112-598: Gela ( Sicilian and Italian pronunciation: [ˈdʒɛːla] ; Ancient Greek : Γέλα ) is a city and comune (municipality) in the Autonomous Region of Sicily , Italy; in terms of area and population, it is the largest municipality on the southern coast of Sicily. Gela is part of the Province of Caltanissetta and is one of the few comuni in Italy with a population and area that exceed those of
224-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
336-636: A careful reading of the sources that name the Mamertines as the real destroyers of the city, five years earlier. The city subsequently disappeared from the chronicles. Under Roman rule, a small settlement, which is mentioned by Virgil , Pliny the Elder , Cicero , and Strabo , still existed. Later it was a minor Byzantine center. Under the Arabs, it was known as the "City of Columns". A later city called "Terranova", by which name it remained known until 1928,
448-575: A chapter in a continuous dramatic narrative. The Oresteia is the only extant example of this type of connected trilogy, but there is evidence that Aeschylus often wrote such trilogies. The satyr plays that followed his tragic trilogies also drew from myth. The satyr play Proteus , which followed the Oresteia , treated the story of Menelaus' detour in Egypt on his way home from the Trojan War . It
560-622: A character in the play and claims, at line 1022, that his Seven against Thebes "made everyone watching it to love being warlike". He claims, at lines 1026–7, that with The Persians he "taught the Athenians to desire always to defeat their enemies." Aeschylus goes on to say, at lines 1039ff., that his plays inspired the Athenians to be brave and virtuous. Aeschylus' works were influential beyond his own time. Hugh Lloyd-Jones draws attention to Richard Wagner 's reverence of Aeschylus. Michael Ewans argues in his Wagner and Aeschylus. The Ring and
672-402: A democratic Athens are praised. Prometheus Bound is attributed to Aeschylus by ancient authorities. Since the late 19th century, however, scholars have increasingly doubted this ascription, largely on stylistic grounds. Its production date is also in dispute, with theories ranging from the 480s BC to as late as the 410s. The play consists mostly of static dialogue. The Titan Prometheus
784-717: A falling object, but this story may be legendary and due to a misunderstanding of the iconography on Aeschylus' tomb. Aeschylus' work was so respected by the Athenians that after his death his tragedies were the only ones allowed to be restaged in subsequent competitions. His sons Euphorion and Euæon and his nephew Philocles also became playwrights. The inscription on Aeschylus' gravestone makes no mention of his theatrical renown, commemorating only his military achievements: Αἰσχύλον Εὐφορίωνος Ἀθηναῖον τόδε κεύθει μνῆμα καταφθίμενον πυροφόροιο Γέλας· ἀλκὴν δ' εὐδόκιμον Μαραθώνιον ἄλσος ἂν εἴποι καὶ βαθυχαιτήεις Μῆδος ἐπιστάμενος Beneath this stone lies Aeschylus, son of Euphorion,
896-545: A guide. The Furies track him down, and Athena steps in and declares that a trial is necessary. Apollo argues Orestes' case, and after the judges (including Athena) deliver a tie vote, Athena announces that Orestes is acquitted. She renames the Furies The Eumenides (The Good-spirited, or Kindly Ones), and extols the importance of reason in the development of laws. As in The Suppliants , the ideals of
1008-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
1120-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
1232-439: A major influence on the area. Gela flourished and the expansionist policy of the tyrants of Gela, in particular Cleander and especially Hippocrates , led to the city founding a series of satellite colonies, including Akragas (Agrigento), and also managed to subdue several cities: Kallipolis (according to some, today's Giarre ), Leontini (Lentini), Naxos (Sicily) (Giardini-Naxos) and Zancle (Messina). Only Syracuse , with
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#17327728522281344-686: A major part in the formation of dramatic literature from the Renaissance to the present, specifically in French and Elizabethan drama. He also claims that their influence went beyond just drama and applies to literature in general, citing Milton and the Romantics. Eugene O'Neill 's Mourning Becomes Electra (1931), a trilogy of three plays set in America after the Civil War, is modeled after
1456-456: A nightmare in which she gives birth to a snake is recounted by the chorus. This leads her to order her daughter, Electra , to pour libations on Agamemnon's tomb (with the assistance of libation bearers) in hope of making amends. Orestes enters the palace pretending to bear news of his own death. Clytemnestra calls in Aegisthus to learn the news. Orestes kills them both. Orestes is then beset by
1568-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
