Sophocles and Homer History 100, February 22, 2006

Philoctetes on Lemnos, Attic red ﬁgure vase, c. 430 BC History and identity

• Herodotus: who were the Persians? Where did the conﬂict start? • Thucydides: what caused the war and what were its eﬀects on the Greeks? Rembrandt van Rijn, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer Philoctetes and Homer

• Familiar story: audience knows outcome • New values and morals: old characters placed in situation of 5th-century Athens • Classicism: poet draws on acknowledged standard but employs it in a new way. • Philoctetes is a model for appropriation and transformation of culture—as is, in a diﬀerent way, The Cure at Troy. The religious context of drama: the Athenian Great Dionysia

The festival in the city:

1. “Leading in from the sacred hearth”

2. “Pompe”: procession to sacriﬁce

3. “Komos”: celebratory revel

Basic elements of Greek public worship: procession, sacriﬁce, celebration Preparation for the dramatic contests

4. Proagon: poets describe their works

Theater of Dionysus, Athens Theater at Epidaurus (best preserved) Theater at Epidaurus Preliminaries in the theater

5. Libation by the strategoi (ten generals)

6. Tribute from subject cities

7. Proclamation and coronation of state benefactors

8. Presentation of war orphans

Association with religion sanctiﬁed the state. Apoo pouring a libation. Vase painting, c. 475-450 BC The poetic competitions

1st day: contest of ten boys’ and ten mens’ dithyrambs

2nd day: contest of ﬁve comedies

3rd day: ﬁrst set of tragedies (with satyr-play)

4th day: second set of tragedies (with satyr-play)

5th day: third set of tragedies (with satyr-play)

Judgment and award of prizes followed at the end Dramatic conventions

• Actors: at ﬁrst two (Aeschylus), then three (Sophocles, Euripides) • Masks for actors: represent characters and project voices • Chorus: 12 or 15 young men, representing society Chorus dressing as women: Vase around the actors painting, c. 430 BC, MFA, Boston (note the mask, bottom center) The themes of Philoctetes/The Cure at Troy

• Suﬀering and punishment: Philoctetes’s wound • The state and the individual: Neoptolemus torn between Odysseus and Philoctetes • Fate and free will—can Philoctetes not go to Troy? • Resolution: deus ex machina? (the god from the machine)