WEBVTT 00:00:02.140 --> 00:00:06.660 My bed, my bridal, all for misery. 00:00:06.660 --> 00:00:07.900 And I cannot... 00:00:09.180 --> 00:00:14.300 I cannot...save my child from death. 00:00:14.300 --> 00:00:17.940 This is one of the most shocking stories ever written. 00:00:17.940 --> 00:00:23.100 A mother, a princess, has lost her city and her husband in war. 00:00:23.100 --> 00:00:27.420 Now, she has to face the news that she is to be sold into slavery 00:00:27.420 --> 00:00:29.500 and her only son - killed. 00:00:30.660 --> 00:00:34.540 This film version of an ancient Greek play called Trojan Women 00:00:34.540 --> 00:00:36.500 has become a classic. 00:00:36.500 --> 00:00:41.260 The first time I saw it, I was moved to tears, and it still moves me now. 00:00:42.780 --> 00:00:47.460 It is a play about the most charged aspects of human life - 00:00:47.460 --> 00:00:51.500 love, war, sacrifice, fear and death. 00:00:51.500 --> 00:00:54.300 And although it is set amongst the gods, myths, 00:00:54.300 --> 00:00:59.100 and peoples of ancient Greece, it is still utterly gripping today. 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:01.900 It is one of the main reasons I study Classics. 00:01:06.540 --> 00:01:10.140 An Athenian called Euripides wrote this play 00:01:10.140 --> 00:01:13.220 a little under two and a half thousand years ago. 00:01:13.220 --> 00:01:16.500 Back then, he was often ridiculed as an angry young man. 00:01:16.500 --> 00:01:19.740 But, over time, his plays have come to symbolise 00:01:19.740 --> 00:01:23.740 the incredible sophistication of ancient Greek civilisation. 00:01:26.340 --> 00:01:31.460 That civilisation has influenced almost every aspect of our lives. 00:01:31.460 --> 00:01:36.020 Not just drama, but politics, language, philosophy, 00:01:36.020 --> 00:01:37.540 art and architecture. 00:01:40.300 --> 00:01:43.500 To understand ourselves, it turns out, 00:01:43.500 --> 00:01:45.900 we need to understand the ancient Greeks. 00:01:47.060 --> 00:01:50.260 And the best seat from which to do that, for my money, 00:01:50.260 --> 00:01:51.500 is in the theatre. 00:01:53.700 --> 00:01:58.460 This series is about how ancient drama changed our world. 00:01:58.460 --> 00:02:00.060 It's the story of dramatists 00:02:00.060 --> 00:02:02.900 like Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, 00:02:02.900 --> 00:02:05.860 who revolutionised storytelling through plays 00:02:05.860 --> 00:02:09.419 like Trojan Women, Antigone, Oedipus, and The Oresteia. 00:02:10.780 --> 00:02:13.020 It's the story of how the Ancient Greeks 00:02:13.020 --> 00:02:15.860 gave birth to tragedy and comedy. 00:02:15.860 --> 00:02:20.100 And it's the story of how theatre spread throughout Greece and beyond, 00:02:20.100 --> 00:02:22.420 becoming a benchmark of civilisation, 00:02:22.420 --> 00:02:25.100 not just for Greeks, but for the world - 00:02:25.100 --> 00:02:26.820 then and now. 00:02:28.300 --> 00:02:31.220 In this episode, I want to journey to Athens 00:02:31.220 --> 00:02:34.540 to explore how drama first began. 00:02:34.540 --> 00:02:37.700 From the very start, it was about more than just entertainment - 00:02:37.700 --> 00:02:42.220 it was a reaction to real events, it was a driving force in history, 00:02:42.220 --> 00:02:45.860 and it was deeply connected to Athenian democracy. 00:02:45.860 --> 00:02:50.020 In fact, the story of theatre, IS the story of Athens - 00:02:50.020 --> 00:02:52.740 the cultural hub of ancient Greece 00:02:52.740 --> 00:02:55.740 and the stage for one of the greatest shows on earth. 00:03:15.980 --> 00:03:20.020 The story of drama as we know it begins in a particular place, 00:03:20.020 --> 00:03:21.740 and a particular time - 00:03:21.740 --> 00:03:25.100 Athens in the 6th century before Christ. 00:03:25.100 --> 00:03:27.940 At that time, Greece was not a single country 00:03:27.940 --> 00:03:31.340 but a mass of competing city-states, or "poleis" - 00:03:31.340 --> 00:03:34.100 the Greek term describing a body of citizens. 00:03:35.220 --> 00:03:38.380 But in the late 6th century, the polis of Athens 00:03:38.380 --> 00:03:40.300 pulled ahead of the others - 00:03:40.300 --> 00:03:42.860 politically, economically and culturally. 00:03:44.420 --> 00:03:46.700 In the last part of the 6th century BC, 00:03:46.700 --> 00:03:50.820 Athens was the breeding ground for two extraordinary inventions. 00:03:50.820 --> 00:03:52.420 The first was democracy. 00:03:52.420 --> 00:03:55.700 Athens was ruled, not by kings or by cliques of aristocrats, 00:03:55.700 --> 00:03:58.540 but by the votes of its own citizens. 00:03:58.540 --> 00:04:00.820 But the second was theatre. 00:04:00.820 --> 00:04:05.220 Athens invented an entirely new art form - drama. 00:04:05.220 --> 00:04:08.620 And these two inventions were tightly intertwined 00:04:08.620 --> 00:04:11.420 at the beating heart of Athenian society. 00:04:11.420 --> 00:04:13.620 And both of them were the result 00:04:13.620 --> 00:04:16.180 of an extraordinary cultural revolution. 00:04:19.620 --> 00:04:22.380 At this time, the whole of ancient Greek culture 00:04:22.380 --> 00:04:25.340 underwent a historic transformation. 00:04:25.340 --> 00:04:28.380 The revolution extended from architecture to literature, 00:04:28.380 --> 00:04:30.980 from vase painting to philosophy. 00:04:30.980 --> 00:04:33.580 You can see the impact of that revolution clearly 00:04:33.580 --> 00:04:36.060 in how Greek sculpture developed. 00:04:36.060 --> 00:04:39.220 In the middle 6th century it was rigid, stylised, 00:04:39.220 --> 00:04:40.700 lacking movement and life. 00:04:40.700 --> 00:04:43.620 But then things began to change. 00:04:43.620 --> 00:04:46.180 By the 5th century, Greek artists began 00:04:46.180 --> 00:04:49.780 to produce some of the greatest life-like sculptures ever made. 00:04:51.060 --> 00:04:54.020 It all amounted, not just to a new-looking world, 00:04:54.020 --> 00:04:56.780 but to a whole new view of the world. 00:04:56.780 --> 00:04:59.420 We call it the Classical World. 00:04:59.420 --> 00:05:02.020 And in this ground-breaking epoch, 00:05:02.020 --> 00:05:05.420 drama was perhaps the biggest innovation of them all. 00:05:08.100 --> 00:05:12.460 Tales of love, death and war had always been passed on 00:05:12.460 --> 00:05:16.260 by storytellers and epic poems like Homer's Iliad 00:05:16.260 --> 00:05:20.220 and savage myths had been celebrated in choral dance and song. 00:05:20.220 --> 00:05:25.700 BUT the Athenians added actors and invented the idea of performance. 00:05:25.700 --> 00:05:29.780 These epic stories would now play out, not only in the mind, 00:05:29.780 --> 00:05:32.540 but live on stage. 00:05:32.540 --> 00:05:35.660 This was more than innovation, this was a revolution. 00:05:37.300 --> 00:05:39.580 Never before in the Greek tradition that we know of, 00:05:39.580 --> 00:05:41.420 in the Greek storytelling tradition, 00:05:41.420 --> 00:05:44.900 were things enacted rather than narrated. 00:05:44.900 --> 00:05:48.900 So, instead of having, "And then the king drew his sword and said..." 00:05:48.900 --> 00:05:53.260 Instead, a person actually draws a sword and speaks. 00:05:53.260 --> 00:05:55.860 I know we sort of say, "Well, children do that" 00:05:55.860 --> 00:05:58.860 but to do it with serious storytelling, 00:05:58.860 --> 00:06:01.940 with storytelling that actually delves into 00:06:01.940 --> 00:06:03.860 important roots in human behaviour, 00:06:03.860 --> 00:06:08.500 that is a very new step and to have it done in front of you, 00:06:08.500 --> 00:06:12.300 I think that must have been a very, very startling innovation. 00:06:12.300 --> 00:06:14.340 ACTOR: The son of Thyestes... 00:06:14.340 --> 00:06:15.820 Ancient Greek drama looked 00:06:15.820 --> 00:06:18.860 and sounded very different from drama as we know it today. 00:06:18.860 --> 00:06:20.860 There were no more than three or four actors. 00:06:20.860 --> 00:06:24.580 There was a chorus who interrupted the action with song and dance, 00:06:24.580 --> 00:06:26.620 and all the performers wore masks. 00:06:29.460 --> 00:06:33.420 When an actor began to enact rather than narrate, 00:06:33.420 --> 00:06:35.980 there's a kind of dangerousness about that, 00:06:35.980 --> 00:06:39.460 that the actor has to become a woman, 00:06:39.460 --> 00:06:41.260 the actor has to become a slave, 00:06:41.260 --> 00:06:43.380 the actor, perhaps even more dangerously, 00:06:43.380 --> 00:06:46.860 has to become a god and it's almost as if the mask 00:06:46.860 --> 00:06:50.580 is a kind of signal of the profession, 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:55.140 that protects the actor against the danger of doing these things. 00:06:55.140 --> 00:06:58.180 ACTOR: Blood shoot of Aetrius... 00:06:58.180 --> 00:07:03.100 'The chorus are costumed and masked in an identical' 00:07:03.100 --> 00:07:06.860 or near identical way and they move and speak as a group. 00:07:06.860 --> 00:07:08.860 The chorus is not a bunch of individuals - 00:07:08.860 --> 00:07:11.060 for the Greeks, the chorus was a group. 00:07:11.060 --> 00:07:14.380 In which, in a sense, they submerged their identity. 00:07:14.380 --> 00:07:19.060 AND what the chorus does is, in its groupness, 00:07:19.060 --> 00:07:23.100 it tries to make sense of what it's witnessing. 00:07:23.100 --> 00:07:28.740 They're deeply emotionally involved, and the suffering becomes a song. 00:07:28.740 --> 00:07:32.180 And the chorus, as a group, with its group response, 00:07:32.180 --> 00:07:33.940 sings its choral lyrics. 00:07:33.940 --> 00:07:37.260 ACTOR: He plotted it? Single-handed? The people will stone him. 00:07:37.260 --> 00:07:39.140 CHORUS: You don't stand a chance. 00:07:42.540 --> 00:07:47.340 It seems to me, that the crucial thing is that it is simultaneously 00:07:47.340 --> 00:07:49.980 a very strong emotional experience 00:07:49.980 --> 00:07:52.140 and a very strong thought experience. 