Οι Επτά επί Θήβας του Αισχύλου, σύμφωνα με όσα γνωρίζουμε, παρουσιάστηκαν για πρώτη φορά στην αρχαία Αθήνα το 467 π.Χ. και βραβεύτηκαν ως μέρος της τετραλογίας Λάϊος, Οιδίπους, Επτά επί Θήβας και του σατυρικού δράματος Σφιγξ, σε μια εποχή όπου η δημοκρατία έχει εγκαθιδρυθεί στην Αθήνα, αλλά έχουν αφήσει έντονα ίχνη σε αυτήν και την πολιτική της οι Περσικοί πόλεμοι. Στην εργασία αυτή θα επιχειρήσουμε να διερευνήσουμε και να αναδείξουμε τις σχέσεις της τραγωδίας των Επτά επί Θήβας με αποσπάσματα της προσωκρατικής σκέψης, ξεκινώντας από τα έπη του Ησιόδου, που οι μελετητές θεωρούν σημαντικά ως υπόστρωμα αυτού του έργου, και φτάνοντας μέχρι τον Πρωταγόρα, που η δράση του αρχίζει την εποχή που πρωτοπαρουσιάστηκε το έργο. Παρόλο που οι μελετητές δεν έχουν ασχοληθεί συχνά με αυτό το ζήτημα, φαίνεται να έχει ιδιαίτερη σημασία για την ερμηνεία αυτής της τραγωδίας, γι’ αυτό το λόγο θα επιμείνουμε σε αυτήν την έρευνα και θα προσπαθήσουμε να δείξουμε πώς ο Αισχύλος χρησιμοποιεί όχι μόνο τους διάφορους μύθους αλλά και φιλοσοφικούς στοχασμούς της εποχής του, για να τους μετουσιώσει σε θέατρο. / --

This thesis examines the theology of Aeschylus through a close text-based discussion of the nature and justice of Zeus. This will not be a dogmatic investigation that looks for signs of monotheism or 'proto-monotheism'. Rather, this thesis will examine the presentation of the god in Aeschylus, as he is found in his plays, free from any desire or attempt to form a rounded, comprehensive 'Aeschylean theology'. The first chapter considers the two closely connected divine terms, thetaepsilonozeta and deltaalphaiotamuonu. The clear-cut and easily discernible meaning of thetaepsilonozeta acts as a constant with which the more ambiguous and less determinable word deltaalphaiotamuonu can be compared and contrasted. This chapter discusses both those instances where deltaalphaiotamuonu seems to be synonymous with thetaepsilonozeta and where it does not, where the term seems to possess a meaning close to that of an individual's fortune or destiny in life. This is done in order to conclusively see how Aeschylus uses the word deltaalphaiotamuonu in the Eumenides as part of his characterisation of the Erinyes, which enables us to see more clearly what role divine terminology plays in the presentation of Zeus and the god's justice. The remaining chapters of this thesis examine Zeus in Aeschylus. First, attention is given to the old debates concerning the potential and respective influence of Homeric, Hesiodic and Presocratic conceptions of divinity on the theology of Aeschylus. Then, the final chapter of the thesis looks at the justice of Zeus primarily through a discussion of one question, whether we should understand Agamemnon as guilty in the eyes of Zeus, which it is argued we should not. It is shown that Aeschylus does not present an optimistic idea of Zeus or divine justice, and the god's rule is seen as neither kind nor benevolent. Rather a pragmatic and pessimistic view is presented to us by Aeschylus, one which recognises that Zeus is an all-powerful being in need of respect and honour and whose will must be carefully observed.

nÃo hà / Na GrÃcia Antiga, mitos como o de AgamÃmnon eram narrados em meios sociais e adaptados ao momento, no qual eram apresentados, possibilitando, assim, vÃrias versÃes de uma mesma narrativa. Acerca do mito de AgamÃmnon, o chefe dos gregos, restaram alguns textos escritos como: na poesia Ãpica, IlÃada e Odisseia de Homero; no poema lÃrico, PÃtica XI de PÃndaro; nas tragÃdias, Oresteia de Ãsquilo, no Ãjax e na Electra de SÃfocles, na HÃcuba, Troianas, AndrÃmaca, Electra, IfigÃnia em TÃuris, Orestes e IfigÃnia em Ãulis de EurÃpides; nos poemas Cantos CÃpriose Retornos do ciclo troiano; e em outras narrativas como a Biblioteca MitolÃgica de Apolodoro e a DescriÃÃo da GrÃcia de PausÃnias. Jà na literatura latina, encontram-se referÃncias ao mito de AgamÃmnon, no Egisto de LÃvio Andronico, na Clitemnestra de Ãcio, na Eneida, de VirgÃlio, nos poemas, A arte de Amar e Metamorfoses de OvÃdio e nas tragÃdias, AgamÃmnon, Troianas e Tiestes de SÃneca. Nessa pesquisa, mostrar-se-à como as obras mencionadas recontam o mito de AgamÃmnon e como Ãsquilo e SÃneca, ao escreverem as suas tragÃdias, ambas intituladas AgamÃmnon, apoderam-se dessa tradiÃÃo literÃria. Analisar-se-à as partes do mito que foram colhidas dessa tradiÃÃo pelos tragediÃgrafos e se tentarà mostrar algumas particularidades dos tragediÃgrafos influenciados por um contexto social, ao recontar esse mito, na tentativa de apresentar uma comparaÃÃo entre os textos quanto ao processo de recriaÃÃo mÃtica feito por Ãsquilo e SÃneca.

