Drama

The 3 Major Dramatists of the Athenian Age

Aeschylus    

He was a poet by profession and he was regarded by the Athenians and is regarded as the Father of Tragedies. He is reputed to have written seventy tragedies, but only seven has been preserved. He excelled in presenting supermen, in depicting gods, Titans, and heroes that made his writing awful and sublime. He is called the Theological Poet because his play had great spiritual and religious fervor by presenting the original dignity and greatness of nature and of man. He is called the Soldier Playwright because he took part in the Battle of Marathon and in Battle of Salamis.



Euripides

He was called the Modern Playwright because he did not only write true tragedies but also serious plays. He portrayed the gods as powerful but also capricious and silly that is why he was exiled from Athens. To him, man is not important because he sees himself as stupid and weak, a victim of forces out of his control and he is, by nature,ignorant and wicked. He was a lonely, melancholy man with a sour disposition. After his exile he, lived with the king of Macedonia, who owned very fierce dogs which he unchained at night. He was killed by these dogs one night as he went out to take a walk in the king’s garden. 

Sophocles  

He is known best for what he wrote about Oedipus, the mythological figure who proved central to Freud and the history of psychoanalysis. Sophocles grew up in the town of Colonus, just outside Athens, which was the setting of his tragedy Oedipus at Colonus. His father, Sophillus, thought to have been been a wealthy nobleman, sent his son to Athens for an education. In 468, Sophocles defeated the first of the the three great Greek tragedians, Aeschylus, in a dramatic competition; then in 441, the third of the tragedian trio, Euripides, beat him. During his long life Sophocles earned many prizes, including about 20 for 1st place. Sophocles increased the number of actors to 3.