Hello, Χαίρετε, and welcome to Epic Greek History episode 23, “Hey, Gang, Let’s Put on a Show! Thespis and the Origins of Greek Tragedy.” I’m Scott Emmons. 

In the last episode, we saw how Pisistratus and his successors ruled as tyrants in Athens for three and a half decades. During their time in power, they introduced innovations that had a lasting impact on the city. One of those was the new religious festival known as the Great Dionysia, which became the city’s main dramatic festival. According to some ancient sources, a poet named Thespis staged the first tragedy at the Great Dionysia during the reign of Pisistratus. Later, when drama was in full bloom with tragedians like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and with comic playwrights like Aristophanes, it was one of the crowning achievements of Athenian culture. So, having just come off an episode on the Pisistratean tyranny, I thought this would be a good opportunity to explore the little we know about the origins of Greek tragedy. 

When I say “the little we know,” I’m not kidding. We’re working with just a few bits and pieces of evidence, many of them from much later sources, so it’s hard to nail down any hard facts. As my 40-year-old edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary puts it, quote: “The attempt to trace back the development of tragedy before the fifth century is beset with uncertainties at every point.” Unquote. So this will be one of those episodes where I can only try to present a reasonably plausible account of what was going on, with the understanding that just about everything is debatable. 

To start from what we do know, Greek drama was always tied to the worship of Dionysus.  So in order to understand its roots, it’s important to know a little about its patron god. The first thing we all learn about Dionysus is that he’s the god of wine. And he is that, but he’s much, much more. Plutarch describes him at one point as the embodiment of “liquid nature.” That’s a bit abstract, but what he’s talking about is a sort of wild life essence that infuses all plants and animals, including humans. He has epithets like Anthios, “blossomer,” Karpios, “fruit-bearer,” and Endendros, “inside the tree.” I’ve always loved the way the classicist E.R. Dodds expressed it in the introduction to his edition of Euripides’ play, the Bacchae. Dionysus is, quote: 

…not only the liquid fire in the grape, but the sap thrusting in a young tree, the blood pounding in the veins of a young animal, all the mysterious and uncontrollable tides that ebb and flow in the life of nature.” Unquote 

The worship of Dionysus, at its most primal, is orgiastic. Not in the sense of partying or debauchery, but in the sense of an ecstatic religious experience. Euripides and other ancient authors depict ancient rites where groups of people, women especially, would go into the mountains and perform dancing rites where they’d lose themselves and be possessed by the god. They’d experience what the Greeks called enthousiasmos. Our word “enthusiasm” is a very pale reflection of that. If you break it down, it comes from the roots “en-theos,” meaning literally “the god inside.” When you went up on the mountain and performed these dances, Dionysus would take over. Another one of his epithets was “lysios,” meaning “releaser,” because when you were in this state of Dionysian ecstasy, you’d be released from all your mundane cares and pains. You’d also be released from the constraints of civilized behavior, so that your animal nature would be revealed. The culmination of the ritual was “omophagia,” the frenzied act of killing an animal and eating its flesh raw. 

Wild stuff, right? What I’ve just described is what you might call the full-strength version of Dionysiac worship. Over time, the rituals became tamer and more appropriate for state-sponsored religious practices. But another important thing to understand about Dionysus is that he had great popular appeal. The older state cults were typically dominated by aristocratic families that had monopolized their priesthoods for generations. There were plenty of gods you might sacrifice to in the hope of receiving some benefit, but anyone could experience a personal connection with Dionysus. He was more accessible to more people. Out in the countryside, local bands of worshippers could form, and they could include marginalized groups like women and non-citizens. So it makes sense that Pisistratus, who drew so much of his support from the non-elites, would centralize his worship in Athens with a great new festival, the City Dionysia. 

So how does all this relate to drama? Why was tragedy performed at the festivals of Dionysus as opposed to, say, the Panathenaea in honor of Athena? At one level, it may have something to do with that altered state that Dionysus could inspire in his worshippers. After all, drama involves a transformation. An actor becomes a different person — or even a god. The author Albin Lesky, in his monumental History of Greek Literature, says, quote: “The basic element of transformation came from the realm of the god who took a different and deeper hold on men than the gods of Homeric Olympus.” Unquote. 

Maybe. But there’s also a more concrete connection. Ancient authors generally agree that a precursor of tragedy was a kind of choral poetry called the dithyramb, which was closely connected to the worship of Dionysus. The historian Herodotus identifies the early poet Arion as the inventor of the dithyramb. We met Arion in the episode on Greek tyrants, because he was a distinguished figure at the court of Periander in Corinth. Now, Herodotus goes overboard when he says Arion invented the dithyramb. Arion was probably working with existing forms that were used in Dionysiac rites but brought them to a new, more highly crafted level. In any case, by the early 6th century BCE, the dithyramb had become a distinctive, respected form of choral performance, which included both poetry and dance.

