In a previous program on the Greco-Persian wars, I made a controversial claim.

The best thing I said that ever happened to ancient Athens was its complete and utter

destruction by the Persian Empire in 480 BC.

Sounds crazy, right?

But think about it.

The Athenians actually won that war with their entire population intact, so they had the chance to rebuild everything from scratch, this time with tons of money and talent flowing in from the rest of Greece, combined with the enthusiasm of victory.

It's like they were given a blank slate and a blank check to build a new civilization over the ruins of the old.

Now, this perfect storm created an explosion of cultural productivity, the likes of which

few civilizations have been able to rival. That was the gist of my argument.

Well, today, we're going to explore a work of literature, which I think more than any other from classical Athens,

encapsulates that unprecedented unleashing of creative human genius.

It's a work rarely taught in schools nowadays.

Perhaps you haven't even heard of it, partly because it is difficult to read without a knowledgeable guide and quite a bit of background information,

but it's extremely relevant to our present moment because it was born from the same crucible

which forged the world's first powerful democracy.

And it reflects the hopes, dreams, and warnings of a society that rode that roller coaster of democracy long before we tried to reboot it.

The work I'm talking about is Escalis's Orostaya.

The Orostaya is a trilogy of three tragedies that were performed back to back in the main theater of ancient Athens on the slopes of the Acropolis on one sunny afternoon in 458 BC.

It became an instant blockbuster for the Athenians.

It was cherished by later generations of Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Europeans of the Renaissance,

and today, with the help of a fellow scholar and friend of mine,

we're going to try to relive its magic and uncover its genius.

...