the 6th century, reflecting the formation of the ancient slave society and state, new connections between people, a new phase in the relationship between society and the individual. The democratic religion of Dionysus played an important role in the struggle that the emerging slave-owning* class of the city waged, relying on the peasantry, against the aristocracy and its ideology; tyrants (for example, Pisistratus in Athens or Cleisthenes in Sikyon) put forward the religion of Dionysus in opposition to local aristocratic cults. Myths about heroes, which belonged to the main foundations of city life and constituted one of the most important parts in the cultural wealth of the Greek people, could not help but fall into the orbit of new problems. With this rethinking of Greek myths, it was no longer epic “feats” or aristocratic “valor” that came to the fore, but suffering, “passions”; In this way, it was possible to make myth an exponent of a new worldview and extract from it material for those relevant in the revolutionary era of the 6th century. problems of “justice”, “sin” and “retribution”. The tragedy that arose in response to these requests took on the type closest to the usual forms of choral lyrics: images of “passions”, often found in primitive rituals: “passions” do not occur in front of the viewer, they are reported through the “messenger”, but The collective celebrating the ritual action reacts to these messages with song and dance. Thanks to the introduction of an actor, a “messenger” who makes messages to the choir and answers its questions, a dynamic element entered the choral lyrics, transitions of mood from joy to sadness and back - from crying to jubilation.

Aristotle provides very important information about the literary genesis of the Attic tragedy. In the 4th chapter of his “Poetics” it is said that the tragedy “subjected to many changes” before it took its final form. At an earlier stage, it had a “satyr” character, was distinguished by its simple plot, humorous style and abundance of dance elements; it became a serious work only later. Aristotle speaks about the “satirian” character of tragedy in somewhat vague terms, but the idea, apparently, is that tragedy once had the form of satyr drama. Aristotle considers the origins of the tragedy to be the improvisations of the “initiators of the dithyramb.”

Aristotle's messages are valuable simply because they belong to a very knowledgeable author, who had at his disposal enormous material that has not reached us. But they are also confirmed by testimony from other sources. There is information that in the dithyrambs of Arion (p. 91)* there were costumed choirs performing, after which individual dithyrambs received one name or another, that in these dithyrambs, in addition to musical parts, there were also declamatory parts of satyrs. The formal features of the early tragedy did not therefore represent an absolute innovation and were prepared by the development of the dithyramb, that is, that genre of choral lyrics that is directly related to the religion of Dio'is. A later example of dialogue in a dithyramb is Bacchylides’ “Theses” (p. 95).

Another confirmation of Aristotle’s instructions is the very name of the genre: “tragedy and I” (tragoidia). Literally translated, it means “goat song” (tragos - “goat”, ode - “song”). The meaning of this term was already unknown to ancient scientists, and they created various fantastic interpretations, such as the idea that the goat allegedly served as a reward for the winning choir in a competition. In the light of Aristotle's reports of the former "satyr" character of tragedy, the origin of the term can be easily explained. The fact is that in some areas of Greece, mainly in the Peloponnese, fertility demons, including satyrs, were represented as goat-shaped. It was different in Attic folklore, where horse-like figures (silenes) corresponded to Peloponnesian goats; however, even in Athens, the theatrical mask of a satyr contained, along with horse features (mane, tail), also goat features (beard, goat skin), and Attic playwrights often called satyrs “goats.” The goat-like figures embodied voluptuousness; their songs and dances should be imagined as rude and obscene. Aristotle also hints at this when he speaks of the playful style and dancing nature of tragedy at its “satire” stage.

“Tragic” choirs were also associated outside the cult of Dionysus with mythological figures of the “passionate” type. Thus, in the city of Sikyon (northern Peloponnese), “tragic choirs” glorified the “passions” of the local hero Adrastus; at the beginning of the 6th century. the Sicyon tyrant Cleisthenes destroyed the cult of Adrastus and, as the historian Herodotus says, “gave the choirs to Dionysus.” In “tragic choirs,” therefore, the element of lamentation, which was widely used in later tragedy, should have occupied a significant place. The lament, with its characteristic alternation of lamentations of individuals and choral lamentation of the group (p. 31), was probably also a formal model for scenes of joint lamentation between the actor and the choir, which are frequent in the tragedy.

