Ain’t No Tragedy Like an Ancient Greek Tragedy

I’ve read a couple Greek tragedies over the years, and while they’re not my favorite genre, at all, even a little bit, they’re always interesting, in almost exactly the same ways that Atari games are interesting. Like, here are some of the first experiments in a brand new medium, and if you squint you can see threads in Antigone (or, say, Pitfall) that, generations later, led to something like Hamilton (or, say, Super Mario Odyssey).

I’m not saying they’re all great by modern standards — if you grew up surrounded by their descendants, they can seem both simplistic and difficult to get into….but, anyway, here’s a poster I made after reading summaries of all the still-existent ancient Greek tragedies.