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2022, Anne Bonny Pirate
We start with a theatre, and two moments of astonishing gender transgression. One happened in a theatre on a hillside in the center of Athens on a spring day in late March of 431 BCE. The second happened there sixteen years later, in March of 415 BCE. Both took place as the audience watched tragedies by the poet Euripides. These plays were about gendered oppression, sexual pain, rape, slavery and the horrors of war.
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2013, The Author’s Voice in Classical and Late Antiquity
This article offers a new interpretation of Athenian tragedy, in which the poets competed for their audience's favour by constructing stories in which the protagonists suffer and die because they act within a world which lacks the institutional compensations of which fifth-century Athenians were so proud. Far from being a subversive or apolitical art form (the most popular current poles of scholarly interpretation), Athenian tragedy was heavily and positively involved in its contemporary social and political discourse.
In this chapter I argue that the ‘socio-political dimension’ of fifth-century Greek tragedy amounts to its engagement with the collective ideology and competitive ethos of the democratized classical polis on the one hand, and more traditional Homeric and mythic conceptions of religion and heroic self-assertion on the other. In addition, I consider the Greek tragedians’ interest in framing dilemmas of action with debates over the merits and meanings of certain key fifth-century socio-political concepts. I address the pressing question of how far Greek tragedy’s ‘socio-politics’ speak to watching Athenians and their guests from other Greek states as polis-dwellers in general as opposed to singling out the democratic aspects of the Athenian civic experience. We see that while Greek tragedy sometimes used tales of monstrous royal goings-on and heroic extremism to highlight the civilized values of Athens, this city’s democratic citizenry rarely watched a play which would not have unsettled their senses of social and political well-being. However, any claim to the effect that Greek tragedy had real socio-political ‘bite’ for its audience has to be tempered with a recognition that Greek tragedy’s overarching mythical idiom should preclude any reading of it as a vehicle for specific messages or manifestos. Having dealt with the case of classical Athens, I briefly argue that the social and political force of tragedy did not diminish after the classical period. Neither the facts of Hellenistic or Roman ‘appropriation’ nor the paucity of available evidence should prevent us from realizing that Roman Republican tragedy spoke provocatively and productively to its audience’s specific socio-political milieu. The politics of writing tragedy under the Roman emperors were a different matter again. I show briefly that Seneca’s distinctively baroque, bloody and highly rhetorical mode of tragic presentation reflects the socio-politics of Nero’s Rome through its very eschewal of direct political ‘comment’ or allusion.
Whether making assembly speeches preliminary to military campaigns, or persecuting draft-dodgers in the law courts, or delivering the annual funeral oration over the war dead, the public speakers of fifth and fourth-century classical Athens revealed a people proud of their military achievements both recent, and those which had taken place in the twilight of their distant (and sometimes mythical) past. The importance of tragedy as a possible counterweight to this militaristic thinking cannot be overemphasised. But tragedies were performed at a state festival, and were preceded by a number of ceremonies which left the audience in little doubt about the military strength and glory of Athens and her martial values. This paper will examine the extant tragedies of Euripides in their socio-political context and the ways in which war is portrayed within them. It will show that his portrayal of war is complex and resistant to definitive categorisation. While freely showing the negative effects of war Euripides is nevertheless careful to avoid criticism of Athenian war-making, and the portrayal of Athens' contemporary enemies catered to audience prejudices. Most of his plays leave the audience at once saddened by the devastation of war and yet supportive of Athenian military campaigns. This has important consequences for Athenian thinking on matters of war.
1999
There have been many different approaches to the subject of Euripides' reception by his contemporary audience. The present article focuses on the aspect of the audience's political education and experience, as a parameter for the discussion about the reception of Euripides' plays.
A collection of twelve essays, several never published elsewhere, on various of ancient Greek theatre: the use of 'parts' and rehearsal scripts, metatheatre, the recurrent comparison of women with visual artworks, childbirth plots in tragedy, comedy and satyr play, and a reappraisal of Inventing the Barbarian fifteen years on. This book was not well marketed and is hard to find.
