Zeus the Guide, who made man turn
Thought-ward, Zeus, who did ordain
Man by Suffering shall Learn.
So the heart of him, again
Aching with remembered pain,
Bleeds and sleepeth not, until
Wisdom comes against his will.
’Tis the gift of One by strife
Lifted to the throne of life.
(Aeschylus, “Agamemnon”)
Lately, I find myself gripped by the lives and works of the Ancient Greek tragedians (specifically, Sophocles and Aeschylus). Reading a handful of their plays this past week (Women of Trachis, Ajax, and Philoctetes by Sophocles; Prometheus Bound and Oresteia by Aeschylus)1, I was left to wonder whether anything we’re making nowadays will still be devoured by the masses 2,500 years from now.2 As someone doomed (or blessed) to see only this age, I won’t be around to test my intuition, but my gut says “no.” It also tells me that future eras will look at ours and see us, on the whole, as complacent, self-satisfied products of a comfortable age churning out fat bellies with heads to match.3
But this post is not about our age; it is about the age of the Ancient Greeks—the age which gave birth to democracy and a new form of story-telling: tragedy and theatre.4 An age, romanticized by Nietzsche, before Socrates and Christ, which saw citizen soldiers and their love of beauty give birth to a new art form.
The two who would father this new genre—tragedy—in its infancy: Aeschylus and Sophocles.5 Not only were they wordsmiths, they were skilled in war. In 490 B.C., Aeschylus (who lived from 524 B.C. to 456 B.C.) and his brother fought to defend Athens from the invasion of King Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon. Ten years later, in 480 B.C., Aeschylus was called to war once again with his younger brother, this time defending Athens against Xerxes I’s invading forces.6 For his part, Sophocles (who lived from 496 B.C. to 406 B.C.) served as a general in the Athenian army during a century in which Athens saw nearly 80 years of war. Both worked hard-won insights available only to those who had seen death up close into their work.
During Aeschylus’ lifetime, dramatic competitions became part of Dionysia (a large annual festival in Athens honoring the god of wine, Dionysus). Every year, 17,000 Greek citizen soldiers would convene on the south slopes of the Acropolis and watch the great tragedians (and eventually comedians) compete.
Second only to the festival Panathenaia, the Greeks held the Dionysia and its contests sacred. In the end, Sophocles won the lifetime competition—taking 18 victories to Aeschylus’ 13.7 But more important than who won the contest for the Greeks was the ritual of it all. Despite living 2,000 years before we had language for things like PTSD, the Greeks discovered story-telling as a medicine, going so far as to place the Temple of Asclepius (where people went to be healed) right next to the Theatre of Dionysus.
They seemed to have a sense that there needed to be a time and place to acknowledge the collective toll that violence, struggle, and suffering took on the human spirit. Once a year, they created the space for things uncomfortable to look at to come to the surface. In doing so, tragedy served not only the soldier side of the Athenian identity, but also the citizen side.
In this cradle of tragedy, young democracy was also at work—turning citizens’ attention toward the moral ambiguities of life to spark debate. In the same theater where people saw plays, they also went to hear rhetorical arguments of lawyers and politicians. Understood as something that served not only to share the trauma of secretly hurting citizens but as water on the seeds of democracy, we might see how the Ancient tragedies served a vital function of engaging the citizens in a project of crowdsourcing a (general) moral consensus.
When Ajax, beaten down by years of the Trojan War, suddenly loses his mind and slays livestock thinking they were humans, who’s to blame—only Ajax? Or do some of the generals who betrayed him share responsibility? When Hercules, in excruciating pain with no hope of relief, asks his son to euthanize him, what’s the moral thing for the son to do? When Orestes kills his mother Clytemnestra (who killed his father, Agamemnon, for killing their daughter), should he be punished or be the victim of vengeance himself? Do the sins of the father pass to the son?
In the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles, we see the same struggles and questions that citizens and soldiers still face today (even if the line between citizen and soldier is much more clearly defined than it once was) presented in what Nietzsche thought was the highest form of art:
Tragic myth, in so far as it really belongs to art, also fully participates in this transfiguring metaphysical purpose of art in general: What does it transfigure, however, when it presents the phenomenal world in the guise of the suffering hero? Least of all the "reality" of this phenomenal world, for it says to us: "Look at this! Look carefully! It is your life! It is the hour-hand of your clock of existence!"8
In the ways of the Ancient Greeks and how they treated the presentation of these tragedies, we see something crucial to democracy that we, today, seem to have lost—that is, a forum where the rules of engagement are that all will be pushed to a place of discomfort followed by a constructive dialogue regarding why certain things make us uncomfortable without fear of judgment.
On the eve of America’s Declaration of Independence, I can’t help but wonder whether if we’re doing enough to keep the democracy we were lucky enough to inherit. Fondly do I hope and fervently do I pray that we might collectively re-commit to the ideals of our democratic experiment made possible by the Ancient Greeks (and aided by the invention of tragedy). Ideals we will always fall short of but must always reach for, outlined in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence dated July 4, 1776:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.
—
P.S. In light of Robert F. Keneddy Jr.’s emergence into the media spotlight, a quick historical footnote regarding his father and Aeschylus: During his presidential campaign in 1968, then-Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted Aeschylus’ Agamemnon on the night of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Giving an impromptu speech on the campaign trail in Indianapolis, Indiana (against the advice of his security), Kennedy Sr. used the words of Aeschylus to express his grief:
My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black ... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.
I read the translations in Bryan Doerries, All That You’ve Seen Here is God. If interested in this topic, I also recommend checking out his podcast on the Art of Manliness: https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/knowledge-of-men/podcast-660-how-ancient-greek-tragedies-can-heal-the-soul/
A third great tragedian, Euripides, is reported to have won five.
In saying this, I fully recognize that I am as much to blame as anyone else. I am reminded of a quote attributed to St. Augustine: “Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.” (Augustine of Hippo)
Comedy also has its origins in Ancient Greece. The main difference between the two: comedy has a happy ending (and is often humorous throughout) while tragedy has a sad ending (and is often serious throughout).
Before them, tragedy was just a chorus and one actor. Little to no props or costumes. But between the two of them, they gave us much of what we call theatre and tragedy today. In their attempts to outdo the other (and themselves), each added new elements: Sophocles added scene decoration; Aeschylus added multiple actors and more lavish costumes.
Inspired by these events, Aeschylus eventually wrote The Persians.
Ancient sources attribute between 70-90 plays to Aeschylus but only seven remain intact: The Persians, Seven Against Thebes, The Suppliants, The Oresteia (a trilogy with Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides), and Prometheus Bound. Sophocles wrote an estimated 120 plays. The fact that these two had to produce (at least) one play every year for the competition inspires me to keep the same cadence for my books.
The Birth of Tragedy, p. 182.