00:07:58.140 --> 00:08:00.740 When the Greeks came to analyse their new art form, 00:08:00.740 --> 00:08:03.540 they discerned three different types of play. 00:08:03.540 --> 00:08:06.740 Two of which we still have with us today - tragedy and comedy. 00:08:06.740 --> 00:08:09.900 But, in many ways, modern tragedy has actually changed 00:08:09.900 --> 00:08:11.940 from how ancient tragedy worked. 00:08:11.940 --> 00:08:15.180 For us, tragedy is a play with a sad ending, 00:08:15.180 --> 00:08:18.380 but for the ancient Greeks, tragedy was a play 00:08:18.380 --> 00:08:22.540 in which the events offered the audience a tough decision. 00:08:22.540 --> 00:08:26.060 And because no real ancient tragedy ends conclusively - 00:08:26.060 --> 00:08:28.780 siding with one course of action or another - 00:08:28.780 --> 00:08:32.580 what it does is face the audience with a problem. 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:35.620 What would THEY do if they were in the same situation? 00:08:38.179 --> 00:08:40.620 Take one of the most famous plays ever written - 00:08:40.620 --> 00:08:43.940 Oedipus The King by Sophocles. 00:08:43.940 --> 00:08:45.740 It tells the story of Oedipus, 00:08:45.740 --> 00:08:49.940 a man who was destined to kill his father and marry his mother. 00:08:49.940 --> 00:08:52.260 Although this outcome is predicted by an oracle, 00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:54.980 Oedipus himself makes a series of free choices 00:08:54.980 --> 00:08:56.780 that lead to its fulfilment - 00:08:56.780 --> 00:09:00.780 choices that would have posed serious questions for the audience. 00:09:00.780 --> 00:09:04.420 The play ends with Oedipus blinding himself in despair. 00:09:06.980 --> 00:09:10.140 The issues dealt with in tragedy were often so disturbing 00:09:10.140 --> 00:09:12.940 that the plays were nearly always set away from Athens, 00:09:12.940 --> 00:09:17.100 in the land of myth and legend, or at very least a far away city. 00:09:17.100 --> 00:09:18.980 And after a series of tragedies, 00:09:18.980 --> 00:09:21.340 the Athenians were offered a satyr play. 00:09:21.340 --> 00:09:22.980 Now, we don't have this any more today 00:09:22.980 --> 00:09:24.740 but effectively the satyrs 00:09:24.740 --> 00:09:28.140 were the half-male, half-goat companions of the god of revelry, 00:09:28.140 --> 00:09:29.980 who would be allowed to run around the stage 00:09:29.980 --> 00:09:32.940 doing lots of lewd and bawdy things as a bit of light relief. 00:09:32.940 --> 00:09:34.780 But what we do have today is comedy. 00:09:34.780 --> 00:09:37.540 And ancient comedy, just like tragedy, 00:09:37.540 --> 00:09:40.100 spoke directly to contemporary Athenians. 00:09:43.740 --> 00:09:47.020 Usually set in a topsy-turvy version of real life, 00:09:47.020 --> 00:09:52.140 or in a realm of fantasy, they poked fun at contemporary Athens. 00:09:52.140 --> 00:09:55.340 The Birds is a play that mocks the Athenian obsession 00:09:55.340 --> 00:09:57.700 with litigation and politics. 00:09:57.700 --> 00:09:59.500 It tells the story of two men 00:09:59.500 --> 00:10:03.300 who are tired of a life of law courts and civic duties. 00:10:03.300 --> 00:10:05.700 To escape, they turn themselves into birds 00:10:05.700 --> 00:10:09.740 and create a bird city-in-the-sky called Cloud Cuckoo Land 00:10:09.740 --> 00:10:14.700 where they reject all attempts to impose Athenian-style law and order. 00:10:14.700 --> 00:10:18.620 Both comedy and tragedy sought to have a direct bearing 00:10:18.620 --> 00:10:20.380 on life in Athens. 00:10:20.380 --> 00:10:23.980 And most fascinating of all, is how they seamlessly blended together 00:10:23.980 --> 00:10:27.220 religion and myth with contemporary politics. 00:10:27.220 --> 00:10:29.780 This means that a play like The Oresteia by Aeschylus 00:10:29.780 --> 00:10:32.780 can start with a mythic tale from the Trojan wars 00:10:32.780 --> 00:10:36.620 where Agamemnon is murdered by his wife and avenged by his son Orestes, 00:10:36.620 --> 00:10:39.940 but can end in a courtroom, in democratic Athens, 00:10:39.940 --> 00:10:43.300 with Orestes on trial for the murder of his mother. 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:49.900 The Oresteia is one of the biggest hits in antiquity, 00:10:49.900 --> 00:10:53.380 it's also one of the very few trilogies that we've got. 00:10:53.380 --> 00:10:56.140 So what you have is three tragedies 00:10:56.140 --> 00:10:59.820 and, in this case, it's got a connected story. 00:10:59.820 --> 00:11:03.100 How does tragedy take this smorgasbord if you like, 00:11:03.100 --> 00:11:05.980 and make it into a story? 00:11:05.980 --> 00:11:08.300 Well it's not the same problem for the ancient Greeks 00:11:08.300 --> 00:11:10.020 as it might be for us. 00:11:10.020 --> 00:11:12.980 You know there's not this idea of anachronism. 00:11:12.980 --> 00:11:17.620 Your mythical world, with the gods, with the Trojan war - 00:11:17.620 --> 00:11:21.220 all of this that we've had in the first parts with the trilogy - 00:11:21.220 --> 00:11:26.700 can then end in that third part with a law court in Athens, 00:11:26.700 --> 00:11:28.980 which would have been familiar, of course, 00:11:28.980 --> 00:11:31.620 from 1st century contemporary Athens. 00:11:31.620 --> 00:11:34.220 So you have this brilliant genre 00:11:34.220 --> 00:11:38.140 where you can zoom from your present day into the past 00:11:38.140 --> 00:11:40.300 and bring your past into your present day. 00:11:40.300 --> 00:11:41.940 And it's that relationship, 00:11:41.940 --> 00:11:45.820 that tragedy uses to say things about its contemporary society. 00:11:47.300 --> 00:11:50.580 To find out more about how drama and democratic Athens 00:11:50.580 --> 00:11:52.900 became so intimately connected, 00:11:52.900 --> 00:11:55.460 I want to look at how theatre first emerged. 00:11:56.660 --> 00:11:58.340 Everything in ancient Greece 00:11:58.340 --> 00:12:01.100 came under the auspices of a particular god, 00:12:01.100 --> 00:12:04.500 and the god controlling theatre was called Dionysus. 00:12:04.500 --> 00:12:07.060 He was also the god of wine and revelry 00:12:07.060 --> 00:12:10.260 and many scholars think that theatre evolved directly 00:12:10.260 --> 00:12:14.260 out of the choral songs performed in honour of Dionysus. 00:12:14.260 --> 00:12:16.580 But there's also something else going on here. 00:12:16.580 --> 00:12:18.900 Something that is suggested by the ruins 00:12:18.900 --> 00:12:21.180 at a place called Thorikos, near Athens. 00:12:22.300 --> 00:12:25.820 This region was once home to the ancient Athenian silver mines 00:12:25.820 --> 00:12:27.500 but is also the site 00:12:27.500 --> 00:12:30.900 of the oldest stone-built theatre in the Greek world. 00:12:30.900 --> 00:12:34.540 We're in an industrial heartland of the ancient Athenian state, 00:12:34.540 --> 00:12:36.580 with the ore washeries and the mineshafts 00:12:36.580 --> 00:12:38.300 just beyond the theatre here. 00:12:39.540 --> 00:12:42.540 The first phase of this theatre is late 6th century 00:12:42.540 --> 00:12:44.340 and that puts it in the same time 00:12:44.340 --> 00:12:47.300 as the invention of Athenian democracy itself. 00:12:47.300 --> 00:12:49.300 Which throws up another question - 00:12:49.300 --> 00:12:54.180 just what is the relationship between theatre and democracy? 00:12:54.180 --> 00:12:57.100 And how did the two help each other into being? 00:13:02.260 --> 00:13:05.980 It's a question that has been debated by scholars for centuries - 00:13:05.980 --> 00:13:09.980 were theatre and democracy connected from the very start? 00:13:09.980 --> 00:13:14.500 Now I actually buy into the story that tragic drama 00:13:14.500 --> 00:13:17.140 IS a democratic invention. 00:13:17.140 --> 00:13:18.860 I have a particular take 00:13:18.860 --> 00:13:23.060 because I am one of those who think that Athenian tragic drama 00:13:23.060 --> 00:13:25.860 was deeply, strongly politicised. 00:13:25.860 --> 00:13:29.380 Not just, it happened in a polis but it happened in a polis 00:13:29.380 --> 00:13:33.940 of a particular sort and could not have happened before Athens 00:13:33.940 --> 00:13:38.260 became a polis of that particular sort, a democratic one. 00:13:38.260 --> 00:13:41.780 The theatrical side seems to coincide 00:13:41.780 --> 00:13:45.300 fairly closely with the political identity. 00:13:45.300 --> 00:13:47.460 Theatrical activities of some sort or another 00:13:47.460 --> 00:13:50.220 were one of the ways in which they expressed the fact 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:51.980 that now they all belonged together, 00:13:51.980 --> 00:13:54.940 this was the place to which they came and in which they acted. 00:13:54.940 --> 00:13:56.340 It's about, you know, 00:13:56.340 --> 00:13:59.660 the local community feeling itself to be a local community. 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:05.060 I'm on my way to visit one of the smaller Athenian communities 00:14:05.060 --> 00:14:07.100 to try and find some more proof 00:14:07.100 --> 00:14:10.300 about the connection between drama and politics. 00:14:10.300 --> 00:14:13.300 I want to see what the archaeology itself has to say. 00:14:14.460 --> 00:14:16.460 Now, neither for theatre nor for democracy, 00:14:16.460 --> 00:14:18.460 was there any kind of immaculate conception. 00:14:18.460 --> 00:14:21.580 Nor were either born into the fully-developed form 00:14:21.580 --> 00:14:23.300 that we recognize them today. 00:14:23.300 --> 00:14:26.340 Both developed, arm-in-arm, over time. 00:14:26.340 --> 00:14:28.300 And all around us as we drive in Attica, 00:14:28.300 --> 00:14:29.900 we can see the building blocks, 00:14:29.900 --> 00:14:32.860 the basis of the Athenian democratic system. 00:14:37.620 --> 00:14:40.340 People tend to think of Athenians as city dwellers, 00:14:40.340 --> 00:14:42.100 but much of the population 00:14:42.100 --> 00:14:45.660 actually lived in village communities called demes. 