The "Pronomos" vase, in Naples.
MORE EVIDENCE FOR WHAT IT MIGHT HAVE LOOKED LIKE: a series of images

Aeschylus:
Persians*
Seven Against Thebes
Suppliants
Agamemnon*
Libation Bearers*
Eumenides*
Prometheus Bound

Sophocles:
Ajax
Electra
Oedipus Tyrannus*
Antigone*
Trachiniae (aka Trachinian Women)
Philoctetes
Oedipus at Colonus*

Euripides:
Cyclops
Alcestis*
Medea
Children of Heracles
Hippolytus*
Andromache
Hecabe
Suppliants
Electra
Heracles
Trojan Women
Iphigenia at Taurus
Ion
Helen
Phoenician Women
Orestes
Bacchae*
Iphigenia at Aulis
Rhesus

Interpreting tragedy:
Aristotle, who has a highly influential view of tragedy (see Poetics and Rhetoric), was a theorist, but is not at all authoritative about tragedy in particular: using Aristotle as a lens thru which to read tragedy is highly distortive. He has his own axes to grind, is highly opinionated, and lived well after the heyday of tragedy. So I won't tell you about Aristotle, but you should know that interpretation of tragedy is very often done with an Aristotelian lens. Also, Aristotle is our source for a great deal of the 'facts' we think we know about the history of tragedy.

Tragedy was an ATHENIAN institution, part and parcel of what it meant to be Athenian, both as an individual and as a group. Tragedy not only reflects what Athenian-ness was, but it also is part of the mechanism which built and maintained Athenian-ness. The problem is like that of the chicken and the egg, but tragedy is only one institution among many that both created and maintained but also reflected and re-presented Athenian-ness. Other institutions were the assembly, its debates and character, the law courts, their cases and character, and a whole slow of other things (building programs, military structure and activity, the Athenian empire, etc.).

• Tragedy also draws on intellectual thought of its day: this was the century when History, Philosophy, Rhetoric, Logic, Lawyers, Biology, Meteorology, and much more were put on a firm disciplinary footing that would develop in later ages.
• This is a culture shaking off orality, but also mythology, and also shaking off divinity as the cause of everything.
• This is culture with its first taste of empire and democracy: two forces at odds, but also in concert.
  
• Binaries exploited by playwright: war/peace, male/female, Greek/Barbarian, domestic/political, slave/free, strong/weak, courage/cowardice, legal/non-legal (wife/son), force/persuasion, fortunate/unfortunate, fortune-fate/choice, rich/poor, noble/lowborn, justice/injustice, noble birth/democracy
  
• The Trojans at this point were somehow associated with the Persians, the empire that had been defeated in its attempt to take over Greece in the beginning of the 5th century. Kind of a broad-brush seems to be used to associate Trojans (East of Greece) with Persians (also East of Greece) (as if we would never do that today! right!)
• But keep in mind that Athens and Sparta are contrasted just as much with one another
• And behind all that, Homer treated Greek and Trojans alike sympathetically without any great cultural distinctions.
  
• An example of a binary in the play:  juxtaposition of private and public: public policy (2 kings in Sparta, divided states) vs. two women in one household
• Very Brief Historical background:
• Whereas Aeschylus (525-456 BCE)
  
• grew up and lived in the glory days of the saving of Greece twice from the attacking Persians: Aeschylus himself fought at Marathon
• witnessed the Athenian Empire coming to be and in its heyday
• Euripides  (480-406 BCE) and Sophocles (497-406 BCE) lived:
• during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), when Athens and Sparta and all of their allies fought each other: a sort of civil war that existed both in Greece at large and within many polises writ-small.
  
• the Athenians in 427 voted to execute every male Mitylenian after Mitylene revolted (they rescinded that vote the next day, but still)
• 427: the Spartans killed every man of Plataea who had not helped them, and enslaved many of the women
• Dates of Euripides' plays (from Wikipedia: all dates are more or less debated, so take this as shaky: the issues are complex and would involve a deeper dive than we can do in this class)
  
• Andromache was produced circa 425
• Hecuba 424
  
• Electra 420
• Trojan Women 415
  
• Later:
  
• 418: Athenians killed the men of Scione and Torone
• 415: Athenians killed the Melians

But tragedy drew on Greek mythology, which was a pan-hellenic thing (via Homer and the Epic Cycle, the Homeric Hymns, etc.). In turn, tragedy was thus attractive to a pan-hellenic audience, who came from far and wide, and even imported tragedy to themselves from Athens.

Tragedy also built on non-Athenian literary tradition: among others, we know of the canonical 9 great lyric poets:

• Alcman of Sparta (choral lyric, 7th century BC)
• Sappho of Lesbos (monodic lyric, c. 600 BC)
• Alcaeus of Mytilene (monodic lyric, c. 600 BC)
• Anacreon of Teos (monodic lyric, 6th century BC)
• Stesichorus of Metauros (choral lyric, 7th century BC)
• Ibycus of Rhegium (choral lyric, 6th century BC)
• Simonides of Ceos (choral lyric, 6th century BC)
• Bacchylides of Ceos (choral lyric, 5th century BC)
• Pindar of Thebes (choral lyric, 5th century BC)
• List taken directly from Wikipedia article "Nine Lyric Poets"
  

How it developed historically is debated highly: from chorus's of satyrs, what it had to do with goats (the word 'tragedy' apparently means 'goat-song'), how the institution of 4 plays each on 4 separate days by 4 playwrights came to be, why it is particularly associated with Dionysius (the greatest tragic performance time was the Greater Dionysia Festival), whether Solon's trimeters influenced it, what role Thespis had in creating it, Aeschylus' role in expanding to 3 actors, whether Sophocles or Aeschylus first used painted scenery (and what that consisted of), etc.

It is often called "religious," but it is not ritual: it does not itself do anything in relation to gods or the like. It is not ritual itself. And yet, it is full of religious elements, from bits of ritual to concepts to subject matter. It is part of a religious festival which did do things in relation to gods (e.g, the torchlight procession with the statue of Dionysius, and it itself is a sort of offering to the god Dionysius surely). It is more like the passion plays put on by some Christians to enact stories from the life of Christ: not a central 'religious' act itself, but religious nonetheless.

What we see is a set of individuals and a group: they are depicted as individuals, but just as much as parts of a family (the son, the mother, the father: the house; that the sins of one generation might be punished in the next) and parts of a society (the king, the messenger, the exile: the governance structures and traditions).

Aeschylus is grand and spectacular. Sophocles is smoothe, clear, lucid, but seems hard to pin down as to outlook on life. The dating of his plays is mostly controversial, which makes it hard to speak of any development. He never got lower than 2nd place and won more than Aeschylus or Euripides, we are told. He was elected to some public offices (stragegos, proboulos, ambassador, etc.) and was instrumental in introducing the cult of Asclepius (a healer god) to Athens. Euripides is the most controversial, the most wildly varying, and the most psychologically "real" of the three. He has many detractors and many champions over the ages.