1680-667: A procession which was followed by a competition of boys singing dithyrambs , and all culminated in a pair of dramatic competitions. The first competition Aeschylus would have participated in involved three playwrights each presenting three tragedies and one satyr play . A second competition involving five comedic playwrights followed, and the winners of both competitions were chosen by a panel of judges. Aeschylus entered many of these competitions, and various ancient sources attribute between seventy and ninety plays to him. Only seven tragedies attributed to him have survived intact: The Persians , Seven Against Thebes , The Suppliants ,
1792-673: A ruling dynasty in Argos. The other 49 Danaids are absolved of their murders, and married off to unspecified Argive men. The satyr play following this trilogy was titled Amymone , after one of the Danaids. Besides a few missing lines, the Oresteia of 458 BC is the only complete trilogy of Greek plays by any playwright still extant (of Proteus , the satyr play which followed, only fragments are known). Agamemnon and The Libation Bearers ( Choephoroi ) and The Eumenides together tell
1904-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
2016-444: A spectacular coup de théâtre . A scale is brought on stage and Hector's body is placed in one scale and gold in the other. The dynamic dancing of the chorus of Trojans when they enter with Priam is reported by Aristophanes . The children of Niobe , the heroine, have been slain by Apollo and Artemis because Niobe had gloated that she had more children than their mother, Leto . Niobe sits in silent mourning on stage during most of
2128-571: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
2240-490: A trilogy about the madness and subsequent suicide of the Greek hero Ajax . Aeschylus seems to have written about Odysseus ' return to Ithaca after the war (including his killing of his wife Penelope 's suitors and its consequences) in a trilogy consisting of The Soul-raisers , Penelope , and The Bone-gatherers . Other suggested trilogies touched on the myth of Jason and the Argonauts ( Argô , Lemnian Women , Hypsipylê ),
2352-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
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#17327728522282464-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
2576-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
2688-540: Is assumed, based on the evidence provided by a catalogue of Aeschylean play titles, scholia , and play fragments recorded by later authors, that three other extant plays of his were components of connected trilogies: Seven Against Thebes was the final play in an Oedipus trilogy, and The Suppliants and Prometheus Bound were each the first play in a Danaid trilogy and Prometheus trilogy, respectively. Scholars have also suggested several completely lost trilogies, based on known play titles. A number of these treated myths about
2800-562: Is bound to a rock throughout, which is his punishment from the Olympian Zeus for providing fire to humans. The god Hephaestus and the Titan Oceanus and the chorus of Oceanids all express sympathy for Prometheus' plight. Prometheus is met by Io , a fellow victim of Zeus' cruelty. He prophesies her future travels, revealing that one of her descendants will free Prometheus. The play closes with Zeus sending Prometheus into
2912-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
3024-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
3136-557: Is higher in autumn and winter. There are three main archaeological areas that can be visited today: Capo Soprano, the Acropolis and the site of Bosco Littorio. At Capo Soprano is the best preserved example in the world of Greek military architecture: the (Timolean) city walls. The length unearthed (almost 400 m) dates to the 4th century BC. The feature that makes them unique is the large squared blocks in Calcarenite 3 m high in
3248-558: Is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness; but is love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black ... Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world." The quotation from Aeschylus
3360-820: Is one of the city's symbols. Until 405 BC the acropolis housed the most important sacred buildings of Gela but after the destruction by the Carthaginians, houses were built over the acropolis after the rise to power of Timoleon. In the Bosco Littorio, south of the Acropolis, the extensive emporium (7th–6th century BC) complex near the port at mouth of the river has been recently brought to light and restored. The emporium included workshops, warehouses and shops. A grandiose Hellenistic villa has been found in via Romagnoli (predio Iacona). The Greek baths of Gela in via Europa are unique in Sicily and consist of two rooms;
