The social function of attic tragedy

Classical Quarterly

Volumn 48, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 39-61

  Griffin, Jasper ^a  

^a BALLIOL COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

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EID: 61249601308     PISSN: 00098388     EISSN: 14716844     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/cq/48.1.39     Document Type: Article

References (64)

1. 'Wer einen Zugang zur tragischen Dichtung der Griechen sucht, muss von den materiellen und geistigen Verhältnissen ihrer Umwelt ausgehen': H. Kuch, in H. Kuch (ed.), Die griechische Tragödie in ihrer gesellschaftlichen Funktion (Berlin, 1983), p. 7
2. Edd. J. J. Winkler and F. Zeitlin (Princeton, 1990)
3. C. Pelling in C. Pelling (ed.), Greek Tragedy and the Historian (Oxford, 1997), p. v
4. The other book named here is A. H. Sommerstein, S. Halliwell, J. Henderson, and B. Zimmermann (edd.), Tragedy, Comedy, and the Polis (Bari, 1993)
5. Also important, but too recent for Pelling, is M. S. Silk (ed.), Tragedy and the Tragic (Oxford, 1996)
6. 'The formal and stylistic preferences of the three great tragedians display considerable divergences, which are hard to explain solely by the methods of social anthropology', observes D. Bain, JHS 113(1993), 187
7. R. Seaford, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford, 1994)
8. N. T. Croally, Euripidean Polemic (Cambridge, 1994)
9. G. Cerri does in fact go so far as to speak of tragedy as being 'vero e proprio apparato ideologico di stato', Legisiazione orale e tragedia greca (Napoli, 1979), p. 269
10. We do nowadays sometimes find her presented in a very negative light: see C. Sourvinou-Inwood, 'Assumptions and the creation of meaning: reading Sophocles' Antigone', JHS 109 (1989), 134-48
11. That goes with the view that her sex (she is a 'Bad Woman') told so heavily with an Athenian audience as to outweigh the fact that she is right. Cf. the recent judgement on Lysistrata, that 'more emphasis is needed on the fact [sic] that any message of the play would be problematic because it comes through a woman' (A. M. Bowie in JHS 113 [1993], 168)
12. Republic 3.394dff. argues that the citizens should each have a single and not be influenced by the sinister versatility of tragedy into adjusting to several: (397el-2), and that is why we must not permit tragedy in our ideal city. Presumably that means that tragedy is being seen as a menace to homogeneity. With some subtlety B. Heiden, in Tragedy, Comedy and the Polis (1993), p. 164, argues that Goldhill's mistake is not to see that Athenian citizens were meant to be versatile and 'The Athenians regarded themselves as typically changing roles and thus as existing in something like a permanent state of transition': the theatrical experience prepared them for this, and so it did not subvert but reinforce the values of the city. The point is perhaps a little too subtle for a city to have grasped and kept in mind for a century
13. J. Gould remarks, mildly, on the way that such statements by Longo are 'framed as a simple and trenchant assertion of established fact', see Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic, p. 219
14. Ethical, I think, rather than political. The question of the status and function of the chorus is interestingly discussed by J. Gould and S. Goldhill in Silk, Tragedy and the Tragic, pp. 217ff., 244ff
15. For criticism of Winkler's suggestion, see P. Vidal-Naquet in PCPS 32 (1986), 137f
16. Only by some such assumption can political significance be got into the matter of the dithyramb. But B. Zimmermann, Dithyrambos: Geschichte einer Gattung = Hypomnemata 98 (Göttingen, 1992), 36, has an opposite theory, more in line with the views discussed in this paper: he speaks of the form as possessing a 'demokratische, egalitäre Charakter'
17. Aristophanes, Acharnians 71-2
18. On the question of exemption from military service for choreutae, see E. Csapo and W. J. Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama (Michigan, 1995), p. 352
19. The centrality of war to the classical polis (except Sparta) can be exaggerated: see S. C. Humphreys in JHS 91 (1971), 191-3
20. B. Heiden in Trag.Com.Pol., 165, n. 40
21. Croally, Euripidean Polemic, p. 50
22. See J. Griffin, Homer on Life and Death (Oxford, 1980), pp. 103-43
