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IT IS A TRUISM that the peak period of Greek tragedy coincides precisely with the most glorious and successful years of Athenian democracy. Virtually all the surviving plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were written and produced in Athens, and all date from the years between the defeat of the second Persian expedition in 479 BCE and the catastrophic end of the Peloponnesian War in 404.Nor does this coincidence seem to be merely accidental: tragOidia is transparently more "democratic" as an art form, in its audience and occasion, its structures and conventions, even to some degree its language and meters, than both the epic and the various other kinds of choral and individual lyric, or iambic, that we know of. That is to say, Attic tragedy is an art form that, within and beneath its mythological and grandiose trappings, its bizarre stories of gods and Bronze Age royal families, is designed to appeal to a mass citizen audience, and to explore some of their fundamental concerns.'In recent years, attention has focused on the ways in which the festival of the City Dionysia, and in particular its dramatic performances, were used to display This article began as a lecture given at the University of Missouri in March 1994. A truncated version was read in December 1994 at the APA meeting in Atlanta. I am grateful to members of both audiences for comments and encouragement. I should also like to thank the members of my Aeschylus seminar at Berkeley (Spring 1993), and a number of friends and colleagues, for their constructive criticisms: especially Erik Gunderson, Leslie Kurke, Donald Mastronarde, Victoria Wohl, and two unusually attentive and helpful anonymous referees. None of these should be held responsible for any mistakes, silly ideas, clumsy expressions, or long-windedness that may remain, though I have tried hard to heed their advice on all these scores.1. An infinitude of modern studies could be cited in support of these "truisms": a few repre sentative specimens must suffice. GRIFFITH: Brilliant Dynasts 63 the cultural riches of the city, both to the Athenians themselves and to hundreds of distinguished visitors from the rest of Greece;2 and critics have emphasized the function of these performances as opportunities to examine and (re)define Athenian "civic ideology"-what it means to be a Greek, a male, a citizen, an Athenian.3 In other cities, the most exciting and rich poetical occasions seem to have been the choral productions commissioned privately by individual tyrants or leading families, for the cult celebrations, athletic victories, or other special occasions for which they were responsible; high cultural status ...