"A pioneering analysis of the relationship between ancient Greek drama and the social realities of the world of its spectators" OUP 2006
Chapter in The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theatre, Edited by Marianne McDonald, Michael Walton
Intertexts, Vol 16, No.1, 2012
This is the appendix of my book, Jane Austen: Closet Classicist, and covers ancient literature from Homer to the New Testament.
2020, Markantonatos, A. (ed.) Brill's Companion to Euripides
In Part 3: Euripides the Innovator: Language, Rhetoric, Realism, and Emotion https://brill.com/view/title/25238?contents=toc-33799
2019, SexuS Journal
In the mythological tradition, the Greeks traced tribal affiliations with the Persians through Perses, the son of the hero Perseus, and with the Medes through the sorceress Medea's son Medos. They also traced family ties with the Egyptians through the Argive Greek cow-maiden Io and with Phoenicia through Europa, abducted by Zeus metamorphosed into a bull, and through Perseus' Phoenician bride Andromeda, and through Cadmus of Boeotian Thebes, and further ties with Egypt through Perseus' visit to his great female ancestor's African homeland. These traditions pertain to the Greek Mystery religions and to the psychoactive sacrament involved in the rites of initiation. One version of this sacrament was the Persian haoma, which in the Sanskrit Vedic rite was the not-personified plant deity Soma. The same sacrament seems to have originated in Africa, perhaps stimulating humankind's first awareness of a spiritual dimension beyond the perceived reality. This was the psychoactive Amanita muscaria mushroom. Its assimilation into Hellenic theology underlies the identity of the Greek deities Dionysus and Demeter, and the various groups of dwarfish highly sexualized African grotes-queries that apparently materialized in the Mystery initiations of the Great Gods on the island of Samothrace and elsewhere , and in the great rite of the Eleusinian sanctuary.
2019, Vergentis. Revista de Investigación de la Cátedra Internacional Conjunta Inocencio
This article, using as a starting point the concept of supplication and asylum seeking in archaic Greek thought, examines cases of supplication which either succeeded and therefore asylum was granted, or were rejected and the pleas for asylum failed. The article focuses on two cases from Greek Drama and one case from Attic Oratory and investigates the features of supplication, the terminology and the argumentation that was considered crucial in order for the supplication to be accepted while moving from the world of myth, drama and religion to the world of oratory, city states and civic identity. Keywords: supplication, asylum, refugees, ancient Greece, drama, oratory, migration, suppliants, asylum-seekers, hospitality, guest-friendship, xenia, reciprocity, Euripides, Aeschylus, Isocrates. Resumen Este artículo, utilizando como punto de partida el concepto de súplica y solicitud de asilo en el pensamiento arcaico griego, examina los casos de súplica que o tuvieron éxito y así se concedió el asilo, o bien se rechazaron y las solicitudes de asilo fallaron. El artículo analiza dos casos de drama griego y uno de Oratoria Ática e investiga las características de la súplica, la terminología y la argumentación que se consideraron cruciales para aceptar la súplica pasando del mundo del mito, el drama y la religión al mundo de la Oratoria, las ciudades estado de Grecia y la identidad cívica. Palabras clave: súplica, asilo, refugiados, Grecia antigua, drama, oratoria, migración, suplicantes, solicitantes de asilo, hospitalidad, amistad, xenia, reciprocidad, Eurípides, Esquilo, Isócrates.
This paper explores the issue of law in Euripides' Hecuba. I am interested in the status of the decree, passed by the assembly of the Greek army, to sacrifice Polyxena to the ghost of Achilles. How would an Athenian audience react to this decree, which replicates there own democratic law making? Hecuba claims that the sacrifice of her daughter is a form of murder, and she notes that the Greeks have laws against this crime. The text insists that its audiences negotiate competing claims to legal authority, and implicates the Athenian spectator in the spectacle of Polyxena's sacrifice.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Exeter, 1999.
