14/10/15

Simon Goldhill
Tragedy and Politics

-Nobody in ancient Greece went to the theatre in the way we conceive of it

-All plays to be discussed took place in Athens, 450-401 BC (Greece at this time was a
thoroughly imperial environment), at the Festival of Dionysia

-One could only see plays once, the festival was the only chance – 3 playwrights were
chosen by the state, and the plays were paid for by the state. It was a state-funded
occasion.

-To get a ticket you had to be enrolled politically, that is to say an adult, enfranchised
man.

-Each wedge in the theatre probably held a tribe. You sat with those of your socio-
political division.
-Front is most important – Generals, priests, and foreign ambassadors
-Middle – 500 seats for the council. Executive body of government.
-Far left (probably) – foreigners
-Far right (probably) – war orphans

-When you walked in you saw a socio-political representation of the city. If tragedy
represents the city to itself, this was literalized in the audience.

-There were rituals beforehand to make out space as a ritual space

Pre-play rituals

Tragedy is not just a commentary on politics, but is itself a political event

Rituals
1)-Libation and sacrifice (piglets) – interesting in terms of who does it – the 10
generals, the most important military leaders of the state. They assembled only 3 times a
year in such contexts, so theatre was EXTREMELY important. This would influence
how the play would be seen.

2)Announcement of those who benefitted the state during the year, who were given
awards
-To have this done was seemingly great for your status, but the function was really to
demonstrate the act of the state giving thanks for public service, and so encourage others
to act likewise.
-Your actions are judged according to how they benefit others, so it was a way of
demonstrating the workings of democracy, in which the worthof actions relates to their
value to the common good. It was a public display of ideology.
-This was a highly politicized moment – people were hissed if they were unpopular – it
was politics in action, taking place in the theatre

3)Slaves walk through theatre carrying silver, and then walk out. This was a parade of
tributes.
-After the Persian wars, Athens was instrumental in setting up Delian league, formed to
keep Persia at bay.

-In the 460s, Athens moved the treasury of this league to their capital at the Parthenon,
and used the money to build fleet, and so accrue members/bring in tributes from
members.

-Ambassadors were required to sit in the theatre and watch their money paraded round
the theatre. This was a ay of the city publicly performing the notion that ‘We are number
1 – we are the power.’ It’s an imperial performance.

-Again representing the city to the city and to the world.

-This action was later criticized as ‘A way of becoming hated by everyone’

4)War orphans (educated at state expense) – when grown up they took a military oath
to stand by their colleagues. This ceremony took place in front of the city.

-‘War is to man what marriage is to a woman’ – the moment at which a woman is fully a
woman in Athens is when she is married, and with a child. Similarly, the only way to
fulfill status as a man was as a soldier.

-Athens was a military society – if you wanted to go to war it was decidedly democratic.
Citizens went to fight – no mercenaries in 5th C. If you voted to fight, you were signing
yourself up to fight. Every year of the 5th century, Athenians voted themselves into going
to war!

-Individual hero is the figure on whom victory turns in Homerian epic, but in Athens,
this is not the case – you sink or swim according to the group/phalanx, not the
individual. Only as strong as the weakest man.

-Huge pressure on Athenian male. Socrates: ‘Don’t you realize that your body is an
instrument of the state?’

-Militarism and citizenship overlap totally – Expression ‘Prove yourself good’ = Die for
the state

-For Aristotle essence of democracy is 1)the right to hold office, and 2)the duty to bear
arms.

-This shows the ideological impact of this last ritual – it ingrains the conception of
militarized democracy.

The theatre is a site of political spectacle before the play even starts.

-There was even a fund set up for people to go to the theatre, so important was it
considered. It was in fact against the law to even propose to change the law about the
fund!

-Attending the theatre was a performance of citizenship, and was considered a civic duty
of sorts.
-Audiences were expected to be engaged, not just passive

What about the plays?

-There is a seeming contradiction between the state ideological occasion, and the
portrayal of the state falling apart/things going wrong

There are 2 ways to analyse this

1)Most plays were not set in Athens, and barely mention it. Also, they are almost never
set in the present. Further, not citizens on stage – kings, women etc.

-So, tragedy is enacted at the scene of the Other

-In other words, the plays held up Athens at the expense of Thebes or other places

-This can also be thought of as showing a negative exemplar to promote its positive
opposite

BUT
These aren’t really plays about other people, they are plays that turn out to be about us.
-Is Oedipus really just a negative model? No, he’s ‘you or no-one’ in Freud’s analysis

SO

2)Tragedy and comedy are put on stage at the same festival, so the two are both mirrors
of the society.
-Comic does is through the carnivalesque/grotesque portrayal of the Other
-Tragedy sets Athens at a distance. Represents Athens to itself through other versions of
what the city could be like.

Oresteia
-Have to understand Homer to understand Aesceleus. Homer was a text you’d learn at
school, presented in full each year, people knew it off by heart. It provided the
images/metaphors by which they lived.

-The Odyssey tells the story of Orestes as an example. He is held up as model of

masculinity. He is the example in the example.

-Aeschylus makes this example of man kill his mother – this is in Homer, but almost
glossed over. It’s in Homer, but strangely erased. It first says ‘he killed him’ (Aegisthus)
, not ‘them’, but in the next line it also talks of his ‘dead mother’

-Aeschylus makes this silence scream

-Aeschylus dramatizes what is silenced in Homer. After Aescylus, nobody said ‘be like
Orestes’

-Tragedy destroys the example of Homer, but how/why?

1)Tragedy is a machine for rewriting myth for contemporary politics. It rewrites myth for
the polis, the state. This social process was not present in Homer’s time – rather houses
of power, not democracy.

-In retelling these stories, they are turned into problems – no good/bad Manichaeism.

- Orestes goes to Delphi and is purified, but then goes to Athens where Athene judges
‘This is too big for one person to decide, it must be a collective decision’. Apollo (reason)
speaks for Orestes, the furies (female/monstrous) speak against. The outcome seems
sure, but Apollo says ‘the mother is not the true parent’, merely a ‘guesthouse’. Athene
decides it’s equal, and he gets off. It’s a gendered fight, not just a question of of justice.

-The vote is tied, though – what does this do to the audience? It puts them in the position
of the impossibility of getting things right. It makes the political process a problem.
Committing to law is crucial to democracy, but the first trial can’t decide. What does this
say about the origins of democracy? Makes audience think harder about the ideology of
the rituals that were presented with before the play.

-Tragedy performs a staging of self-doubt in your own ideology (v. postmodern...!)

Conclusions
-The more you deny your part in tragedy, the more you are bound to perform it.

-Everybody who reads Oedipus has the same reaction: nobody thinks they would do
what Oedipus is warned of by the oracle. But that’s the moment Opedipus really gets
you – he thinks he knows what he’s doing, as we do, thinking we’re in control. But
tragedy keeps proving us wrong.

-The moment of self-confidence in our own agency is consistently undermined.

-The question of ‘who are you?’ is central to tragedy, and we should not take it glibly.

-The question ‘where are you going?’ is another – if you think the answer is simple, you
do not understand the stochastics of narrative.

-Tragedy shows that decision-making about your life will always be flawed, as so much is
out of your control.

-This is why Tragedy is so political – it goes to the heart of democracy – your ability to
act as an agent, and be responsible for those action. Tragedy questions this very premise.
It pre-announces your doubt about these questions.