3472-673: Is situated on the Mediterranean coast at the estuary of Gela river on the south-western side of Sicily. The bounding municipalities are Acate , Butera , Caltagirone , Mazzarino and Niscemi . Its frazione (municipal parish) is the coastal village of Manfria . In geology , Gela gives its name to the Gelasian Age of the Pleistocene Epoch. Gela has a Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa ). Winters are mild and rainy while summers are dry and hot. Precipitation
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3584-752: The Battle of Plataea in 479 BC. Ion of Chios was a witness for Aeschylus' war record and his contribution in Salamis. Salamis holds a prominent place in The Persians , his oldest surviving play, which was performed in 472 BC and won first prize at the Dionysia. Aeschylus was one of many Greeks who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries , an ancient cult of Demeter based in his home town of Eleusis. According to Aristotle , Aeschylus
3696-621: The Battle of Salamis . It is unique among surviving Greek tragedies in that it describes a recent historical event. The Persians focuses on the popular Greek theme of hubris and blames Persia's loss on the pride of its king. It opens with the arrival of a messenger in Susa , the Persian capital, bearing news of the catastrophic Persian defeat at Salamis, to Atossa , the mother of the Persian King Xerxes . Atossa then travels to
3808-535: The Furies , who avenge the murders of kin in Greek mythology. The third play addresses the question of Orestes' guilt. The Furies drive Orestes from Argos and into the wilderness. He makes his way to the temple of Apollo and begs Apollo to drive the Furies away. Apollo had encouraged Orestes to kill Clytemnestra, so he bears some of the guilt for the murder. Apollo sends Orestes to the temple of Athena with Hermes as
3920-588: The Great Dionysia . His family was wealthy and well established. His father, Euphorion, was said to be a member of the Eupatridae , the ancient nobility of Attica, but this might be a fiction invented by the ancients to account for the grandeur of Aeschylus' plays. As a youth, Aeschylus worked at a vineyard until, according to the 2nd-century AD geographer Pausanias , the god Dionysus visited him in his sleep and commanded him to turn his attention to
4032-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
4144-474: The Oresteia . Before writing his acclaimed trilogy, O'Neill had been developing a play about Aeschylus, and he noted that Aeschylus "so changed the system of the tragic stage that he has more claim than anyone else to be regarded as the founder (Father) of Tragedy." During his presidential campaign in 1968, Senator Robert F. Kennedy quoted the Edith Hamilton translation of Aeschylus on the night of
4256-657: The Twelfth Air Force during the Italian Campaign , in the area around the city. After the war, a large oil refinery was built in Gela's territory as a part of Eni 's industrial expansion plan in South Italy. The refinery was intended to help the region's economy but instead it caused significant damage to the area's visual appearance and touristic appeal and in 2014, the refinery was closed down. Gela
4368-454: The chorus . Only seven of Aeschylus's estimated 70 to 90 plays have survived in complete form. There is a long-standing debate regarding the authorship of one of them , Prometheus Bound , with some scholars arguing that it may be the work of his son Euphorion . Fragments from other plays have survived in quotations, and more continue to be discovered on Egyptian papyri . These fragments often give further insights into Aeschylus' work. He
4480-428: The chorus . Aeschylus added a second actor, allowing for greater dramatic variety, while the chorus played a less important role. He is sometimes credited with introducing skenographia , or scene-decoration, though Aristotle gives this distinction to Sophocles. Aeschylus is also said to have made the costumes more elaborate and dramatic, and made his actors wear platform boots ( cothurni ) to make them more visible to
4592-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
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4704-466: The 470s BC, having been invited by Hiero I , tyrant of Syracuse , a major Greek city on the eastern side of the island. He produced The Women of Aetna during one of these trips (in honor of the city founded by Hieron), and restaged his Persians . By 473 BC, after the death of Phrynichus , one of his chief rivals, Aeschylus was the yearly favorite in the Dionysia, winning first prize in nearly every competition. In 472 BC, Aeschylus staged
4816-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
4928-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
5040-562: The Argive-Egyptian war threatened in the first play has transpired. King Pelasgus was killed during the war, and Danaus rules Argos. Danaus negotiates a settlement with Aegyptus, a condition of which requires his 50 daughters to marry the 50 sons of Aegyptus. Danaus secretly informs his daughters of an oracle which predicts that one of his sons-in-law would kill him. He orders the Danaids to murder their husbands therefore on their wedding night. His daughters agree. The Danaids would open
