The birth of tragedy in late sixth-century Attica was a moment of major innovation in Greek poetry and society. For the first time, gods and mythical figures came to life and walked onto the stage before the eyes of their audiences. Homeric bards sung about them, but tragic poets gave them a voice, making them interact both with each other and with a collective entity, the chorus. Combining the legends of epic with the songs of various lyric genres, tragedy was a hybrid genre that appropriated and transformed other artistic traditions. Its flexible and rich texture contributed to its appeal, and so did its production: masks, music, dance and stage effects in general.

This chapter focuses on the dramatic festivals held from the Hellenistic to the Roman period. My discussion is chronologically arranged into two main parts, one covering the Hellenistic period and the other the Roman period. Each section follows the same arrangement: after reviewing various sources for actors’ activities and dramatic festivals, I consider both the premieres and post-premiere performances recorded. Although festival catalogues regularly attest to the performance of both ‘new’ and the ‘old’ tragedies, they name the plays staged only rarely. Other types of records, however, allow us to identify the plays that formed the repertoire of later actors. While the performance reception of newly composed dramas remains elusive, especially after the Early Hellenistic period, ancient theatres did continue to host tragedies that premiered in the fifth and fourth centuries, and Euripides’ plays are prominent among them. Actors ensured their survival among the larger public, and their performances helped create a shared cultural heritage.

The introduction serves three main purposes. First, I present the topic of the book and its main goal: to identify the Greek tragedies that ancient actors continued to stage from the fourth century BC to the third century AD. In addition to surveying the relevant scholarly literature, I also introduce the terminology used in the book. Second, I describe the four types of ancient sources that allow us to reconstruct the repertoire of ancient actors: inscriptions, literary records, tragedy-related vases and Roman tragedies. I discuss each category of records separately, presenting previous studies and addressing their contribution to my own work. Third, I summarise the four chapters making up the book and I describe how I have arranged the two Appendices collecting ancient sources, one related to identifiable Greek tragedies (Appendix I) and the other to their unidentifiable counterparts (Appendix II).

This chapter identifies the tragedies that ancient actors kept performing in three areas: fourth-century Athens and Attica, fourth-century Sicily and South Italy, and Republican Rome. My discussion is organised by poet, starting with the canonical tragedians: Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Although Aeschylus’ tragedies quickly lost appeal with theatrical audiences across Greece, at least a few of them survived in fourth-century Sicily and South Italy and were later adapted by Roman dramatists for Latin-speaking audiences. Sophocles’ tragedies fared generally better than Aeschylus’, but Euripides clearly had the largest impact on actors’ activities. Many of his tragedies can be consistently found in different venues. While the plays by the three canonical tragedians can be more easily traced in the theatre-related sources, the tragedies by other authors also survived in later theatres. Their plays as well were reproduced on the theatre-related pots from across fourth-century Sicily and South Italy and were later staged in Rome in their Latin adaptations.

This chapter discusses both the dramatic and the literary canons of Greek tragedy. First, I review the plays that entered the repertoire of ancient actors by focusing on the elements that they share. These include specific features, scenes and motifs, ranging from accessible Greek to large main roles, recognition and reunion scenes, mad heroes, the legends surrounding Dionysus and those related to Athens. Second, I discuss the scholarly activities that preserved most of the extant tragedies. My discussion spans from fourth-century Athens to the Byzantine period. Drawing from literary and papyrological sources, I identify the reasons underlying the literary selection of Greek tragedies: a narrow focus on the three canonical tragedians, generic definitions, considerations about specific authors and plays as well as pedagogical needs. Finally, I discuss the relationship between the two canons, arguing for their independence. They derive from two different kinds of selection, each driven by its own set of criteria.

This chapter discusses both premieres and post-premiere performances in Classical Athens and Attica by focusing on their venues and on the tragedies involved. The main dramatic festivals in Athens, the Great Dionysia and the Lenaea, offered post-premiere performances only rarely, but the Dionysia held in the demes, the Attic Dionysia, had a more flexible schedule allowing for both types of dramatic events. After discussing the ancient evidence for dramatic contests at the Attic Dionysia, I argue that these festivals had a key role in the early formation of the dramatic canon. As for the tragedies involved, I present three case-studies: Libation Bearers and Edonians by Aeschylus and Euripides’ Telephus. Dramatic texts suggest that these tragedies were mounted time and again already in Classical Attica, and these early performances laid the groundwork for the popularity that these tragedies enjoyed with later actors and audiences.

We have referred elsewhere to Aristotle’s pronouncement in his Poetics on the role of the chorus in tragedy: ‘the chorus must be regarded as one of the actors; being part of the whole, it should take part in the action (sunagonízesthai), not as in Euripides, but as in Sophocles’. In the wake of this famous normative statement it is often said that the chorus of Euripides’ tragedies no longer played the central role it had played in those of Sophocles. According to Aristotle the tragic poet Agathon had been the first to turn the chorus’ interventions into mere musical intermezzos or embólima, and many have ascribed the same tendency to Euripides. If there is one play of Euripides that does not justify this belief it is his second Hippolytus. This play shows the master tragedian at the apex of his poetic career.