Theatre of ancient Greece

A theatrical culture flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. At its centre was the city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, and the theatre was institutionalised there as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy (late 500 BC), comedy (490 BC), and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres emerged there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies. Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements.

Etymology

The word τραγῳδία, tragodia, from which the word "tragedy" is derived, is a compound of two Greek words: τράγος, tragos or "goat" and ᾠδή, ode meaning "song", from ἀείδειν, aeidein, 'to sing'.

This etymology indicates a link with the practices of the ancient Dionysian cults. It is impossible, however, to know with certainty how these fertility rituals became the basis for tragedy and comedy.

Origins

The Ancient Greeks valued the power of the spoken word, and it was their main method of communication and storytelling. Bahn and Bahn write, "To Greeks, the spoken word was a living thing and infinitely preferable to the dead symbols of a written language." Socrates himself believed that once something has been written down, it lost its ability for change and growth. For these reasons, among many others, oral storytelling flourished in Greece.