How does the afterlife affect ethical and political considerations in this life when a culture has no unified religious dogma? This article focuses on the afterlife as an uncertain “elsewhere” invoked to rethink political imperatives in specific Ancient Greek literary and philosophical texts. First, it uncovers the political implications of radically divergent notions of the afterlife in both Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Sophocles’s Antigone—from nothingness, to continuation in a society of souls below, to ethical judgment by a divinity—significant examples of which (...) have been neglected. It then follows out the almost congruent diversity of afterlife notions in Plato’s Apology and Phaedo. By examining how Socrates uses “unbelief” concerning the afterlife to interrogate ethics and politics, this article gives a fresh perspective on the structure of debate in the Phaedo. The very emphasis on “unbelief,” however, demonstrates that the dialogue itself may not present Socratic views as definitive. (shrink)

In PCPhS 213, 92–104 at 93–6, Oliver Taplin suggests that the Getty vase published by J. R. Green in 1985 represents not Aristophanes' Birds but the first version of Clouds. The purpose of this note is to offer some support for this, while perhaps raising further problems.

Democracy and tragedy captured a delicate poise in ancient Athens. While many today perceive democracy as a finite, unquestionable and almost procedural form of governance that glorifies equality and liberty for their own sake, the Athenians saw it as so much more. Beyond the burgeoning equality and liberty, which were but fronts for a deeper goal, finitude, unimpeachability and procedural norms were constantly contradicted by boundlessness, subversion and disarray. In such a world, where certainty and immortality were luxuries beyond the (...) reach of humankind, tragedy gave comfort and inspired greatness. Before the disciplinary segregation and the delimiting of the poetic and artistic, tragic art dramatized the paradox of existence in a most political manner. The purpose of this paper is to explicitly highlight the crucial links that existed between democracy and tragedy during their formative years in ancient Athens. What was it about democracy that necessarily incited and depended upon the ascendency of tragedy during the time of the Athenian city-state? And why and how did a peculiar institution such as Athenian tragedy play so central a role in the democratic polis of Athens? (shrink)

It is orthodox to state that tragedy encourages its audience to meditate on questions related to living in the polis with the resulting claim that it should promote self-examination among its citizen-spectators. The evidence that tragedy is political in some sense is incontrovertible. And yet, given what is sometimes seen on stage, it is worth exploring this orthodoxy a little and asking if there are limitations to it. In particular, what happens when the city of Athens itself is brought into (...) close contact with tragic suffering? It seems that there were limits to what the Athenians were willing to see of suffering that directly involved their city. This paper suggests that by its nature, tragedy must always contain the possibility of not challenging, but rather reaffirming, the audience’s beliefs about their own city and thus themselves. Modern scholars may possibly over-estimate the Athenians’ ability for self-critique. (shrink)

This paper argues that Aeschylus' Eumenides presents a coherent geography that, when associated with the play's judicial proceedings, forms the basis of an imperial ideology. The geography of Eumenides constitutes a form of mapping, and mapping is associated with imperial power. The significance of this mapping becomes clear when linked to fifth-century Athens' growing judicial imperialism. The creation of the court in Eumenides, in the view of most scholars, refers only to Ephialtes' reforms of 462 BC. But in the larger (...) context, Athenian courts in the mid-fifth century are a form of imperial control. When geographically specific jurisdiction combines with new courts, it supports and even creates a developing imperial ideology. Moreover, the figure of Athena and the role she gives the Athenian jury emphasizes a passionate pro-Athenian nationalism, a nationalism that the text connects to Athens' geographic and judicial superiority. This imperial ideology did not spring from Aeschylus' imagination fully formed; it reflects a trend in Athens of promoting her own cultural superiority. This sense of cultural superiority in fact disguises the realities of Athens' developing power and increasingly harsh subjection of her former allies. (shrink)

