The Dramatic Festivals of Athens

Greek tragedy was essentially Athenian tragedy. All of the works of ancient Greek drama that have survived till today were written by Athenians, and performed for the benefit of the citizens of Athens at the Festival of Dionysos, all in the golden age of Tragedy, 470 BC to 400 BC. During this period Athens was undergoing a revolution of social, political and cultural change. It saw the invention of democracy; it is critical to appreciate that Athenian tragedy was written  in a city which was a democracy, the world's first democracy, Tragedy as drama evolved as a full part of this new political system and of the cultural innovations that concurrently taking place. To understand this it is necessary to appreciate how Athenians watched tragedy.

All tragedies were originally composed for performance at a single event in the Athenian calendar - The Great Dionysia, a spring festival, a celebration in honour of the god Diónysos Eleuthereús ("Dionysus the Liberator") , one of the great gods of the earth [the other was Demeter],  held annually over 4 consecutive days at approximately the end of February. and beginning of March in a single competition, a time when the sailing season had just opened and trade and intercourse with far off lands around the Mediterranean was made possible after Winter. If Dionysos was a god about anything, he was the god of spectacle and entertainment. The Great Dionysia was perhaps the most important cultural festival in the Athenian calendar.

At a time somewhat later these plays and their playwrights became so famous that the best ones were re-performed not only in Athens but elsewhere in The Ancient Greek World, and became taught in schools, read and studied by philosophers like Aristotle.

The Great Dionysia was not just a theatrical spectacle: it was a musical one as well. Each tragedy featured, in addition to three actors, a chorus consisting of twelve or fifteen Athenian citizens accompanied by an instrumentalist, a player of a double-reed pipe called the aulos. Between intervals of speech and dialogue performed by the actors, the chorus would sing and dance for the audience.

The Great Dionysia was a festival which allowed Athens to demonstrate to its colonies, allies, members of its empire, trading partners that it was a huge cultural centre. It took place at the time of the re-opening of the sailing season, when ships could set sail from their harbours at the end of winter. The Great Dionysia allowed it to put on a huge show, a performance for the benefit of all these other peoples. Where the Olympics were Pan-Hellenic, the Great Dionysia was international.

Eric Csapo says "The Dionysia took place mid to late March, the beginning of Greek Spring. By popular reckoning the Dionysia marked the opening of the sailing season. Sailors, like farmers, used the stars as a guide: both the agricultural year and the sailing season began with the evening setting of the Pleiades (late March/early April) and ended with their morning setting (late October/early November): hence the ancient etymology of Ancient astronomers and mythographers liked to connect the Pleiades with Dionysus, stressing their corporate persona as a chorus and their location between the horns of Taurus (the bull)."

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