Greek tragedy portrayed the husband and wife relationship as fraught with hos¬tilities and ambivalences. The purpose of this mini-dissertation is to examine these dysfunctions, and to explain them. I have approached the problem from several important angles. I have begun with selected aspects of Athenian Mythol¬ogy and the foundation myths of Athenian culture to see whether there are recur¬rent themes that attest to inherent ambivalences and hostilities towards women within the mythological heritage of Athens. This approach is based on two as¬sumptions: first, that the dynamics of interpersonal relationships portrayed in mythology and literature tend to mirror the modal patterns of cultures and sec¬ond, the experiences of these modal patterns are the inspiration from which a culture draws its mythmaking. I then examine the context of the production of tragedy within the religious framework of the festival of the Greater Dionysia so as to establish a theory of the nature and function of Greek tragedy. The purpose of the second focus is to see whether there are connections between the workings of Greek tragedy and the thematic material it portrays. I have chosen four Greek tragedies within which to explore marital dysfunctions: Aeschylus’ Agamemnon, Sophocles’ Ajax and The Women of Trachis, and Euripides’ Medea. I have un¬der¬taken a close reading of the original texts and commentaries as well as a close reading of comparative translations of the texts for the purpose of this study. My explorations reveal that Athenian society was aware of the risks of the dire imbalance prevailing within their social order, which was created by such a fero¬cious suppression and derogation of half their members. In addition this imbal¬ance was redressed on a continual basis by the production of and through com¬munal participation in tragedy in its function as a ritualistic mechanism for ca¬thartic relief. Thus I conclude that the production of tragedy served to reaffirm the status quo. Tragedy provided a process for the de-structuring of familial and social order first and then sought and promoted a process of psychological restructuring and re-integration. This occurred through the empathetic workings of Catharsis or pur¬gation of negative emotions or feelings of guilt. The cathartic effects of tragedy were designed for men. As a collective therapeutic action it confirmed the male dominated order of society and reaffirmed the Athenian perception of a dualistic reality in the form of irreconcilable opposites: theatre versus life and female ver¬sus male. Tragedies were written by men and performed by men and thus we can expect all symptoms, signs and symbols of male and female conflict to be the products of the masculine psyche. / Prof. J.L.P. Wolmarans

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My thesis examines the evolution of Clytemnestra’s characterization throughout the generations of receptions of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon. This diachronic study investigates how Clytemnestra’s complex use of gender, specifically her use of masculinity, allows her character to be understood in a different light by a modern audience in contrast to the original perception of her character in antiquity. In analysing the aspects that contribute to Clytemnestra’s ancient characterization, which display her to be dangerously masculine to a fifth-century male audience, the meaning behind her behaviour is also revealed, as it opens a discussion on masculinity in Athens through Clytemnestra’s emasculation of the men around her. The true depth of her character is revealed through a study of Clytemnestra’s modern characterization, as modern audiences are able to recognize the sympathetic aspects of her character in the text, which are reflected through the various feminist adaptations and performances today. The paradox of Clytemnestra’s characterization demonstrates the impact that she has not only on the plot of the play, but also on its survival, as her complexity is what continues to engage audiences in modernity. The findings of this thesis will demonstrate the importance of female characters in Greek tragedy through examining the various layers of Clytemnestra’s character that are uncovered by comparing her characterization in antiquity and modernity, thus proving that her figure, and tragedy overall, has the ability to evolve and influence audiences yet to come through the impact of these dynamic women. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

A dramatic analysis and directorial reflection on Temple Theaters' production of Charles L. Mee's BIG LOVE, a modern rendering of Aeschylus' THE SUPPLIANT WOMEN. This thesis explores the entire process of directing the production, from research and text analysis, to visual collaboration and rendering, to casting and rehearsal, to tech and production. Ultimately, it is the author's intention to reveal a specific directorial perspective of BIG LOVE and the corresponding creative process utilized to render this interpretation. / Theater

