ABSTRACT
Greek tragedy has played a large role in theories of fiction, but it is a role that is also problematic. It stands at the head of the Western literary-theoretical tradition, and provides the principal material for Plato and, in particular, Aristotle in their respective theorising about mimesis. Yet it is not always clear that tragedy can be co-opted to more recent approaches to fictionality. In this paper, I shall be asking how tragedy stands in relation to theories of fiction. Is fictionality a reasonable category to apply to Greek tragedy, above all in its original context? Did the ancient audience approach Greek tragedy as fiction? The broader issues that I shall be teasing out will be what the audience knew, believed or expected in watching a Greek tragedy. As such, I shall also be re-examining the somewhat well-thumbed question of how Greek tragedy related to Greek mythology more generally-and the status and truth claims of that mythology.1
