This chapter examines some of the specific methodological challenges of reading dramatic fragments intertextually. It also explores some broader aspects of intertextuality, literary culture, readership, orality, and memory in relation to Greek drama in general. It begins by noting the tendency of commentators and critics to use the formula ‘cf.’ when identifying any sort of similarity between fragmentary texts (or between fragmentary texts and extant ones). But ‘cf.’ on its own is inadequate as an interpretative strategy. This chapter investigates what types of textual relationship are actually being signified by ‘cf.’, and whether it is always possible to know for certain. It also asks to what extent the poor state of the evidence hampers our understanding of textual relations between fragmentary plays, and it raises the problem of how to discern which text is responding to which. These questions are addressed by looking in detail at a number of case studies from works by Aeschylus, Phrynichus, Glaucus, Ion, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes.

This chapter considers how we might approach the intertextual relationship between two highly fragmentary texts, in this case Sophocles’ Judgement, a satyr play that dramatised the Judgement of Paris, and the epic Cypria in which that mythological episode featured. The exiguous textual remains of both works are taken as a prompt to consider intertextuality in its broader sense, namely the interrelationship of texts in ways that go beyond direct verbal allusion. The framework of possible worlds is employed to conceptualise the relationship between satyr drama and the world of epic and tragedy on which it draws, suggesting that the latter may be thought of as an actual world on which the alternative world of the former is predicated. Using this as a model of intertextuality allows us to examine the movements of the satyric plot as it opens up and closes down possibilities for radically alternative outcomes. In this reading of Judgement, we see Sophocles engaging with both the Cypria and that epic’s own intertextual network, with the satyrs acting paradoxically as both disruptors of the mythical tradition and a force that supports the story reaching its traditional conclusion.

This chapter considers some aspects of the intertextual and intervisual dynamics of Euripides’ Cyclops with particular reference to the cave represented by the skēnē. The particular links of the Cyclops to Sophocles’ Philoctetes are used to explore a network of allusive possibilities in both plays going back to Homer’s ‘Cave of the Nymphs’ in Odyssey 13 and embracing the lost Philoctetes plays of Aeschylus and Euripides. The powerful mediating role of Homer’s cave is seen to be transferred to the caves of drama as the boundary between the seen and the unseen, between the past, present, and future, and as a strongly suggestive marker of the difference between epic narrative and dramatic representation. As the Homeric cave had separate entrances for mortals and gods, so did the Athenian stage. In exploring some of the richness of ‘intertextual allusion’ in fifth-century drama, the chapter also contributes to the appreciation of the differences in allusive practice between tragedy, comedy, and satyr play and of how poets acknowledged and exploited those differences.

According to Aristotle, character or ethos in tragedy is ’that which reveals what the moral choice is like’. This kind of ethos is what this book explores in Sophocles, by examining five tragedies in which moral choice is central to the course of the drama. These choices are made within the context of traditional Greek morality, which, amongst other things, expected one to help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. Closely allied to these principles is the conception of justice as retaliation. This nexus of principles provides a pervasive ethical background to most of Greek literature and is of special significance for tragedy.

Greek popular thought is pervaded by the assumption that one should help one’s friends and harm one’s enemies. These fundamental principles surface continually from Homer onwards and survive well into the Roman period, and indeed to the present day, especially in international relations. They are firmly based on observation of human nature, which yields the conclusion that most human beings do in fact desire to help their friends and harm their enemies, and derive satisfaction from such behaviour. Thus Xenophon’s Socrates can count benefiting friends and defeating enemies as one of the things which bring the ’greatest pleasures’.

This chapter introduces the human as a question. It revolves around the figure of the Theban Sphinx and her interaction with Oedipus and traces her presence from the ancient world into the works of Sigmund Freud. The chapter invokes the Sphinx as a presence that both prompts and challenges the way we think the human. Oedipus’ troubled humanity stands at the intersection between his success in solving the Sphinx’s riddle and his apparent failure to understand how her words apply to his own existence. As such, the Sphinx’ intervention at Thebes exposes a deep-seated vulnerability at the core of the human condition – a vulnerability springing from the fact that while the riddle can be solved with the powers of reasoning, the human as a riddle remains enigmatic and beyond the application of logos.

