Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World 3110795965, 9783110795967, 9783110980356, 9783110980387, 2022939320

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Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World

Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World Edited by Eric Csapo, Hans Rupprecht Goette, J. Richard Green, Brigitte Le Guen, Elodie Paillard, Jelle Stoop and Peter Wilson

ISBN 978-3-11-079596-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-098035-6 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-098038-7 Library of Congress Control Number: 2022939320 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2022 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: View of the theatre of Taormina with Mount Etna. Photo: Hans R. Goette Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Preface For more than half a century, scholars have been exploring the relationship between theatre – especially tragic theatre – and democracy. And yet, from the very beginning, theatre appealed just as much to autocrats as to democrats and it continued to thrive in autocratic states for more than half a millennium after the extinction of the Classical democracies. Knowing of no single volume devoted to theatre and autocracy, whether as a general phenomenon or even in relation to specific tyrants, monarchs or emperors, in 2017 the heptad of editors of this collection initiated a project, ‘Theatre and Autocracy in Ancient Greece’. It was clear from the outset that the sheer scope of the subject, in terms of chronology and materials, demanded collective effort, all the more so when we decided that it was arbitrary to exclude the Roman experience altogether from our purview. The project was based in Sydney (Wilson, Csapo, Green, Stoop), with partners in France (Le Guen), Germany (Goette), and Switzerland (Paillard). This volume makes no pretence to furnish a comprehensive account of the phenomenon and aspires to offer not final, but encouraging first, words. Earlier versions of nine of its chapters were presented at a Colloquium – ‘Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World’ – held at the University of Sydney 26–27 July, 2018. The presentations of five speakers at that event – Anne Duncan, Simon Goldhill, Chris Kraus, Ian Rutherford and Jelle Stoop – were unavailable for publication in this book, and we take this opportunity to thank them warmly for the enormous contribution they made to the success of the event. Simon Goldhill’s paper – ‘Antigone and the Autocrats’ – was published in a collection edited by Phiroze Vasunia, The Politics of Form in Greek Literature (Bloomsbury 2021), under the title ‘Sophocles’ Antigone, Feminism’s Hegel and the Politics of Form’. We were very fortunate that Marie-Hélène Garelli and Mali Skotheim subsequently accepted our invitation to join the project and contribute their expertise in the history of theatre in the Roman early Imperial period. We take pleasure in thanking the following institutions and individuals for their support. The Colloquium was made possible by the award of a Discovery Project Grant (DP170100260) from the Australian Research Council. Further assistance came from the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney in the form a conference support grant. Our thanks to its then Head, Professor Barbara Caine. A generous gift from an anonymous donor made it possible to expand our provision of graduate and early-career travel bursaries. Simon Goldhill came to Sydney as the Sixth William Ritchie Memorial Lecturer, supported by the bequest of the late William Ritchie. We thank the Centre for Classical and Near Eastern Studies of Australia at the University of Sydney for hosting the Colloquium, and the University’s (former) Nicholson Museum, and its supportive staff Jamie Fraser and Candace Richards, for hosting its reception. Alastair Blanshard, Frances Muecke and Paul Roche kindly served as guest chairs of sessions. Billy Kennedy provided the entire event with superb logistical planning and amiable help of all kinds, ably assisted by students Janek Drevikovsky and Daniel Hanigan. The work of the editors on this volume has been further supported by a number of institutions: the British Academy (Csapo); the Swiss National Science Foundation (Paillard); All Souls and Corpus Christi Colleges, Oxford (Wilson). We are extremely fortunate to have had (once more) the experienced and learned editorial and indexing assistance of Andrew Hartwig, as well as the research assistance provided by Emmy Stavropoulou, who also prepared the bibliography. Eric Csapo, Hans R. Goette, J. Richard Green, Brigitte Le Guen, Elodie Paillard, Jelle Stoop, Peter Wilson

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-202

Contents Preface 

 V

List of Abbreviations 

 IX

Eric Csapo, Elodie Paillard & Peter Wilson Theatre and Autocracy: A Paradox for Theatre History 

 1

Part I: Theatre and Greek Autocrats Eric Csapo & Peter Wilson 1 Greek Theatre and Autocracy in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries 

