Western Literature week 10

Oedipus Rex

Oedipus Rex, also known by its Greek title, Oedipus Tyrannus, or Oedipus the King, is an Athenian tragedy by Sophocles that was first performed around 429 BC. Originally, to the ancient Greeks, the title was simply Oedipus (Οἰδίπους), as it is referred to by Aristotle in the Poetics. It is thought to have been renamed Oedipus Tyrannus to distinguish it from Oedipus at Colonus. In antiquity, the term “tyrant” referred to a ruler, but it did not necessarily have a negative connotation.

Electra (Sophocles play)

Electra or Elektra is a Greek tragedy by Sophocles. Its date is not known, but various stylistic similarities with the Philoctetes (409 BCE) and the Oedipus at Colonus (401 BCE) lead scholars to suppose that it was written towards the end of Sophocles' career.

Set in the city of Argos a few years after the Trojan war, it recounts the tale of Electra and the vengeance that she and her brother Orestes take on their mother Clytemnestra and step father Aegisthus for the murder of their father, Agamemnon.

The school of Athens

The School of Athens is one of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens, representing Philosophy, was probably the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa (Theology) on the opposite wall, and the Parnassus (Literature). The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the Renaissance".

Semele

Semele, in Greek mythology, daughter of the Boeotian hero Cadmus and Harmonia, was the mortal mother, of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

Certain elements of the cult of Dionysus and Semele came from the Phrygians. These were modified, expanded and elaborated by the Ionian Greek invaders and colonists. Herodotus, who gives the account of Cadmus, estimates that Semele lived sixteen hundred years before his time, or around 2000 BCE. In Rome, the goddess Stimula was identified as Semele.

Aegisthus

Aegisthus is a figure in Greek mythology. He was the son of Thyestes and his daughter, Pelopia. The product of an incestuous union motivated by his father's rivalry with the house of Atreus for the throne of Mycenae, Aegisthus murdered Atreus to restore his father to power. Later, he lost the throne to Atreus's son Agamemnon.

While Agamemnon was at the Trojan war, Aegisthus became the lover of the king's estranged wife Clytemnestra. The couple killed Agamemnon on his return. He became king of Mycenae for seven years before he was killed in his turn by Agamemnon's son Orestes.

A Moment of Excellence

Pythia

The Pythia, commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the name given to the High Priestess of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi who also served as the oracle.

The name Pythia is derived from Pytho, which in myth was the original name of Delphi. In etymology the Greeks derived this place name from the verb, πύθειν (púthein) "to rot", which refers to the sickly sweet smell of the decomposition of the body of the monstrous Python after he was slain by Apollo. Pythia was the House of Snakes.