ABSTRACT
Formal dramatic productions in Athens were associated with festivals dedicated to the god Dionysus, and we can understand how tragedy worked only by viewing the performances in their festival context. However, the association of tragedy with Dionysus leads inexorably to the problem of tragic origins. Although there is no simple answer to the question ‘whence tragedy?’, a brief review of the evidence will clear up some persistent misconceptions about the way tragedy was (and, by extension, ought now to be) approached.1 We then will examine the nature of Dionysiac worship, and trace out the organization and schedule of the greatest dramatic festival, the City (or Great) Dionysia, held every spring in Athens. Explanations for the rise of tragedy and the incorporation of tragic performances into the civic and festival life of Athens tend to focus on the following influences: contemporary ritual, including funeral lamentation, hero cults, and initiation rites; earlier forms of artistic performance, including song, dance, poetry, and Homeric recitation (discussed in the previous chapter); Dionysiac worship, ranging from folkdances linked with the harvest to ritualized impersonation, from drunken revels to formal initiation into the Dionysiac mysteries; anthropological paradigms, such as the worship of a cyclical ‘yeargod’ who suffers, dies, and comes back to life with the changing seasons; intellectual, spiritual, and creative energies cohering in a ‘tragic’ vision, epitomized in Nietzsche’s brilliantly speculative The Birth of Tragedy; or political and cultural forces aimed at promoting civic loyalty, democratic ideology, and social cohesion.