 17

Brigitte Le Guen 2 Artists of Dionysus and Ptolemaic Rulers in Egypt and Cyprus 

 37

Christopher de Lisle 3 The Autocratic Theatre of Hieron II 

 55

Paul Touyz 4 Autocratic Rulers and Hellenistic Satyrplay 

 71

Part II: Theatre and Roman Autocrats Elodie Paillard 5 Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances 

 87

Marie-Hélène Garelli 6 Drama and Power in Rome from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (First-Second Centuries AD)  Mali Skotheim 7 Augustan Policy Towards the Greek Dramatic Festivals 

 105

 117

J. Richard Green 8 Theatres and Autocracy in the Roman Period: An Example in Microcosm 

 127

Hans Rupprecht Goette 9 The Portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander in Roman Contexts: Evidence of the Reception of the Theatre Classics in Late Republican and Imperial Rome   149 Ewen Bowie 10 Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire 

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Part III: Representations of Autocrats and Oligarchs in Drama Lucia Athanassaki 11 Charms of Autocracy, Charms of Democracy: Euripides’ Athenian Leaders in the Light of Civic Iconography  Simon Perris 12 Oligarchs in Greek Tragedy 

 199

Robert Cowan 13 Fault on Both Sides: Constructive Destruction in Varius’ Thyestes  Bibliography 

 229

General Index 

 261

Index locorum 

 269

List of Contributors 

 279

 219

 183

List of Abbreviations The abbreviations we use for Greek and Latin authors follow those found in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, fourth edition 2012 by S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth and E. Eidinow. Journal abbreviations are those used by the American Journal of Archaeology 104 (2000) 10–24, supplemented where necessary by the abbreviations used in L’Année Philologique. Other abbreviations are listed below. AV CDL CEG CID CIG CIIP CIL Corinth VIII 1 Corinth VIII 3 DK FD III FGE FGrH IAph2007 ID I.Didyma I.Ephesos

IG IGR III I.Iasos ILS I.Magnesia I.Mylasa I.Napoli I.Olympia I.Oropos I.Paphos I.Salamis I.Sicily I.Smyrna I.Thespiae LBW LIMC OGIS PCG PIR2 RC RE R-O SEG