Herodotus provides another clue — and at the same time makes things more complicated for us — in his account of the tyrant Cleisthenes of Sicyon. If you remember this detail from the episode on the tyrants, your memory is about a thousand times better than mine, so here’s a short recap: Cleisthenes was at war with Argos, and he didn’t like that there was a shrine to the Argive hero Adrastus in his city. The Delphic oracle wouldn’t let him kick the hero out, so he did everything he could to dishonor him and make him want to leave of his own accord. Well, Herodotus tells us that before all this, Adrastus had regularly been honored with “tragic choruses” that lamented his sufferings — and that Cleisthenes took those choruses away from Adrastus and gave them over to Dionysus. 

There’s a lot to unpack there. When Herodotus says, “tragic choruses,” he can’t be referring to tragedy as it was known in his own time. But evidently the word “tragic” could apply to early choral performances of this kind. Then there’s the detail that those choruses honoring Adrastus lamented his suffering. That’s an element that clearly continued in the laments of 5th-century tragedy. And finally, when Herodotus says Cleisthenes gave those choruses to Dionysus, he uses a word that can mean “give back” or “restore.” We don’t get any further explanation, but there’s some implication that they rightfully belonged to Dionysus, that they were somehow owed to him. 

Well, for the evolution of tragedy from the dithyramb, we have the authority of Aristotle. Yeah, him again. When I first started this podcast, I really didn’t know how often I’d be drawing on Aristotle. But his writings cover so much ground, from politics to science to poetry, that he keeps popping up everywhere. So here we are. Aristotle says in his Poetics that both tragedy and comedy originated with improvisations. In the case of tragedy, these were improvisations by the leaders of the dithyramb. So in this embryonic stage, there was at least some distinction between a leader and the rest of the chorus. That gets some support from a fragment of the poet Archilochus way back in the seventh century, who bragged that he could lead the Dionysian dithyramb even when his brains were “thunderstruck with wine.” 

Aristotle goes on to say tragedy developed gradually, step by step, undergoing many changes until it attained its final form. For one thing, as dialogue became more important in relation to choral lyric, the poetic meter changed. Dialogue was still in verse, but Aristotle says the meter moved from one that was more dance oriented to an iambic form that was more like natural speech. Another change is a bit more mysterious. Aristotle tells us that tragedy became a serious dramatic form with heavy plots only after gradually moving away from shorter, trivial plots and ludicrous language that were characteristic of the satyricon – in other words, a kind of choral performance associated with satyrs, those mythical creatures portrayed as half men and half horses or sometimes half goats. Satyrs were conceived as wild, randy creatures, so it’s natural that they often accompanied Dionysus. On vase paintings, they’re often shown dancing. The question is, when Aristotle says tragedy had to evolve away from some kind of satyr drama, how does that square with what he says earlier about it growing out of the dithyramb?   

That’s been a head-scratcher for some scholars, because Aristotle seems to be saying two different things. One possible solution comes from a Byzantine encyclopedia called the Suda, that was compiled in the 10thcentury CE. Its entry on Arion, that dithyrambic poet I mentioned earlier, says he was the first to train a chorus, sing a dithyramb, give a title to what the chorus sang, and to bring on satyrs speaking in verse. Full disclosure — the Suda is very late, and it contains a lot of erroneous information, so it has to be used cautiously. But if what it says here is true, we have an instance of a dithyramb with a chorus of satyrs, and Aristotle’s account makes perfect sense. 

That satyric element in early choruses survived in what were called “satyr plays” of the classical period. In the fully developed dramatic competitions, a playwright would stage three tragedies followed by a short, humorous play with a chorus of satyrs. And it was considered something entirely different from comedy. That’s a little hard for us moderns to comprehend, but the Greeks generally thought of tragedy and comedy as entirely separate. If you wrote tragedies, you didn’t write comedies, and vice-versa. But a satyr play, even though it was funny and had crude jokes, was something a tragedian would write. In any case, that holdover is a good indication that satyr drama was part of tragedy’s family tree. 

That ancestry may even be reflected in the word “tragedy.” In ancient Greek, “tragos” means “goat,” so “tragodia” almost certainly means “goat song.” That may be linked to satyrs. The problem there is that most early depictions of satyrs show them with the ears and tails of horses rather than goats. Over time, they took on more goat-like features. Long story short, even the ancients didn’t know quite what to make of the term “goat song.” The later Hellenistic scholars did a lot of speculating about it. Some said tragedy was originally a song that accompanied the sacrifice of a goat. Others said a goat was offered as a prize in the earliest dramatic competitions. Nobody really knew then, and nobody knows now. 

