What lies between Homer and the tragedies we are reading:

•     "Homer" and Hesiod begin the 'Archaic Age' of Greece
• they are the 'first' authors
• as you know, Homer may have been a group rather than a single author
• but Hesiod is an author
• Theogony
• Works and Days
• Catalogue of Women
• lost works
• next come a rather large group of authors from whom we have mostly fragmentary remains
• a great variety of lyric poets
• beginnings of 'political writings': Solon
• beginnings of 'philosophy'
• etc.
• By the time we get to the three great tragedians (Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides), we are dealing with an expanded landscape of genres and disciplines
• history
• lyric poetry
• medicine
• legal speeches
• philosophy
• comedy
• and more
• In other words, by the time we get to these tragedians, we have moved from a single main known text (Homer's epics) to a whole slew of texts and authors

• Tragedy: a distinctly Athenian event (i.e. we are not dealing with a "Greek" thing, but rather a thing that started local to Athens and spread to Greece)
  
• staged as a contest
• also a large civic event: the Greater Dionysia
  
• three playwrights
• three plays each, plus a "satyr" play,
  
• so 4 plays each total
  
• they were assigned three actors and a chorus: by an official part of the Athenian gov't
  
• there was a rich person who was volunteered to pay for it all
  
• tragedy and comedy grew out of choral performances
• eventually the theater was stone: but clearly started out wooden
• "scenery" was minimal
• masks
• music
• a great variety of rhythms, especially in the choral portions
  
• dance: a huge part that is all but lost
  

• Clytaemnestra is Helen's sister: Agamemnon and Menelaus married to Clytaemnestra and Helen: 2 brothers marry 2 sisters
• Aigisthus is Agamemnon's cousin
• Clytaemnestra and Agamemnon had children, Orestes and Iphigeneia
• Iphigeneia was sacrificed at Aulis so that the fleet could sail to Troy
  
• Pylades is Orestes' mate, his best friend
• Agamemnon is "tyrant" of Mycenae

• Wikipedia's article "Atreus" will give us a quick orientation into the bewildering story of the 'house of Atreus' of. No need to repeat all that here.
  

• Homer's version in Odyssey
  
• 1.29-43
• 1.298-300
• 3.254-312
• 4.514-537
• 11.405-434
• So it is related piecemeal in Homer
  
• In Odyssey, as opposed to Iliad, Agamemnon is a foil for Odysseus, a counterpart who makes Odysseus' traits more clear by contrast and comparison
  
• Simple morally: Agamemnon good, Orestes good, Clytaemnestra bad
• no hint of shades of morality or that Agamemnon, Orestes, and Clytaemnestra may be guilty, but guilty of different things.
  
• Other versions
• Pindar, 11th Pythian Ode
• an excerpt
• Was it Iphigenia, who at the Euripos crossing
  was slaughtered far from home,
  that vexed her to drive in anger the hand of violence?
  or was it couching in a strange bed
  by night that broke her will and set her awry--for young wives
  a sin most vile?
• Epic Cycle: the house of Atreus appears in
  
• Nostoi
• Cypria
• Stesichorus of Sicily: lyric poet

• Aeschylus: 525-456 BCE
• 7 plays survive that are attributed to Aeschylus: he wrote up to 90
• doing the math (three playwrights for each festival, each presented 3 tragedies), that means that other playwrights wrote up to 180 more for the festivals Aeschylus participated in: almost all of those are lost
  
• we have under 40 total surviving whole tragedies: all 40 are either by Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides (unless some are falsely ascribed to one of them)
• doing the math: there were hundreds of tragedies produced
  
• Aeschylus traveled to Sicily from Athens to stage plays there too: theater spread
  
• Said to be first playwright to introduce more than one character
• Also said to be first to write a trilogy (three plays that were connected to each other as a plot arc): he is said to have written many trilogies.

• Agamemnon
• a "tragedy"
• basically, tragedy is serious stuff, while comedy is funny: there was no requirement that everyone die or that there be certain elements: it developed organically and later ages analyzed it and came up with rules or ideas about what made a tragedy
  
• google "Aristotle's tragic plot structure" (exploring this topic would take a long time)
• this play is, however, a "tragedy" in the modern sense in several ways:
  
• personal
  
• domestic
• war-time
• political
• moral/legal: portrays the bankruptcy of the moral code of vengeance
• it has really minimal action (Agamemnon finally arrives at line 800, and isn't killed until much later)
• there were three individual actors, but Aeschylus doesn't use them all much
  
• There were two more plays Aeschylus presented on the same day as Agamemnon: we will read them in the coming week.
  
• Libation Bearers (aka Choephoroi)
• Eumenides