Heidegger, in the 1946 essay Letter on Humanism, famously remarks that the tragic dramas of Sophocles are in some sense superior to the philosophical ethics of Aristotle in their ability to “preserve” the site of human dwelling in language. This chapter first offers a reading of Aristotle’s Ethics, suggesting in what sense they might be deficient, from Heidegger’s perspective. Next, Heidegger’s reading of Sophocles’ Antigone in the 1942 lecture course Hölderlin’s Hymn “The Ister” provides our focus, and we find there a poetization of the site of human dwelling, as opened up by a play between homeliness and unhomeliness, familiar order and uncanniness, presencing and absencing. Thirdly and finally, we ask precisely how Sophocles’ poetizing manages to preserve this dynamic play and, moving beyond Heidegger, we suggest that Antigone herself, as she moves through the plot of Sophocles’ play, eventually and dramatically models how humans properly inhabit this site as such, in her questioning way of thinking and in her hesitating way of taking action.

Similes in Apollonius’ Argonautica tell two contrasting tales. On the one hand, humans with skilled expertise can exert an exhilarating amount of control over the world around them. The power of knowledge reflects the contemporary culture of Hellenistic Alexandria where new forms of knowledge were sprouting up everywhere. But such skills are largely useless for women, and they fail in the face of human passions. While characters in the simile world of the Argonautica use strategy to overcome danger in a way that is largely out of reach in the Homeric simile world, similes also highlight the intractable power of erotic desire as powerful and deadly as the battlefield of the Iliad. The Argonautica represents the first post-Homeric chapter in the story of epic similes. Simile structures take on a range and variety that previously was found only in the content of the similes. These new forms bring forward simile features that are peripheral in Homeric to reshape the epic genre in ways that reflect the ideas of the Hellenistic period. At moments of powerful emotion in the Argonautica, similes weave “erudition” and “emotion” inextricably together.

The Moschopoulean comments on Sophocles are among the many materials for the teaching of high-register Medieval Greek that emerged from the well-regarded school of Maximos Planoudes and Manuel Moschopoulos in Constantinople between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth centuries. The aim of this contribution is to explore this complex material, examining what its focus was and what this can tell us about Medieval Greek education in the late Middle Ages. This chapter takes as a case study the Moschopoulean scholia on Sophocles’ Electra. Previously unpublished passages from its prologue are here edited and discussed.

The use of the present tense to refer to the past in scenic narrative, that is, narrative passages where discourse time comes close to story time, depends on the pretense that the past events are being currently re-enacted. This pretense is facilitated by a mimetic style of narrating: the narrative is construed in such a way that the activity of processing the narrative is similar to the processing of actual experience. This is achieved in three ways. First, by narrating events that are concrete and appeal to our sensorimotor faculties. Second, by depicting the narrative events through gesture, direct speech representation, sound symbolism, and other means. Third, by using simple grammar to mimic the immediacy of actual experience. Moreover, the present tense is more likely to be used when the narrated events are high in communicative dynamism, which means that they are particularly newsworthy or important for the development of the discourse.

This chapter explores in particular the 'greek presence' in the small organon, as manifested in the form of greek tragedy and/or its theorist aristotle. This is embedded within a broader analysis of this key work as a fundamenal contribution to theatre theory. New archival material in the form of brecht's type-written inserts into his personal copy of aristotle's 'poetics' is published for the first time and discussed in detail.

The significance of the model book, which developed out of the 1948 production of the antigone, far exceeds its immediate context. Like the production which it is based on, it is an exemplary case study for brecht's novel kind of theatre in its dramaturgical, actorial and directorial dimensons. The diverging format of the two editions of the model book and their significance are discussed. The chapter concludes with a plea for re-inventing the model book format.

An integrative concluding exploration of the book's key themes and insights which is also designed to function as a stand-alone piece.

Key themes of this book are introduced. This includes brecht's position relative to the western dramatic tradition, the structure of this book and the range of brecht's exposure to (greek) tragedy. The notions of genealogy and analogue are introduced. The chapter concludes with a case study, brecht's use of masks.