00:14:45.660 --> 00:14:50.020 There were 139 demes making up the Athenian democracy 00:14:50.020 --> 00:14:52.540 and each deme governed itself. 00:14:52.540 --> 00:14:54.980 The deme I'm looking for is one of the remotest - 00:14:54.980 --> 00:14:57.220 it's called Rhamnous. 00:14:57.220 --> 00:14:59.820 The people who lived here were mostly farmers, 00:14:59.820 --> 00:15:02.820 but all the male citizens voted for the council, 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:05.700 and on local regulations and on by-laws. 00:15:05.700 --> 00:15:08.020 And right at the heart of the community, 00:15:08.020 --> 00:15:10.340 are the remains of what was once a theatre. 00:15:12.300 --> 00:15:15.260 This is what I've come looking for on this very hot afternoon - 00:15:15.260 --> 00:15:18.020 an inscription that shows us democracy 00:15:18.020 --> 00:15:20.060 at its most local level in operation. 00:15:21.860 --> 00:15:24.620 "Dionisoi" - to Dionysus... 00:15:25.860 --> 00:15:30.340 "Hypo tes boules" - from the Boule, 00:15:30.340 --> 00:15:35.300 the local council controlling this deme, here in Attica. 00:15:35.300 --> 00:15:38.900 And it's to Dionysus because, yes, you've guessed it, 00:15:38.900 --> 00:15:42.860 we're in a theatre - a theatre, the space of Dionysus. 00:15:42.860 --> 00:15:45.540 The privileged seats for the distinguished local clientele, 00:15:45.540 --> 00:15:48.780 and the stage set out before us. 00:15:48.780 --> 00:15:51.860 Religion, politics, theatre... 00:15:51.860 --> 00:15:54.340 at democracy's most local level. 00:15:58.260 --> 00:16:02.740 These theatres really were far more than just places of entertainment, 00:16:02.740 --> 00:16:07.060 they were places where the whole deme would gather together. 00:16:07.060 --> 00:16:09.500 No-one's going to bother to build a theatre 00:16:09.500 --> 00:16:12.460 just for a couple of days of drama a year. 00:16:12.460 --> 00:16:13.860 But the theatres here, 00:16:13.860 --> 00:16:17.060 at the lowest, most basic level of the Athenian democracy, 00:16:17.060 --> 00:16:20.900 seem to have also been used as multi-purpose civic spaces, 00:16:20.900 --> 00:16:25.020 giving them all-year-round potential, not just for drama, 00:16:25.020 --> 00:16:29.100 but also for democracy and democratic action itself. 00:16:29.100 --> 00:16:33.260 And THAT is what the archaeology is really beginning to uncover - 00:16:33.260 --> 00:16:37.220 not only the demes, but the deme theatres, 00:16:37.220 --> 00:16:39.060 spreading across all of Attica. 00:16:41.620 --> 00:16:44.220 The use of theatres for democratic activity 00:16:44.220 --> 00:16:46.780 seems to have been the case, not just in the demes, 00:16:46.780 --> 00:16:49.060 but in the city of Athens itself. 00:16:49.060 --> 00:16:52.580 Every year, the democratic authorities spent a fortune 00:16:52.580 --> 00:16:56.260 on the Great Dionysia Festival - a drama competition 00:16:56.260 --> 00:16:58.540 that took place in the Theatre of Dionysus 00:16:58.540 --> 00:17:01.060 in honour of the god of theatre. 00:17:01.060 --> 00:17:04.300 It's through understanding the different stages of this festival 00:17:04.300 --> 00:17:07.660 that we can get closer to understanding what ancient Athenians 00:17:07.660 --> 00:17:11.339 experienced when they watched and created drama. 00:17:11.339 --> 00:17:13.460 The festival began with a procession - 00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:15.900 a rowdy affair with feasting, drinking 00:17:15.900 --> 00:17:19.099 and a great crowd of people parading through the streets 00:17:19.099 --> 00:17:23.260 with a statue of the god and a small herd of sacrificial animals. 00:17:23.260 --> 00:17:27.300 When it reached the altar of the 12 Olympian Gods in the marketplace, 00:17:27.300 --> 00:17:29.900 the first thing that happened was a holy dance. 00:17:31.260 --> 00:17:35.780 The cult of Dionysus is very much 00:17:35.780 --> 00:17:38.820 a psychological thing. 00:17:38.820 --> 00:17:41.460 Wine was, of course, very important, 00:17:41.460 --> 00:17:43.620 everyone knows that, 00:17:43.620 --> 00:17:46.260 but the thing was that by drinking wine, 00:17:46.260 --> 00:17:48.980 you were getting closer to the god 00:17:48.980 --> 00:17:53.020 and the more wine you drink, the more you step out of yourself 00:17:53.020 --> 00:17:54.380 and get closer to the god. 00:17:55.820 --> 00:17:58.980 And that is also what happens when you're dancing, 00:17:58.980 --> 00:18:03.300 you're getting outside yourself, so to say, but also by, for example, 00:18:03.300 --> 00:18:04.260 wearing a mask... 00:18:05.780 --> 00:18:08.740 The ancient people thought that when you were wearing a mask, 00:18:08.740 --> 00:18:11.420 you really become someone else. 00:18:11.420 --> 00:18:14.460 And the Greek word is... It's ecstasies. 00:18:14.460 --> 00:18:20.020 So "ec" - out, "stasis" - of one's self, of one's stance. Yes. 00:18:20.020 --> 00:18:23.980 And that's our ecstasy. It is the ecstasy as we know it. 00:18:23.980 --> 00:18:25.660 The ecstasy of the god. Yeah. 00:18:29.620 --> 00:18:32.220 The procession then surged through the streets 00:18:32.220 --> 00:18:34.460 along a route lined with tripods - 00:18:34.460 --> 00:18:38.660 monuments put up by the proud sponsors of the winning plays. 00:18:38.660 --> 00:18:40.300 Often politicians, 00:18:40.300 --> 00:18:43.420 they spent fortunes funding dramatic productions, 00:18:43.420 --> 00:18:46.780 and marked their victories with monuments like this one - 00:18:46.780 --> 00:18:49.220 put up by a winner from the 4th century BC. 00:18:51.620 --> 00:18:55.620 So, the drama festival was more than an opportunity for staging plays, 00:18:55.620 --> 00:18:58.420 it was a chance for the leading figures of Athens 00:18:58.420 --> 00:19:03.500 to stage their generosity, and their success to the whole city. 00:19:03.500 --> 00:19:07.260 Finally, having wound its way right around the Acropolis, 00:19:07.260 --> 00:19:11.620 the procession emerged noisily into the precinct of Dionysus. 00:19:11.620 --> 00:19:15.620 By now, the participants were becoming a single entity. 00:19:15.620 --> 00:19:20.100 It was a religious but also a political incident, actually. 00:19:21.180 --> 00:19:24.100 You know, the whole city, so to say, 00:19:24.100 --> 00:19:27.100 steps toward the god 00:19:27.100 --> 00:19:31.020 in order to worship the god 00:19:31.020 --> 00:19:34.900 and they show not only their piety 00:19:34.900 --> 00:19:37.420 but also that they belong together. 00:19:37.420 --> 00:19:39.620 So... It's an extraordinary idea, isn't it? 00:19:39.620 --> 00:19:42.900 That when they take their seats in theatre, it's no longer, 00:19:42.900 --> 00:19:45.700 we would say in English, "It's no longer Joe Bloggs and somebody" - 00:19:45.700 --> 00:19:47.820 it's no longer the farmer and the individuals, 00:19:47.820 --> 00:19:51.420 it is a collective of people with a new identity 00:19:51.420 --> 00:19:55.580 which is that of worshippers of the god Dionysus. Yes, correct. 00:19:55.580 --> 00:19:59.380 It's a bit different to going to the theatre today, right? It is indeed. 00:20:01.380 --> 00:20:04.700 All of this put the audience into a receptive state 00:20:04.700 --> 00:20:07.540 for the drama competition that was to follow. 00:20:07.540 --> 00:20:10.220 But first, as they took their seats in the theatre, 00:20:10.220 --> 00:20:13.140 there was one more important set of rituals to come. 00:20:14.940 --> 00:20:17.140 The audience were seated here, 00:20:17.140 --> 00:20:20.780 perhaps in the same groupings as when they went to war. 00:20:20.780 --> 00:20:23.020 The citizens of Athens who were acting on the stage, 00:20:23.020 --> 00:20:26.780 were acting in the same groups as when they went to war. 00:20:26.780 --> 00:20:29.580 And in the front seats of the theatre were the reserved seats 00:20:29.580 --> 00:20:33.180 for various priests of the city, and for the important civic officials. 00:20:34.420 --> 00:20:38.180 And then, before the plays began, there were a series of events. 00:20:38.180 --> 00:20:41.780 First, a libation - an offering to the gods were poured 00:20:41.780 --> 00:20:43.940 in the centre of the stage by the generals, 00:20:43.940 --> 00:20:46.180 the military generals of the city. 00:20:46.180 --> 00:20:49.580 Then, a parade of tribute, 00:20:49.580 --> 00:20:52.940 of all the money paid by the cities and states of the Athenian empire 00:20:52.940 --> 00:20:56.620 to Athens, was literally taken across the stage, 00:20:56.620 --> 00:21:00.020 paraded in front of an audience that contained members 00:21:00.020 --> 00:21:03.820 from those same city-states which had to pay all that money. 00:21:03.820 --> 00:21:06.900 Then a list of all those who had benefited the city in some way 00:21:06.900 --> 00:21:08.420 was read out. 00:21:08.420 --> 00:21:12.980 And finally, onto the stage were brought the orphans, 00:21:12.980 --> 00:21:16.940 those whose parents had died fighting for the city in battle 00:21:16.940 --> 00:21:19.060 and whom the city would now 00:21:19.060 --> 00:21:22.180 take on the expenses of bringing up and educating. 00:21:22.180 --> 00:21:26.660 They came on, dressed themselves in the armour of war 00:21:26.660 --> 00:21:30.220 and took their seats, their special seats here in the theatre. 00:21:30.220 --> 00:21:32.420 Only then could the plays begin. 00:21:35.380 --> 00:21:38.220 From dawn until dusk, for five days, 00:21:38.220 --> 00:21:40.980 the citizen audience watched three playwrights 00:21:40.980 --> 00:21:45.020 each put on three tragedies as well as a farcical satyr play, 00:21:45.020 --> 00:21:46.540 and some comedies. 00:21:46.540 --> 00:21:49.780 At their heart were issues of justice and loyalty, 00:21:49.780 --> 00:21:53.020 war and peace, vengeance and compassion, 00:21:53.020 --> 00:21:56.140 which sent powerful messages to the citizen audience. 