Aneziri, Sophia 2003: Die Vereine der dionysischen Techniten im Kontext des hellenistischen Gesellschaft, 2003, Stuttgart. Michel, Anaïs 2020: Chypre à l’épreuve de la domination lagide. Testimonia épigraphiques sur la société et les institutions chypriotes à l’époque hellénistique, Athens. Hansen, Peter A. 1983–1989: Carmina epigraphica graeca, 2 vols., Berlin and New York. Rougemont, Georges, Bousquet, Jean, Bélis, Annie and Lefèvre, François 1977: Corpus des inscriptions de Delphes, Paris. Boeckh, August 1828–1877: Corpus inscriptionum graecarum, 4 vols., Berlin. Corpus inscriptionum Iudaeae/Palaestinae, 2010- , Berlin. Corpus inscriptionum latinarum, 1861- , Berlin. Meritt, Benjamin D. 1931: Corinth VIII.1: The Greek Inscriptions, 1896–1926, Cambridge MA. Kent, John H. 1966: Corinth VIII.3: The Inscriptions, 1926–1950, Princeton. Diels, Hermann and Kranz, Walther 1951–1952: Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., Berlin. Bourguet, Émile, Colin, Gaston, Daux, Georges, Salač, Antoine, Flacelière, Robert, Plassart, André, Pouilloux, Jean and Valmin, Natan 1929- : Fouilles de Delphes III: Épigraphie, Paris. Page, Denys L. 1981: Further Greek Epigrams, Cambridge. Jacoby, Felix et al. 1923- : Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin and Leiden. Reynolds, Joyce, Roueché, Charlotte and Bodard, Gabriel 2007: Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, http://insaph.kcl.ac.uk/. Durrbach, Félix, Roussel, Pierre, Launey, Marcel, Plassart, André and Coupry, Jacques 1926–1972: Inscriptions de Délos, 7 vols., Paris. Rehm, Albert 1958: Didyma, II. Die Inschriften, Berlin. Wankel, Hermann, Börker, Christoph, Merkelbach, Reinhold, Engelmann, Helmut, Knibbe, Dieter, Nollé, Johannes, Meriç, Recep and Şahin, Sencer 1979–1984: Die Inschriften von Ephesos (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 11–17), 8 vols., Bonn. Inscriptiones Graecae, 1873- , Berlin. Cagnat, René, Toutain, Jules, Lafaye, Georges and Henry, Victor 1901–1927: Inscriptiones graecae ad res romanas pertinentes, 3 vols., Paris. Blümel, Wolfgang 1985: Die Inschriften von Iasos (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 28), 2 vols., Bonn. Dessau, Hermann 1892–1916: Inscriptiones latinae selectae, 3 vols., Berlin. Kern, Otto 1900: Die Inschriften von Magnesia am Maeander, Berlin. Blümel, Wolfgang 1987–1988: Die Inschriften von Mylasa (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 34–35), 2 vols., Bonn. Miranda, Elena 1990–1995: Iscrizioni greche d’Italia, Napoli, 2 vols., Rome. Dittenberger, Wilhelm and Purgold, Karl 1896: Die Inschriften von Olympia, Berlin. Petrakos, Vasilios C. 1997: Οἱ ἐπιραφὲς τοῦ Ὠρωποῦ, Athens. Cayla, Jean-Baptiste 2018: Les Inscriptions de Paphos. La cité chypriote sous la domination lagide et à l’époque impériale, Lyon. Pouilloux, Jean, Roesch, Paul, Marcillet-Jaubert, Jean 1987: Salamine de Chypre XIII, Testimonia Salaminia 2. Corpus épigraphique, Lyon. Inscriptions of Sicily, Oxford. http://sicily.classics.ox.ac.uk/ Petzl, Georg 1982–1990: Die Inschriften von Smyrna (Inschriften griechischer Städte aus Kleinasien 23–24), 2 vols., Bonn. Roesch, Paul 2007–2009: Les Inscriptions de Thespies, Lyon. Le Bas, Philippe and Waddington, William H. 1851–1870: Voyage archéologique en Grèce et en Asie Mineure, 3 vols., Paris. Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae, 1981–1999, Zurich and Munich. Dittenberger, Wilhelm 1903–1905: Orientis graeci inscriptiones selectae. Supplementum sylloges inscriptionum graecarum, 2 vols., Leipzig. Kassel, Rudolf and Austin, Colin 1983–2001: Poetae comici graeci, 8 vols., Berlin and New York. Groag, Edmund, Stein, Arthur, Petersen, Leiva, Wachtel, Klaus, Heil, Matthäus, Eck, Werner, Heinrichs, Johannes 1933–2015 (2nd ed.): Prosopographia imperii romani saec. I. II. III., Berlin. Welles, C. Bradford 1934: Royal Correspondence in the Hellenistic Period. A study in Greek Epigraphy, New Haven. Wissowa, Georg et al. 1893–1980: Paulys Realencyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Stuttgart. Rhodes, Peter J. and Osborne, Robin G. 2003: Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 BC, Oxford. Supplementum epigraphicum graecum, 1923- , Leiden.

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Syll.3 TAM II TE Tit. Cam. TrGF

Dittenberger, Wilhelm 1915–1924 (3rd ed.): Sylloge inscriptionum graecarum, 4 vols., Leipzig. Kalinka, Ernst 1920–1944: Tituli Asiae Minoris, II. Tituli Lyciae linguis graeca et latina conscripti, 3 fasc., Vienna. Le Guen, Brigitte 2001: Les Associations de Technites dionysiaques à l’époque hellénistique, vol. 1, Corpus documentaire, Nancy. Segre, Mario and Pugliese Carratelli, Giovanni 1949–1951: ‘Tituli Camirenses’, ASAtene 27–29, N.S. 11–13, 141–318. Kannicht, Richard et al. 1971–2004: Tragicorum graecorum fragmenta, 5 vols., Göttingen.

