Epic songs were performed to the sound of the lyre, later recited. The bards reshaped the poetry as they performed it. Oral transmission continued for many centuries. Multiple different stories extolled the deeds of local heroes. Eventually those about the "Trojan War" prevailed over the others and became panhellenic. We have the text of two long poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey, which eventually were set in writing. Hymns addressing the gods were also performed: they are called "Homeric" but are anonymous. They too tell myths.

 DRAMA INHERITS THIS MYTHIC TRADITION, BUT THE PLAYWRIGHTS RESHAPE IT AGAIN

LYRIC

Songs performed by one singer, who could be the poet himself, or by a chorus, were accompanied by dance. These performances may have begun earlier than the epic (the Iliad mentions song and dance to celebrate the harvest, weddings, funeral songs, etc.). Choruses of male and female adolescents performed songs of initiation. These performances were related to myth as well as religious ritual.

Some of these lyric poems are composed in an artificial literary dialect, "Doric" (one of the dialects that served to mark different groups within the Hellenic culture)

Hymns to Dionysos were called dithyrambs. Their performance continued for a long time, and eventually this became a literary genre.

Later, lyric poems were composed by authors whose name remains; we have fragments that include Sappho (6th century BCE) and, most remarkable, four books of victory odes by Pindar (early 5th century BCE).

DRAMA INHERITS THIS CHORAL TRADITION OF SONG AND DANCE, EMPLOYS DORIC DIALECT FORMS IN THE CHORUSES, AND BORROWS MYTHS AS MUCH FROM LYRIC AS FROM EPIC
 

PERFORMANCE

It may have started very early, before any evidence. Scholars suspect that the Minoans carried out dramatic rituals at Knossos, probably presided at by the king-priest, in an area of the ruins that is known as "theatral."

Popular theater must also be very archaic, performed in the countryside and in town squares. Much of it may have been bawdy. (There remains obscene lyric poetry, and evidence that it was associated with ritual). The name of Thespis is mentioned as the leader of a troupe of performers who went on a wagon from town to town.

Theater may be said to have started when the leader of a chorus stepped up and addressed the others, beginning a dialogue between one and many.

 DRAMA COMBINES AND SYNTHESIZES ALL OF THESE TRADITIONS, BUT ALSO INTEGRATES IN THE PLAYS THE DISCOURSE OF EVERYDAY LIFE; read on.
 

DEBATE

Turning our attention to Athens (since the tragedies we have were all composed and produced not earlier than the fifth century BCE, in the theater of Dionysos at the foot of the Athenian acropolis), we can say that civic activities were mostly based on a pattern of debate. In the fifth century Athens had become a radical democracy, and citizens engaged in agons, a term that means confrontation or conflict, but these were contests of words, and they took place in the assembly, in the innumerable courts of law, in the several political committees, and in constant masculine discussion in the men's halls and in the agora ("marketplace," better: place of civic assembly).

 DRAMA IMITATES THIS DISCOURSE, USING THE ATTIC DIALECT (Attica is the region of which Athens is the political center) IN THE EPISODES (equivalent to our acts) THE CHARACTERS ARGUE CONCERNING MATTERS OF CRUCIAL IMPORTANCE IN THEIR LIVES AS IF THEY WERE IN A COURT OF LAW. OFTEN LOGIC IS DISCARDED FOR THE BENEFIT OF EFFECT.