1. The Golden Age of Greek Tragedy

2. 5th Century Greek Society
Between roughly 496 B.C.E and 406 B.C.E the world bore witness to the rise and fall of the uniquely splendid and tragic Athenian society of the 5th century.

3. 5th Century Greek Society
Athenian supremacy would definitively collapse in 404 when Sparta and its allies conquered Athens.
Just 2 short years later the last of the three great Greek tragedians Sophocles would die at the age of 90.

4. Tragedy
Tragedy - a serious drama typically describing a conflict between the protagonist and a superior force (as destiny) and having a sorrowful or disastrous conclusion that elicits pity or terror.
Protagonist - the principal character in a literary work (as a drama or story).

5. Euripides
Euripides – Youngest of the 3 great Greek Tragedians, he is said to have been born on the day of the momentous Greek naval victory at Salamis in 480 B.C.E.
Well known for his non-conformist political views. Least popular of the three during his time.
His play Trojan Women exposed the brutality of “heroic” conquerors and shows his distaste for Athenian imperialism.

6. Sophocles
Sophocles – Consummate artist who combined the high ethical and religious concerns of Aeschylus with the intense interest in individual human psychology characteristic of Euripides.
Held numerous important public positions.
Wrote dramas that call into question – but do not necessarily undermine – the values generally associated with the role.

7. Sophocles
Oedipus, in Oedipus the King, is the model of a good ruler, humanely intelligent, who saved his adopted city Thebes from disaster. Yet Oedipus is finally driven to self-mutilation and self-imposed exile because he has committed, though unwittingly, the most horrendous crimes against the divine order, the natural order, and the polity: patricide, incest, and the pollution of his city.

8. Sophocles
In Antigone, Oedipus’ daughter Antigone, confronts her uncle Kreon, the new ruler of Thebes, over an issue – the conflicting demands of civic, familial, and religious principles – that few establishmentarians would press urgently.

9. Aesychlus
Aesychlus, the oldest of the three great Greek tragedians, a definitive spokesman for central Athenian values during the noblest age of Greece.
Persians is the only surviving Greek tragedy based on history.