Eric Csapo, Elodie Paillard & Peter Wilson

Theatre and Autocracy: A Paradox for Theatre History ‘Autocracy’ in this volume means one-man rule. It brings kings, tyrants, generalissimos, and emperors under a single rubric. The category is more modern than ancient, but not for that reason unhelpful to think with.1 We avoid the closest ancient term monarchia because its English derivative ‘monarchy’ imports too many anachronistic connotations from modern history. Besides, monarchia appears in this comprehensive sense only in more abstract political discourse. In ordinary speech monarchia seems a far less coherent category than demokratia or oligarchia. It is not just technical but ethical differences that separate the varieties of monarchia, above all questions of constitutional legitimacy, and for this reason the category is too abstract for most normal political discourse, whereas kings, tyrants, generalissimos and emperors rarely mix in the same conceptual space. For theatre history, however, there is one thing that unites all varieties of autocrat: a keen enthusiasm for theatre and, often, a deft management of its resources for the consolidation of personal power. Often there is an inverse relation between an autocrat’s legitimacy and his support for theatre.

Theatre Politics Autocratic regimes dominate the first millennium of theatre history. From the fifth century BC to the sixth century AD autocrats were theatre’s most lavish sponsors. Autocrats built antiquity’s most magnificent theatres. Autocrats patronised (or owned) poets, actors, theatre musicians, pantomimes and mimes. Two of the great Hellenistic actors’ associations assumed direct responsibility for the cult of the local king. Theatre was fully integrated into Imperial cult. Yet, this is the first general volume on autocracy and theatre in antiquity. The topic has been more than neglected. Until recently scholarship treated autocratic theatre as a paradox and aberration. For the Classical period, two generations of scholarship have evinced theatre’s democratic qualities. Much effort and ingenuity has gone into showing how democracy is part of theatre’s DNA. It can be found in the form2 and themes3 of drama – all its genres generally,4 and severally: tragedy,5 comedy,6 even satyrplay.7 Classical drama embodied the democratic values of frank debate,8 plurivocalism,9 dialogicity,10 universal accessibility,11 and popular participation.12 The democratic ethos shaped theatre’s poetic and musical styles.13 Democratic practice informed its festival and competitive context:14 organisation, sponsorship,15 and the process of judging its winners.16 The physical space of the ancient theatre, both auditoria and performance spaces, reflected democratic principles.17 The very idea of democracy appears to have adhered to the broadly uniform theatre culture that spread throughout Classical Greece in the fifth and 1 Cf. Luraghi 2013a. 2 Rose 1992, 185–330; Wohl 2015. 3 Seaford 1995; Allan and Kelly 2013, 92: “the one consistent political line that tragedy does take is [. . .] the repeated portrayal of one-man rule [. . .] as prone to error, paranoia, and disaster”. 4 From the vast literature we single out only a few particularly helpful and/or influential works: Goldhill 2000b; Henderson 2007; Rosenbloom 2012. 5 Vernant and Vidal Naquet 1972; Euben 1986a; Croally 1994; Burian 2011. See Athanassaki and Perris, this volume. 6 Henderson 1990; Henderson 1998; Olson 2008; Rosenbloom 2014. 7 Most theories of satyrplay regard the drama as having the function of creating civic solidarity in various ways within a pro-democratic audience (good overview in Lämmle 2014, 93–98): but for more explicit connections with democratic ideology, see Winkler 1989; Paganelli 1989. 8 Burian 2011; Paillard 2017; Carter 2018a. 9 Hall 1997; Allan and Kelly 2013; for Bakhtinian ‘polyphony’, see next note. 10 Edwards 2002; Platter 2007; Platter 2016. 11 For the inclusiveness of the theatre audience, extending to women, and slaves: see Roselli 2011, 118–194, and Le Guen 2018b, 149–174. 12 Goldhill 1997; Revermann 2006b; Paillard 2017. 13 Csapo 2004; LeVen 2014. 14 Goldhill 1986; Goldhill 2000a; Wilson 2009. 15 Wilson 2000; Wilson 2011. 16 Marshall and Willigenburg 2004. 17 Carlson 1989, 139; Wiles 1999; Wiles 2000, 89–127; Roselli 2011. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-001

