Minotaur, Labyrinth, Greek Tragedy and Greek ArchitectureAn introduction of the Classical Period

Outline of todays lecture1. Labyrinth and ancient Greek design2. Greek Tragedy3. the father of Greek tragedy: Aeschylus4. Greek architecture and Athens

A gentle reminder: Term-paper A and B(A) Two essays. (answer two of the questions TBA).(B) Editing all weekly journals.--week 17 (6 January 2014) :due for term paper and time for peer review--week 18: (13 January 2014) final exam/ 33 fill in the blanks (all questions are from the weekly journals

(Minotaur )Minos

Labyrinth/ MazeLabyrinth

Theseus and Ariadne. TheseusAriadne. Ariadnes thread

Daedalusan Athenian architect, and the first inventor of images.

Daedalus flying machines

Minos Daedalus. . .DaedalusIcarius

Minos, king of Crete/ Daedalusthe first ruler to control the Mediterranean Sea, which he ridded of pirates.He had with him a famed craftsman, Daedalus the Athenian, who was in exile from Athens because he had murdered his nephew Talos. Daedalus !!

Minoan Civilization

Maze amazing!

Theseus kills the Minotaur as Ariadne looks on

Phaistos Palace

Greek tragedy and theaterArts and architecture

Alice Y. Chang *The classical period

The three major Greek tragediansAeschylus Agamemnon

Sophocles Oedipus the King

Euripides Medea

AESCHYLUS524?-456 B.C.

This tomb hides the dust of Aeschylus, an Athenian, Euphorions son, who died in wheat-bearing Gela; his glorious velour the precinct of Marathon may proclaim, and the long-haired Medes, who knew it well. ~Aeschylus, Fragment 272Epitaph of Aeschylus

' Greek Text

the creator of tragedyThe earliest documents in the history of the Western theater are the seven plays of Aeschylus that have come down to us through the more than two thousand years since his death.

When he produced his first play in the opening years of the fifth century B.C., the performance that we know as drama was still less than half a century old, still open to innovationand Aeschylus, in fact, made such significant contributions to its development that he has been called the creator of tragedy.490s BCE

Dionysia FestivalAfter the defeat of the Persian invaders (480-479 B.C.), as Athens with its fleets and empire moved toward supremacy in the Greek world, this spring festival became a splendid occasion. The Dionysia, as it was now called, lasted for four or five days, during which public business (except in emergencies) was suspended and prisoners were released on bail for the duration of the festival.

In an open-air theater that could seat seventeen thousand spectators, tragic and comic poets competed for the prizes offered by the city.

an open-air theater

three tragedies and a satyr playPoets in each genre had been selected by the magistrates for the year. On each of three days of the festival, a tragic poet presented three tragedies and a satyr play (a burlesque on a mythic theme), and a comic poet produced one comedy.

The three tragedies could deal with quite separate stories or, as in the case of Aeschyluss Oresteia, with the successive stages of one extended action. By the time this trilogy was produced (458 B.C.) the number of actors had been raised to three; the spoken part of the performance became steadily more important. trilogy

The first play, Agamemnon, was followed at its performance by two more plays, The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides, which carried on its story and theme to a conclusion.

The Oresteia

Death of Agamemnon

Orestes killing Aigisthos

an equilibrium (~concerto)In the Oresteia an equilibrium between the two elements of the performance has been established. The actors, with their speeches, create the dramatic situation and its movement, the plot; the chorus, while contributing to dramatic suspense and illusion, ranges free of the immediate situation in its odes, which extend and amplify the significance of the action.

justiceThe theme of the trilogy is justice, and its story, like that of almost all Greek tragedies, is a legend that was already well known to the audience that saw the first performance of the play.

Tribe polisThe legend preserves the memory of an important historical process through which the Greeks had passed: the transition from tribal institutions of justice to communal justice, from a tradition that demanded that a murdered persons next of kin avenge the death to a system requiring settlement of the private quarrel by a court of law (the typical institution of the city-state, which replaced the primitive tribe).

Avenge When Agamemnon returns victorious from Troy, he is killed by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus, who is Agamemnons cousin. Clytemnestra kills her husband to avenge her daughter Iphigenia, whom Agamemnon sacrificed to the goddess Artemis when he had to choose between his daughters life and his ambition to conquer Troy. Aegisthus avenges the crime of a previous generation, the hideous murder of his brothers by Agamemnons father, Atreus.

standards of the old system, justiceThe killing of Agamemnon is, by the standards of the old system, justice; but it is the nature of this justice that the process can never be arrested, that one act of violence must give rise to another.

