Aeschylus
Athenian tragic poet (?525/4–456/5 bc). He fought in the battle of Marathon. His first tragic production was in 499, his first victory in 484. He gained thirteen victories altogether. His epitaph ...
Agathon
Of Athens was the most celebrated tragic poet after the three great masters. (See tragedy, greek.) He won his first victory in 416 bc, and the occasion of Plato's Symposium is a party at his house in ...
Antiphon
(c.480–411 bc),of the deme of Rhamnus, the first Attic orator whose works were preserved. From a prominent family, he participated in the intellectual movement inspired by the sophists, taking a ...
Asclepiades
(RE 27),of Tragilus (4th cent. bc), wrote an account of Greek mythology as told in tragedy, the six books of Tragodoumena (Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 12), just as earlier ...
chorégos
‘chorus-leader’, i.e. the man who trained and paid for a festival chorus. See tragedy, Greek §1.4.
didaskalia
Lit. ‘teaching’, came to be used in Greece as the standard term for the production of a performance at a dramatic festival. Dithyrambs, tragedies, satyr‐plays (see satyric drama), and comedies were ...
Dionysia
Many festivals of Dionysus had special names, e.g. Anthesteria, Lenaea, etc. This article concerns those Attic festivals known as (a) the Rural Dionysia, and (b) the City or Great Dionysia. Festivals ...
Dionysus
In Greek mythology, a god, son of Zeus and Semele; his worship entered Greece from Thrace c.1000 bc. Originally a god of the fertility of nature, associated with wild and ecstatic religious rites, in ...
dithyramb
In ancient Greece an intoxicated song in honour of the god Dionysus; in modern usage applied to a comp. of wild, passionate character.
Euripides
(480–c. 406 bc),Greek dramatist. His nineteen surviving plays show important innovations in the handling of traditional myths, such as the introduction of realism, an interest in feminine psychology, ...
genre
A grouping of texts related within the system of literature by their sharing features of form and content. Ancient theoretical discussions of specific literary genres operate according to criteria ...
Greek Poetry
[This entry includes thirteen subentries: Overview to 1 bceOverview from 1 ceDidactic PoetryEpicPost-Classical Greek EpicChoral LyricLyricPastoralEpinician PoetryElegiac PoetryEpigramsThe Iambic ...
imagery
The identification of scenes in sculpture, painting and the minor arts has long been a major activity of classical archaeology, although it has traditionally been accorded less emphasis than the ...
intolerance, intellectual and religious
Sir K. Popper famously praised 5th cent. bc Athens as an ‘open society’, but the tolerance of that society had limits. There is some evidence for literary censorship, though of a haphazard and ...
Juvenal
(c. 60–c. 140),Roman satirist. His sixteen verse satires present a savage attack on the vice and folly of Roman society, chiefly in the reign of the emperor Domitian.
Latin tragedy
Varro and Pomponius Atticus dated the first performance of a Latin tragedy to 240 bc at the Ludi Romani. Performances continued at this and other public festivals down to the end of the 1st cent. bc. ...
Lenaea
A Dionysiac festival (see dionysus) celebrated in Athens on 12 Gamelion (January–February), which in other Ionian calendars is called Lenaion. The name is derived from lēnē, ‘maenad’. The official ...
libraries
By the end of the 5th cent. bc, books were no rarity, even if some regarded them as a fad of intellectuals like Euripides; Athens had booksellers, and exports reached the Black (Euxine) Sea. ...
literary criticism in antiquity
1. The arts of formal speech played a big part in ancient life; so it was natural that vocabularies and conceptual frameworks should be developed for the purposes of evaluation, speculation about the ...
Lucilius
Friend of Seneca (2) the Younger and the recipient of his On Providence, Natural Questions, and Ethical Epistles; b. in Campania, without wealth or prospects. Talent, literary style, and ...
