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Epic Age - When the form “lyric” began.
Lyric Age - Poets of lyric are associated with the archaic period.
Khoros - the Greek term for Chorus, ,which means singing and dancing. This could include the audience.
This pattern is typical. Greek tragedies do not narrate heroic exploits: instead, they explore the disruptions and dilemmas generated by such heroism, disruptions and dilemmas which almost invariably involve the catastrophic destruction of a household. Now of course tragedy is not the only genre to highlight the problematic aspects of heroism. We need only think of the Iliad, where heroic values are put under enormous strain by the conflict between Agamemnon and Achilles; where Achilles' clear-eyed awareness of the brevity of his glory contrasts with the all-too-human, indeed ‘tragically' limited vision which characterizes Hector;4 and where one of the poem's greatest affective climaxes, in which Priam ransoms from Achilles the body of his dead son Hector, precisely exemplifies the kind of emotional intensity later exploited in Attic tragedy.5 Or we may think of the Odyssey, in which Odysseus' slaying of the suitors is by no means morally unambiguous (this is especially clear in Book 24, where the suitors' grieving families step forward to exact vengeance for their murdered brothers and sons). Nevertheless, it is above all in tragedy that the underside of heroism becomes pervasive, not simply as a ‘theme,' but as the predominant perspective from which mythical events are selected and depicted. It will be useful to illustrate this in more detail, by examining one myth, that of Jason and Medea, in three different versions.
