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.

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Rhetoric of Parody in Plato's MenexenusFranco V. TrivignoIn Plato's Menexenus, Socrates spends nearly the entire dialogue reciting an epitaphios logos, or funeral oration, that he claims was taught to him by Aspasia, Pericles' mistress. Three difficulties confront the interpreter of this dialogue. First, commentators have puzzled over how to understand the intention of Socrates' funeral oration (see Clavaud 1980, 17–77).1 Some insist that it is parodic, performing an (...) essentially critical function (e.g., Loraux 1986); while others claim that it is serious, in particular as an expression of Plato's political ideal (e.g., Kahn 1963).2 Adherents on both sides seem to think that the options are mutually exclusive.3 Second, commentators have had difficulty understanding why Plato would have Socrates attribute his entire oration to Aspasia (e.g., Coventry 1989, 3; Pownall 2004, 60). Most agree that this move is ironic and that it has something to do with the alleged target of the dialogue's criticism. But scholars have differed over whether the Aspasia reference is meant to implicate Pericles' funeral oration (Monoson 1998), rhetoric in general (Pownall 2004), Athens (Loraux 1986), or even Aeschines (Clavaud 1980).4 Third, scholars have struggled to make sense of the dialogue's "deliberate and fantastic anachronism" (Dodds 1990, 24). In the funeral oration, Socrates relates the history of Athens up to the King's Peace in 386 B.C., a full thirteen years after he has died. This problem has generated the least consensus, with some scholars restricting their analysis [End Page 29] to dating considerations (e.g., Dodds 1990) and at least one speculating that Socrates speaks in this dialogue as a ghost (Rosenstock 1994).5It is the contention of this article that, by understanding the rhetoric of parody in the Menexenus, one can resolve these difficulties and come to a coherent and unified understanding of the philosophical intentions of the dialogue.6 More specifically, I will show that the anachronism is a consequence of a particular parodic strategy, that of amplification; that the dialogue's parody targets not only Pericles' funeral oration in particular but funeral oratory, rhetoric, and Athens as well; and that the parody has serious philosophical implications.7 Further, I claim that the serious philosophical content is both critical and constructive. Plato subverts the civic identity and understanding of virtue encouraged by the genre of funeral oration, and he challenges its praise-based model of political discourse. At the same time, Plato's parodic criticism is not entirely negative, for it relies on alternative paradigms of civic identity, virtue, and political discourse.I. The Rhetoric of ParodyBefore turning to the Menexenus itself, I want to clarify what I mean by parody. For a working definition, I suggest that parody is "an imitation that distorts a target text, author, or genre."8 In order to make some general observations about the rhetoric of parody, I will look briefly at an exemplar of parody from Aristophanes' Frogs. I do so for three reasons: to display two strategies of parodic distortion, to show that parody can have multiple targets, and to argue that parody can have both serious and complex intentions.9In the Frogs (1331–63), Aristophanes uses at least two techniques of parodic distortion, inversion and amplification, in his extended parody of Euripides' monodies or single-actor odes.10 Parodic inversion, broadly speaking, upsets or overturns the target text by distorting the original in a way that reverses the stylistic effect or semantic intention. Parodic amplification hones in on one aspect of the target text and amplifies it to absurdity, often exposing its artificiality as a literary trope.The parodic scene features a woman who awakens, hysterical and terrified, from a god-sent dream, which has conveyed disturbing news. We find in this passage a particular kind of parodic inversion: bathos, the unexpected introduction of the vulgar, ordinary, or mundane, which undermines an otherwise somber tone.11 Consider the following excerpt:Attendants, set alight a lamp for me,Collect the dew of rivers in pitchers [End Page 30] And heat the water,So that I may wash away the god-sent dream.Oh god of the sea... (shrink)