Institute for Travesty

The years between, say 450 B.C. and the start of the Roman Empire are normally thought of as the exciting gestation period of Western drama. In tragedy, it is the period that begins by producing Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides and ends with the rehearsed dramas of Seneca. In comedy, it is the period of foundational development beginning with the satires of Aristophanes, proceeding through the Middle Comedy of Menander, and coming into an essentially modern form in Plautus, leaving almost two centuries of modern development before the reign of Tiberius Caesar.

If in any significant way these years are misunderstood, we have an exceedingly shaky base for understanding the foundational dramatic traditions of the West.

Thus, it is well to rethink this half-millennium, a period of tremendous change, excitement, and competition for the direction of Western history. Competition, conflict, adaptation, and intrigue are routine bases for dramatic interest, and these centuries have it all on a world scale.

Interestingly, these same centuries are talked about in Western theology as “the Silent Years,” and are often glossed over. They are silent in that the last of the Old Testament Prophets have already been written. Unfortunately, secular history has accepted this basic stance of silence when, in fact, the same years are filled with normally beneath-the-radar and indirect evidence that the ideas embodied in the Jewish Scriptures and personified in the Jewish Synagogue were exerting enormous influence on all things Mediterranean.

A revised paradigm then would be that the Silent Years are years of exciting world-wide competition between the Greek establishment and the Roman New Order, while underneath, Judaism was sculpting new directions that were very disquieting in their own day and which remain fundamental paradigms and strains in Western society even today. “The Silent Years” are the first three acts of a stupendous, unfinished drama, the dark comedy of Western Thought and Culture. Well into the fifth act as we currently are, division about this comedy and this darkness, even division over whether it is a comedy or rather a tragedy, is still raging around us.

ITCHS was founded to study Travesty, Comedy, and Humor. We have occasionally made forays into Classical studies in these efforts and have been gratified by their reception. But if we are to do more on the foundational dramatic realities of the West, it seems necessary to provide an appropriate basic understanding of the Not-So-Silent Years in which those foundations were laid.

First chapter: The Seven-Day Week

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