Every Art Possessed by Man Comes from Prometheus

”Every Art Possessed by Man Comes from Prometheus” THE GREEK TRAGEDIANS AND SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY ARTHUR D. KAHN In this verse—“Every art possessed by man comes from Prometheus” —from the Prometheus, a play lauding the resistance of a scientist to a tyrant, Aeschylus proclaims his enthusiasm for the spectacular tech­ nological and scientific advances transforming life in Athens and other cities of the Greek world during the 5th century b.c.1 Fortu­ nately, works of three of the world’s greatest tragedians spanning seventy-five years of that century provide a sense of how it felt to live in that time and how, during the three successive but over­ lapping generations which they represent, attitudes toward this revolution evolved. Aeschylus, the eldest, reflects the initial confidence in man’s unlimited capacity for controlling nature, a confidence in­ spired by a spate of extraordinary successes; Sophocles exemplifies the measured and cautious attitude of the following generation; and Euripides, the doubt and pessimism of intellectuals during the last third of the century in face of the increasing exploitation of the new technology by militarists and profiteers in wars of conquest and plunder. Insofar as the 5th century b.c. in Athens probably re­ sembles our own time more than any other period in history in the rapidity of the technological and social transformations, the reactions of these dramatists to the dynamic changes of their day have a particular immediacy to us. Aeschylus stands at the exuberant onset of the era, for many of the spectacular advances transforming life in the Greek world occurred Dr. Kahn is chairman of the department of classics at Brock University, Saint Catherines, Ontario. He has published a novel, a book about the postwar occupation of Germany, and has had a play produced off-Broadway. His scholarly writings are in classical literature and archaeology. 1 Prometheus, in Herbert Weir Smyth, trans., Aeschylus, Loeb Classical Library (London, 1922), 1:259, 11. 505-6. 133 134 Arthur D. Kahn either during his lifetime—from the last quarter of the 6th through the second quarter of the 5th centuries—or were sufficiently fresh at his birth to stimulate the kind of conversation among his elders that was current after World War II about the atom bomb, Sputnik, and miracle drugs. He himself reflected the spirit of innovation of his times in his own contributions to the development of the drama. “It was Aeschylus,” declares Aristotle in the Poetics, “who first raised the number of the actors from one to two. He also curtailed the chorus and gave the dia­ logue the leading part. Three actors and scene-painting Sophocles intro­ duced.”2 Such changes in an art form are not introduced in isolation from social and technological changes. If, as Aristotle asserts, the drama is a sophisticated exemplification of the universal instinct for mimicry (a mimesis or an imitation of an action, that is, of an aspect of human experience), then changes in so­ ciety predicate modifications in dramatic form and technique. Aeschy­ lus’s introduction in the first quarter of the 5th century of a second actor, for example, permitted a more effective mimesis of conflict through dialogue, while his reduction of the role of the chorus re­ flected the decline in the unity of beliefs and motivations of a more variegated society. Similarly, Sophocles’ addition of the third actor, an innovation subsequently adopted by Aeschylus, aimed at a more effective mimesis of the intensifying conflicts accompanying the ac­ celerating differentiation in Athenian society in the second quarter of the 5th century. His introduction of scenery enabled a more precise imitation of an environment becoming more complex and impinging more directly on the lives of 5th-century Athenians. But scenery is not just a means toward a fuller and more precise mimesis of a more complicated reality, it is also a product, of the more complicated reality emerging with scientific progress, advances in tech­ nology, and increased specialization of labor. Even as in the United States the current experiments in mixed media in the theater would have been impossible two generations ago because of the backwardness of electronic theory and technology and the absence of such inventions as

Aesthetics · Ancient history · Art · CONQUEST · Enthusiasm · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Immediacy · Literature · Pessimism · Resistance (ecology) · Social science · Sociology · Classical Antiquity Studies · Digital Humanities and Scholarship · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · History · Interdisciplinary Studies: Technology, Society, and Humanities · Philosophy

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