00:21:59.380 --> 00:22:01.380 In the centuries of Athens' greatness, 00:22:01.380 --> 00:22:05.060 over 1,000 plays were written for the Dionysia. 00:22:05.060 --> 00:22:09.620 But today, just 32 of them survive in full. 00:22:09.620 --> 00:22:11.780 And those 32 have survived, in part, 00:22:11.780 --> 00:22:14.380 because they were considered to be the greatest. 00:22:14.380 --> 00:22:17.300 And they were all written by just three people - 00:22:17.300 --> 00:22:20.220 Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - 00:22:20.220 --> 00:22:23.380 the great tragedians of the 5th century BC. 00:22:26.140 --> 00:22:27.740 Aeschylus was the first. 00:22:27.740 --> 00:22:29.780 He was the author of the Oresteia, 00:22:29.780 --> 00:22:32.740 the only whole trilogy to have survived. 00:22:32.740 --> 00:22:35.380 Sophocles wrote two of the most enduring plays - 00:22:35.380 --> 00:22:37.540 Oedipus The King and Antigone, 00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:40.420 which tells the tragic story of Oedipus' daughter 00:22:40.420 --> 00:22:41.980 who is sentenced to death 00:22:41.980 --> 00:22:45.340 for breaking the law and burying her rebel brother. 00:22:45.340 --> 00:22:48.100 But, of all the playwrights, Euripides is now considered 00:22:48.100 --> 00:22:50.420 in many ways to have been the best. 00:22:50.420 --> 00:22:53.580 He wrote the play Medea, with its shocking tale 00:22:53.580 --> 00:22:55.300 of a woman betrayed by her husband 00:22:55.300 --> 00:22:57.900 who takes revenge by killing her own children. 00:22:59.140 --> 00:23:03.740 The playwrights of ancient Athens were all gurus of the city 00:23:03.740 --> 00:23:07.460 in one form or another - Aeschylus the war hero, 00:23:07.460 --> 00:23:09.740 Sophocles the civic official, 00:23:09.740 --> 00:23:13.500 and Euripides, the sort of enfant terrible of Athenian society. 00:23:14.700 --> 00:23:18.860 The Greek word for playwright is "didaskalos", 00:23:18.860 --> 00:23:21.140 which means "trainer", or "teacher". 00:23:21.140 --> 00:23:23.820 Now, in part, that refers to the playwright's role 00:23:23.820 --> 00:23:26.100 in training the chorus for their play, 00:23:26.100 --> 00:23:30.620 BUT many believe it also refers to the role of the playwright 00:23:30.620 --> 00:23:36.100 in training the audience for participation in democracy itself. 00:23:36.100 --> 00:23:39.700 If we take Sophocles' Ajax, as an example - 00:23:39.700 --> 00:23:42.220 it's a retelling of a classic myth 00:23:42.220 --> 00:23:45.900 set in the time of the legendary war between the Greeks and the Trojans. 00:23:45.900 --> 00:23:47.980 And, on the one hand, it's just that 00:23:47.980 --> 00:23:50.540 but on the other it's also a lesson, 00:23:50.540 --> 00:23:55.420 a lesson in the sacrifices that have to be made for democracy to work. 00:24:00.100 --> 00:24:04.700 Ajax was one of the warriors who fought with the Greeks at Troy. 00:24:04.700 --> 00:24:08.500 After the death of Achilles, the greatest hero of them all, 00:24:08.500 --> 00:24:12.180 the Greeks take a vote on who should get his weapons. 00:24:12.180 --> 00:24:16.420 They choose Odysseus, not Ajax, and Ajax is furious. 00:24:18.540 --> 00:24:23.220 Unable to accept the result of the vote, he goes on a killing spree. 00:24:23.220 --> 00:24:26.940 And ultimately, consumed by the shame of his actions - 00:24:26.940 --> 00:24:28.700 he is driven to suicide. 00:24:32.620 --> 00:24:34.740 The motor of this play is a vote - 00:24:34.740 --> 00:24:36.820 a process that would have been very familiar 00:24:36.820 --> 00:24:39.540 to the democratic citizens of ancient Athens. 00:24:39.540 --> 00:24:43.180 But it's a vote that Ajax refuses to accept. 00:24:43.180 --> 00:24:47.940 Ajax is the antithesis of the good democratic citizen. 00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:49.700 But the play also goes further. 00:24:49.700 --> 00:24:51.940 Because, for me, the key moment 00:24:51.940 --> 00:24:55.140 is actually what happens after Ajax's death. 00:24:55.140 --> 00:24:57.220 What Sophocles has the other Greeks do 00:24:57.220 --> 00:24:59.820 is debate about how they should proceed. 00:24:59.820 --> 00:25:03.140 And some argue that Ajax should not be buried because of his actions 00:25:03.140 --> 00:25:06.260 but Odysseus steps in to argue that he should be buried. 00:25:07.980 --> 00:25:12.620 "Do not fling his body out unburied, treated so unfeelingly. 00:25:12.620 --> 00:25:16.340 "And don't let force have such control of you that you allow 00:25:16.340 --> 00:25:19.500 "your hate to trample justice down." 00:25:19.500 --> 00:25:22.700 For scholars, this is the critical point in the play. 00:25:24.260 --> 00:25:25.700 There's a real danger in Ajax 00:25:25.700 --> 00:25:29.500 that because you've got these two extraordinary episodes 00:25:29.500 --> 00:25:31.100 that are bloody and shocking, 00:25:31.100 --> 00:25:33.380 you think the play is about those two episodes 00:25:33.380 --> 00:25:34.860 that are bloody and shocking. 00:25:34.860 --> 00:25:38.660 But I think the play is about the process of debate 00:25:38.660 --> 00:25:40.980 that leads to decisions 00:25:40.980 --> 00:25:47.300 in the wake of actions that really you haven't been able to cope with. 00:25:47.300 --> 00:25:51.740 So, this is a play that stages debate 00:25:51.740 --> 00:25:54.500 and it stages it in all its forms. 00:25:54.500 --> 00:25:58.580 One way of thinking about Ajax is as a hermetical bronze age 00:25:58.580 --> 00:26:02.860 or archaic warrior stuck in a much more modern political system. 00:26:02.860 --> 00:26:06.740 He has values about being an individual and being a hero, 00:26:06.740 --> 00:26:09.340 not being a co-operative person... 00:26:09.340 --> 00:26:11.220 that make him very difficult, 00:26:11.220 --> 00:26:15.700 as if individuals can no longer be powerful figures in a democracy. 00:26:15.700 --> 00:26:18.060 A man out of time, out of place? Yes. 00:26:18.060 --> 00:26:21.540 So, this may be someone who is hardly a role model citizen 00:26:21.540 --> 00:26:23.580 but there are going to be lots of people in Athens 00:26:23.580 --> 00:26:25.100 who are hardly role model citizens. 00:26:32.180 --> 00:26:35.660 Athens, no doubt, had its own fair share of bigheads 00:26:35.660 --> 00:26:40.060 and glory seekers - people who just wouldn't work within the democracy. 00:26:40.060 --> 00:26:41.860 And this play plays out the dilemma 00:26:41.860 --> 00:26:43.780 of what do you do with those kinds of people? 00:26:43.780 --> 00:26:46.900 How do you keep the democracy on track? 00:26:46.900 --> 00:26:50.260 And that, for me, is why Odysseus' intervention is so crucial, 00:26:50.260 --> 00:26:52.980 because he shows that you need to have empathy with these people 00:26:52.980 --> 00:26:56.260 and you need to let justice run its course. 00:26:56.260 --> 00:26:58.380 Odysseus offers a way for the community 00:26:58.380 --> 00:27:01.940 to come back together, make a joint decision and move forward. 00:27:03.140 --> 00:27:06.180 And that's why this play is such a great example 00:27:06.180 --> 00:27:10.220 of what theatre did in ancient Athenian society - 00:27:10.220 --> 00:27:13.100 it told a story, it posed problems, 00:27:13.100 --> 00:27:15.540 it asked questions, questions of the audience 00:27:15.540 --> 00:27:18.180 about what would you do in this kind of situation, 00:27:18.180 --> 00:27:21.700 a situation which they would undoubtedly have to face up to 00:27:21.700 --> 00:27:23.100 at some point in their lives. 00:27:25.940 --> 00:27:28.900 Theatre was vital to the processes that played out 00:27:28.900 --> 00:27:32.100 here on the Pnyx, home of the Athenian assembly. 00:27:32.100 --> 00:27:35.780 It was the oil that allowed democracy to function. 00:27:35.780 --> 00:27:39.100 A contained space which allowed for a continual process 00:27:39.100 --> 00:27:42.900 of risky reflection, self-doubt and debate. 00:27:42.900 --> 00:27:45.340 It's no accident that the most important words 00:27:45.340 --> 00:27:48.220 in any Greek tragedy are "Ti draso?" - 00:27:48.220 --> 00:27:50.540 "What shall I do?" 00:27:50.540 --> 00:27:53.980 Theatre and democracy had grown up together 00:27:53.980 --> 00:27:56.980 and were now inextricably linked in Athenian minds 00:27:56.980 --> 00:28:00.020 and every year, for almost the next two centuries, 00:28:00.020 --> 00:28:02.540 the Athenians came to the theatre 00:28:02.540 --> 00:28:06.060 to rework the old myths into tragic dramas 00:28:06.060 --> 00:28:08.980 that spoke to the problems that had beset 00:28:08.980 --> 00:28:10.900 and were fundamental 00:28:10.900 --> 00:28:14.020 to one of the most important and interesting stories in history - 00:28:14.020 --> 00:28:16.740 The Rise and Fall of Athens. 00:28:16.740 --> 00:28:20.900 And, at the same time, those very same people were here, 00:28:20.900 --> 00:28:23.820 in the assembly, making the decisions 00:28:23.820 --> 00:28:25.460 that affected those events. 00:28:28.060 --> 00:28:29.660 It's therefore no surprise 00:28:29.660 --> 00:28:32.740 that a common subject matter in Athenian drama 00:28:32.740 --> 00:28:37.220 was a problem that constantly dogged the Athenian assembly - war. 00:28:37.220 --> 00:28:39.980 And one war in particular fired the imagination 00:28:39.980 --> 00:28:41.500 of the playwright Aeschylus, 00:28:41.500 --> 00:28:43.860 who lived through the real life drama 00:28:43.860 --> 00:28:45.860 and was inspired to write what is now 00:28:45.860 --> 00:28:49.540 the first ancient Greek play to survive in full. 00:28:49.540 --> 00:28:54.460 In 490 BC, less than 20 years after the democracy was established, 00:28:54.460 --> 00:28:58.940 Athens was attacked by the greatest power on earth - the Persian empire. 00:29:02.100 --> 00:29:06.500 The first crisis came at Marathon, 26 miles from the city of Athens. 