Read Euripides, Bacchae (entire) [text]

Question:  Why did Ovid choose elegiac meter for this project? 

Some attempts at answers: 

There were no direct literary precedents. 

We have seven works each of Aeschylus and Sophocles (preserved, it appears, in a standardized school text from the ancient period), nineteen of Euripides, ten of Aristophanes, and one of Menander.  Each wrote many more plays, which did not survive.  Thus, like Shakespeare, even though these are highly sophisticated poems, they were written very quickly. 

We have a lot of external evidence about ancient drama since ancient scholars in Greece and Rome were interested in it and preserve information about its history and performance at the time of the extant playwrites and later.  The origins of Greek drama were a mystery even to ancient scholars, however.  It appears to derive from choral lyric, however. 

Context of Performance: 

General rule:  all great Greek drama was Athenian.  In its early stages, it was written for one of two festivals (both in honor of Dionysus), the City Dionysia (March/April) and the Lenaea (January).  The former began in the late sixth century, the latter in the middle of the fifth.  They later became classics and were performed at local festivals in Attica (Country Dionysia) and elsewhere in the Greek world.  Euripides spent the last three years of his life in the court of the Macedonian king, and composed his last plays there. 

Tragedies would be written and performed in triologies (only one triology survives intact) that would be performed together, with a 'satyr play' as a coda.  Comedies were written and performed individually.  The festivals were the occasion of competition between playwrites.  A performance required, in addition to a script, a producer and a troop of actors (many of whom had no speaking roles).  There was public support to allow poorer citizens to buy tickets by the latter fifth century, and drama was a major site of civic cohesion throughout the period in which it was a living art form. 

Works of each playwrites:  

Aeschylus 

For further reference:  there are two useful and inexpensive books on the market now that provide a good introction to Greek drama:  Graham Ley, A Short Introduction to the Ancient Greek Theater, Univ. of Chicago Press, 1991; and Bernhard Zimmermann, Greek Tragedy:  An Introduction, Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1991.  They will provide a further bibliography.

Copies of primary readings for November 11 (Berossus, Manetho, Megasthenes) will be available in Rosengarten Reserve Room in photocopied form before class today.  We will discuss this material next week along with the Euripides reading assigned originally for today. 

The lectures on Roman Scholarship and Athenian State Religion do not relate to any readings.  I therefore will give them when time permits --- maybe after break, since they don't relate as directly to the literature theme.  I plan to cover the Philosophical Critique of religion on November 18 as planned.