Representation of women in Athenian tragedy Representation of women in Athenian tragedy The representation of women in Athenian tragedy was performed exclusively by men and it is likely (although the evidence is not conclusive) that it was performed solely for men as well. In a society that valued women’s silence, their predominance in the most public of Athenian art-forms constitutes a paradox. Only one of the surviving 32 plays has no female characters: Sophocles' "Philoctetes". Female tragic choruses also outnumber the male choruses by twenty-one to ten. Macaria, in the "Heracleidae" states that "for a woman, silence and self control are best." The philosopher Xenophon thought
Oedipus Rex and Thebes were the major focus of Greek epic poetry. The events surrounding the Trojan War were chronicled in the Epic Cycle, of which much remains, and those about Thebes in the Theban Cycle, which have been lost. The Theban Cycle recounted the sequence of tragedies that befell the house of Laius, of which the story of Oedipus is a part. Homer's "Odyssey" (XI.271ff.) contains the earliest account of the Oedipus myth when Odysseus encounters Jocasta (named Epicaste) in the underworld. Homer briefly summarises the story of Oedipus, including the incest, patricide, and Jocasta's subsequent suicide. However, in the Homeric