5152-522: The Athenian, who perished in the wheat-bearing land of Gela; of his noble prowess the grove of Marathon can speak, and the long-haired Persian knows it well. The seeds of Greek drama were sown in religious festivals for the gods, chiefly Dionysus , the god of wine. During Aeschylus' lifetime, dramatic competitions became part of the City Dionysia , held in spring. The festival opened with
5264-614: The Carthaginian leader Hamilcar died. After the death of Gelon in 478 BC, Hiero moved to Syracuse, leaving Gela to Polyzelos. Many of the Geloi returned from Syracuse in this period and the city regained some of its power. Aeschylus died in this city in 456 BC. In 425 BC during the Sicilian wars, Gela was an ally of Syracuse, while Kamarina was on the opposing side although they were traditional allies. They concluded an armistice in
5376-641: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Aeschylus Aeschylus ( UK : / ˈ iː s k ɪ l ə s / , US : / ˈ ɛ s k ɪ l ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Αἰσχύλος Aischýlos ; c. 525 /524 – c. 456 /455 BC)
5488-492: The Greeks that his epitaph commemorates his participation in the Greek victory at Marathon while making no mention of his success as a playwright. Aeschylus was born around 525 BC in Eleusis , a small town about 27 kilometres (17 mi) northwest of Athens , in the fertile valleys of western Attica . Some scholars argue that the date of Aeschylus's birth may be based on counting back 40 years from his first victory in
5600-520: The Oresteia (London: Faber. 1982) that the influence was so great as to merit a direct character by character comparison between Wagner's Ring and Aeschylus's Oresteia . But a critic of that book, while not denying that Wagner read and respected Aeschylus, has described the arguments as unreasonable and forced. J.T. Sheppard argues in the second half of his Aeschylus and Sophocles: Their Work and Influence that Aeschylus and Sophocles have played
5712-665: The Sicilian League that pushed back the Athenian attempt to conquer the island in 415 BC (see Sicilian Expedition ). In 406 BC, the Carthaginians conquered Agrigento and destroyed it. Gela asked for the help of Dionysius I of Syracuse but Dionysius did not arrive and, after heroic deeds, the following year, Gela was ruined and its treasures sacked. The survivors took refuge in Syracuse. In 397 BC, they returned in Gela and joined Dionysius II in his struggle for freedom from
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#17327728522285824-659: The Trojan War. One, collectively called the Achilleis , comprised Myrmidons , Nereids and Phrygians (alternately, The Ransoming of Hector ). Another trilogy apparently recounted the entrance of the Trojan ally Memnon into the war, and his death at the hands of Achilles ( Memnon and The Weighing of Souls being two components of the trilogy). The Award of the Arms , The Phrygian Women , and The Salaminian Women suggest
5936-503: The abyss because Prometheus will not tell him of a potential marriage which could prove Zeus' downfall. Prometheus Bound seems to have been the first play in a trilogy, the Prometheia . In the second play, Prometheus Unbound , Heracles frees Prometheus from his chains and kills the eagle that had been sent daily to eat Prometheus' perpetually regenerating liver, then believed the source of feeling. We learn that Zeus has released
6048-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
6160-541: The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. Kennedy was notified of King's murder before a campaign stop in Indianapolis, Indiana, and was warned not to attend the event due to fears of rioting from the mostly African-American crowd. Kennedy insisted on attending and delivered an impromptu speech that delivered news of King's death. Acknowledging the audience's emotions, Kennedy referred to his own grief at
6272-509: The audience. According to a later account of Aeschylus' life, the chorus of Furies in the first performance of the Eumenides were so frightening when they entered that children fainted and patriarchs urinated and pregnant women went into labour. Aeschylus wrote his plays in verse. No violence is performed onstage. The plays have a remoteness from daily life in Athens, relating stories about
6384-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
6496-429: The burial of Polynices, and Antigone declares her intention to defy this edict. The play was the third in a connected Oedipus trilogy. The first two plays were Laius and Oedipus . The concluding satyr play was The Sphinx . Aeschylus continued his emphasis on the polis with The Suppliants ( Hiketides ) in 463 BC. The play gives tribute to the democratic undercurrents which were running through Athens and preceding
