Tragedy in Ovid's Metamorphoses common one throughout the world of ancient tragedy. This theme is most clearly illustrated in Aeschylus' great trilogy the Oresteia and in Sophocles' trilogy on Oedipus. As in Hecuba's speech, characters from the works of Aeschylus and Sophocles both lament their great losses and what has led them to this point. One of the best examples of this theme that Ovid so clearly draws upon is the speech given by a messenger in Oedipus Rex that tells of the death of Jocasta and the blinding of Oedipus. This famous speech follows in the same theme of that given by Hecuba,
Representation of women in Athenian tragedy of him is motivated by a range of male abuses. Medea becomes the aggressor when her husband Jason plans a new more advantageous marriage. There is also a theme running through the plays based on the setting. Performed in open-air theatres, Classical Athenian tragedy was set outside the private sphere of the home. Indeed, Euripides was notorious for "taking the streets, the bedroom, into tragedy" and thereby reducing its remoteness. In "Hippolytus", Phaedra first appears, carried out of the house by her servants, demanding open air, in order to declare her love for her stepson and thus the spiral of