The lesser festivals the great or city Dionysia the actors the costumes the chorus the audience the artists of Dionysus.

Theocritus, Idyll 26 is short, starkly dramatic, and highly puzzling. Gow (1952) and his predecessors generally regarded it as bad, or even un Theocritean; and many of its details remain obscure. Lines 27–32 in particular present acute problems; and, as Gow (1952) II.475 wrote, ‘no explanation of the poem as a whole can be satisfactory unless it accounts for these mysterious lines’. No ancient scholia survive (except for scraps in P3), and Idyll 26 in isolation offers scant indications of a cultural or social context. In consequence any new attempt to increase understanding of Idyll 26 must inevitably be speculative, particularly when it moves from text-based, literary aspects to more general questions about the idyll. Such an effort may, however, seem more worthwhile nowadays, when the characteristics of professional hellenistic poetry can more easily be recognised in Idyll 26.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/A5395382832C7EFB495E7AD73D1A4EC4/S0068673500001607a.pdf/div-class-title-theocritus-span-class-italic-idyll-span-26-a-href-fn01-ref-type-fn-1-a-div.pdf

The dramatic festivals of Athens

Theocritus, Idyll 261

The study of "The Vanquished Christ in Modern Passion Drama" selects from the anthropocentric passion imagery in over fifty modern plays written in English between 1864 and 1980. By focusing on the modern passion dramas which appeared during the 1920s and in the postmodern period coinciding with the conflict in Vietnam of 1957 through 1973* the main thrust of this research reveals the modern poetic vision of the Christ figure or passion persona who, like mankind at war, is threatened with extinction. The modern, radical poetic vision differs from the traditional view of the passion demonstrated in pageants such as The Oberammergau Passion Play in that it replaces the theistic world view and typological interpretation of the Bible with the playwright's personal world view that reflects the death of God theology. In effect, the radical vision departs from two theistic paradigms, Christus victim, represented by the Oberammergau pageant, and Christus victor which is modeled after the dialogue between God and Job in the book of Job. In contrast, the vanquished paradigm illustrates the Oedipal experience of suffering that constitutes the tragic theology of an impersonal, malevolent power which tyrannizes mankind.

/pdf/the-vanquished-christ-of-modern-passion-drama-2xlyy9lhfm.pdf

The vanquished Christ of modern passion drama

In this book, Alexander Beecroft explores how the earliest poetry in Greece (Homeric epic and lyric) and China (the Canon of Songs) evolved from being local, oral, and anonymous to being textualised, interpreted, and circulated over increasingly wider areas. Beecroft re-examines representations of authorship as found in poetic biographies such as Lives of Homer and the Zuozhuan, and in the works of other philosophical and historical authors like Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Confucius, and Sima Qian. Many of these anecdotes and narratives have long been rejected as spurious or motivated by naive biographical criticism. Beecroft argues that these texts effectively negotiated the tensions between local and pan-cultural audiences. The figure of the author thus served as a catalyst to a sense of shared cultural identity in both the Greek and Chinese worlds. It also facilitated the emergence of both cultures as the bases for cosmopolitan world orders.

/pdf/authorship-and-cultural-identity-in-early-greece-and-china-57xdvajss0.pdf

Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China: Patterns of Literary Circulation

background

https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/downloads/q237ht47k

The Trauma at Home: Wives of Returning Veterans in Greek Tragedy

Since the late nineteenth century it has been almost universally accepted that Sophocles gave lodging to the cultic snake or statue of Asclepius when it was brought to Athens in 420 BC, that he raised an altar or altars for the god, and that in recognition for these services as the so-called ‘Receiver’ of Asclepius he was heroised after his death under the name Dexion. This story derives chiefly from a Byzantine dictionary article, the earliest known form of which dates from the second half of the ninth century.

The dramatic festivals of Athens

Citations

Theocritus, Idyll 261

The vanquished Christ of modern passion drama

Authorship and Cultural Identity in Early Greece and China: Patterns of Literary Circulation

The Trauma at Home: Wives of Returning Veterans in Greek Tragedy

Was Sophocles Heroised As Dexion

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