6608-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
6720-485: The city, also taking away a statue that was said to have been made by the mythical sculptor Daedalus. The Temple of Athena Lindia, protector of the city, was built on the acropolis over the protohistoric remains in the 7th century BC, This was then incorporated into a second temple in the 6th century, also dedicated to Athena. The Greeks established many colonies in Magna Graecia and for many centuries they had
6832-418: The day after the wedding. It is revealed that 49 of the 50 Danaids killed their husbands. Hypermnestra did not kill her husband, Lynceus, and helped him escape. Danaus is angered by his daughter's disobedience and orders her imprisonment and possibly execution. In the trilogy's climax and dénouement, Lynceus reveals himself to Danaus and kills him, thus fulfilling the oracle. He and Hypermnestra will establish
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#17327728522286944-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
7056-423: The establishment of a democratic government in 461. The Danaids (50 daughters of Danaus , founder of Argos ) flee a forced marriage to their cousins in Egypt. They turn to King Pelasgus of Argos for protection, but Pelasgus refuses until the people of Argos weigh in on the decision (a distinctly democratic move on the part of the king). The people decide that the Danaids deserve protection and are allowed within
7168-475: The first prize at the City Dionysia thirteen times. This compares favorably with Sophocles' reported eighteen victories (with a substantially larger catalogue, an estimated 120 plays), and dwarfs the five victories of Euripides, who is thought to have written roughly 90 plays. One hallmark of Aeschylean dramaturgy appears to have been his tendency to write connected trilogies in which each play serves as
7280-673: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
7392-752: The gods would restore the winds and allow the Greek fleet to sail to Troy. Clytemnestra was also unhappy that Agamemnon kept the Trojan prophetess Cassandra as his concubine. Cassandra foretells the murder of Agamemnon and of herself to the assembled townsfolk, who are horrified. She then enters the palace knowing that she cannot avoid her fate. The ending of the play includes a prediction of the return of Orestes , son of Agamemnon, who will seek to avenge his father. The Libation Bearers opens with Orestes' arrival at Agamemnon's tomb, from exile in Phocis . Electra meets Orestes there. They plan revenge against Clytemnestra and her lover, Aegisthus . Clytemnestra's account of
7504-486: The gods, or being set, like The Persians , far away. Aeschylus' work has a strong moral and religious emphasis. The Oresteia trilogy concentrated on humans' position in the cosmos relative to the gods and divine law and divine punishment. Aeschylus' popularity is evident in the praise that the comic playwright Aristophanes gives him in The Frogs , produced some 50 years after Aeschylus' death. Aeschylus appears as
7616-573: The help of her former colonizing city Corinth and Corcyra managed to escape. When Kamarina , a Syracusan colony, rebelled in 492 BC, Hippocrates intervened to wage war against Syracuse. After defeating the Syracusan army at the Heloros river, Hippocrates besieged the city but was persuaded to retreat in exchange for possession of Camarina. Hippocrates died in 491 BC in a battle against the Siculi ,
7728-506: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
7840-424: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
7952-414: The importance of the deme over family tradition. In the last decade of the 6th century, Aeschylus and his family were living in the deme of Eleusis. The Persian Wars played a large role in Aeschylus' life and career. In 490 BC, he and his brother Cynegeirus fought to defend Athens against the invading army of Darius I of Persia at the Battle of Marathon . The Athenians emerged triumphant, and
8064-420: The importance that the ancient Greeks gave to defensive design and engineering as they were designed by an architect down to the smallest detail, with devices and structures intended for specific purposes such as protection from weather and towers, stairs, walkways, drains, buttresses. Inside the walls the military district was brought to light with buildings of clay bricks. Not far away, a large residential area of
8176-529: The initial assault on 9 July 1943 of the Allied invasion of Sicily , the U.S. 1st Infantry Division and the 82nd Armored Reconnaissance Battalion landed on the beaches of Gela, which were strongly defended by the Livorno Division . The Allied forces repelled an Italian and German armored counter-attack at Gela . The U.S. Army Engineers built several advanced landing airfields, which were used by