00:29:08.660 --> 00:29:11.260 A Persian fleet arrived with an enormous army. 00:29:11.260 --> 00:29:14.260 Although outnumbered, the Athenians attacked, 00:29:14.260 --> 00:29:16.620 and against all the odds, they triumphed. 00:29:18.860 --> 00:29:22.380 The Athenian dead were commemorated by a memorial barrow 00:29:22.380 --> 00:29:23.980 near the battlefield, 00:29:23.980 --> 00:29:25.820 which is impressive even today. 00:29:27.460 --> 00:29:30.540 But ten years later, the Persians were back with an army 00:29:30.540 --> 00:29:33.020 said to have been more than a million strong. 00:29:33.020 --> 00:29:36.620 As it bore down on Athens, the assembly passed a heroic decree 00:29:36.620 --> 00:29:40.100 at the urging of a leading general called Themistocles. 00:29:40.100 --> 00:29:42.660 Amazingly, a later copy of the decree 00:29:42.660 --> 00:29:45.820 actually survives in an Athens museum. 00:29:45.820 --> 00:29:50.140 This is one of the most evocative inscriptions surviving to us today. 00:29:50.140 --> 00:29:54.500 It's a decree of the people of Athens and here's the key word - 00:29:54.500 --> 00:29:57.420 "Salamina" - Salamis. 00:29:57.420 --> 00:30:00.460 This is the decree recording the decision 00:30:00.460 --> 00:30:03.860 by the Athenian people to evacuate their home city 00:30:03.860 --> 00:30:06.220 and go to the island of Salamis 00:30:06.220 --> 00:30:11.220 to save themselves from the invading hordes of Persians. 00:30:11.220 --> 00:30:13.980 This is the record of one of the most key moments 00:30:13.980 --> 00:30:15.700 in the whole of ancient history. 00:30:18.700 --> 00:30:22.620 The Athenians abandoned their city and took to their ships, 00:30:22.620 --> 00:30:25.660 leaving only a few men barricaded on the Acropolis. 00:30:26.940 --> 00:30:31.780 The Persians ransacked the city, destroying the temples. 00:30:31.780 --> 00:30:33.860 But the Athenian gamble paid off - 00:30:33.860 --> 00:30:36.340 the Athenian fleet defeated the Persians 00:30:36.340 --> 00:30:38.460 in the narrows off Salamis. 00:30:38.460 --> 00:30:39.860 Greece was saved. 00:30:41.060 --> 00:30:45.420 And witnessing it all, not from afar but at close range, was Aeschylus. 00:30:47.660 --> 00:30:52.300 Aeschylus wasn't just a playwright - he was also a soldier. 00:30:52.300 --> 00:30:56.020 He stood in the Athenian ranks on the plane at Marathon, 00:30:56.020 --> 00:30:59.500 on that fateful day when the Persians first arrived. 00:30:59.500 --> 00:31:02.620 He was part of the victorious Athenian army, 00:31:02.620 --> 00:31:05.300 but he also lost his brother on the battlefield. 00:31:06.700 --> 00:31:08.460 Aeschylus, in his own epitaph, 00:31:08.460 --> 00:31:12.060 preferred to be remembered for his role here at Marathon, 00:31:12.060 --> 00:31:14.060 rather than for his plays. 00:31:14.060 --> 00:31:17.100 Without doubt, it was his extraordinary experiences 00:31:17.100 --> 00:31:20.700 here on the battlefield that gave him a unique perspective 00:31:20.700 --> 00:31:24.460 and allowed him to represent war on stage 00:31:24.460 --> 00:31:27.220 in a way that has echoed ever since. 00:31:29.620 --> 00:31:32.420 Aeschylus composed over 90 plays in his lifetime 00:31:32.420 --> 00:31:34.300 and of the few that survive, 00:31:34.300 --> 00:31:37.100 the play that he composed about these great events 00:31:37.100 --> 00:31:41.220 is one of the most moving, and one of the most fascinating. 00:31:41.220 --> 00:31:45.420 In 472 BC, Aeschylus produced a play called The Persians, 00:31:45.420 --> 00:31:49.620 and it's the first ancient tragedy to survive to us in full today. 00:31:49.620 --> 00:31:54.300 Its sponsor was no-one less than the future democratic hero Pericles. 00:31:54.300 --> 00:31:58.700 But what's really surprising about it is its subject matter, 00:31:58.700 --> 00:32:01.860 because it tells the story of how the Persians 00:32:01.860 --> 00:32:05.500 reacted to the news of their defeat at the battle of Salamis, 00:32:05.500 --> 00:32:09.700 a battle that those in the audience had fought and won 00:32:09.700 --> 00:32:11.700 just eight years before. 00:32:15.020 --> 00:32:17.580 The play is set in the Persian capital. 00:32:17.580 --> 00:32:19.820 A messenger arrives at the Persian court 00:32:19.820 --> 00:32:22.020 with the news of the Greek victory. 00:32:22.020 --> 00:32:24.780 The Persians cannot believe that they have been defeated, 00:32:24.780 --> 00:32:26.780 and they fall to pieces. 00:32:26.780 --> 00:32:28.420 In their misery, 00:32:28.420 --> 00:32:32.820 they summon the ghost of the previous King Darius for advice. 00:32:32.820 --> 00:32:35.380 The ghost of Darius tells the Persians 00:32:35.380 --> 00:32:38.020 that they themselves are to blame for their defeat, 00:32:38.020 --> 00:32:40.620 because their pride and their ambition 00:32:40.620 --> 00:32:42.780 has led them to disregard the gods. 00:32:44.820 --> 00:32:49.420 "The voiceless heaps of slaughtered corpses shall eloquently show 00:32:49.420 --> 00:32:53.220 "that no one human should puff up inflated thoughts. 00:32:53.220 --> 00:32:56.420 "You see how insolence, once opened into flower, 00:32:56.420 --> 00:32:59.180 "produces fields ripe with calamity 00:32:59.180 --> 00:33:02.780 "and reaps a harvest-home of sorrow." 00:33:02.780 --> 00:33:06.020 This is the crucial theme of the play. 00:33:06.020 --> 00:33:10.820 Well, I think, really, at its heart, it's almost a tragedy about hubris. 00:33:10.820 --> 00:33:14.860 Hmm. This idea of, sometimes translated as "arrogance", 00:33:14.860 --> 00:33:18.940 something like that - going too far, crossing a line, transgressing. 00:33:18.940 --> 00:33:21.980 And the Persians had done that. 00:33:21.980 --> 00:33:24.700 They thought big, they thought they could go and take Greece. 00:33:24.700 --> 00:33:26.900 They didn't win and, actually, 00:33:26.900 --> 00:33:28.380 part of what the play is exploring 00:33:28.380 --> 00:33:31.140 is the idea that big empires can fall. 00:33:31.140 --> 00:33:32.820 What kind of resonance 00:33:32.820 --> 00:33:37.500 and implications does a play like The Persians have for us today? 00:33:37.500 --> 00:33:41.620 It deals with one of these eternal themes - it looks at war. 00:33:41.620 --> 00:33:44.340 It looks at the destruction, the loss, 00:33:44.340 --> 00:33:47.180 the risks you run if you go to war. 00:33:47.180 --> 00:33:50.580 They became really popular with the Gulf War 00:33:50.580 --> 00:33:55.100 and with the Iraq War as well and this is a really interesting one. 00:33:55.100 --> 00:33:56.980 In some modern productions, 00:33:56.980 --> 00:33:59.860 what you get is costume that really tells you 00:33:59.860 --> 00:34:04.580 that the audience should be making a link with contemporary war. 00:34:04.580 --> 00:34:07.980 What point is Aeschylus making, do you think, with that? 00:34:07.980 --> 00:34:10.980 I mean this is an amazingly difficult question to answer, 00:34:10.980 --> 00:34:15.780 you can't even imagine how this must have felt for the audience. 00:34:15.780 --> 00:34:20.060 They'd had their city sacked, they'd really come close 00:34:20.060 --> 00:34:23.179 to being completely occupied by Persia. 00:34:23.179 --> 00:34:27.580 This play is, on one level really celebratory... Yeah. 00:34:27.580 --> 00:34:30.860 But you have to imagine it operating on another level as well 00:34:30.860 --> 00:34:34.739 because there are incredibly moving speeches in this - 00:34:34.739 --> 00:34:39.580 the language isn't just victorious, if you like. 00:34:39.580 --> 00:34:42.139 I think it tells us a lot about what tragedy is doing, 00:34:42.139 --> 00:34:45.380 it is complex and it doesn't make it easy on the audience 00:34:45.380 --> 00:34:48.460 and it's really asking the society to reflect. 00:34:54.780 --> 00:34:57.980 This play, for me, is both an exception to normal tragedy 00:34:57.980 --> 00:35:00.620 AND a fantastic example of it. 00:35:00.620 --> 00:35:05.740 It's an exception because unlike most that focus on mythical stories, 00:35:05.740 --> 00:35:08.780 this focuses on real and recent history. 00:35:08.780 --> 00:35:12.140 But it's a fantastic example of what tragedy does 00:35:12.140 --> 00:35:14.300 because it doesn't just allow the Athenians 00:35:14.300 --> 00:35:16.940 to gloat over their victory. 00:35:16.940 --> 00:35:18.740 Instead, it offers a warning. 00:35:18.740 --> 00:35:22.020 For the Persians, pride came before a fall, 00:35:22.020 --> 00:35:24.740 and at a time when Athens and the Athenians 00:35:24.740 --> 00:35:28.300 were beginning to grow in their own power within the Greek world, 00:35:28.300 --> 00:35:30.580 the play offers that same message - 00:35:30.580 --> 00:35:34.740 "be careful or you too could end up just like the Persians." 00:35:37.060 --> 00:35:42.620 This warning had a direct bearing on the current situation in Athens. 00:35:42.620 --> 00:35:44.780 In the aftermath of the Persian wars, 00:35:44.780 --> 00:35:47.980 Athens reached the peak of her power and influence 00:35:47.980 --> 00:35:51.220 and the fleet that had secured victory at Salamis 00:35:51.220 --> 00:35:53.580 now reached out across the Aegean. 00:35:54.740 --> 00:35:59.780 Athens became the leading city-state in a new anti-Persian alliance. 00:35:59.780 --> 00:36:04.180 But what began as a free coalition, was soon under Athenian control. 00:36:07.780 --> 00:36:11.180 The financial muscle at Athens' command allowed it eventually 00:36:11.180 --> 00:36:13.980 to turn the free alliance of Greek cities and states, 00:36:13.980 --> 00:36:18.180 that had been brought together to wreak revenge on the Persians, 00:36:18.180 --> 00:36:21.940 into an empire solely to support the glory of Athens. 00:36:21.940 --> 00:36:23.740 And it was policed by the mighty 00:36:23.740 --> 00:36:28.140 and yet brutal majesty of the supreme Athenian fleet. 