23. C. W. Macleod, Commentary on Iliad 24 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 1-16
24. This argument of Goldhill is criticized by R. Friedrich, and defended by Goldhill, in Tragedy and the Tragic, pp. 263ff
25. 'What seems certain is that it was in the sixth century that the festival [the City Dionysia] became important, probably through the policy of Pisistratus': A. W. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd edn, rev. J. Gould and D. M. Lewis (Oxford, 1988), p. 58
26. M. L.West points out that these assertions about the very early years of tragedy are not firmly reliable: CQ 39 (1989), 251-4
27. But there seems to be no evidence that tragedies were first introduced by the democracy. An interesting speculative case is made for that, and for a post-tyranny date for the City Dionysia, by W. R. Connor, 'City Dionysia and Athenian democracy', C&M 40 (1989), 7-32
28. So Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, pp. 103-4: 'The purpose of the new festivals was to foster and display the power of the unified state, centered politically upon the city and ultimately upon the tyrant himself, and to promote a common cultural identity and a system of values consistent with the new political reality.' Nothing here about democracy; but otherwise the story is the same. Evidently the Dionysia, and tragedy, could serve democratic and tyrannical regimes and ideologies equally well
29. E.g. W. S Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens (London, 1911), pp. 290f.
30. C. Schneider, Kulturgeschichte des Hellenismus (München, 1971), vol. II, pp. 188, 245. New tragedies continued to be performed, and to be an important part of the festival. 'The competitions went on, and proclamations of honour were made and crowns bestowed at the Dionysia down to the first century B.C.' (Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, p. 82)
31. It is of course not even the case that all tragedies were put on at the Great City Dionysia. Some were staged at the Lenaia, at which the allies were not present to be impressed; though we are not well informed about that, and it seems always to have been the minority option (Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, p. 41). There were also many performances at Rural Dionysia: they are known in thirteen demes. See conveniently Csapo and Slater, The Context of Ancient Drama, p. 107
32. Cf. S. Goldhill, 'Battle narrative and politics in Aeschylus' Persae', JHS 108 (1988), 188-93: p. 192, the play 'may not demonstrate the ironic questioning of an Euripides, but it is not hard to see it investigating attitudes within the polis to the recent victory'. Such attitudes, I think, would be religious, rather than political
33. I agree with J. B. Hainsworth, The idea of Epic (California, 1991), p. 8, that the Iliad is 'about heroism, specifically about heroic honour, and its effect and price'
34. This was of course the view of Homer taken in antiquity by the poet Horace in Epistles 1.2: the Iliad is a better teacher of ethics, and specifically of the control of the passions, than the professional philosophers. Quidquid delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi. Cf. the comments of Nicholas Richardson, Commentary on the Iliad, vol. VI (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 14-19
35. Creek Tragedy and the Historian, p. 234
36. But see J. P. Euben in J. P. Euben (ed.), Greek Tragedy and Political Theory (Berkeley, 1986), p. 24: tragedy helped to 'define, sustain and question democratic culture' (my italics)
37. Cf. N. Loraux, L'invention d'Athènes (Paris, 1981). A different genre, admittedly, but a form intended for essentially the same audience
38. Plato, Apology 38a5
39. A. Sommerstein in Greek Tragedy and the Historian, pp. 65ff
40. The theorikon seems to have been a fourth-century innovation, and the charge in the second half of the fifth century to have been two obols: not inconsiderable! For the evidence, see Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, pp. 265-8
41. The argument of A. T. von S. Bradshaw, that Sophocles' Ajax fails in aidos, and that that failure is relevant to the relations of Athens with her allies (in D. C. Pozzi and J. M. Wickersham [edd.], Myth and the Polis [Cornell, 1991])
42. is well criticized by C. Sourvinou-Inwood, CR 46 (1996), 82