The Libation Bearers presents the revenge taken on Clytemnestra and Aegisthus by Orestes, Agamemnon's son. This red-figure crater (c470 BCE) shows Orestes striking down Aegisthus as Clytemnestra tries to intervene with an axe. Electra stands at far right, urging him on.This red-figure crater

Agamemnons murder must be avenged too, as it is in the second play of the trilogy by Orestes has acted justly according to the code of tribal society based on blood relationship, but in doing so he has violated the most sacred blood relationship of all, the bond between mother and son. The old system of justice has produced an insoluble dilemma.

insoluble dilemma

The ending of the second playAt the end of the second play they are only a vision in Orestes mindYou cant see them, he says to the chorus. I can; they drive me on. I must move on. But in the final play we see them too; they are the chorus, and they have pursued Orestes to the great shrine of Apollo at Delphi where he has come to seek refuge.

The FuriesAt the end of The Libation Bearers , Orestes sees a vision of the Furies. They are serpent-haired female hunters, the avengers of blood. Agamemnon had a son to avenge him, but for Clytemnestra there was no one to exact payment.

female, chthonic deities of vengeance or supernatural personifications of the anger of the dead. They represent regeneration and the potency of creation, which both consumes and empowers. A formulaic oath in the Iliad (iii.278ff; xix.260ff) invokes them as those who beneath the earth punish whosoever has sworn a false oath.Furies/ Erinyes/ Eumendies

The Remorse of Orestes (1862) by William Frederic Bouguereau (18251905)

This task is taken up by the Furies, who are the guardians of the ancient tribal sanctities; they enforce the old dispensation when no earthly agent is at hand to do so. Female themselves, they assert the claim of the mother against the son who killed her to avenge his father.

The task of the Furies

The trialThe arguments employed in the trial may not strike us as compelling, and may appear disappointing as an answer to the problems of guilt and justice raised by the trilogy.

According to this argument, the fact of the courts establishment is more important than the particular judgment in Orestes case. This is the end of an old era and the beginning of a new. The court institutes a system of communal justice, which punishes impersonally and has at last replaced the inconclusive anarchy of individual revenge.

The establishment of the court

Human institutionsBesides, the trilogy not only is concerned with the history of human institutions but also makes a religious statement. The sequence of murderous acts and counter-acts over three generations, leading to an important advance in human understanding and civilization, can be seen as the working out of the will of Zeus.

Athenian democracyThe ending of the Eumenides, then, when the Furies call blessings down on Athens, gives a vision of a city ruled by law and living in harmony with its land and its gods. In this story of progress painfully won, Aeschylus offers Athenian democracy its charter myth just as it is entering the era of its greatest achievements and its greatest risks.

The geography of Greecea land of mountain barriers and scattered islandsencouraged this fragmentation.*Alice Y. ChangTHE CITY-STATES OF GREECE

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Starting with colonies at Ischia and Cumae around the Bay of Naples in c. 750 BCE, the Greeks founded cities all around the Mediterranean, from the south of France to Naucratis in Egyptian Delta, to solve problems of over-population at home.*Alice Y. ChangThe expansion of Greece750-580 BCE

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Athens was at this time a democracy, the first in Western history. It was a direct, not a representative, democracy, for the number of free citizens was small enough to permit the exercise of power by a meeting of the citizens as a body in assembly.

*Alice Y. ChangAthens

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Alice Y. Chang *The Athenian Acropolis

Athens is the symbol of freedom, art, and democracy in the conscience of the civilized world. The capital of Greece took its name from the goddess Athena, the goddess of wisdom and knowledge. *Alice Y. ChangAthena

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Alice Y. Chang *Resorted plan of the Agora in 400BCE

Sparta, on the other hand, was rigidly conservative in government and policy. Because the individual citizen was reared and trained by the state for the states business, war, the Spartan land army was superior to any other in Greece, and the Spartans controlled, by direct rule or by alliance, a majority of the city-states of the Peloponnese.

*Alice Y. ChangSparta

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These two cities, allies for the war of liberation against Persia, became enemies when the external danger was eliminated. The middle years of the fifth century were disturbed by indecisive hostilities between them and haunted by the probability of full-scale war to come. As the years went by, this war came to be accepted as inevitable by both sides, and in 431 B.C, it began. It was to end in 404 B.C, with the total defeat of Athens.