00:36:28.140 --> 00:36:29.820 The war-chest for that free alliance, 00:36:29.820 --> 00:36:32.220 which had been kept on the sacred island of Delos, 00:36:32.220 --> 00:36:35.180 was moved to Athens, placed on the Acropolis 00:36:35.180 --> 00:36:37.980 and eventually into a building - the Parthenon - 00:36:37.980 --> 00:36:42.260 which has today become synonymous with democracy and freedom. 00:36:42.260 --> 00:36:44.820 And yet which was originally built 00:36:44.820 --> 00:36:46.940 with the blood-money of Athenian empire. 00:36:49.900 --> 00:36:53.140 Every year, each city in the alliance or empire, 00:36:53.140 --> 00:36:55.740 contributed money in silver as tribute, 00:36:55.740 --> 00:36:59.020 and this money was displayed in the theatre, in Athens, 00:36:59.020 --> 00:37:02.100 at the Great Dionysia Festival. 00:37:02.100 --> 00:37:05.140 But when any members of the empire refused these payments, 00:37:05.140 --> 00:37:07.780 Athens sent a fleet to attack them. 00:37:07.780 --> 00:37:10.340 Having an empire meant that the Athenian assembly 00:37:10.340 --> 00:37:12.700 was now making life-or-death decisions, 00:37:12.700 --> 00:37:16.860 not just about themselves but about cities and peoples far away 00:37:16.860 --> 00:37:18.940 who had no real say in the matter. 00:37:21.100 --> 00:37:24.900 These decisions were far from easy, as the Athenians discovered 00:37:24.900 --> 00:37:28.220 when they had to decide how to deal with the city of Mytilene. 00:37:33.260 --> 00:37:35.540 In 428 BC, the city of Mytilene 00:37:35.540 --> 00:37:37.500 rebelled against the Athenian empire. 00:37:37.500 --> 00:37:40.740 The Athenian assembly met to decide how to respond. 00:37:40.740 --> 00:37:43.340 The hardliners wanted to execute every man 00:37:43.340 --> 00:37:45.580 and enslave every woman in the city - 00:37:45.580 --> 00:37:48.660 the moderates just to execute the ringleaders. 00:37:48.660 --> 00:37:49.980 On the first day of debate, 00:37:49.980 --> 00:37:52.500 the Athenian assembly sided with the hardliners. 00:37:52.500 --> 00:37:56.820 They even dispatched a trireme to Mytilene to carry out those orders. 00:37:56.820 --> 00:37:58.940 And yet when they met on the second day, 00:37:58.940 --> 00:38:02.620 the Athenian assembly started to doubt its own decision. 00:38:02.620 --> 00:38:05.700 And indeed they went on to reverse it, sending a second trireme 00:38:05.700 --> 00:38:08.220 which got there just in time. 00:38:08.220 --> 00:38:11.500 Now these events not only brought great relief to the Mytileneans 00:38:11.500 --> 00:38:15.380 but it also brought home to the Athenians the critical importance 00:38:15.380 --> 00:38:19.580 of thinking through properly their decisions before taking action. 00:38:23.500 --> 00:38:26.100 Dealing with life and death decisions like this 00:38:26.100 --> 00:38:29.300 had always lain at the heart of Athenian drama. 00:38:29.300 --> 00:38:33.140 And authors like the prize-winning Sophocles forced the audience 00:38:33.140 --> 00:38:38.500 to experience vicariously the consequences of sloppy thinking. 00:38:38.500 --> 00:38:42.540 In 442 BC, Sophocles won yet another victory at the City Dionysia 00:38:42.540 --> 00:38:44.620 with his play Antigone. 00:38:44.620 --> 00:38:46.980 Now, Sophocles was a man intensely involved 00:38:46.980 --> 00:38:48.740 with the affairs of the Athenian state. 00:38:48.740 --> 00:38:50.380 He had been a general and he would go on 00:38:50.380 --> 00:38:52.540 to become one of its closest advisers 00:38:52.540 --> 00:38:55.300 during its darkest hours in future years. 00:38:55.300 --> 00:38:58.100 And his play Antigone deals with exactly this kind of thing - 00:38:58.100 --> 00:39:01.180 how to debate and argue through the difficult 00:39:01.180 --> 00:39:04.220 and yet critical issues that face a city. 00:39:05.340 --> 00:39:08.500 And what can happen when it all goes terribly wrong. 00:39:13.300 --> 00:39:18.060 The play tells the sad story of Oedipus' daughter Princess Antigone. 00:39:19.380 --> 00:39:22.300 When Antigone buries the body of her rebel brother, 00:39:22.300 --> 00:39:24.740 she is following the law of the gods. 00:39:24.740 --> 00:39:28.660 But the city's law and her uncle, King Creon have forbidden it. 00:39:30.460 --> 00:39:32.940 Creon is furious, and condemns her to death. 00:39:36.100 --> 00:39:40.180 Creon's son Haemon, who is in love with Antigone, 00:39:40.180 --> 00:39:42.580 urges his father to reconsider. 00:39:43.740 --> 00:39:49.580 He argues that "A city is not a city if it is the holding of one man." 00:39:49.580 --> 00:39:51.980 But Creon is stubborn and uncompromising. 00:39:51.980 --> 00:39:56.380 He refuses to listen, and refuses to back down. 00:39:56.380 --> 00:39:59.780 The play ends with Antigone and Haemon both committing suicide 00:39:59.780 --> 00:40:02.820 and with Creon facing the displeasure of his people 00:40:02.820 --> 00:40:04.100 and of the gods. 00:40:04.100 --> 00:40:06.500 Creon has to face the fact that his actions, 00:40:06.500 --> 00:40:08.780 and his alone, have caused this disaster. 00:40:10.540 --> 00:40:15.780 All of Greek tragedy stages dilemmas that cities under leaders have, 00:40:15.780 --> 00:40:16.020 where they're faced with either very bad luck 00:40:16.140 --> 00:40:19.660 where they're faced with either very bad luck 00:40:19.660 --> 00:40:23.060 or very bad management, or both. 00:40:23.060 --> 00:40:25.900 Now, at one end of that spectrum you've got Oedipus, 00:40:25.900 --> 00:40:29.660 who has very, very, very bad luck - he's doomed before he's even born. 00:40:29.660 --> 00:40:31.380 How do you react to that? 00:40:31.380 --> 00:40:34.700 How do you conduct yourself in a situation with very bad luck? 00:40:34.700 --> 00:40:38.900 Right at the other end is the story of Oedipus' daughter Antigone, 00:40:38.900 --> 00:40:43.460 faced with THE most incompetent leader in all of Greek literature 00:40:43.460 --> 00:40:45.380 and that is saying something. 00:40:45.380 --> 00:40:49.940 Creon simply cannot put a foot right, so Sophocles is asking people 00:40:49.940 --> 00:40:52.100 to think about what a good leader might be 00:40:52.100 --> 00:40:54.740 through showing them the worst possible leader 00:40:54.740 --> 00:40:56.380 and the Athenians loved that 00:40:56.380 --> 00:41:00.820 so much that Antiquity said they made him general in response. 00:41:00.820 --> 00:41:04.060 Creon is getting pretty a bad stick from Edith 00:41:04.060 --> 00:41:08.740 but there is a real sense in which the issue at the centre of the play 00:41:08.740 --> 00:41:12.180 is an issue that arises even in Athenian law. 00:41:12.180 --> 00:41:14.940 In Athenian law, if someone is a traitor 00:41:14.940 --> 00:41:16.540 they are not to be buried - 00:41:16.540 --> 00:41:18.900 you have to take them beyond the borders 00:41:18.900 --> 00:41:20.900 and you can then bury them outside. 00:41:20.900 --> 00:41:23.180 If you're a dimark in Athens 00:41:23.180 --> 00:41:27.660 and there is a dead body in your deign you are obliged to bury it. 00:41:27.660 --> 00:41:30.940 So, immediately that clash of, 00:41:30.940 --> 00:41:32.940 "Yes, you must bury it but no, you can't" 00:41:32.940 --> 00:41:35.500 arises if the dead body happens to be a traitor. 00:41:35.500 --> 00:41:39.180 So this isn't a non issue, this is a real issue 00:41:39.180 --> 00:41:43.340 and Creon may make a complete fist of resolving it 00:41:43.340 --> 00:41:46.180 but he makes a fist because 00:41:46.180 --> 00:41:50.500 there are two diametrically opposed, justifiable views 00:41:50.500 --> 00:41:53.220 and you then have to pick your way through these. 00:42:00.740 --> 00:42:04.100 Due to his dogged determination for others to do 00:42:04.100 --> 00:42:08.580 exactly what he wants, his inability to listen, to compromise, 00:42:08.580 --> 00:42:10.940 Creon ends up paying the ultimate price - 00:42:10.940 --> 00:42:14.460 the loss of his family and his authority. 00:42:14.460 --> 00:42:18.260 It's a play about listening, debate, compromise, 00:42:18.260 --> 00:42:20.260 what it takes to be a leader. 00:42:20.260 --> 00:42:23.100 Those are issues which, of course, had relevance 00:42:23.100 --> 00:42:25.860 to the ancient Athenians watching the play, 00:42:25.860 --> 00:42:30.500 but they're also issues that are relevant to any society at any time. 00:42:30.500 --> 00:42:34.100 That's what makes Antigone so timeless. 00:42:37.100 --> 00:42:41.740 It's got universal appeal because it's about someone 00:42:41.740 --> 00:42:45.020 fighting against the system and a system that's wrong. 00:42:45.020 --> 00:42:47.500 I mean, that's how it gets picked up now 00:42:47.500 --> 00:42:51.500 and that's what really appeals to modern audiences, I think, about it. 00:42:51.500 --> 00:42:52.940 A play like Antigone, 00:42:52.940 --> 00:42:55.940 what kind of resonance does that have for us today? 00:42:55.940 --> 00:42:59.420 Thinking about this adaptation that Jean Anouilh 00:42:59.420 --> 00:43:05.940 produced in 1944 in France while it was being occupied by Nazis - 00:43:05.940 --> 00:43:08.860 that's a real example where you've got this play 00:43:08.860 --> 00:43:13.820 which is really taken on and championed by the Resistance. 00:43:13.820 --> 00:43:17.820 How did it ever get permission to be performed 00:43:17.820 --> 00:43:20.500 if it's such a play of resistance? 00:43:20.500 --> 00:43:23.820 Well, I think that's the ambiguity of the play. 00:43:23.820 --> 00:43:28.260 So, for the occupying force, for the Vichy government, 00:43:28.260 --> 00:43:30.860 actually, you can look at this play and think, 00:43:30.860 --> 00:43:34.060 "This is a play about law and imposing law" 00:43:34.060 --> 00:43:36.380 and actually this is a silly little girl 00:43:36.380 --> 00:43:40.140 who breaks that law and she gets what's coming to her. 00:43:40.140 --> 00:43:44.260 So, it's that ambiguity that allows, even in those circumstances, 00:43:44.260 --> 00:43:47.260 this great play of resistance, for some people, to be put on. 00:43:52.500 --> 00:43:56.700 Tragedy was an effective way of engaging with the issues 00:43:56.700 --> 00:44:00.660 that beset the democracy, but it was not the only way. 00:44:00.660 --> 00:44:02.940 There was also comedy. 