ABSTRACT
Classical tragedy is regarded as an authoritative medium for the presentation or dissemination of serious ideas. Critics from Aristophanes onwards have treated tragic drama as an influential source of myth, a vehicle for various sorts of teaching, and a repository of Greek ideas about the past and its relationship to the present. Yet many tragedies appear to be subverting received ideas or offering unorthodox accounts of the past. In the hands of the tragedians, myth is not a fixed or monolithic entity, but a fluid and contestable body of material, incorporating many contradictions and alternative versions. It is difficult to say to what extent the tragedians or their audiences believed in the accounts presented on stage; but it seems that tragedy’s authority does not depend on any straightforward notion of truth or reliability.
