Civilization #9: Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides as Prophets of Democracy

Athenian citizens attended theatrical festivals twice yearly, where playwrights like Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides shaped democratic consciousness. These festivals attracted massive audiences who memorized plays and participated in collective civic education.

Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were the most admired playwrights in Athens. Everyone aspired to be a playwright because winning the Festival of Dionysus represented the highest honor, equivalent to winning a Nobel Prize.

Aeschylus created the Oresteia trilogy telling how Orestes killed his mother Clytemnestra to avenge his father Agamemnon, then faced judgment. Athena, goddess of Athens, established the first jury of 500 Athenian citizens to decide his fate.

The Furies, ancient gods responsible for maintaining cosmic order through vengeance, clash with Athena’s new democratic justice system. Orestes becomes the test case when both systems claim authority over his matricide.

Antigone defies King Creon’s decree by burying her brother Polynices, who rebelled and died fighting his own brother. Creon forbids burial as punishment; Antigone insists divine law supersedes human law.

Creon’s son Haemon confronts his father after Creon sentences Antigone to death. The people of Thebes support Antigone, viewing her burial of her brother as just, but fear speaking against the king.

Euripides wrote The Trojan Women showing Hecuba and Andromache, Trojan women enslaved by Greeks, witnessing their children murdered and facing lives as Greek concubines. Performed one year after Athens massacred Melos, killing all men and enslaving all women.

King Pentheus of Thebes rejects Dionysus, god of wine, theater, music, festivals, and sex. Pentheus insists on rational order, rejecting emotional and physical aspects of human nature that Dionysus represents.