8288-401: The invaders and in 383 BC their independence was acknowledged. Timoleon rebuilt the city walls in 338 BC after the destruction by the Carthaginians. The Acropolis lost its sacred character and was populated with houses arranged on the flanks of the hill. The monumental area of the city was moved to Capo Soprano. Under Agathocles (317-289 BC), the city again suffered internal strife between
8400-540: The island at Gela. Archaeology has shown that the acropolis of Gela was occupied during the Copper Age in the 4th millennium BC and during the Bronze Age in the 2nd millennium BC. Gela was founded around 688 BC by colonists from Rhodes and Crete , 45 years after the founding of Syracuse . Archaeology has shown that they chose to settle on the northern slope of the Molino a Vento extending for more than 400 m towards
8512-528: The jury sympathetic to the military service of him and his brothers during the Persian Wars. According to the 2nd-century AD author Aelian, Aeschylus' younger brother Ameinias helped to acquit Aeschylus by showing the jury the stump of the hand he had lost at Salamis, where he was voted bravest warrior. The truth is that the award for bravery at Salamis went not to Aeschylus' brother but to Ameinias of Pallene. Aeschylus travelled to Sicily once or twice in
8624-399: The last time, visiting the city of Gela , where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise dropped by an eagle which had mistaken his head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell, and killed him. Pliny , in his Naturalis Historiæ , adds that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by
8736-526: The late summer. Since a bilateral peace was unlikely to last if the rest of the island remained at war, the two cities invited all the belligerents to convene and discuss peace terms. The cities not only sent ambassadors but also granted them unusually broad power to conduct diplomacy. In 424 BC at the Congress of Gela , the Sicilian cities made peace on the basis of "Sicily for the Sicilians". Gela fought
8848-553: The life of Perseus ( The Net-draggers , Polydektês , Phorkides ), the birth and exploits of Dionysus ( Semele , Bacchae , Pentheus ), and the aftermath of the war portrayed in Seven Against Thebes ( Eleusinians , Argives (or Argive Women ), Sons of the Seven ). The Persians ( Persai ) is the earliest of Aeschylus' extant plays. It was performed in 472 BC. It was based on Aeschylus' own experiences, specifically
8960-422: The lower part and a thick layer of raw or sun-dried clay bricks above which were perfectly preserved. The upper layer was probably added as a quick solution after news of the imminent invasion of the Carthaginians. At some points the walls externally reached a height of almost 10 m. They are considered to be one of the most important discoveries of classical archeology of the twentieth century as they are testimony of
9072-399: The mortal Peleus. The product of that union is Achilles, Greek hero of the Trojan War. After reconciling with Prometheus, Zeus probably inaugurates a festival in his honor at Athens. Of Aeschylus' other plays, only titles and assorted fragments are known. There are enough fragments (along with comments made by later authors and scholiasts) to produce rough synopses for some plays. This play
9184-472: The murder of Martin Luther King and, quoting a passage from the play Agamemnon (in translation), said: "My favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote: 'Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart, until in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.' What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States
9296-430: The nascent art of tragedy. As soon as he woke, he began to write a tragedy, and his first performance took place in 499 BC, when he was 26 years old. He won his first victory at the Dionysia in 484 BC. In 510 BC, when Aeschylus was 15 years old, Cleomenes I expelled the sons of Peisistratus from Athens, and Cleisthenes came to power. Cleisthenes' reforms included a system of registration that emphasized
9408-420: The native Sicilian people. Hippocrates was succeeded by Gelon , who in 484 BC conquered Syracuse and moved his seat of government there. His brother Hiero was given control over Gela. When Theron of Agrigento conquered Himera and a Carthaginian army disembarked in Sicily to counter him, he asked for help from Gela and Syracuse. Gelo and Hiero were victorious in the subsequent battle of Himera , in which
9520-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
9632-407: The one located to the north west consists of two groups of bathtubs connected by a wastewater system that surrounds a central space. The bathtubs that make up the first of the two groups are arranged in a horseshoe and have a particular shape. While only two seats of this first group have been lost, those of the second group are all missing the upper half (perhaps never completed). The material used for