1994, The Social Science Journal
Sailors were praised as much as hoplites in democratic Athens. In the eyes of the dēmos fighting at sea was no less of a benefit than doing so on land. They believed that a citizen equally met his martial duty by serving as a sailor or a hoplite. Non-elite citizens insisted that Athenians fighting sea battles be equally recognised for their courage. All this differed from the negative view of sailors that elite citizens had held in archaic times. In the military realm the dēmos had thus successfully redefined traditional aristocratic values. Résumé: Dans l'Athènes démocratique, les marins étaient tout aussi importants culturellement que les hoplites. En effet, il était clair pour le dēmos que son État était une importante puissance maritime. Athènes était consciente qu'il était crucial de préserver ses forces navales, puisqu'elle menait avant tout ses combats en mer. Pour le peuple, combattre en tant que marin profitait autant à l'État que le faire en tant qu'hoplite, et les Athéniens n'appartenant pas à l'élite étaient convaincus qu'un citoyen honorait de la même manière ses devoirs en servant dans la marine ou dans l'armée de terre. Il leur tenait donc à coeur que les Athéniens combattant en mer obtiennent la même reconnaissance de leur bravoure. Traditionnellement, l'aretē était définie en fonction de ce que les hoplites devaient accomplir en se battant sur terre. Cependant, la manière de combattre des marins était nettement différente. Par conséquent, les reconnaître comme courageux posait un problème, puisqu'ils ne répondaient pas strictement à la définition de l'aretē telle qu'elle était appliquée aux hoplites. Les orateurs publics et les dramaturges identifièrent deux manières de contourner ce problème: parfois, ils mettaient en exergue les aspects des combats en mer par lesquels les marins répondaient aux critères traditionnels du courage, ou tout au moins s'en approchaient. Plus souvent encore, ils utilisaient tout simplement une nouvelle définition de l'aretē, considérant que le courage consistait à braver les dangers du champ de bataille malgré les risques. Puisque cette nouvelle définition n'était plus liée aux hoplites, elle pouvait facilement s'appliquer aux marins. Tout cela différait grandement de la vision négative des marins que les Athéniens classiques avaient héritée de leurs ancêtres, et c'est ainsi que le dēmos est parvenu à redéfinir les valeurs aristocratiques traditionnelles dans le domaine militaire.
2015, History of Political Thought
This article explores the political implications of Euripides’ Medea. Drawing on Aristotle’s and Nietzsche’s readings of Euripidean tragedy, I will show that Euripides’ play brings to the attention of its audience that the Greek democratic ideal of persuasion can also be used by a foreign woman in her demand for justice. Thus, Euripides at once advocates the civic ideals of the Athenian polis and points to its injustices, in particular with regard to women and ‘barbarian’ foreigners. But at the same time, Euripides emphasizes that Medea’s politics of violent revenge demonstrates not only the error in her judgment (hamartia) but also the deeply wounded moral psychology of the oppressed and marginalised people. The article finally examines the contributions of Euripides’ tragic storytelling to political theory and democratic citizenship with particular reference to the concepts of justice, hospitality, compassion and ‘enlarged mentality’.
2015
paper or electronic formats. The author retains ownership of the copyright in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts fiom it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. L'auteur a accordé une licence non exclusive permettant à la Bibliothèque nationale du Canada de reproduire, prêter, distribuer ou vendre des copies de cette thèse sous la forme de microfiche/film, de reproduction sur papier ou sur format électronique. L'auteur conserve la propriété du droit d'auteur qui protège cette thèse. Ni la thèse ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci ne doivent être imprimés ou autrement reproduits sans son autorisation.
Poulheria Kyriakou, Antonios Rengakos (Eds.), Wisdom and Folly in Euripides, Berlin / Boston 2016, pp. 45-63
In this paper I propose to investigate how Euripides frames the phenomena of wisdom and folly, in order to distinguish between mortals and the gods. Both the triumph of reason and its breakdown are subject to the relativism that derives from human ideas of good judgement, which are apparently different from the gods’. In his tragedies, Euripides outlines characters who wonder whether it is possible to define wisdom unambiguously, as the result of cognitive effort. We will look at examples of a plausible double system of values, and at the difficulty of being able to attach coherent definitions of both wisdom and folly to the very same phenomena, which indicates the inadequacy of human language and its incapability of signifying reality. These examples bring out an interesting aspect of Euripides’ incessant exploration of the meaning of the divine.