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fourth centuries BC, and to some degree stayed stuck long afterwards.18 Even the origins of theatre, at least theatre as we know it, are probably to be found in democracy. The hard evidence suggests that the creation of theatre was the new Athenian democracy’s earliest cultural initiative (and probably not created, as Hellenistic scholars claimed, during the tyranny of the Pisistratids).19 If nearly all aspects of theatre culture are so very democratic, how do we explain theatre’s powerful appeal to autocrats? Within a generation of theatre’s creation the tyrants of Syracuse made comedy and tragedy part of their extensive cultural program.20 Within the first two centuries of its existence theatre was adopted by autocrats in Cyrene (possibly as early as the mid fifth century BC), in Macedon (about 410 BC), in Thessaly (by the 370s BC), in the Black Sea area (Heraclea and Cimmerian Bosporus by 360 BC), and in Caria from the first half of the fourth century BC. Does this fact prove that there is nothing democratic about theatre? Or was autocratic theatre fundamentally different from Athenian theatre? Or is it possible that the tyrants just got carried away with their enthusiasm for theatre and embraced a cultural practice that tended to undermine their own position? Though the general consensus is for a significant connection between theatre and democracy, there have of course been dissenting views, especially in the case of tragedy. In the debate, theatre and drama’s appeal to autocrats is often adduced in evidence against the general principle. Jasper Griffin and Peter Rhodes, for example, claimed that the alleged origin of tragedy under the Pisistratid tyranny formed an obstacle to belief in any essential connection between theatre and democracy.21 Considering both ends of the historical spectrum, David Carter pointed out that “Aeschylus was performed for the tyrants at Syracuse” and that the Dionysia in Athens “was celebrated long after the end of democracy”.22 Recent interest in drama outside Athens has brought the problem of autocracy into clearer focus: Kate Bosher introduced her volume on theatre in the Greek West with the words “this work shows that the widely accepted connection between Greek drama and democracy [. . .] does not hold in the west”.23 Another possible response is to argue that democratic and autocratic theatre were two very different phenomena in antiquity. Anne Duncan, for example, notes that “some critics have got round the awkward fact” that the apparently democratic Aeschylus performed tragedies in honour of the tyrant Hieron “by arguing that Aetnaeae does not count as a tragedy, while others have argued that the play must have undermined Hieron’s regime”.24 The claim that autocratic theatre is essentially different from democratic theatre has in the past been by far the most common response (see the next section). But recent scholarship tends to undermine sharp distinctions between the form and contents of theatre under the two regimes, both during and after the Classical period. On the contrary, it stresses that much (though perhaps not all) that has been characterised as fundamentally or essentially democratic in Athenian or Classical theatre is also found in autocratic theatre. We could begin a list of continuities and similarities with the theatre-buildings themselves. Even in the Classical period autocrats vied with democracies, and one another, to build monumental theatres, big enough to hold a representative portion of the local population, and some autocrats may be responsible for formal innovations to increase capacity, comfort or improve acoustics and acting space.25 Though the theatres built by Classical democracies were unsurpassed in the size of their auditoria, especially the theatres of Megalopolis or Argos with their seating capacity of roughly 20,000, many Hellenistic and Roman theatres came close: e.g. the theatre at Ephesus (estimated by Sear at 19,717) or the most capacious of Rome’s five public theatres, the Theatre of Marcellus, with seating for an estimated 15,100.26 In the Hellenistic and Imperial periods no regional capital lacked a large theatre.27 18 Csapo and Wilson 2020a; Paillard, and Bowie, this volume. 19 Connor 1989; West 1989; Scullion 2002, 81; Csapo 2015; Cropp 2019, ix-xi; Csapo and Wilson, this volume. 20 Csapo and Wilson, this volume, offer a detailed history of autocratic theatre in the fifth and fourth centuries BC, free from the grip of a paradigm that postulates exclusively democratic theatre in the fifth century followed by the decline of both theatre and democracy in the fourth (on which paradigm, see further below). 21 Griffin 1998, 47; Rhodes 2003, 106. The argument relies on the mythology surrounding Thespis, which is likely an invention of the late fourth century BC: see Csapo 2015, 88–92; Csapo and Wilson, this volume. 22 Carter 2004, 3. 23 Bosher 2012, 8; cf. Stewart 2017, esp. 6. 24 Duncan 2011, 72. 25 Architectural innovations of Classical autocrats: Moretti 2014, 135–137. 26 Sear 2006, 27, 55, 57, 62, 70, 386, 400. 27 The great Hellenistic theatre of Syracuse, as rebuilt by Hieron II, had a capacity of around 15,800. Christopher de Lisle (this volume) shows how this theatre played a central role within a comprehensive architectural and ideological plan that branded the civic landscape of Syracuse

