Mountains of memory: a phenomenological approach to mountains in fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy

Modern tourists and mountaineers often describe their experience of mountains in highly sensory terms, frequently alluding to the mythical and historical pasts which they ascribe to mountainous landscapes. Such experiences are more difficult to identify in fifth-century BCE Greek tragedy. Utilising phenomenological theories on sensory perception, embodied experience, and the stimulation of memory through environment, this chapter reconstructs the ancient experience of mountains through Euripides’ Bacchae and its treatment of Mount Kithairon. It identifies visceral description of movement, song, and sensory stimuli which would have brought the audience’s remembered experiences into contact with literary space. The same mountain in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannos links mythical time with narrative space through evocation of aural resonance. Finally, the beacon scene of Aeschylus’ Agamemnon uses mountains as memory-places to literally bridge the gap between Greece and Troy. Mountains in Greek tragedy could thus link places, myth, characters, remembered history, and personal experience.