WEBVTT

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It is this link with the mask

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which also makes Dionysus the god of the theatre...

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which becomes, especially for the city of Athens,

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the epic of a New World

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In all the previous Greek tradition

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the ideal was the Homeric one

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the aristocrats', the princes'...

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Homer says that it would be better

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for human beings not to be born at all

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because from the moment of birth,

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every individual is condemned to unhappiness.

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the only remedy would be not to be born at all

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or become immortal

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like heroes, dying in battle

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like the heroes of the Trojan war

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which were then sung in the lyrics of an epic poet...

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immortalizing them

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Then that world of aristocrats and heroes ended...

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and the world of Athens was born.

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the one of assemblies, of democracy

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a world that replaces the traditional epic

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with the one narrated by the theater

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which stages the new values of this society...

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This new world is ruled and mastered by Dionysus himself...