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Theatre never ceased to be a place where the people gathered and engaged in dialogue with their autocrat, and even, in some important sense, ruled.28 Hellenistic and Imperial audiences were no less large, comprehensive and diverse than in Classical Athens. It is true that they were often less mixed, strictly speaking:29 in later times, Roman times especially, seating was decidedly more hierarchic.30 But these class divisions, if they created a visual order, seem not to have robbed the auditorium of its voice or disempowered it in any way. On the contrary, social division in the theatre often encouraged the promotion of sectarian interests and aggravated factionalism.31 In the time of the Imperial autocracy theatres and amphitheatres were the only place the popular voice was heard and it was a force to be reckoned with, far more vocal and participatory than in Classical Athens. The audience, filled with claques and factions, often became vociferous and unruly, shouting acclamations, mocking the emperor, or making demands of him, and sometimes rioting.32 “Un jeu complexe et à haut risque” for all involved, but especially for the autocrats.33 Was autocratic drama distinctly different from democratic drama? Over the past decade scholarship has engaged more intensively than ever with non-Athenian Classical theatre, fourth-century theatre, and post-Classical theatre. The general result of these more recent studies contradicts the traditional view that drama changed radically, once removed from Athens and the context of the allegedly more vigorous fifth-century democracy. We will deal with this important shift in perspective in the next section of this introduction, but it will be helpful here to summarise the results. We appear now to be more disposed to see continuity than difference between democratic and non-democratic drama. In the Classical period autocrats favoured and sponsored all the same genres as did democratic Athens, especially tragedy, but including comedy, satyrplay, and even men’s and boys’ lyric choruses.34 Indeed when poets and titles are recorded, they are mostly poets and titles known from the Athenian stage (Epicharmus may be the exception, though he also came to be well known in Athens, and is said by Aristotle to have had a powerful influence on the development of Athenian comedy, though he was never, so far as we know, performed in Athens).35 When we find the names of actors who performed in autocratic theatre, they are generally international stars who also performed in democratic theatre. There is no reason to believe that there was any significant difference in the genres or manner and style of performance between democratic and autocratic drama. It is Classical oligarchies that seem to avoid drama generally and avoid tragedy specifically, or that appear to have regional forms of comedy that do not conform to the theatrical koine of the Classical period known from Athens and many other cities.36 with the identity of the autocrat. For the Empire, Dick Green (this volume) shows how inscriptions, decoration and even the variety of marbles used in the construction of three theatres during the Antonine period (Paphos, Patara and Sessa Aurunca) gave voice to the incomparable benefits of the imperial system. 28 De Lisle, this volume, stresses the importance of Hieron II’s theatre as a site for facilitating and structuring dialogue between the autocrat and his subjects. 29 Le Guen 2018b, 170. 30 There is plentiful evidence, for example, of the presence of women in the Hellenistic and Imperial theatres, though the question is so vexed for Classical Athens. Hierarchic seating: Rawson 1987; Imperial Greek audience: Skotheim 2016, 98–128. For Syracuse, de Lisle, this volume. 31 For example, the Roman knights who occupied the front rows of the theatre auditorium were particularly effective in vociferously defending their class interests (Davenport 2019, 375–380; Garelli, this volume). 32 For the Early Empire: Bollinger 1969; Arnaud 2004. For the late empire Browning 1952; Cameron 1976 (for the Republic and Early Empire, 157–192, 223–249); Roueché 1993; Potter 2011. As David Potter points out, audience self-assertion grows in rough correlation to autocratic control (Potter 1996). Audience self-assertion escalated through the activities of increasingly powerful and organised claques, best known from the Late Empire, but present already in the time of Plautus (esp. Amph. 65–86), developed in conjunction with the intense political rivalries of the Late Republic (Vanderbroeck 1987, 77–81, 143–144; Morstein-Marx 2004, 119–159), and became institutionalised during the Early Empire (Slater 1994; Potter 1996; Garelli, this volume). The art of mobilising theatrocracy was in no way distinctly Roman. This is clear from the evidence for an advanced state of its development, from at least the time of Tiberius, in Alexandria, whence many techniques and technicians were imported by Nero to excite audience partisanship in Rome (Philo In Flacc. 33–42, 135–139; Dio Chrys. Or. 32 (with Jones 1978, 41–42); Suet. Ner. 20, 3; Tac. Ann. 14, 15, 5; Cass. Dio 61, 20, 4; 66, 8, 2–6; Suet. Vesp. 19, 2). 33 Arnaud 2004, 226. Marie-Hélène Garelli (this volume) explores the forces that constrained the early Emperors in their attempts to exert control over theatre audiences and theatre culture more generally – one of which was the close ties that existed between some members of the Roman elite and the claques and factions that supported the performers themselves. 34 Csapo and Wilson 2020a, 14; Csapo and Wilson, this volume. 35 Arist. Poet. 1449b; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 327–328. 36 Csapo and Wilson 2020a, 11–13. Simon Perris (this volume) offers an intriguing take on the subject of oligarchy and tragedy: contrary to the dominant, polarising view that sees tyranny, as represented in tragedies produced in fifth-century Athens, as the conceptual opposite of democracy, oligarchic practices and ideas were in fact explored with some nuance and even sympathy in a number of tragedies, though this voice falls notably silent after the Athenian experience of oligarchic extremism in 411 BC.