Well, at one point, tragedy became actual drama and not just choral lyric. Enter Thespis, the poet who became known as the first to perform actual tragedies. Who was he, and what exactly did he do? Here again, we’re trying to make a meal of a few crumbs that the ancients have left us. Most of the literary references to Thespis come from late sources that can’t always be trusted. Aristotle doesn’t mention him in that passage from the Poetics that I referred to earlier. It seems weird that if Thespis really was the first true tragedian, Aristotle doesn’t mention him by name here. Fortunately, a fragment of a lost work by Aristotle called “On the Poets” is preserved by a late Roman-era author by the name of Themistius.  And in that fragment, Aristotle says tragedy originated with a chorus singing to the gods and that Thespis introduced the prologue and speech. That’s probably the most trustworthy statement we have about Thespis. 

Other sources paint a more vivid picture with more details, but again, a lot of what they say can’t be taken at face value. One of those is a document called the Parian Marble, also known as the Parian Chronicle. It’s big slab of marble, discovered on the island of Paros, and it’s inscribed with a chronology of events running from 1582 down to 299 BCE. Its entry on Thespis, as translated by Gillian Newing, says, quote: “Thespis the poet, who brought out a play in the city, was the first to speak in dialogue, and the prize of a goat was established.” Unquote. The Suda, that Byzantine encyclopedia I mentioned a little earlier, says he was the first tragedian, or maybe the second, or the sixteenth! It adds the detail that Thespis painted his face with white lead at first and later introduced the masks that became standard in Greek tragedy. Most scholars reject that idea, because masks are very common in early dramatic rituals from all over the world, so they’re more likely to belong to the prehistory of Greek drama. But Thespis may very well have made innovations in tragic masks. 

One last author I should mention is the Roman poet Horace, because in a few memorable lines he conveyed an image that shaped the popular perception of Thespis for centuries. In his long poem called The Art of Poetry, he says Thespis “discovered the tragic muse” and performed plays on wagons, with the actors’ faces smeared with wine lees. It’s very unlikely that there’s anything historical about that. Horace was probably drawing on late Greek and Roman traditions about what early, rustic plays must have been like. But that image of Thespis and his troupe touring in a wagon has a certain romantic aura to it, and it’s endured until modern times. 

So where does all of this leave us? We can’t say much for certain, but I think we’ve at least arrived at a likely narrative. Thespis was a leader of choral performances that traced back to the dithyramb, and he made a crucial innovation. He had an actor take on the role of a character separate from the chorus. That actor, who could play different roles in the course of a performance, could deliver a prologue, make separate speeches, and engage in dialogue with the chorus. To us it may sound very stiff and a bit dull to have only one character and the chorus on stage at a time. But if you’d never seen it before, it would be an exciting new thing that would really make an impression. In any case, the Parian Marble and the Suda combine give us a good indication that he staged his first tragedy in about the year 534 BCE, when Pisistratus was in power and had elevated the worship of Dionysus to a major city festival. 

In that passage of the Poetics where Aristotle describes the evolution of, he mentions a couple of innovations that brought it to its fully developed form. Aeschylus, working in the early fifth century, added a second actor. That was a major step, because now the two actors could engage in dialogue with each other, not just with the chorus. Later, Sophocles added a third actor, which allowed for even more flexibility. Greek tragedy never got to be like modern drama, where a playwright can fill the stage with as many characters as they like. But with as many as three characters on stage at a time, there’s obviously a lot more potential for plot and dramatic action. 

We’ll come back to the age of the great tragedians in a later episode. But the point I want to end on is that Thespis’s rudimentary tragedy appears when Athens is on the verge of becoming a democracy. And the development of tragedy is closely intertwined with the growth of the democratic state. The dramatic festivals were state sponsored, and it was a civic duty for wealthy citizens to fund productions. The producers of tragedies, at least at the City Dionysia, were required to be citizens. So were the actors, and for that reason they had a level of respect that actors have rarely enjoyed in western culture. At times, the content of a drama could reflect events that were happening in the state. Attending a dramatic competition wasn’t just entertainment, it was a form of civic engagement. It might be too much to say that Greek tragedy could never have developed outside the Athenian democracy, but if it had, it would certainly have turned out differently.

And that concludes episode 23. Even if we couldn’t come to any hard and fast conclusions, I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride. If you have something to add, comment on, ask about, or correct, I’d love to hear from you at scott@epicgreekhistory.com. Or you can always comment on Facebook or Instagram. I’m Scott Emmons. The music for my theme song was composed and recorded by Parry Gripp. My logo and other artwork were created by Chris Harding. Until next time, εὐτυχεῖτε! Be well.