However, if the Attic tragedy developed on the basis of the folklore game of the Peloponnesian “goats” and the dithyramb of the Arion type, the decisive moment for its emergence was the development of “passions” into a moral problem. While formally retaining numerous traces of its origin, tragedy in content and ideological character was a new genre that posed questions of human behavior using the example of the fate of mythological heroes. As Aristotle puts it, the tragedy “has become serious.” The dithyramb underwent the same transformation, losing the character of a stormy Dionysian song and turning into a ballad on heroic subjects; an example is the dithyrambs of Bacchylides. In both cases, the details of the process and its individual stages remain unclear. Apparently, the songs of “goat choirs” first began to receive literary treatment at the beginning of the 6th century. in the northern Peloponnese (Corinth, Sikyon); at the turn of the 6th and 5th centuries, when a democratic system was established in Athens, which gave rise to all further problematics of the tragedy, it was already a work on the theme of the suffering of the heroes of Greek myth, and the choir dressed up not in a mask of “goats” or satyrs, but in a mask of faces, plot-related to these characters. The transformation of the tragedy did not occur without opposition

supporters of the traditional game; there were complaints that at the festival of Dionysus works were performed that “had nothing to do with Dionysus”; the new form, however, prevailed. The old-style chorus and the corresponding humorous character of the game were preserved (or, perhaps, restored after some time) in a special play, which was staged after the tragedies and was called the “satyr drama.” This cheerful play, with an invariably successful outcome, corresponded to the last act of the ritual performance, the rejoicing of the risen god.

The growth of the social significance of the individual in the life of the polis and the increased interest in its artistic depiction lead to the fact that in the further development of the tragedy the role of the chorus decreases, the importance of the actor grows and the number of actors increases; but the two-part structure itself remains unchanged, the presence of choral parts and actor parts. It is reflected even in the dialectal coloring of the language of the tragedy: while the tragic chorus to a certain extent gravitates towards the Dorian dialect of choral lyrics, the actor pronounced his parts in Attic, with some admixture of the Ionian dialect, which until that time was the language of all declamatory Greek poetry (epic , iambic). The two-part nature of the Attic tragedy also determines its external structure. If the tragedy, as was usually the case later, began with the actors’ parts, then this first part, before the arrival of the chorus, constituted a prologue. Then came the parade, the arrival of the choir; the choir entered from both sides in a marching rhythm and performed a song. Subsequently, there was an alternation of episodies (additions, that is, new arrivals of actors), acting scenes and stasis (standing songs), choral parts, usually performed when the actors left. The last stasim was followed by ex od (exit), the final part, at the end of which both the actors and the choir left the place of play. In episodies and exodes, a dialogue between the actor and the luminary (leader) of the choir is possible, as well as com 6 s (“blows” - usually on the chest - as an expression of grief), a joint lyrical part of the actor and choir. This last form is especially characteristic of the traditional lament of tragedy. The choir parts are strophic in structure (p. 95). The stanza corresponds to the antistrophe; they may be followed by new stanzas and antistrophes of a different structure (diagram: aa bb, ss) Epodes are relatively rare.

There were no intermissions in the modern sense of the word in the Attic tragedy. The game went on continuously, and the choir almost never left the place of the game during the action. Under these conditions, changing the scene of action in the middle of the play or stretching it out for a long time created a sharp violation of the stage illusion. Early tragedy (including Aeschylus) was not very demanding in this regard and dealt quite freely with both time and place, using different parts of the site on which the game took place as different places of action; Subsequently, it became customary, although not absolutely obligatory, for the tragedy to take place in one place and not exceed one day in duration. These features of the construction of developed Greek tragedy were acquired in the 16th century. the name of “unity of place” and “unity of time”. The poetics of French classicism, as is known, attached very great importance to “unities” and elevated them to the main dramatic principle.

The more or less constant components of Attic tragedy are “suffering,” the message of the messenger, and the lament of the choir. A catastrophic end is not at all necessary for her; many tragedies had a reconciliatory outcome. The cult character of the game, generally speaking, required a happy, joyful end, but since this end was ensured for the game as a whole by the final drama of the satyrs, the poet could choose the ending that he found necessary.