Western literature/week12

Introduction

Iphigenia

In Greek mythology, Iphigenia was a daughter of King Agamemnon and

Queen Clytemnestra, and thus a princess of Argos. Agamemnon offends the

goddess Artemis, who retaliates by commanding him to kill Iphigenia as a

sacrifice so his ships can sail to Troy. In some versions, Iphigenia is

sacrificed at Aulis, but in others, Artemis rescues her. In the version where

she is saved, she goes to the Taurians and meets her brother Orestes.

Euripides

Euripides was a tragedian of classical Athens. He is one of the few whose plays have survived, with the others being Aeschylus, Sophocles, and potentially Euphorion. Some ancient scholars attributed 95 plays to him but according to the Suda it was 92 at most. Of these, 18 or 19 have survived more or less complete (there has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds) and there are also fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays. More of his plays have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, partly due to mere chance and partly because his popularity grew as theirs declined—he became, in the Hellenistic Age, a cornerstone of ancient literary education, along with Homer,Demosthenes and Menander.

Dionysus

☑️Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the main religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c. 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks; traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete.

☑️His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner; in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, "the god that comes", and his "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults.

 

Medea (play)

Medea is an ancient Greek tragedy written by Euripides, based upon the myth of Jason and Medea and first produced in 431 BC. The plot centers on the actions of Medea, a former princess of the "barbarian"kingdom of Colchis, and the wife of Jason; she finds her position in the Greek world threatened as Jason leaves her for a Greek princess of Corinth. Medea takes vengeance on Jason by killing Jason's new wife as well as her own children with him, after which she escapes to Athens to start a new life.

Cassandra

Cassandra also known as Alexandra or Kassandra, was a daughter of King Priam and of Queen Hecuba of Troy. In modern usage her name is employed as a rhetorical device to indicate someone whose accurate prophecies are not believed by those around them.