43. It is a question whether there actually was cult of Oedipus at Colonus, outside the pages, or the influence, of Sophocles. There is a dearth of evidence; there is another reported cult in Athens, below the Areopagus; and the insistence in the play that nobody except the king and his successors in each generation should know the place of the grave is hard to reconcile with any public cult. F. Pfister, in his classic work Der Reliquienkult im Altertum (Berlin, 1909), pp. 110ff., is confident that Sophocles cannot have invented the Colonus cult
44. E. Kearns, The Heroes of Attica (BICS Supplement 57, London, 1989), p. 50, is more sceptical but concludes her thorough discussion with the judgement: 'I am inclined to feel that there is a little too much evidence connecting Oedipus with Kolonos to be explained simply by the influence of Sophocles' play' (p. 209)
45. Tragedy and the Tragic, p. 175
46. That cult of Philoctetes is mentioned in his play is suggested by S. J. Harrison, JHS 109 (1989), 173-5. His argument is that w. 1418-22, spoken from the machina by Heracles, which promise Philoctetes a glorious existence like his own after all his sufferings, 'subtly suggest' posthumous cult. If so, this cult must be one to which Appian once alludes, 'on an island near Lemnos'; this island must be Chryse, a few miles from Lemnos; Lemnos itself had been acquired for Athens by Miltiades and was an Athenian possession. Thus 'there is at least some possibility that this cult of Philoctetes on Chryse existed in the fifth century B.C. and was known to Sophocles and his audience' (p. 175). The argument is subtle, but several steps in it are speculative, and the supposed allusion is fleeting and elusive; to make it a central plank in the interpretation of the play must be very bold. And even if it is accepted, the awkward fact remains that Sophocles has placed such allusion as there is to cult entirely on the recipient. There is no mention of the worshippers or of 'collectivity'
47. Cambridge Ancient History, 2nd edn (Cambridge, 1992), Vol. V, pp. 75
48. Tragedy and the Polis, p. 34
49. On this tradition, not recorded in evidence as early as we should ideally like, see e.g. R. Merkelbach, Untersuchungen zur Odyssee = Zetemata 2 (München, 1969), pp. 239-62
50. S. R. West in the Oxford Commentary on the Odyssey, vol. I (Oxford, 1988), pp. 36-40
51. On this point I have a lot of sympathy with the challenging book of Malcolm Heath, The Poetics of Greek Tragedy (Duckworth, 1987)
52. See J. Griffin, 'The Epic Cycle and the uniqueness of Homer', JHS 97 (1977), 39-53
53. See J. de Romilly, L'évolution du pathétique d'Escliyle à Euripide (Paris, 1961)
54. See the classic article by John Gould, 'Hiketeia', JHS 93 (1973), 74-103
55. That well-mannered volume says only (p. 35): 'Critias had enough armed support at his disposal to convince the Council and force Theramenes' execution.' We observe how neatly the colour, the particularity, the sense of period and place, have all been drained away; we might be reading about events of any place, at any time. That is not the way to get an insight into the history of the period, as it presented itself to the minds of those who made and endured it..The flight of Themistocles, similarly, is described, in Vol. V: The Fifth Century (Cambridge, 1992), p. 65, without reference to his enforced supplication of the queen of the Molossians (simply, 'Admetus of the Molossi refused either to surrender him or to allow him to stay'). Those details, occurring in a first-rate source, and very revealing for the mentalité of the period, are presumably left to the students of ancient religion and literature. Clio, the austere Muse of serious modern historiography, draws her skirts aside; she prefers, she says, a diet of very dry bread
56. Isocrates, Panegyricus 54-8
57. id., Panathenaicus 168-74
58. Demosthenes 60.8. See N. Loraux, The Invention of Athens (Eng. trans., Harvard, 1986), p. 216
59. Cf. J.-P. Vernant, 'Le tyran boiteux: d'Oedipe à Périandre', in J.-P. Vernant and P. Vidal-Naquet, Mythe et tragédie deux (Paris, 1986), pp. 45-78
60. K. Reinhardt, 'Herodots Persergeschichten', Vermächtnis der Antike (Göttingen, 1960), 133-74
61. = Herodot, ed. W. Marg (W.d.F.26, 1965), pp. 320-69
62. E. Wolff, 'Das Weib des Masistes', ibid., pp. 668-78
63. = Hermes 92 (1964), 51-8
64. Cf. Plato, Laws, 653cd