Do the maths here:  Roughly 110 years

 Great Dionysia  Lenaia  Rural Dionysia

 A rough total of 2320

’ Lycourgeia tetralogy (before 456BC), one of the many that treated the theme of resistance to the Dionysiac cult

 Edonians, Bassarids, Youths & satyr drama Lycurgus

 The Oresteia tetralogy was around 5000 lines (including its satyr play)

 From the Lycourgeia we have around 45 lines and some testimonia

The Edonians told the story of Lycurgus’ (king of the Edonians, a people of ) attempt to suppress the worship of in his kingdom, along more or less the same lines as [Apollodorus,] Library 3.5.1. At the start of the play Dionysus had just arrived in Thrace with his male and female followers. Lycurgus had both him and the women bacchants arrested, but they miraculously escaped, and Dionysus then drove Lycurgus mad, so that he killed his own son Dryas with an axe, believing that he was cutting a vine-branch. Lycurgus may well in the end, as in [Apollodorus] and as in , Antigone 955–965, have been imprisoned perpetually in a rocky chamber on Mount Pangaeum.

It has been attractively conjectured that Orpheus, who was the central figure of the following play (Bassarids), also figured in this one, before his apostasy, as a devotee (maybe a priest) of Dionysus, imprisoned with his master by Lycurgus (cf. fr. 60);

Edonians was extensively imitated by when he wrote about the fate of another enemy of Dionysus in , and the Roman poet Naevius in his Lucurgos seems to have followed it closely. It is known from the Cataterisms of pseudo-Eratosthenes that the play dealt with the death of Orpheus at the hands of Thracian women, who in this version, unusually, are devotees of Dionysus, called Bassarids.

“Orpheus,” we are told by ps-Eratosthenes, “after going down to Hades in quest of his wife and seeing what things were like there, ceased to honour Dionysus, by whom he had been glorified, and regarded the Sun (whom he also called Apollo) as the greatest of the gods; he would rise before daybreak and await the sunrise on the [Thracian] mountain called Pangaeum, so as to be the first to see the Sun. Dionysus was angry at this and sent against him the Bassarids (as the tragic poet Aeschylus says), who tore him in pieces and scattered his limbs far and wide; but the Muses collected them together and buried him at the place called Leibethra [in Macedonia].”

Cambridge Greek play 2013, dir H. Eastman

Prom. 82-113, p. 457

Prom 984-96; p. 553

vv. 1014-35; p. 557

Prom. 1080- 93; p. 563

 Cratinus’ Plutoi, fr. 171

Cratinus’ Plutoi, fr. 171 (PSI 1212 and Pap. Brux. E 6842)  Cratinus’ Plutoi (Wealth-gods) – 429 BC

 Cratinus’ Seriphioi – 424 BC

’ Birds and the myth of the fire - 414 BC

The chorus as prosecutors of the ‘unjustly wealthy’  How ‘Aeschylean’ is ?

 When did scholars first start suspecting the play’s authenticity? When did it become ‘mainstream’ that Prometheus is not by Aeschylus?  Aeschylean inspiration and perhaps homage, but not Aeschylean workmanship. Stylistically, it is closer to Sophocles and Euripides

 Probably produced around 430 BC  The fascinating theory of M. West about Euphorion, Aeschylus’ son.

 Not everyone is convinced. There are still many different approaches (and a North-South divide!)

 Is there any ‘hard’ evidence for any of these things?

 The portrayal of Zeus; gods and mortals  Hesiodic and other mythical influences  Practicalities of staging (the position of the chained hero; the arrival of the chorus; the final cataclysm)  The ‘inaccurate’ geography of the play

 Space and meaning; crag, world, cosmos  Technology and progress; fire and its symbolism

The reception of Prometheus

The Thyestes or Atreus probably dealt with the story of the golden lamb (see fr. 738) and the Thyestean feast. It may have dealt with the story that after his brother Atreus had given him his own children’s flesh to eat, Thyestes was told by an oracle that the crime could be avenged only by a son begotten by him on his own daughter. He accordingly made his way to Sicyon, where his daughter Pelopia had been sent for the sake of safety, and with his head covered raped her. The same authority who tells us this, the mythographer Hyginus, also tells us that Atreus, not knowing that Pelopia was the daughter of Thyestes, married her, and brought up her son Aegisthus as his own.

Later, Thyestes fell into the hands of his brother, who handed him over to Aegisthus to be killed. But the two somehow discovered the secret of Aegisthus’ real parentage. On learning this, Pelopia killed herself. But Aegisthus took the bloody sword with which she had done so to Atreus, telling him that the blood was that of Thyestes, and later, when Atreus was sacrificing by the sea, murdered him and restored his father to power. Some believe that this narrative furnished the material for two plays of Sophocles. But there is room for doubt. Euripides too wrote a Thyestes, as did at least six other tragedians.

ARISTOPHANES’ BIRDS 69ff.

The Hoopoe from Aristophanes Birds by Quentin Blake  Tereus, king of Thrace, received Procne in marriage from the Athenian king Pandion. They had a son, Itys. Procne missed her sister, Philomela, and asked Tereus to bring her on a visit from Athens. During the return journey to Thrace, Tereus raped Philomela and cut her tongue out to prevent her from revealing the truth. But Philomela made the truth known through a piece of weaving. When Procne learnt the truth, she exacted a gruesome revenge. Itys was killed, cooked and fed to an unsuspecting Tereus. When he learnt the truth, his attempt to take revenge was frustrated because the gods intervened and turned the sisters and Tereus into birds. The tragedy probably covered the story from the return to Thrace up to the .

The play was produced before 414 B.C., for it was made fun of in Aristophanes’ Birds, in which Tereus, in his hoopoe form, plays a not unimportant part. See fr. 890. For attempts to reconstruct the plot, see D. Fitzpatrick, CQ 51 (2001), 90–101. p. 294-5 p. 294