Oedipus Rex by Sophocles is my favorite Ancient Greek play

[seleanor]

This classic tragedy is still read and performed today. In the play, a father leaves his own son, Oedipus, to die in a field. Rather than die, he is taken in by another family and raised. While with this family, Oedipus is told by an Oracle that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother. Despite his best efforts to prevent this from happening, he does both of these things.

 

[amygdalE]

This classic tragedy is still read and performed today. In the play, a father leaves his own son, Oedipus, to die in a field. Rather than die, he is taken in by another family and raised. While with this family, Oedipus is told by an Oracle that he will murder his father and sleep with his mother. Despite his best efforts to prevent this from happening, he does both of these things.

Where do you find tragedy? In the verification of the oracle or in somethimg else?

 

[paharo45]

Where do you find tragedy? In the verification of the oracle or in somethimg else?

I thought tragedy is what they call all Greek plays?

 

[amygdalE]

I thought tragedy is what they call all Greek plays?

No, my friend. There are two main species of Greek plays (dramas): tragedy and comedy. Aristophanes wrote comedies. In extreme forms, comedies are called farces. I will not answer the question I asked you; I will only point out that "tragedy" [< trago-ode : goat-song] originally was a lament by goat-attired men who exactly mourned the death of Dionysus (the mythical god-man, the son of Zeus and a human female, wherefore he inherited a double nature, just as Jesus of Nazareth will do in more recent times. The theater where tragedies were performed always had an altar to Dionysos, even when the tragedies had nothing to do with Him. But then, why do we call some dramas tragedies? What is lamented (usually by a chorus -- in a drama itself-- that represents the witnesses of something "tragic"? There are many theories, as by Aristotle, by Nietzsche, and others.

 

[paharo45]

No, my friend. There are two main species of Greek plays (dramas): tragedy and comedy. Aristophanes wrote comedies. In extreme forms, comedies are called farces. I will not answer the question I asked you; I will only point out that "tragedy" [< trago-ode : goat-song] originally was a lament by goat-attired men who exactly mourned the death of Dionysus (the mythical god-man, the son of Zeus and a human female, wherefore he inherited a double nature, just as Jesus of Nazareth will do in more recent times. The theater where tragedies were performed always had an altar to Dionysos, even when the tragedies had nothing to do with Him. But then, why do we call some dramas tragedies? What is lamented (usually by a chorus -- in a drama itself-- that represents the witnesses of something "tragic"? There are many theories, as by Aristotle, by Nietzsche, and others.

Interesting how there is no in-between, just tragedy and comedy. Funny to think of our media now and how there are so many categories