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In the Hellenistic and Imperial period all three dramatic genres continue to be performed both in their Classical forms and as new productions that adhere to a large extent to the Classical models. The Classical tragedies (predominantly Euripides) were performed, more or less intact (see below), in festival competitions of ‘old tragedies’ on public stages until the second century AD.37 ‘Old satyrplay’ similarly was performed in Athens (in separate competitions) until the mid third century BC.38 Competitions of ‘old comedy’ continued into the later second and perhaps into the third century AD.39 Men’s and boys’ lyric (dithyramb) competitions continue to be very popular in the Hellenistic period and survive well into the Empire,40 and these included revivals of the once highly politicised new dithyramb of the late fifth century, and the ‘New Music’ it championed, once condemned by conservative critics for its expressions of radical democracy, but now “accepted by all as ‘classic’”.41 At the same time new tragedies, satyrplays and comedies continued to be performed in theatres until at least the mid-second century AD,42 and, even here, contrary to the long-standing tradition, recent studies stress continuity over difference. Post-fifth-century remains of tragedy are exiguous, though much better for the fourth century BC than for any later period. For fourth-century tragedy, the most recent studies detect no change in fundamentals, including tragedy’s ability to present many and divergent points of view in frank debate.43 Even the one substantial remnant of Hellenistic tragedy, Ezechiel’s Exagoge, has recently been defended as adhering to fifth-century standards.44 Comedy written after the fifth century BC is much better represented and here the situation is considerably more complex. A strong case can be made that the genre was modified to suit less democratic contexts. From the time of Platonios it has been generally recognised that New Comedy lacks the political engagement of Old Comedy: the former is non-controversial, universalising, ethical and integrative; the latter topical, ad hominem, provocatively satirical and partisan. But the degree to which Menander, the archetypical author of New Comedy, is ‘democratic’ or ‘undemocratic’ remains a point of controversy, largely because he is not overtly one or the other.45 The politics of Menandrian comedy lie in avoiding the political. By offering imaginary solutions to social problems, particularly those rooted in economic and status disparity, the plays encourage political complacency, and construct social solidarity, albeit a solidarity generalised for export to Greek states of any political hue.46 This seems a tangible modification for different political regimes, especially given the scarcity of evidence for the revival on the public stage of what we call Old Comedy after the Classical period, in stark contrast for the evidence for lasting popularity of New Comedy.47 It is, however, important to note (as mentioned above), that in Classical times Old and Middle comedy were performed in autocratic theatres.48 Moreover, what we hear of the performance of Roman comedy in the Late Republic and Early Empire suggests a certain political brinkmanship, combined with an audience 37 Nervegna 2014b, 166; Griffith 2018, 233–241; Le Guen 2018a. Continued performance of Classical tragedy need not entail a continuity of the meanings attached to it. Hans Goette (this volume) shows that the portraits of the canonical three Classical Athenian tragedians found in Roman contexts from the Late Republic to Imperial times, along with those of Menander, are (with one partial exception) never found inside theatres, but in collections of members of the Roman elite, along with portraits of other Greek writers and philosophers. The implication is that they demonstrate no specific interest in the theatre as such, but function rather as symbols of a generalised idea of Greek paideia. 38 See Touyz, this volume. We have no evidence for old satyrplay in cities other than Athens. 39 Nervegna 2013, 99–110. Jones 1993, 46–47, and Peterson 2019, 4–5, 74, for possible stagings of Old Comedy in the second century AD. See also Bowie, this volume. 40 Shear 2013; Rutherford 2013. 41 Griffith 2018, 208–229 (quotation 229); on the reception of Timotheus, see Csapo and Wilson 2010; for dithyramb and Classical tyranny: Csapo and Wilson, this volume. 42 Skotheim 2016, 182, 325. 43 Taplin 2014; Duncan and Liapis 2018; Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2018; Dunn 2018; Carter 2018b. 44 Stewart 2018; Lanfranchi 2018. 45 See the full discussion by Nervegna 2013, 25–54 and the surveys by Webster 1953, 100–110; Sommerstein 2014 and Rosenbloom 2014 (301 “Ancient scholars [. . .] were correct to identify democracy as a variable basic to the development of Athenian comedy”). Lape 2004 sees Menander’s plays as fundamentally democratic, against the norm that finds them apolitical or even supportive of the pro-Macedonian politics of Demetrius of Phaleron (Wiles 1984; Major 1997). 46 Konstan 2010; Konstan 2018. 47 See note 39, above. 48 Comedy at Gelon’s and Hieron’s court: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 308–345; Archelaus’ court: Praxiphanes, On History fr. 21 Matelli (18 Wehrli; Marcellin. 29–30); comedy at Philip’s court: Dem. 19, 192–195; comedy at Alexander’s court: Plut. Alex. 29, 6; De Alex. fort. 334e; comedy in the Cimmerian Bosporus, mid fourth century: Csapo 2020a, 168–169 and Fig. 4 (cf. Braund 2019, 101–102, Fig. 6, 2, where the relief in question is said, mistakenly in our view, to show satyrs).

