Ancient tragedy

[eugene]

Why did ancient literature did not produced any great tragedies compared with those od Aeschyles, Sophocles
and Eurypydes?

[Gaius Opius Fugi]

Eugene,

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Thanks,
Adam C.

[Epictetus]

Well, greatness is in the eye of the beholder. We know that people continued to write tragedies, because Aristotle tells us so in the Poetics. Even later we know that people were still writing them. We have some of Seneca’s tragedies, for instance.

I don’t think the writing of tragedies ever became a dead art, but later generations may have laboured under what the public expected. Aristotle, with his very intense descriptions of the specific parts of Tragedy, either caused or illustrates this. Later writers may have felt constrained on what they could or could not do, and this may have caused quality to suffer.

I think your triad became entrenched in the public consciousness, partly because of the brilliance of the writers and partly because of the times.

[Jona Lendering]

Why did ancient literature did not produced any great tragedies compared with those od Aeschyles, Sophocles
and Eurypydes?

The Hellenistic scholars liked to make lists. So, there was a top ten for epic poets (guess who was first?), lyrical poets, comedians, tragedians, and so on. There's nothing wrong with that, but in an age in which copying texts was expensive, this meant that the authors who had been called "the top", were copied more frequently than others. When people converted from papyrus to parchment (very expensive!), inevitably the top authors were copied first. So, Polybius, who lived after the list had been made, has been poorly preserved, even though he is a better historian than, say, Xenophon.

There's still another factor at play. After, say, 75 AD, there was a new approach to literature, called the Second Sophistic. The sophists liked to speak and write classical Greek and made a list of twelve "classical" authors. Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were among them. Being "one of the twelve" seriously improved your chances on being copied. So, again a factor contributing to the afterlife of our triad.

The tragedians were published in two editions. There was a scholarly edition, in which the tragedies were published in an alphabetical sequence, and there was a school edition of three times seven plays, with commentary. This school edition has survived, and it is a very good edition. For example, it includes one complete trilogy (Agamemnon - Electra - Eumenides) and three plays that teach us how Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides dealt with the same subject matter (Electra, Electra, Orestes). We also have one book of the scholarly edition of Euripides, which contained only tragedies beginning with eta (Heracles, Hecuba, Helen...).

This is of course not my discovery; credit to Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff.

[SigniferOne]

It is a big misunderstanding to say that tragedians stopped writing after Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. As referenced, Aristotle makes mention of subsequent playwrights such as Agathon, but it is a general consensus that the Greek tragedy entered into a downward spiral after the 5th century, with Agathon being among the last few leftovers during the 4th, after which, during the Hellenistic period, there seems to have been nothing of value.

Then during the Roman period there is a strong revival of drama, wherein a LOT of people wrote tragedies and comedies. For example Caesar wrote them, Brutus, and Atticus among others. Varius, a competitor with Virgil for the greatest among Latin poets, and whose work has completely perished, is said to have written one particular play which could stand comparison with any of the best ones of the Greek. Asinius Pollio is another famous and great playwright (likewise completely perished). Additionally, it is known that Ovid has written a perished play ("Medea"), that could likewise stand comparison with the best of Sophocles or Euripides, and some scholars find traces of it in his Heroides, which carry a very strong pathos.

Subsequently, Roman tragedy can be seen from Tacitus' "Dialogus", where one of the main interlocutors is a major poet and playwright (Curiatus Maternus). He is said to have written several plays (some of which are thought to be listed in the Senecan corpus), including one about Cato the Younger. Nor was he the only one to write about Cato, who received dramatic treatment by several other tragedians earlier in the century as well. Romans in general were much more advanced in that sense, treating of real themes and not just mythological scenarios at every point, so there are lots of poems on real-world events, e.g. the Civil War, the Battle of Actium (recently discovered), etc etc. And similarly they had lots of plays that dealt with real-world events; aside from plays about Cato and various moments in Roman history, another example is a superb play from Senecan Corpus ("Octavia") which is about Nero, and has his tyranny be contrasted with the liberty-loving protagonist. I would also have to say that the Senecan Oedipus can stand good contrast with the Sophoclean Oedipus.

Practically the whole of the Roman tragedic corpus had suffered a catastrophic oblivion, and after the Roman Classical period, circa 180 AD, it too spirals downward into oblivion, paralleling the Greek precedent.