A slightly different version of this article has appeared in Greece and Rome 61.2 (2014) 174-93.
1999
2016, Chora 7: Intervals in the Philosophy of Architecture (edited by Alberto Pérez-Gómez and Stephen Parcell)
"This essay initiates a new approach to the architectural interpretation of chōra by considering the pre-philosophical meanings of chōra, as an inhabited “region” or “land,” and by drawing attention to certain situationally transformative scenes from Athenian drama in which chōra appears in the script. Through this approach, I intend to reveal the relatively ordinary meanings of chōra from the time just before Plato recast it, in Timaeus, as a highly enigmatic entity fundamental to cosmological formation and human making. Unfortunately, Jacques Derrida, whose philosophy of deconstruction influenced architectural theory in the 1980’s and 90’s, generally ignored and even dismissed the “ordinary” meanings and contexts of chōra, in favor of its more abstract “paradoxes and aporias.” This essay counters that tendency with a hermeneutic approach. By taking a fresh look at primary sources, I aim to recover an understanding of the common yet complex world in which chōra originally came into being as a philosophically and architecturally suggestive concept. I believe this approach can help us to recognize not only where Plato’s notion of chōra was coming from, but also how chōra may remain relevant for present-day architects striving, amid politically and ecologically vexed circumstances, to engage and engender meaningful change."
The Athenian judicial system would be, were it to permeate all aspects of the society of its time, we go from what is theoretically possible to a description of what is real. At no time, even in Euripides, is there any open criticism of the rule of law, nor is the validity of the democratic institutions questioned, but there is an evolution in the consideration of these. Aeschylus is the tragedian who trusts in the power of truth, assuming without doubt the capacity of the human being to arrive at truth because his only mission is to discover, through rhetoric, what the gods have already inscribed within him. On the other hand, Euripides, knowing all the rhetorical mechanisms and managing them with great mastery, centers his interest on exposing possible shortfalls here, those in which society undermines its foundations. Without openly criticizing the values rooted in Athens, he hints at its deficiencies and allows us to intuit, without explicitly proposing it, what could be a new social order, one more in line with the real principles from which it arose. On different lines from those of Aeschylus, Euripides also seeks to justify respect for the legal order, not in its antiquity or in the effectiveness of its application (Harris 2004: 35), but in its goodness and the fact of it being in accordance with human nature. Such an approach would prevent society from being able to identify moral and social norms and to disassociate the right order from the divine order.
delivered at the Classical Association Annual Meeting in Leicester (April 8, 2018) in the "Tibullus Beyond Elegy" panel
Contributions by K. Bradley (Notre Dame), C. Champion (Syracuse), W. Dominik (Otago), S. Frangoulidis (Crete), E. Gee (Sydney), S. Halliwell (St Andrews), M. Helzle (Case Western Reserve), J. Hilton (KwaZulu-Natal), V. Howan (Massey), S. Ireland (Warwick), B. Kytzler (KwaZulu Natal), E. Lockhead (Canterbury), D. Markus (Michigan), S. Newmyer (Duquesne), E. Ndiaye (Orléans), A. Nice (Reed), L. Pedroni (Austria), P. Roche (Otago), H. Roisman (Colby), R. Scodel (Michigan), L. Warman (Toronto), S. Wear (Dublin), M. Wright (Exeter).
2014
The question of the relationship between ethnicity and morality lies at the heart of Euripides’s Andromache. Despite the ample work done on the play’s cultural import and Euripides’s costuming technique, there remains a need to articulate one of the most significant strategies by which the play explores the nature of ethnic and moral difference. This article focuses on Hermione’s appearance and the way the Spartan ethos is drawn out of the character’s skeue. This discussion intends to add to the arguments for the dramatic force of her costume, by unfolding Euripides’s unique play with the mythic, literary, and performative associations of the female Dorian dress in the Andromache.