This dissertation claims contributions on two fronts. First, it aims to contribute to the theory of reception with a practical model of reading postclassical texts that substantially engage ancient ones. In the second place, it contributes three individual readings of three important works of literature on which nothing has been written by anglophone classicists working on classical reception: José Watanabe’s Antígona, Christine Brooke-Rose’s Amalgamemnon, and Anne Carson’s Economy of the Unlost. This dissertation’s contribution to the theory of reception is the proposition of a practical schema of reading, which is a figure upon which the imagination can operate. Simply put, it posits a schema as the place where meaning is construed. The schema calls attention to the constructedness of meaning and to the act of construction and organizes different moments of “reception”: that of the postclassical text receiving the ancient one (which the schema imagines as a vertical line) and that of the scholar receiving that particular instance of reception, the “I” of interpretation, which is theorized as one of two axes of transcendence of the schema (the other one being the world of/to which the schema speaks and means). Furthermore, the schema puts the “where” of meaning in the relation of (at least) two texts, but the “of” of meaning belongs to the postclassical texts. The postclassical text receiving ancient text(s) is proposed as a complex work, simultaneously in relationship with texts from the past as well as other texts from other periods. The relations of the postclassical text with each of these texts are different and need to be differently traced or theorized. The relation with the ancient texts is properly textual and thus the primary way of tracing it in the schema is a vertical line that first and foremost pays attention to form, with the tools of structural analysis and philology. Then, the theorization of the vertical line is made thicker with the operation of concepts upon it. As each of these texts (the classical and the postclassical) mean in relation to webs of texts that are relevant to the vertical relation, the schema imagines an additional dimension to the vertical one: the horizontal. Each of the horizontal lines traced for both the classical and the postclassical texts are in one way or another “historicist” readings, they trace contexts for the texts, but the way that context is understood in the theorization of the horizontal dimension of the schema is plural and never saturated. While this horizontal aspect of meaning is understood as textual, the schema also imagines for it an axis of transcendence, the world on which writers write and in which the reader is situated. The first chapter’s primary goal is to provide a reading of José Watanabe’s Antígona using the schema to illuminate the ways in which this text makes meaning in relation to Sophocles’ Antigone and part of the body of texts that have come to form part of that name. This reading counters the predominant approach to this work (and to many a work in classical reception), which reads it allegorically, as a commentary on a particular moment in the history of Peru. That predominant way of reading not only ignores the vertical orientation of the text in relation to its avowed ancient source, it also limits itself to one way of tracing the horizontality of the postclassical text, construing “context” in the most immediate and literal sense. The chapter contributes a reading that opens up Antígona to much more than allegory, highlighting its powerful affective and aesthetic dimension, as well as its intersection with recent feminist readings of the Greek tragedy that turn towards the figure of Ismene and the politics of sisterhood. The second chapter sets itself to the analysis of the complex role that ancient texts play in Christine Brooke-Rose’s radically experimental novel Amalgamemnon. This novel has not been the focus of attention of any work by a classical scholar, and those scholars who have written about it in other fields have failed to analyze the importance that Herodotus’ Histories and Aeschylus’ Agamemnon play at both the structural and the thematic levels. Tracing the vertical line, the chapter shows how these two texts are essential to the novel’s writing and themes. In the horizontal dimension, the schema situates the novel’s engagement with those ancient sources in the context of contemporary feminist discourse, especially as it concerns the question of the possibility of a feminine discourse and an outside of the phallocentric system of signs. That intersection illuminates both how Brooke-Rose is reading the ancient sources as well as what are arguably some of the limitations of her writing in contrast to the ethical commitments of feminisms. Finally, the third chapter is a reading of Anne Carson’s Economy of the Unlost, a text that is perhaps better known than the texts treated in the previous two chapters, at least in the Anglophone world, but which has nonetheless been fairly disregarded in the scholarship. The chapter provides a rigorous analysis of the “work” of this text, of what it does and how it does it, as the scholarship on Carson’s work has failed to posit or satisfactorily respond to the important questions regarding what constitutes the undeniable originality of her writing. In this particular book, which combines academic and poetic discourses into a new form that partakes of both, Carson proposes a comparative mode of making meaning that cannot be captured with a structural analysis of inter- or -trans- textuality, as the previous two chapters construed the vertical dimension of the schema. Instead, the theory of metaphor developed by Paul Ricoeur provides the appropriate tool to imagine the vertical dimension of the schema and analyze Carson’s exercise in bringing an ancient and a modern author together. This particular construction of the schema brings into the terrain of classical reception the possibility of interpretating comparative works that do not fit nicely within the theoretical margins of this subfield of classical studies. Finally, the chapter provides the occasion to trace another aspect of the schema, its other axis of transcendence, which is the “I” of interpretation.