Lost in transmission: the disappearance of Greek tragedies during antiquity

When dealing with the tragic dramas performed in Greece during the fifth and fourth centuries BC, whether by the ‘big three’ tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, or by other playwrights, we are used to the binary categories of ‘loss’ and ‘survival’: the great majority of plays have been lost, while a fortunate few survive. This chapter questions this dichotomy by showing both that the ‘surviving’ plays have themselves suffered irreparable loss, and that the ‘lost’ plays often survive at least to some degree. It goes on to examine how and why different plays fell into these two categories, and over what time period: after all, some plays now called ‘lost’ were in circulation for hundreds of years, longer than (for instance) the plays of Shakespeare have circulated to date, and will have had a profound cultural impact. This further highlights the malleability of the categories of loss and survival in this context; and should also encourage us to make the fullest use of all the evidence for Greek tragedy that has succeeded in reaching our times.