9744-579: The other Titans which he imprisoned at the conclusion of the Titanomachy , perhaps foreshadowing his eventual reconciliation with Prometheus. In the trilogy's conclusion, Prometheus the Fire-Bringer , it seems that the Titan finally warns Zeus not to sleep with the sea nymph Thetis , for she is fated to beget a son greater than the father. Not wishing to be overthrown, Zeus marries Thetis off to
9856-463: The people and the aristoi (aristocrats). When the Carthaginians arrived in 311 BC, they met little resistance and captured the city with the help of the aristoi . The acropolis site at Molino a Vento was then definitively abandoned. In 282 BC Phintias of Agrigento ruthlessly destroyed Gela to crush its power forever and transferred its population to his new city of Phintias next to present-day Licata . This assertion, however, seems to be refuted by
9968-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
10080-539: The place was certainly a Greek necropolis. Gela is twinned with: Gela has got a football team; S.S.D. Città di Gela . Their football stadium is Stadio Vincenzo Presti . This team was founded in 1975 and re-founded in 2006, 2011 and 2019. Their best performance in Italian football was 12th position in the group B of the 2010–11 Lega Pro Prima Divisione . Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
10192-458: The play. In the Republic , Plato quotes the line "God plants a fault in mortals when he wills to destroy a house utterly." These are the remaining 71 plays ascribed to Aeschylus which are known: The theatre was just beginning to evolve when Aeschylus started writing for it. Earlier playwrights such as Thespis had already expanded the cast to include an actor who was able to interact with
10304-599: The production that included the Persians , with Pericles serving as choregos . Aeschylus married and had two sons, Euphorion and Euaeon, both of whom became tragic poets. Euphorion won first prize in 431 BC in competition against both Sophocles and Euripides . A nephew of Aeschylus, Philocles (his sister's son), was also a tragic poet, and won first prize in the competition against Sophocles' Oedipus Rex . Aeschylus had at least two brothers, Cynegeirus and Ameinias . In 458 BC, Aeschylus returned to Sicily for
10416-458: The provincial capital . Gela was founded in 698 BC by Greek colonists from Rhodes and Crete ; it was an influential polis of Magna Graecia in the 7th and 6th centuries BC and became one of the most powerful cities until the 5th c. BC. Aeschylus , the famous playwright, lived here and died in 456 BC. In 1943, during the Invasion of Sicily , the Allied forces made their first landing on
10528-545: The same era was discovered. The Acropolis extends between the mouth of the Gela and the Pasqualello valley and contains the ruins of houses, shops, temples and the Hippodamian road system (with the plateia and the stenopoi ). The sacred area extended to the north: today only the bases of three temples are visible. Of the largest, temple C or Athenaion, a Doric-style column (almost 8 m high) remains standing and
10640-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
10752-402: The throne of the city. After the first year, Eteocles refuses to step down. Polynices therefore undertakes war. The pair kill each other in single combat, and the original ending of the play consisted of lamentations for the dead brothers. But a new ending was added to the play some fifty years later: Antigone and Ismene mourn their dead brothers, a messenger enters announcing an edict prohibiting
10864-489: The title of Marquis of Terranova was created for Giovanni Tagliavia Aragona, and in 1561, his son Carlo obtained the title of Duke. The Terranova Aragona held the city until 1640, when the marriage of Giovanna Tagliavia Aragona and Ettore Pignatelli give the possession to the Pignatelli, who held the fiefdom until 1812. Terranova was renamed Terranova di Sicilia, and in 1927, it was renamed Gela. In World War II , during
10976-463: The tomb of Darius, her husband, where his ghost appears, to explain the cause of the defeat. It is, he says, the result of Xerxes' hubris in building a bridge across the Hellespont , an action which angered the gods. Xerxes appears at the end of the play, not realizing the cause of his defeat, and the play closes to lamentations by Xerxes and the chorus. Seven against Thebes ( Hepta epi Thebas )
11088-415: The trilogy known as The Oresteia (the three tragedies Agamemnon , The Libation Bearers and The Eumenides ), and Prometheus Bound (whose authorship is disputed). With the exception of this last play – the success of which is uncertain – all of Aeschylus's extant tragedies are known to have won first prize at the City Dionysia. The Alexandrian Life of Aeschylus claims that he won
