II. GREEK TRAGEDY
BY PROFESSOR CHARLES BURTON GULICK
THE WORD “drama” is Greek, and means action—or, as the Greeks limited its use, action that goes on before our eyes. In this way they distinguished the product of the theater from the action of epic poetry and the action of history, both of which, as understood and written by the Greeks, had highly dramatic qualities.
Three centuries roughly coincide with the three periods of development into which the history of the Greek theater naturally falls. The sixth century B. C. is the time of preparation. The fifth witnessed the full flowering of Athenian genius. In the fourth the so-called New Comedy, largely inspired by the realism of Euripides, took shape in the comedy of manners, the portrayal of domestic life, and the foibles of society.