"Around the time at which the oldest extant tragedies were produced, the Attic citizenry, mainly men of little education or experience who had hitherto existed within the confines of a provincial horizon, gained wide dominions as a result of the Persian Wars, assuming virtual primacy in the Aegean. Shortly afterwards they toppled the aristocratic Council of the Areopagus and adopted sole responsibility for Athens and its empire. This demanded a long arm and considerable boldness in the making of policy and the conduct of war over a domain that stretched from the Black Sea to Egypt and was soon to take in the west of Greece. As a result, undreamt-of fields of activity and expectation opened up, so that in every area things could be perceived, shaped and mastered anew, initiating a great torrent of change.

How did the Athenians cope with this power?"

Bakhtin's theory of the carnivalesque argues that festivals such as the City Dionysia "celebrate temporary liberation from the prevailing truth of the established order; it marks the suspension of all hierarchical rank, privileges, norms, and prohibitions. Carnival was the true feast of time, the feast of becoming, change and renewal. It was hostile to all that was immortalized and complete."

the epitaph of Phrasicleia reads:

Instead of marriage the gods gave me this name.