00:44:02.940 --> 00:44:06.940 Comedy was irreverent, rude and bawdy, 00:44:06.940 --> 00:44:10.860 and it was also personal, targeting real individuals. 00:44:10.860 --> 00:44:14.580 And just like today, ordinary Athenians in the marketplace 00:44:14.580 --> 00:44:18.860 were deeply suspicious of their elected political leaders. 00:44:18.860 --> 00:44:21.540 Some people, it seems, were just naturally born 00:44:21.540 --> 00:44:23.140 to successfully navigate 00:44:23.140 --> 00:44:26.500 the slippery waters of Athenian politics. 00:44:26.500 --> 00:44:29.860 And one of those guys was a man called Cleon. 00:44:29.860 --> 00:44:32.140 HE SPEAKS GREEK 00:44:32.140 --> 00:44:36.180 Now, Cleon was what we would call today an opportunistic politician. 00:44:36.180 --> 00:44:38.620 He would be with the aristocrats or he would be spurring 00:44:38.620 --> 00:44:42.220 on the lowest of the low of the Athenian citizenry. 00:44:42.220 --> 00:44:46.220 And the ancient commentators are fairly hard on Cleon. 00:44:46.220 --> 00:44:48.420 Today we'd probably be a bit more balanced, 00:44:48.420 --> 00:44:50.220 but without a shadow of a doubt 00:44:50.220 --> 00:44:53.700 he would do whatever it took to get whatever he wanted. 00:44:53.700 --> 00:44:56.380 Naturally, he had his enemies. 00:44:56.380 --> 00:44:59.820 They accused him of being greedy, not just for power, 00:44:59.820 --> 00:45:02.500 but for fresh-caught tuna, 00:45:02.500 --> 00:45:06.300 seen back then as a luxury desired by the rich and anti-democratic. 00:45:09.060 --> 00:45:12.580 How could the democracy keep people like this in check 00:45:12.580 --> 00:45:15.060 while not killing off their energy and enthusiasm 00:45:15.060 --> 00:45:18.020 that at the end of the day benefited the city? 00:45:18.020 --> 00:45:21.180 Well, one of the ways they did it was in the theatre, 00:45:21.180 --> 00:45:24.780 by taking the piss out of them, right in their very face. 00:45:30.420 --> 00:45:33.340 Comedies, while performed at the Dionysia Festival, 00:45:33.340 --> 00:45:35.980 also had their own smaller festival. 00:45:35.980 --> 00:45:38.100 It was called the Lenaia. 00:45:38.100 --> 00:45:39.580 It took place early in January, 00:45:39.580 --> 00:45:41.900 long before the season for sailing started, 00:45:41.900 --> 00:45:44.420 so there were no foreigners present. 00:45:44.420 --> 00:45:47.180 This meant that comic writers could really let rip 00:45:47.180 --> 00:45:50.180 without letting the city down. 00:45:50.180 --> 00:45:52.980 What you have is really lively plays, 00:45:52.980 --> 00:45:56.340 very outrageous plays sometimes 00:45:56.340 --> 00:45:58.500 but they are politically involved. 00:45:58.500 --> 00:46:03.140 The settings can be amazing in the real sense, incredible. 00:46:03.140 --> 00:46:06.180 You have comedies that go to the underworld, 00:46:06.180 --> 00:46:07.500 they go to hell 00:46:07.500 --> 00:46:11.020 and that's where you get these animal choruses like frogs. 00:46:11.020 --> 00:46:14.220 This is a frog that was used 00:46:14.220 --> 00:46:18.340 in the King's College Greek play. 00:46:18.340 --> 00:46:21.420 Animal choruses are quite common in comedy. 00:46:21.420 --> 00:46:23.940 You've got, for example, the chorus here... 00:46:25.060 --> 00:46:28.900 These guys performing and the songs that they get to sing, 00:46:28.900 --> 00:46:32.140 I mean, this is a great source of comedy. 00:46:32.140 --> 00:46:35.780 What kind of level of biting satire are we talking about here 00:46:35.780 --> 00:46:37.220 in ancient comedy? 00:46:37.220 --> 00:46:38.980 It's extremely personal, 00:46:38.980 --> 00:46:42.420 there's insults really of quite an infantile nature. 00:46:42.420 --> 00:46:46.060 You have plays which put politicians as one of the characters, 00:46:46.060 --> 00:46:47.900 very thinly disguised, 00:46:47.900 --> 00:46:51.620 but they'll be the leading politicians of the day. 00:46:51.620 --> 00:46:55.540 Their policies will be clear, the way they speak might be parodied, 00:46:55.540 --> 00:47:00.020 even the mask can reflect characters from Athenian society. 00:47:01.380 --> 00:47:03.780 This was the sort of thing that lay in store 00:47:03.780 --> 00:47:07.380 for ambitious politicians like Cleon. 00:47:07.380 --> 00:47:10.420 And the man who was the real expert at this 00:47:10.420 --> 00:47:13.900 was a comic playwright called Aristophanes. 00:47:13.900 --> 00:47:17.380 And for Aristophanes and Cleon, it was a grudge match - 00:47:17.380 --> 00:47:19.620 they even came from the same village. 00:47:24.180 --> 00:47:28.380 In 425 BC, Aristophanes wrote a play called The Knights. 00:47:28.380 --> 00:47:31.020 It portrays Cleon as a cunning servant 00:47:31.020 --> 00:47:34.420 working for an old man called Demos. 00:47:34.420 --> 00:47:38.700 Demos represents the people, and as his crafty servant, 00:47:38.700 --> 00:47:41.060 Cleon misuses his position 00:47:41.060 --> 00:47:44.900 for the purposes of extortion and corruption. 00:47:44.900 --> 00:47:47.980 Yet, in the end, is it Demos who has the last laugh. 00:47:47.980 --> 00:47:52.380 Cleon's corrupt ways are exposed, he loses his position 00:47:52.380 --> 00:47:54.540 and he is reduced to selling sausages 00:47:54.540 --> 00:47:56.900 outside the Athens' city gates. 00:47:56.900 --> 00:47:59.340 Aristophanes didn't pull any punches - 00:47:59.340 --> 00:48:02.380 this play brings Cleon right back down to earth. 00:48:02.380 --> 00:48:04.620 And, of course, the politicians, 00:48:04.620 --> 00:48:06.380 about whom the jokes were being made, 00:48:06.380 --> 00:48:09.620 were right here, visible to all in the audience. 00:48:09.620 --> 00:48:11.580 So it's like having one of our shows, 00:48:11.580 --> 00:48:14.700 The Daily Show in the States or Have I Got News For You here, 00:48:14.700 --> 00:48:16.980 being played out in an important civic space - 00:48:16.980 --> 00:48:19.340 the Capitol or the House of Commons - 00:48:19.340 --> 00:48:21.340 with the people they're taking the piss out of 00:48:21.340 --> 00:48:23.140 sitting right here in the audience, 00:48:23.140 --> 00:48:24.940 having to take it in front of everyone. 00:48:24.940 --> 00:48:26.660 The Greeks even had a word for this - 00:48:26.660 --> 00:48:29.220 they called these people, the "komedoumenoi", 00:48:29.220 --> 00:48:32.180 those made fun of in comedy. 00:48:32.180 --> 00:48:34.620 And this isn't just some sort of sideshow. 00:48:34.620 --> 00:48:37.540 This, many ancient commentators saw, 00:48:37.540 --> 00:48:40.580 as the hallmark of ancient Athenian democracy 00:48:40.580 --> 00:48:42.820 and of freedom and free speech. 00:48:44.820 --> 00:48:47.460 The laughter didn't stop Cleon's career. 00:48:47.460 --> 00:48:52.540 Despite his slippery reputation, he was elected again and again. 00:48:52.540 --> 00:48:55.820 But the effect of comedy was more subtle than that. 00:48:55.820 --> 00:48:58.900 What it did do, was police the boundaries of behaviour, 00:48:58.900 --> 00:49:02.780 skewer pretensions and remind those in positions of power 00:49:02.780 --> 00:49:06.940 of their responsibilities and of the limits of their ambitions. 00:49:06.940 --> 00:49:09.540 It's a kind of satire that we can still see at work 00:49:09.540 --> 00:49:11.980 in our own democracy today. 00:49:11.980 --> 00:49:16.180 By the time of Cleon, this experiment in Athenian democracy 00:49:16.180 --> 00:49:18.580 was heading towards its centenary. 00:49:18.580 --> 00:49:21.660 And in that time it had seen it all, from fighting for survival, 00:49:21.660 --> 00:49:25.580 to cultural supremacy, to empire, to wealth. 00:49:25.580 --> 00:49:30.180 And it was, still, at war, not now with Persia 00:49:30.180 --> 00:49:34.060 but with Greece's greatest fighting force - the Spartans. 00:49:35.380 --> 00:49:38.580 And desperate times called for desperate measures. 00:49:41.900 --> 00:49:46.380 The war between Sparta and Athens started in 431 BC 00:49:46.380 --> 00:49:48.540 and lasted for decades. 00:49:48.540 --> 00:49:50.380 It was a fight to the death. 00:49:50.380 --> 00:49:54.060 Sparta ruled by land, Athens ruled at sea. 00:49:54.060 --> 00:49:55.820 But there was one island 00:49:55.820 --> 00:49:58.380 that had never submitted to Athenian domination 00:49:58.380 --> 00:50:01.620 and tried instead to remain neutral - 00:50:01.620 --> 00:50:03.900 the small island of Melos. 00:50:05.220 --> 00:50:09.820 In 416 BC, the Athenian democrats had had enough - 00:50:09.820 --> 00:50:13.020 it was time for the Melians to submit. 00:50:13.020 --> 00:50:16.740 So the Athenians sent their fleet to enforce their demands. 00:50:18.180 --> 00:50:21.620 Now, according to Thucydides, the contemporary Athenian historian, 00:50:21.620 --> 00:50:23.580 the Athenians sent in not just their fleet 00:50:23.580 --> 00:50:26.660 but also some diplomats to put the case. 00:50:26.660 --> 00:50:30.180 The case was very simple, it was this - join us or die. 00:50:31.940 --> 00:50:34.500 But what happened next, according to Thucydides, 00:50:34.500 --> 00:50:38.180 was an extraordinary debate between the two sides. 00:50:38.180 --> 00:50:41.380 "These envoys the Melians did not bring before the popular assembly, 00:50:41.380 --> 00:50:43.860 "but bade them tell in the presence of the magistrates 00:50:43.860 --> 00:50:45.940 "and the few what they had come for." 00:50:45.940 --> 00:50:48.940 The envoys gave the Melians an ultimatum - 00:50:48.940 --> 00:50:53.020 surrender and pay tribute to Athens or be destroyed. 00:50:53.020 --> 00:50:56.860 The Melians argued that they were a neutral city, not an enemy. 00:50:56.860 --> 00:51:00.660 And that it would be shameful and cowardly to submit without a fight. 