ABSTRACT
Tragedy makes its appearance in fifth-century BC Athens with the same apparent spontaneity as that city’s other achievements. Like Aphrodite, the foamborn goddess, it seems to emerge fully grown out of the raw stuff of life. To say it is preoccupied with this or that theme seems naïve, but tragedy is, from its earliest surviving examples, selective. It is a form that deals with murder, revenge, guilt, sacrifice, retribution and lament. Aristotle will claim that through the contemplation of such themes in a form that imitates reality, men experience both fear and pity. By entering into an active relationship with the drama, they achieve a kind of purification, or catharsis of their affections.1 Aristotle is not the first to suggest that poetry induces these emotional responses; Gorgias, in Helen, adds ‘shuddering fear, weeping pity and sorrowful longing’ to the list of more pleasant emotions induced in those who listen to ‘speech with rhythm’.2
