Ancient Greece

Lesson 7: Greek Drama

Attic Comedy

Tragedy was always considered the ‘senior’ of the two main forms of Greek drama.

There was usually one comedy staged at the end of each day during the Festival of Dionysus. This meant that the audience would already have watched three tragedies and a satyr play before the comedy even began.

Unlike tragedy, the subject matter of the comedies was usually contemporary. Few mythical elements were introduced.

Comedies were often used as a platform for attacking and ridiculing politicians. Even the great Pericles was attacked on stage by the comic poets.

The most important comic poet that we know of is Aristophanes.

Aristophanes himself came from a wealthy family. He was not very sympathetic to the democratic system.

He directed a lot of vicious jokes against the politician Cleon, who was the leader of the ‘popular’ (that is, democratic) party in the Athenian ‘Ekklesia’. Because the only other source we have about Cleon is Thucydides, who was also hostile to the democracy in many ways, the image of Cleon that has come down to us from the ancient sources is a very negative one.

This image is not necessarily accurate, as you would already be working out for yourself by now if you have been going through the course carefully.

Another one of Aristophanes’ well known works is one called “The Clouds”, in which Aristophanes makes fun of Socrates. The image that Aristophanes presented of Socrates may well have played a large part in the Anti-Socrates prejudices that led to his trial and condemnation.

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