While many historians and philosophers have sought to understand the ‘failure’ of the French Revolution to thrive and to avoid senseless violence, very few have referred to the works of two women philosophers who diagnosed the problems as they were happening. This essay looks at how Mary Wollstonecraft and Olympe de Gouges theorised the new tyranny that grew out of the French Revolution, that of ‘petty tyrants’ who found themselves like ‘cocks on a dunghill’ able to wield a new power (...) over those less fortunate than themselves. Both offer diagnoses and prognoses that revolve around education. Wollstonecraft argues that a revolution that is not backed by a previous education of the people is bound to result in chaos and violence. Such education, however, must be slow, and it necessitates the reform of the institutions that most shape the public’s character. A revolution, perforce, is fast, and it often takes several years, or even generations before the spirit of the reforms finds itself implemented into new institutions. Olympe de Gouges shares Wollstonecraft’s worry and she observes that the men who were once dominated quickly become tyrants themselves unless their moral character is already virtuous. But the state of being dominated leaves little room for virtue; hence, newly minted citizens need to be educated in order not to replicate the reign of tyranny onto other. Gouges suggests that the answer to the difficulty she and Wollstonecraft highlighted was to educate the people where they could be found: on the streets, or, where they could easily and willingly be gathered: in theatres. By helping organise revolutionary festivals, highlighting the ways in which citizens could be virtuous, and writing plays to awaken their virtue, and proposing a reform of the theatre, so that the production of such plays would be possible, Gouges offered a plan for the civic education of French citizens in the immediate aftermaths of the Revolution. Unfortunately, the chaos she and Wollstonecraft had sought to remedy, led by the cocks or petty tyrants, ensured that they were unable to see through their plans, with Wollstonecraft having to leave Paris and Gouges being sent to the guillotine. (shrink)

Prompted by Levy’s observations and questions, our brief review of symbolic space in ancient Greece suggests that some features of Greek culture that at first sight seem rationalist and modernizing, signs of the transformation of the archaic city, were deeply rooted in the culture of the city-states from as early as we can study them.11 It may be that they are factors that contributed to the intellectual process referred to as the breakthrough or enlightenment which is not easily attributed entirely (...) to economic and social changes in the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE. The largely secular political tradition is sometimes, and plausibly, invoked as a cause (cf. Humphreys 1986). It should probably be seen as part of the overall ordering of the sacred vis-à-vis the profane. By the later fourth century BCE, contact with a larger, multiethnic world and the growth of impersonal market relationships produced or hastened secondary urbanization and with it the fracturing of a social coherence. In the intervening classical period, in some areas, such as drama, festival, and the visual arts, the first stirrings of the enlightenment may actually have fostered a more intense deployment of traditional resources. The symbolic use of space in the Greek cities probably never matched, despite important similarities, the more complex traditional systems of their South Asian counterparts. Greece’s traditional culture only reached its acme when new winds were blowing (and even because of them), but before they had swept away the delicate links that held the culture together. (shrink)

Sophocles's classical tragedy, Antigone, is continually reinvented, particularly in the Americas. Theater practitioners and political theorists alike revisit the story to hold states accountable for their democratic exclusions, as Antigone did in disobeying the edict of her uncle, Creon, for refusing to bury her brother, Polynices. Antigone in the Americas not only analyzes the theoretical reception of Antigone, when resituated in the Americas, but further introduces decolonial rumination as a new interpretive methodology through which to approach classical texts. Traveling between (...) modern present and ancient past, Andrés Fabián Henao Castro focuses on metics (resident aliens) and slaves, rather than citizens, making the feminist politics of burial long associated with Antigone relevant for theorizing militant forms of mourning in the global south. Grounded in settler colonial critique, black and woman of color feminisms, and queer and trans of color critique, Antigone in the Americas offers a more radical interpretation of Antigone, one relevant to subjects situated under multiple and interlocking systems of oppression. (shrink)

Scholars have disagreed about whether the Great Dionysia was celebrated in 404 BCE, despite the grim circumstances in Athens on the eve of the city's surrender to Sparta. This article reconsiders the problem and reviews the positive documentary evidence for the festival's celebration. The evidence indicates that the festival was indeed held, which speaks to the centrality of the Great Dionysia to Athenian civic life. The article then re-examines the conditions in Athens in the spring of 404, the practical consequences (...) that these may have had for the festival, and the celebration of other festivals during times of war and crisis. Despite the evidence that the Great Dionysia was celebrated, the scale of its festivities must have been reduced. The first regular celebration after the war did not likely take place until 402/1, when the posthumous premiere of Sophocles' Oidipous at Kolonos would have served partially as a symbolic proclamation that Athens' great theatrical tradition would continue undiminished. (shrink)

In PCPhS 213 , 92–104 at 93–6, Oliver Taplin suggests that the Getty vase published by J. R. Green in 1985 represents not Aristophanes' Birds but the first version of Clouds. The purpose of this note is to offer some support for this, while perhaps raising further problems.

Nuestro objetivo es exponer un esquema compositivo de Suplicantes que logre aprehender su particular técnica estructural, frente a la pauta fija aristotélica. El enfoque pondera el trabajo de Taplin sobre la puesta en escena trágica esquilea, que revolucionó los estudios performativos al demostrar el uso dramático de los movimientos de entrada y salida de los personajes. Dada la singularidad de Suplicantes en cuanto al protagonismo coral y el predominio lírico, sostenemos que el análisis de su estructura impone reformular la propuesta (...) de Taplin y considerar las odas corales como parte sustancial de los actos. (shrink)