*Alice Y. ChangPersian War and Peloponnesian War

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Before the beginning of this disastrous war, known as the Peloponnesian War, Athenian democracy provided its citizens with a cultural and political environment that was without precedent in the ancient world. The institutions of Athens encouraged the maximum development of the individuals capacities and at the same time inspired the maximum devotion to the interests of the community.

*Alice Y. ChangThe Athenian Empire

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The role of the assemblyAfter 500 BCE the Assembly met at the Hill of the Pnyx, on which stood a plinth.*Alice Y. Chang Total Democracy: Athenian Democracy in action

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*Alice Y. Chang Athena, maiden goddess of wisdom and the crafts, was very aptly the special deity of Athens, a city Aristotle later called the city hall of wisdom.

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Ancient Greek Architecture

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Doric order

The Main Elements of the Doric Order (Temple of the Dioscouri at Agrigento)

The fluted columns of the temple of Apollo Epicurus at Bassae bear a striking resemblance to the stem of angelica (angelica sylvestris).

Wild Angelica http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Illustration_Angelica_silvestris0.jpg

Ionic column and the frond of bracken (pteridium aquilinum)

Ionic orderionic order

the ratio of golden mean0.6181.618

Classical Ideal(Classical Ideal)balanceorder

Martin, Thomas R. Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times. New Haven: Yale UP, 1996.

Public revenuesAthens received substantial public revenues form harbor fees, sales taxes, and the tribute of the allies. Buildings paid for by public funds from these sources constituted the most conspicuous architecture in the city of the Classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries.

Agora and council The scale of these public buildings was usually no greater than the size required to fulfill their function, such as the complex of buildings on the agoras western edge in which the council of five hundred held its meetings and the public archives were kept.

The Acropolis 447 BCESince the assembly convened in the open air on a hillside above the agora, it required no building at all except for a speakers platform. In 447 B.C., however, at Pericles instigation, a great project began atop the Acropolis, the mesa-like promontory at the center of the city, which towered over the agora.

ParthenonParthenon, the name of the new temple built for Athena on the Acropolis, meant the house of the virgin goddess. As the patron goddess of Athens, Athena had long had another sanctuary on the acropolis honoring her in her role as Athena Polias (guardian of the city).

Expensive construction programThese buildings alone cost easily more than the equivalent of a billion dollars in modern terms, a phenomenal sum for an ancient Greek city-state. The program was so expensive that the political enemies of Pericles railed at him for squandering public funds. The finances for the program apparently came in part form the tribute paid by the members of the Delian League.

EntablatureColumnStylobateFriezeArchitraveCorniceTriglyphMetopeHigh-relief

pedimentCornice

Sculptural decorationThe Parthenon was extraordinary in its great size and expense, but it was truly remarkable in the innovation of its refined architecture and elaborate sculptural decoration.

http://cheriesplaceblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/parthenon-sculptures.html

230*100Constructed from twenty thousand tons of Atticmarble, it stretched nearly 230 feet in length and 100 feet in width, with eight columns across the ends instead of the six normally employed in Doric style, and seventeen instead of thirteen along the sides. These dimensions gave it a massive look conveying an impression of power.

Optical illusionSince perfectly rectilinear architecture appears curved to the human eye, subtle curves and inclines were built into the Parthenon to produce an optical illusion of completely straight lines: the columns were given a slight bulge in their middles, the corner columns were installed at a light incline and closer together, and the platform was made slightly convex.

Classroom discussion1. What are the most striking features of ancient Greek architecture?2. Do you agree the following statement? Theatre is life and life is theatre. Use the examples of Aeschylus plays to prove your viewpoints.

****THE MYTH OF THE MINOTAUR http://www.minotaur-websites.com/minomyth.htm

**http://www.timelessmyths.com/classical/gallery/daedalus.jpg****http://www.minoan.com/****************************************************In Doric temples the columns almost invariably stood directly on the floor, tapering upwards towards the roof. They were composed of a number of superimposed drums, held together by dowels of wood or bronze, and were generally fluted (i.e. cut with concave grooves the length of the column) examples without grooves are unfinished. The flutes were possibly meant to imitate the grooves made by a convex-bladed adze used to trim the original logs, although this type of decoration has a long, long pedigree in Egypt. http://www.odysseyadventures.ca/articles/greektemple/greek_temple.htm ******************