Greek Culture
God of wine, irrationality, emotions, instincts, fertility, vegetation, festivity, chaos, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, theatre
Dionysus
a character who has a moral struggle and suffers a fall from greatness due to their own moral shortcoming
tragic hero
Writer of Antigone and 122 other plays!
Sophocles
Name of the King who heard a prophecy that his own son would kill his father and marry his mother
King Laius
The time period in Athens when Antigone was written in 441 BC is often referred to as ...
The golden age of Athenian democracy
god of the sun, light, rational thinking, logic and order, music and arts, poetry
Apollo
defect in the tragic hero that leads them to cause their own ruin (DAILY DOUBLE if you can remember the Greek word for it)
hamartia (tragic flaw)
Greek plays were split into these two categories
Tragedy and comedy
To become King of Thebes, Oedipus had to solve a riddle from this creature
The Sphinx
Ancient Greece was divided into these (urban centers whose power extended to surrounding regions) DAILY DOUBLE if you can remember Greek word!
city states (polis)
Why is burying the dead so darn important in Greek culture?
Only the souls of the buried can proceed to the Underworld
most common character fault /moral shortcoming in Greek tragedy (DAILY DOUBLE if you remember the Greek word)
hubris (pride)
This is the process by which actors were selected
election / voting
After Oedipus became the King of Thebes, what calamity befell Thebes?
A plague
These three groups were excluded from voting, citizenship, and participating in the government in Athens. (You get 100 pts for each group you name.)
Excluded were women, slaves, and foreginers. (This is why I put "democracy" in air quotes!)
The name for the 4-day Greek theatre competition & festival to honor the God from which it takes its name
Dionysia
Source of most of the stories behind Greek tragedies
Greek mythology
Part in the play where the tragic hero has a major realization that their tragic flaw has caused their downfall
Epiphany
The Oracle at Delphi tells Creon that to stop the plauge in Thebes, they must ...
bring justice to the murdered King Laius
Only this percentage of the popluation could actually participate in Athenian "democracy"
10%
Only free adult men born in Athens who had served in military could vote!
This group was banned from the big theatre festival
Women )':
Literary term for the tension between what the audience knows and what the characters know
dramatic irony
Part in the play that is a release of emotions / purging of pity & fear
Catharsis
This is why Creon refuses to bury Polynices
He thinks Polynices is a traitor for attacking Athens
This is why loyalty to the polis was considered so important in Athens, and why traitors were punished so harshly
Protecting democracy from individual aristocrats who wanted to be king