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Triptolemus’ Trips, or Around the World by Snake Power (part 2)

As I explained last week, the greater part of what we know about Sophocles’ early play Triptolemus relates to the instructions given by the goddess Demeter to Triptolemus of Eleusis for his journey or journeys to various parts of the world spreading the knowledge of grain cultivation and probably also of the Eleusinian mystery-cult. What …

Triptolemus’ Trips, or Around the World by Snake Power (part 1)

In 468 BC the tragic dramatist Sophocles won the City Dionysia for the first time.  He was about twenty-eight years old, which was good going; Aeschylus gained his first victory when he was forty, Euripides when he was thirty-eight or so, and each of them had been competing at the festival, on and off, for …

Only seen dead

Greek tragedy was not always about death, but it very often was:  of the 32 tragedies that survive in full (or almost in full), there are only nine which do not include the death of at least one character.  What is more, while violent death was not seen on the tragic stage (with the very …

Parallel but presumably unconnected

In 2007 Christoph Muelke published a small papyrus fragment (Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 4807) containing about a dozen lines of verse, which happened to include six words that had been quoted by an ancient commentator on Aristophanes who attributed them to Sophocles.  The context of those six words had not been known, but the new fragment surprisingly …

Aeschylus’ ghost writer?

We are familiar today with the phenomenon whereby new novels are published in the style of, or as sequels to, the work of popular or classic authors, most recently in the case of Agatha Christie.  This of course is done quite openly, and everybody knows that it’s not actually an undiscovered work of the great …

Two upcoming talks …

… organized by Nottingham’s Classics Research Workshop in conjunction with the Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception (CADRE).  Both will be held on Tuesdays at 5 pm in room A3 (unless otherwise notified – any change will be posted on this blog), Humanities Building, University of Nottingham. October 8 – Johanna Hanink (Brown University) …

Sophocles the politician

Sophocles was arguably the greatest, and certainly in his own time the most popular, of Greek tragic dramatists.  He was also, in his later years, a prominent figure in Athenian public life, and one whose relationship to Athens’ democratic political system was curiously equivocal.  He was more than once chosen by popular vote for the …

The Oresteia explained

Steven Pinker, the linguist, cognitive scientist and author of half a dozen must-read books (including How the Mind Works, The Stuff of Thought, The Blank Slate and The Better Angels of our Nature), wrote in his 2007 article “A history of violence” : “Life in a state of nature is nasty, brutish, and short, not …

Tragic Troy in Nottingham

Euripides’ Women of Troy, adapted by Don Taylor and directed by Cynthia Marsh, is playing all this week at Nottingham’s Lace Market Theatre.  And tonight (Wednesday) Professor Judith Mossman, of the University’s Centre for Ancient Drama and its Reception (CADRE), will be giving a post-performance talk at the theatre on “The Life and Times of …

Song, dance, drama

This post is by Richard Rawles. Since attending a conference in London during the Easter vacation, I have been thinking about Greek tragedy as a form of music drama, and how hard it is for us as modern readers to grasp this. If we watch a musical or an opera, one of the things which …