11200-419: The tubs was an agglomeration of terracotta fragments and sandstone debris while some seats are entirely in terracotta. Among recent discoveries in the area are: In 2019, a sarcophagus containing an intact skeleton was discovered at Gela. Some weeks later, a short distance away, a ceramic water jug containing the bones of a newborn baby and parts of a large animal's skeleton was discovered. Archaeologists said
11312-404: The victory was celebrated across the city-states of Greece. Cynegeirus was killed while trying to prevent a Persian ship retreating from the shore, for which his countrymen extolled him as a hero. In 480 BC, Aeschylus was called into military service again, together with his younger brother Ameinias , against Xerxes I 's invading forces at the Battle of Salamis . Aeschylus also fought at
11424-505: The violent story of the family of Agamemnon , king of Argos . Aeschylus begins in Greece, describing the return of King Agamemnon from his victory in the Trojan War , from the perspective of the townspeople (the Chorus) and his wife, Clytemnestra . Dark foreshadowings build to the death of the king at the hands of his wife, who was angry that their daughter Iphigenia was killed so that
11536-411: The walls of Argos despite Egyptian protests. A Danaid trilogy had long been assumed because of The Suppliants' cliffhanger ending. This was confirmed by the 1952 publication of Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 2256 fr. 3. The constituent plays are generally agreed to be The Suppliants and The Egyptians and The Danaids . A plausible reconstruction of the trilogy's last two-thirds runs thus: In The Egyptians ,
11648-531: The west up to Castelluccio. The city was named after the river Gela , the name of which derives from gela , the Sicilian-dialect word for "winter frost". According to Diodorus Siculus , the city was founded by Antiphemus and Entimus. Gela immediately had violent clashes with the Sicani of the area: Antiphemus waged a war against the city of Omphace , not far from Gela. The Gelans won and defeated
11760-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
11872-456: Was accused of asebeia (impiety) for revealing some of the cult's secrets on stage. Other sources claim that an angry mob tried to kill Aeschylus on the spot but he fled the scene. Heracleides of Pontus asserts that the audience tried to stone Aeschylus. Aeschylus took refuge at the altar in the orchestra of the Theater of Dionysus. He pleaded ignorance at his trial. He was acquitted, with
11984-402: Was an ancient Greek tragedian often described as the father of tragedy . Academic knowledge of the genre begins with his work, and understanding of earlier Greek tragedy is largely based on inferences made from reading his surviving plays. According to Aristotle , he expanded the number of characters in the theatre and allowed conflict among them. Formerly, characters interacted only with
12096-632: Was based on books 18 and 19 and 22 of the Iliad . It follows the Daughters of Nereus, the sea god, who lament Patroclus' death. A messenger tells how Achilles (perhaps reconciled to Agamemnon and the Greeks) slew Hector . After a brief discussion with Hermes , Achilles sits in silent mourning over Patroclus. Hermes then brings in King Priam of Troy , who wins over Achilles and ransoms his son's body in
12208-532: Was based on books 9 and 16 of the Iliad . Achilles sits in silent indignation over his humiliation at Agamemnon's hands for most of the play. Envoys from the Greek army attempt to reconcile Achilles to Agamemnon , but he yields only to Patroclus , who then battles the Trojans in Achilles' armour. The bravery and death of Patroclus are reported in a messenger's speech, which is followed by mourning. This play
12320-434: Was founded in 1233 by Frederick II . The new settlement was located west of ancient Gela, and was provided with a castle and a line of walls. Terranova, also known as Heracles, was a royal possession until 1369, when King Frederick III of Aragon gave it to Manfredi III Chiaramonte . In 1401, however, after the treason of Andrea Chiaramonte , the city was confiscated and was assigned to several Aragonese feudataries. In 1530,
12432-423: Was likely the first dramatist to present plays as a trilogy . His Oresteia is the only extant ancient example. At least one of his plays was influenced by the Persians' second invasion of Greece (480–479 BC). This work, The Persians , is one of very few classical Greek tragedies concerned with contemporary events, and the only one extant. The significance of the war with Persia was so great to Aeschylus and
12544-456: Was performed in 467 BC. It has the contrasting theme of the interference of the gods in human affairs. Another theme, with which Aeschylus' would continually involve himself, makes its first known appearance in this play, namely that the polis was a key development of human civilization. The play tells the story of Eteocles and Polynices , the sons of the shamed king of Thebes , Oedipus . Eteocles and Polynices agree to share and alternate
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