ABSTRACT
Ancient drama was written in a form that today would be called poetry, and it highlighted the relation of the individual to the community. In the fifth century BCE, a play consisted of three actors, who played all of the individual speaking parts, and a group of performers, called a chorus, that spoke in unison. In drama, tragedy is when a good person comes to a bad fate because either he or she took a virtue too far or had to choose between two contradictory right paths of action. The point of watching tragedy was that, in the words of the playwright Aeschylus, “suffering teaches.” Comedy, too, was invented in Athens. Like tragedy, comedy offered a moral commentary on the defects of Athenian life. Education was a key component of attaining these virtues and living a moral life, and the role of government, assumed to be monarchy, was to set an example for, and lead the people to, moral perfection.
