The tragic dramas written and performed at Athens during the 5th century B.C. represent some of the most enduring of all Classical masterpieces.Each author competing in the festival - com petition always played an important role in the Gre ek attitude to life composed four plays, to be per formed on a single day.The last wor k in each author's offering was a more light-hearte d "satyr" play. The plots of the tragedies were gen erally based on myths, with which the spectators would already be familiar. Writers could thus empl oy "dramatic irony," whereby the audience was in p ossession of information still hidden from the char acters.For the Greeks the theatre retain ed its connection with worship, and audiences at t he performances of the Classical era regarded the m as religious rituals.The Dramatic Festivals of Dionysus

The origins of drama go back to the 6th cent ury B.C., in the form of choral hymns in praise of t he god Dionysus.The first three dramas wer e tragedies, sometimes forming a trilogy - three e pisodes in a single story and sometimes three dif ferent stories with a common theme.The first works in the history of the Western theatr e, many of them still retain the power to grip and m ove audiences today; some two and a half thousan d years after their creation.All the surviving plays were written for one of the two annual festivals of dram a dedicated to Dionysus, the god of the theatre an d of wine.