00:51:00.660 --> 00:51:03.140 But the Athenians were unmoved - 00:51:03.140 --> 00:51:06.500 they countered that if they didn't extract surrender from Melos, 00:51:06.500 --> 00:51:08.660 the empire would look weak. 00:51:08.660 --> 00:51:12.540 They argued that the strong have the right to exert their authority. 00:51:13.620 --> 00:51:15.020 This is a classic example 00:51:15.020 --> 00:51:17.700 of what we call in Greek an "agon" - a debate. 00:51:17.700 --> 00:51:20.220 You could have seen it in the philosophical lecture hall 00:51:20.220 --> 00:51:22.500 or in the political assembly or in the law courts, 00:51:22.500 --> 00:51:24.660 or indeed on the stage in the theatre. 00:51:24.660 --> 00:51:27.500 And it's summed up... Well, it's summed up rather well, actually, 00:51:27.500 --> 00:51:30.460 by an enthusiastic student who seems to have had this copy before me. 00:51:30.460 --> 00:51:34.500 And who has written rather pithily in the margin, "Might is right". 00:51:34.500 --> 00:51:37.140 And that was the Athenian argument. 00:51:37.140 --> 00:51:39.100 The strong do as they can. 00:51:39.100 --> 00:51:41.820 The weak suffer what they must. 00:51:41.820 --> 00:51:43.580 And that's exactly what happened. 00:51:43.580 --> 00:51:45.620 The Athenians invaded the island of Melos, 00:51:45.620 --> 00:51:47.140 they executed all the men, 00:51:47.140 --> 00:51:49.220 they enslaved all the women and the children, 00:51:49.220 --> 00:51:52.220 and they established an Athenian colony there. 00:51:52.220 --> 00:51:57.140 And yet, just the very next year, in the Theatre of Dionysus, 00:51:57.140 --> 00:51:59.020 in the centre of Athens, 00:51:59.020 --> 00:52:02.660 Euripides, the enfant terrible of Athenian drama, 00:52:02.660 --> 00:52:06.100 staged a play called Trojan Women. 00:52:06.100 --> 00:52:09.420 Its subject matter was what happened to the women at Troy 00:52:09.420 --> 00:52:13.220 after the Greeks had besieged, invaded and destroyed the city. 00:52:14.700 --> 00:52:18.540 So the Athenians sat down to watch a play 00:52:18.540 --> 00:52:20.780 which laid before them on the stage 00:52:20.780 --> 00:52:24.580 the tragic reality of what they had done, 00:52:24.580 --> 00:52:27.100 just the year before, to the island of Melos. 00:52:31.140 --> 00:52:35.340 The play is set in the aftermath of the legendary siege of Troy. 00:52:36.780 --> 00:52:39.540 The city has fallen, all the Trojan men are dead, 00:52:39.540 --> 00:52:41.500 and the surviving Trojan women, 00:52:41.500 --> 00:52:45.780 who make up the chorus in the play, are to be sold into slavery. 00:52:45.780 --> 00:52:48.300 But for Princess Andromache, there's worse - 00:52:48.300 --> 00:52:50.980 her son is to be taken from her and slaughtered. 00:52:52.420 --> 00:52:57.740 When she argues, the messenger tells her to be brave - "might is right". 00:52:57.740 --> 00:53:00.180 SHE WAILS 00:53:03.700 --> 00:53:05.660 WOMEN ALL SCREAM 00:53:05.660 --> 00:53:08.020 MAN: Hush. 00:53:12.780 --> 00:53:13.940 SHE PANTS 00:53:13.940 --> 00:53:16.340 If you say words that make the army angry... 00:53:17.860 --> 00:53:19.780 ..the child will have no burial... 00:53:21.340 --> 00:53:23.140 ..and without pity... 00:53:24.740 --> 00:53:26.900 So bear your fate as best you can. 00:53:28.860 --> 00:53:32.220 Then you need not leave him dead without a grave... 00:53:34.340 --> 00:53:37.060 ..and you will find the Greeks... 00:53:37.060 --> 00:53:38.220 more kind. 00:53:42.340 --> 00:53:47.100 Trojan Women may well have spoken to Athenian actions on Melos, 00:53:47.100 --> 00:53:49.340 but Euripides was also crucially 00:53:49.340 --> 00:53:52.140 sending a broader message about the disillusionment 00:53:52.140 --> 00:53:53.860 that was taking hold in Greece 00:53:53.860 --> 00:53:56.420 after years of relentless, savage war 00:53:56.420 --> 00:53:58.660 and the terrible impact 00:53:58.660 --> 00:54:01.540 that such conflict has on all members of society. 00:54:04.500 --> 00:54:08.860 Why should WE think that what the Athenians did to the Melians 00:54:08.860 --> 00:54:12.340 would have generated such terrific outrage 00:54:12.340 --> 00:54:14.460 when the Spartans had done something 00:54:14.460 --> 00:54:19.980 very similar to the people of Hisiai just a few years earlier. Exactly. 00:54:19.980 --> 00:54:21.980 I mean that's purely historically. 00:54:21.980 --> 00:54:24.780 On the other hand, the coincidence of date means, 00:54:24.780 --> 00:54:27.700 it seems to me, that as Euripides is writing this, 00:54:27.700 --> 00:54:30.980 what is the big campaign the Athenians are involved in 00:54:30.980 --> 00:54:35.660 that is going to involve women as slaves of war? 00:54:35.660 --> 00:54:38.860 Well, there is no other campaign going on 00:54:38.860 --> 00:54:44.100 as Euripides is writing it in the winter of 416-5 00:54:44.100 --> 00:54:48.420 but he could have thought it at any time, that's the thing. 00:54:48.420 --> 00:54:53.700 By 416/415, I think Euripides really has seen that war 00:54:53.700 --> 00:54:56.060 as a way of life brings nothing but misery 00:54:56.060 --> 00:54:58.260 to both victors and vanquished. 00:54:58.260 --> 00:55:00.460 And from that point of view, if you focus on Melos, 00:55:00.460 --> 00:55:02.860 you actually miss that point. Exactly. 00:55:02.860 --> 00:55:04.900 The more you think that this is a sort of, 00:55:04.900 --> 00:55:07.740 "Oh, there's been a terrible atrocity..." Yes. Exactly. 00:55:07.740 --> 00:55:09.340 ..the more you miss 00:55:09.340 --> 00:55:12.980 that this is about war and how irrational and terrible. 00:55:12.980 --> 00:55:17.100 Euripides is presenting a view of all the Greeks 00:55:17.100 --> 00:55:19.540 as having barbarised themselves 00:55:19.540 --> 00:55:21.740 during the course of the Peloponnesian War. 00:55:23.740 --> 00:55:25.620 Euripides was not the only one 00:55:25.620 --> 00:55:28.140 to despair at the state of affairs in Greece, 00:55:28.140 --> 00:55:30.860 or criticise Athenian behaviour. 00:55:30.860 --> 00:55:34.420 Many in Greece now felt that Athens was guilty of hubris, 00:55:34.420 --> 00:55:36.220 of over-reaching pride. 00:55:36.220 --> 00:55:39.260 And anyone who had ever seen a Greek tragedy 00:55:39.260 --> 00:55:42.700 would have been aware of what could happen next. 00:55:42.700 --> 00:55:45.420 Here at Rhamnous in the 6th century, 00:55:45.420 --> 00:55:47.340 the people had built a temple 00:55:47.340 --> 00:55:51.660 to the Greek goddess responsible for punishing those guilty of hubris. 00:55:51.660 --> 00:55:56.140 She was called Nemesis, a name that comes from the Greek verb "nemein" - 00:55:56.140 --> 00:55:58.340 meaning to give what is due. 00:56:01.060 --> 00:56:02.900 Now, after the Melian atrocity, 00:56:02.900 --> 00:56:06.700 it seemed like Athenian ambition and pride 00:56:06.700 --> 00:56:09.060 was beginning to over-reach itself. 00:56:09.060 --> 00:56:10.620 They not only had enemies abroad - 00:56:10.620 --> 00:56:13.900 they had an increasing number of enemies in Greece, 00:56:13.900 --> 00:56:16.620 and indeed an increasing number of enemies at home as well, 00:56:16.620 --> 00:56:18.700 who were beginning to think of democracy 00:56:18.700 --> 00:56:22.900 as perhaps the immoral inversion of the righteous order. 00:56:22.900 --> 00:56:24.620 The question was, 00:56:24.620 --> 00:56:28.700 as the glorious golden age of the 5th century drew to a close, 00:56:28.700 --> 00:56:30.740 how would theatre and democracy, 00:56:30.740 --> 00:56:34.900 which had so spectacularly grown up together, 00:56:34.900 --> 00:56:38.940 survive in a much harsher and more difficult world? 00:56:45.460 --> 00:56:49.020 Although the future of Athens now looked uncertain, 00:56:49.020 --> 00:56:53.340 the past century had been a spectacular era, 00:56:53.340 --> 00:56:57.460 Athens had invented and pioneered an array of things 00:56:57.460 --> 00:57:01.100 which underpin our own civilisation. 00:57:01.100 --> 00:57:03.820 From classical sculpture and architecture 00:57:03.820 --> 00:57:06.780 to new directions in philosophy and history. 00:57:08.220 --> 00:57:10.900 But for me, out of all those legacies, 00:57:10.900 --> 00:57:14.500 two stand out as the most extraordinary... 00:57:14.500 --> 00:57:16.220 First, democracy - 00:57:16.220 --> 00:57:20.220 Athens created the first democratic constitution in history 00:57:20.220 --> 00:57:22.980 which has become a beacon across the centuries. 00:57:24.620 --> 00:57:27.020 And second - at the very same time, 00:57:27.020 --> 00:57:31.260 Athens invented a powerful and incisive new art form - 00:57:31.260 --> 00:57:34.620 theatre - an innovation without which perhaps, 00:57:34.620 --> 00:57:37.340 that democracy might never have survived. 00:57:39.420 --> 00:57:45.060 Drama comes from the Greek word, "dram" - to do, to act, to perform. 00:57:45.060 --> 00:57:47.540 And if there is one thing that has become abundantly clear 00:57:47.540 --> 00:57:50.140 it's that theatre was never just mere entertainment, 00:57:50.140 --> 00:57:52.020 never a passive spectator - 00:57:52.020 --> 00:57:56.460 it was a performer in Athens' story in the ancient world. 00:57:56.460 --> 00:58:02.260 From tragedy making our most important beliefs uncomfortable, 00:58:02.260 --> 00:58:04.900 to comedy questioning and policing citizenship, 00:58:04.900 --> 00:58:07.020 and keeping people in check. 00:58:07.020 --> 00:58:12.220 Theatre was an institution that plugged into religious, civic, 00:58:12.220 --> 00:58:16.380 political and military aspects of ancient Athenian society. 00:58:16.380 --> 00:58:20.300 It was an extraordinary, and extraordinarily uncomfortable, 00:58:20.300 --> 00:58:24.620 risky and yet essential part of Athenian life. 00:58:24.620 --> 00:58:27.220 Join the Open University as we explore 00:58:27.220 --> 00:58:30.980 the connections between Greek theatre and modern-day democracy. 00:58:33.020 --> 00:58:35.980 Follow the links to the Open University's free-learning website. 00:58:44.780 --> 00:58:48.500 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd