50 Fun Facts About Ancient Greek Theatre

Which English word for a kind of pretender comes from the ancient Greek term for a stage actor?

Hypocrite comes from hypokrites, the Greek technical term for a stage actor. The orator Demosthenes ridiculed a rival who had once been an actor as a hypokrites whose stage skills made him untrustworthy.

Which Latin phrase for a contrived plot rescue recalls the crane that lowered gods onto the ancient Greek stage?

Deus ex machina means 'god from the machine', after the crane that swung actors playing gods above the stage. Around half of the surviving tragedies of Euripides are resolved by one.

Which Greek tragedian, a veteran of Marathon, was killed in legend by a tortoise that an eagle dropped on him?

Aeschylus died at Gela in Sicily, and the Roman writer Valerius Maximus says the eagle mistook his head for a rock to crack the shell on. His epitaph mentions Marathon but none of his plays.

Which Greek god, whose wooden statue was paraded to the theatre, was honoured by the drama festivals of Athens?

Dionysus, god of wine, gave his name to the City Dionysia, where three tragedians competed each year. Among Athenian festivals only the Panathenaia ranked higher.

What did every actor in ancient Greek tragedy wear so that one performer could play several different roles?

Masks let a performer reappear as several characters. None survive, because they were made of perishable stiffened linen, leather, wood or cork and were dedicated to the god after the show.

The Greek 'tragoidia', source of the word 'tragedy', literally means what, perhaps recalling an early prize for poets?

Goat song is the literal sense, from tragos, a he-goat, and oide, a song. A goat may have been the prize in early choral contests, or the animal the chorus danced around before its sacrifice.

In which tragedy by Sophocles does a king of Thebes blind himself after learning he has married his own mother?

Oedipus Rex took only second place at its first performance, yet Aristotle later counted it among the greatest of all tragedies.

In which ancient Greek comedy do the women of warring cities refuse sex until their husbands agree to make peace?

Lysistrata, whose name means 'army disbander', was first staged in 411 BC, while Athens was still fighting the Peloponnesian War against Sparta.

Which Greek poet, said to have toured with a wagon of costumes, is credited as the earliest actor to play a character?

Thespis won the first recorded tragedy contest at Athens in 534 BC, and his name survives in 'thespian', the word for an actor.

Which part of an ancient Greek theatre, lying at the foot of the seating, was the circular floor used by the chorus?

Orchestra literally means 'dancing place', because the chorus danced there as well as sang. The modern word for a large body of musicians comes from the same space.

The theatre where Sophocles staged his tragedies stands on the south slope of which Athenian landmark?

The Acropolis hill gave the theatre its natural bowl. Rebuilt in stone under the statesman Lycurgus in the fourth century BC, it stayed in use into Roman times.

Which Greek theatre, built beside a sanctuary of the healing god Asclepius, is famed for its near-perfect acoustics?

Epidaurus is considered the most perfect Greek theatre for acoustics. Its summer festival, revived in 1954, has even hosted the soprano Maria Callas.

Which medical word for purging the body did Aristotle borrow to describe the effect of tragedy on pity and fear?

Catharsis meant 'cleansing' or 'purification' in Greek. Aristotle compared what tragedy and music do to a spectator's mind with the effect of a purge on the body, and scholars dispute exactly what he meant.

Which Greek word, a crime of outrage in Athenian law, now names the excessive pride that undoes a tragic hero?

Hubris in Athenian law meant using violence to shame a victim. In myth and tragedy it became the overconfident pride that provokes the gods to punish a mortal.

In which tragedy by Sophocles does a princess of Thebes defy King Creon to bury her brother Polynices?

Antigone is condemned to be shut alive in a cave for the deed and hangs herself there. It is thought to be the second-oldest surviving play by Sophocles.

In which tragedy by Euripides does a princess from Colchis kill her own children to punish her unfaithful husband?

Medea earned Euripides only the lowest prize at the festival of 431 BC, yet it became the most frequently performed Greek tragedy of the 20th century.

Which building behind the acting area of a Greek theatre served as both the backdrop and the actors' changing room?

Skene means 'tent' or 'hut', because the earliest ones are thought to have been temporary shelters of cloth or light wood. English gets the word 'scene' from it.

The Greek word 'theatron', source of the English 'theatre', originally named which part of the playhouse?

The tiered seating was the theatron, meaning 'seeing place'. The name later spread to the whole complex, which is how English got the word 'theatre'.

Which literary term began as the ancient Greek name for the actor who took the chief part in a drama?

Protagonist joins the Greek for 'first' to a word meaning both actor and competitor. Athenian actors really were contestants: a jury of ten citizens picked the best actor as well as the best author.

In classical Athenian theatre, who performed female roles such as queens, goddesses and the heroines of Greek tragedy?

Male actors took every part in Athenian drama. To play women they changed their outline with padding worn on the chest and stomach under the costume.

Which trilogy, the only one to survive complete from ancient Greek theatre, ends with a play called The Eumenides?

The Oresteia ends with the goddess Athena setting up a jury trial in Athens to stop a cycle of family revenge killings. It won first prize at its first performance.

Which tragedy, the oldest Greek play to survive, is the only extant one based on events of its own time?

The Persians shows the court of Xerxes hearing of the defeat at Salamis. It was staged in Athens only eight years after the battle, and the young statesman Pericles paid for the production.

In which ancient Greek comedy does the god of theatre travel to Hades to bring a dead tragedian back to Athens?

The Frogs is named after a croaking chorus that annoys the god on his way down. Its climax is a contest in which two dead poets have their lines weighed on a balance.

Which ancient Greek comedy imagines a city in the sky, the origin of the English phrase 'cloud-cuckoo-land'?

The Birds has an Athenian talk the birds into building the city so that they can blockade the Olympian gods. It is the longest surviving play by its author.

Which Greek tragedy opens with a Titan being chained to a mountainside for giving fire to humankind?

Prometheus Bound has its hero fettered in remote Scythia by the smith god Hephaestus, who does the job reluctantly, and he stays pinned there for the whole play.

In which tragedy by Euripides is King Pentheus of Thebes torn apart by his own mother and her fellow worshippers?

The Bacchae was first staged after the death of Euripides, probably directed by his son or nephew, and won first prize.

Which daughter of Agamemnon is the title character of surviving revenge tragedies by both Sophocles and Euripides?

Electra, in the version by Sophocles, saves her young brother by sending him away, then waits years for him to return and take revenge. Each of the three great tragedians dramatised the story.

Which queen of Mycenae in Greek tragedy murders her husband Agamemnon on his return from the war at Troy?

Clytemnestra also kills Cassandra, the captive princess he brought home as a war prize. The queen was the half-sister of Helen, whose abduction began the war.

Which blind prophet of Thebes warns rulers of their mistakes in several tragedies by Sophocles and Euripides?

Tiresias is scorned by the kings he advises and then proved right. In myth he was also said to have spent seven years living as a woman.

Which Athenian playwright, often called the Father of Comedy, caricatured the philosopher Socrates in The Clouds?

Aristophanes wrote forty plays, of which eleven survive almost complete. Plato singled out his mockery in The Clouds as a slander that helped bring Socrates to trial.

Which treatise by Aristotle, the earliest surviving work of Greek dramatic theory, analyses how a good tragedy is built?

Poetics once had a second part on comedy, which is lost. The surviving half reached western Europe through a Latin translation of an Arabic version.

Which choral hymn, sung by up to fifty performers in a circle, did Aristotle call the origin of Athenian tragedy?

Dithyramb was a hymn sung and danced for the god of wine, and the word doubled as one of his titles. The poet Arion is traditionally credited with turning it into a literary form.

Which kind of bawdy afterpiece did each Greek tragedian at Athens have to supply to follow his three tragedies?

Satyr play choruses were costumed as lewd woodland followers of the wine god and traded in wordplay and innuendo. Only one survives whole: Cyclops by Euripides.

In ancient Greek drama, what was the leader of the chorus, who spoke for the whole group in dialogue, called?

Coryphaeus comes from the Greek for 'the top of the head', and the word later came to mean the chief of any company or movement.

In ancient Athens, what was the wealthy citizen called who paid to train and costume a play's singers and dancers?

Choregos duty was an honour the rich could not refuse, part of a system that used private wealth for public good. A sponsor whose chorus won also hosted a feast.

Which term from Aristotle, often translated as 'tragic flaw', comes from a Greek verb meaning to miss the mark?

Hamartia can be an error made in ignorance or a misjudgement rather than a defect of character. Christian theology later used the same word.

In Greek tragedy, what name was given to the scenes of dialogue that came between the songs of the chorus?

Episodes comes from 'epeisodion', the entry of an actor after a choral song. A tragedy usually had three or more, and the word now names each instalment of a series.

Which leading writer of Athenian New Comedy wrote Dyskolos, a play rediscovered on papyrus in the 1950s?

Menander wrote more than a hundred comedies, yet for centuries he was known mainly through Latin adaptations by Plautus and Terence.

Which change to Greek tragedy does Aristotle credit to Sophocles, reducing the role of the chorus in telling the story?

A third actor let three characters share a scene and pushed the chorus further into the background. Sophocles won 24 of the 30 contests he entered and never came lower than second.

What small structure stood at the centre of the chorus's floor in a Greek theatre, recalling drama's roots in ritual?

An altar called the thymele marked the middle of the circle, because the plays were staged as part of a sacred festival rather than as plain entertainment.

Which Greek term names both the side passages into a theatre and the first song the chorus sang on entering?

Parodos passages were long ramps on either side of the stage. In comedy, the arrival of the chorus through them was treated as a climactic moment.

Which wheeled platform was rolled out of the stage building in Greek tragedy to reveal events that had happened indoors?

Ekkyklema literally means 'roll-out machine', and it was often used to bring dead characters into view. Comic playwrights parodied the device in their own plays.

Which term did Aristotle use for a tragic plot's sudden reversal, most powerful when joined to a moment of discovery?

Peripeteia, as Aristotle defined it, is a change by which the action swings round to its opposite. He ranked it, with discovery, as the most powerful part of a tragic plot.

Which Greek term names the moment in a tragedy when a character passes from ignorance to knowledge of who someone is?

Anagnorisis originally meant recognition, not only of a person but of what that person stood for. Aristotle thought the finest kind arrives together with a reversal of fortune.

Which technique of Greek verse drama gives two characters rapid alternating single lines, often in a heated argument?

Stichomythia joins the Greek words for 'line of verse' and 'speech'. The quick exchange is especially suited to scenes where two characters are locked in a violent dispute.

In Athenian Old Comedy, which section had the chorus step forward and speak to the audience in the poet's voice?

Parabasis is the chorus's step forward: it dropped its role in the plot to talk to the spectators about unrelated matters, such as the author's career or jibes at local politicians.

Which winter festival at Athens, held around January, staged drama contests that at first were for comedy only?

Lenaia comic contests became official around 440 BC, and a contest for tragedy followed about a decade later. The festival fell in the month the Athenians called Gamelion.

Which Greek word, also used for athletic contests, names the formal debate between two characters in Old Comedy?

Agon could mean any contest held at a religious festival, from athletics to music or drama. The English word 'agony' grew from the same root.

Which high laced boot of the ancient tragic actor became a symbol of tragedy alongside comedy's sock?

Buskin is the English name for the Greek kothornos, the boot of the tragic actor. 'Sock and buskin' became shorthand for the dramatic art, after the low shoe that comedians wore.

How did Athens punish the poet Phrynichus after his tragedy on the fall of Miletus moved the theatre to tears?

It fined him a thousand drachmas for reminding the city of a disaster so close to home, and banned the play from ever being staged again.