The social function of attic tragedy: A response to Jasper Griffin

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 50, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 30-44

  Seaford, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF EXETER   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 60950545014     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/50.1.30     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. J. Griffin, CQ 48 (1998), 39-61
2. We may even see the caricature in the process of unfolding. G. quotes from my Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-Slate (Oxford, 1994), 153-4 the following: 'If that is so, then among the qualities that ensured the predominance of the Iliad and Odyssey over other possible versions of themselves and over the epic cycle was their exceptional embodiment of the aspirations of the early polis', and on the very same page (49) paraphrases it as follows: 'we recall that for Seaford the ascendancy of the Homeric poems was because of their "exceptional embodiment of the aspirations of the early polis"'. The disappearance of the words 'among the qualities...' creates an absurdly simplistic notion that is easy to dismiss
3. J. Svenbro, La Parole et le Marbre (Lund, 1976), esp. 31-5
4. On this scene K. J. Dover writes of 'Aristophanes' readiness to caricature both sides in a debate' (Aristophanes Frogs [Oxford, 1993], 17) and that 'comparison with Clouds indicates that Aristophanes has assimilated the contrast between Aeschylus and Euripides to the generalized contrast between old and new' (22)
5. The theatre as reconstructed by Lykourgos is thought to hold between 14,000 and 17,000. Plato's 30,000 (Symp. 175e) for the earlier theatre may be an exaggeration. Even allowing for the presence of foreigners, metics, women, and slaves, it seems very likely that the audience contained many thousands of politically active male citizens. In the fourth century the number of adult male citizens is estimated at 20,000 or 30,000. For the early fifth century Hdt. (5.97.2) suggests (perhaps as a conventional number) 30,000. A high estimate for the year 432/1 is 60,000: M. Hansen, Three Studies in Athenian Demography. Historisk-filosofiske Meddeielser 56 (Copenhagen, 1988)
6. For a historical explanation of the absence of the polis from Aristotle's account of tragedy, see Edith Hall in M. S. Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic (Oxford, 1996), 295-309
7. S. G. Salkever, on the other hand, argues that 'Aristotle's discussion presupposes the thought that tragedy is not only a political institution, but more particularly a democratic one' (in J. P. Euben [ed.], Greek Tragedy and Political Theory [Berkeley, 1986], 274-303)
8. See J. Henderson in K. Morgan (ed.), Popular Tyranny (Texas University Press, forthcoming)
9. On this point, and in general, see M. W. Taylor, The Tyrant Slayers. The Heroic Image in Fifth Century B.C. Athenian Art and Politics (Salem, NH, 1991)
10. Eating at public expense in the Prytaneum: see e.g. W. E. Thompson in AJP 92 (1971), 226-37
11. Something similar was probably also part of the oath taken by members of the Boule, by the mid-fifth century if not the late sixth, according to M. Ostwald in TAPA 86 (1955), 103-28
12. Perhaps the one cited at Ath. Pol. 16.10: see Rhodes ad loc; B. Lavelle in Class. et Med. 39 (1988), 35-7
13. R. Meiggs and D. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1969), no. 40, lines 32-4
14. J. P. Guépin, The Tragic Paradox (Amsterdam, 1968), 89-90
15. J.-P. Vernant in J.-RVernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece (Sussex, 1981), 87-119
16. 'The tomb of Aias and the prospect of hero cult in Sophokles', CA 12 (1993), 165-80
17. The argument is in some respects anticipated by P. Burian 'Supplication and hero cult in Sophocles' Ajax', GRBS 13 (1972), 151-6
18. In Sophocles: Second Thoughts (Göttingen, 1997), 137
19. Perhaps G. thinks that the presence of Oedipus' body (without cult) will be enough. But it is through cult that benefit from the heroic dead (e.g. Theseus in the Theseion) is maintained: W. Burkert, Greek Religion (Oxford, 1985), 203-8
20. And indeed cult for Oedipus is clearly indicated at 1526-34 (cf. 624, 1642, 1644 with Kamerbeek ad loc), though its content must remain secret. The point of secrecy (cf. e.g. Eur. Hcld. 1041-2) was presumably to deny to enemies the chance to obtain the goodwill of the hero through offerings at his tomb, as is made explicit at E. Erechtheus 65.87-9: E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica. BICS Suppl. 57 (London, 1989), 51-2. Hero-cult for Oedipus at Colonus is mentioned at Pausan. 1.30.4
21. Although (against G.) I agree with Harrison (JHS 109 [1989], 173-5) that in Phil. it is hinted at at 1418-22: see further Seaford (n. 3), 138
22. See e.g. P. E. Easterling, Sophocles Trachiniae (Cambridge, 1982), 9-10
23. U. Kron, Die Zehn Attischen Phylenheroen. AM Beiheft 5 (Berlin, 1976), 172-6
24. H. A. Shapiro, Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens (Mainz am Rhein, 1989), 154-7
25. C. Carey in his A Commentary on Five Odes of Pindar (Arno Press, 1981), comparing our passage of Pindar with the tradition that the Delphians were at this time hostile to Neoptolemus, is puzzled, because unaware that to give hero-cult (in appeasement) to the enemy you have slain is standard practice
26. see e.g. M. Visser 'Worshipping your enemy: aspects of the cult of heroes in ancient Greece', HTR 75 (1982), 203-28. The Athenians, to judge from Eur. Andr., may have isolated this element of the cult as a reproach to the Delphians
27. id., Euripides Bacchae (Warminster, 1996), 44-52
28. On safety for the group by relinquishing a member as a basic pattern of Greek and other religions, see W. Burkert, The Creation of the Sacred (Harvard, 1996)
29. See F. Zeitlin, 'Thebes: theater of self and society in Athenian drama', in J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (eds), Nothing to Do Hillr Dionysos? Athenian Drama in its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 130-67
30. See n. 33 above, and J. Bremmer, 'Scapegoat rituals in ancient Greece', HSCP 87 (1983), 299-320. The ritual was performed in Athens
31. On the ambivalence of the Oresteia towards its great individuals, see further M. Griffith, 'Bright dynasts: power and politics in the Oresteia, Classical Antiquity 14 (1995), 62-129