How Greek Drama Saved The City
Daniel Mendelsohn begins his latest essay thusly: ‘At the climax of Aristophanes’ comedy “Frogs,” a tartly affectionate parody of Greek tragedy that premiered in 405 BCE, Dionysus, the god of wine and theater, is forced to judge a literary contest between two dead playwrights. Earlier in the play, the god had descended to the Underworld in order to retrieve his favorite tragedian, Euripides, who’d died the previous year; without him, Dionysus grumpily asserts, the theatrical scene has grown rather dreary. But once he arrives in the land of the dead, he finds himself thrust into a violent literary quarrel. At the table of Pluto, god of the dead, the newcomer Euripides has claimed the seat of “Best Tragic Poetâ€â€”a place long held by the revered Aeschylus, author of the Oresteia, who’s been dead for fifty years.’
