Abstract
In recent years the study of Agathon and his works has been much furthered by a series of researches such as those by P. Leveque and I. Waern, who again confirmed the much discussed influences of Gorgia's upon the style of this poet. These researches have also established beyond doubt, that Agathon was at once a tragic poet and a true sophist, who made free .use of sophistic style and thought throughout his tragedies. It is needless to say that his sophistic tragedies must inevitably have altered to a great extent the character of Attic tragedy, which had originally been largely religious and ritualistic. We can indeed find direct references to his renovation of Greek tragedy in Aristotle and other contemporary authors. In this connection it is to be noted that Agathon's taste for Gorgianic metaphor may have influenced even the titles of some of his tragedies, for example a work called "Flower". Perhaps Leveque went too far, when he surmised that Agathon's first prize-winning play mentioned in Symp. 196 ab might have been "Flower". I believe however that he is right in so far his interpretation is concerned that it was a sort of domestic play which depicted an ordinary love affair as inferred from the passage in Plato where Eros and Flowers are mentioned in close connection. In his adaptation of th Epic Cycle's "Fall of Troy" the serious nature (σπουοαιον) of tragedy was mostly lost and the theme transformed into a light play. The music in his tragedies was given a far more important role and made independent from dramatic action by the use of embolima and chromatic scale, and in this way the stately adagio of the old tragedy was quickened into the lively scherzo. As a result, however, the serios character of Greek tragedy as a Dionysiac ritual faded away and tragedy itself began gradually to fall into decay. Agathon may be, as Waern suggested, labelled as a mere "Epigone" of Gorgias, but this may be less surprising, since he and his contemporaries necessarily came under the influence of the new, sophistic system of education. The vital problem Agathon had to face as a successor of Euripides, was not only to find new ways and means to compete successfully with his more eminent rivals, but to present his audience with the sophistic spirit of the age.
