This chapter examines how Sophoclean tragedy approaches and conceptualises the relationship between divine and mortal. It demonstrates that Sophocles builds on the early Greek theological, philosophical and literary tradition outlined in Chapter 1, but steers his own, distinctive course. It argues that Sophocles’ tragedies deploy ideas and beliefs about humans and gods in three, closely interconnected ways: in the explicitly theological and philosophical discourse uttered by characters and choruses; in the trajectories and experiences of individual characters on the stage; and in the broader, religious and ethical patterns that underlie these trajectories, which are occasionally and partially revealed to audiences. As part of its attempt to foreground the close interrelation of dramatic structure, form and content, the chapter devotes considerable space to a new interpretation of dramatic irony. This general discussion relies on readings of four Sophoclean plays, Oedipus Tyrannus, Ajax, Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus, as well as on brief comparative analyses of some Aeschylean and Euripidean examples.

This chapter offers in-depth case studies to display how playwrights both used and innovated with mechanical epiphany. Six ancient tragedies are discussed, grouped in thematic pairs. Euripides’ Helen and Bacchae, are taken together as plays that use the deus ex machina to comment on divine form. While the mēchanē in the Helen confirms divine form in a play otherwise full of illusion; the mēchanē in the Bacchae is presented as yet another epiphanic mode of the mimetically inclined patron god of theatre, Dionysus. Sophocles’ Philoctetes and Euripides’ Heracles use the mēchanē to explore issues of space, movement, and the connectedness of divine and mortal. Finally, Euripides’ Orestes and Medea both make use of the mēchanē to question divine epiphany by bringing to the fore issues of ontological boundaries between human and divine.

This chapter examines the fidelity discourse as applied to Greek drama and how it has affected the ways in which adaptations have tended to be detrimentally regarded. The chapter challenges the premise that we have access to the original versions of these plays, and suggests ways in which we can approach adaptation as a positive act of creativity that has enabled the work to survive, rather than a kind of debasement of the canon. The chapter also shows how the fidelity discourse exerts a negative influence on the adaptation of Greek drama, by using examples drawn from the author's own work on adaptations with the Aquila Theatre public programming aimed at the veteran community in the United States. By briefly describing these performance projects, the chapter hopes to show how an informed approach to adaptation can produce new ways in which to increase engagement with and knowledge of ancient dramatic works.

explores the phenomenon of disintegration, akrasia, in which the agent’s better judgment and appetite (classified as a feeling by Aristotle) come apart and the agent acts voluntarily simply on her appetite instead of her better judgment. Here again I rely on my account of indexical insight from , and I return to Sophocles’ Philoctetes to give a reading of the play that supports Aristotle’s claim that Neoptolemus is not akratic when he ceases to fall in with Odysseus’s plan to deceive Philoctetes, because he is not acting incorrectly. The upshot of my discussion, a detailed interpretation of the infamous EN VII 3, is that the akratic lacks the self-knowledge, the thoughtfulness, and virtue of character to act reliably in a correct manner. Contrary to the contention of modern philosophers, I argue that akrasia is primarily an ethical phenomenon.