GREECE: Sophocles and the Drama
In southeastern Europe, along the Mediterranean Sea is the mountainous peninsula called Greece. It is a small country (only about 50,000 squares miles in area) and almost the size of New York. Greece is a very beautiful land. The long coast line is so broken that the deep blue sea seems to be everywhere. In the Aegean Sea, the part of the Mediterranean that lies east of Greece, there are many islands. The highest mountain in Greece is Mount Olympus, which rises 9,570 feet above sea level. The ancient Greeks believed that the immortal gods lived on Mount Olympus. This is the region where, 2,500 years ago, an independent people created the first democracy in history. Around them in other lands, absolute rulers had built empires and controlled the lives of many people. But in Greece the land was naturally divided into small districts by mountains or sea, therefore geography stood in the way of a central ruler. Small communities grew up in the many separate areas and on the islands. In the communities, each person was valued and thought of as an individual (not as a ruler's subject or as the servant of god. This belief in the importance of the individual person led to the creation of what we call "democracy" and in Greek it is "dem
The auditorium had stone seats and held about eighteen thousand persons. C were Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides. He represents the Greek ideal that we must be both thinking and active people. After an argument about the right of way, Oedipus slew him and without knowing it, Oedipus had killed his father. It was based on a legend familiar to the Greeks since the time of Homer. He set out for Thebes instead, but on the road met an elderly man in a chariot. But the boy was rescued and brought up as the son of the king of Corinth, ignorant of his true background. At the end of the week judges awarded prizes to the best producer, the best actor, and the best dramatist. The audience gathered at the theater not long after dawn on the first day of the festival. Some of his works were The Birds (is a fantasy of an ideal kingdom), The Frogs (attacks Euripides), while The Clouds makes the philosopher Socrates his victim. But most important of all is the Greek drama and entertainment they provided us. They seek reasons for the laws of the universe.
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