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eager to extract political messages.49 During the Empire in the Greek West there is some evidence for productions of new comedy that imitated the most politically mordant features of Classical Old Comedy, such as the personal abuse of public figures: as Aelius Aristides attests for the comic competitions of the Dionysia of second-century AD Smyrna,50 and there is evidence for competitions of new ‘Old Comedy’ elsewhere during the Empire.51 The political outspokenness of mime enjoyed even greater indulgence in Imperial times.52 It is not only the genres that survive, more or less intact. The immediate context in which they were performed is recognisably the same. Drama continued to be performed in public festivals, in large public theatres, in prize competitions, preceded by civic rituals,53 above all the awarding of public honours, and followed by the awarding of prizes by panels of judges (separate from the autocrat, and in theory impartial). Post-Classical theatre prided itself in being very Classical. Epigraphic texts relating to the organisation and conduct of post-Classical Greek festivals take great pains to stress their conservatism and continuity with the past.54 It appears then that the forms, contents and contexts of theatre culture that have been identified as ‘democratic’ were also for the most part received and embraced by autocrats. If there were differences, they were far more subtle than traditional ancient theatre history would have us believe. How do we deal with this apparent contradiction? Are we to suppose, as some do, that autocrats just liked theatre so much that they were willing to put up with a culture that undermined their positions? Much is written about strategies to control the energy of the theatre public in these times, sometimes leaving the impression that theatre was a necessary evil that autocrats had somehow to tolerate. But autocratic engagement with the theatre suggests much more than naivety or passive resignation. Autocrats frequently took the initiative in building theatres, organising festivals, managing performers, and at times, indeed, actively encouraged audience partisanship. Despite the risks, autocrats frequently attended the theatre in person to face their potentially unruly subjects; some, like Nero, even performed. Festivals and theatres are, not surprisingly, occasions for assassination plots.55 Autocrats evidently felt theatre worth its risks. It is hard to believe that virtually every successful autocrat in antiquity either pursued theatre, remaining ignorant of the fact that it was harmful to his interest, or embraced it, like a destructive passion, despite the harm. Responses to the conundrum of autocratic theatre remain problematic. It is difficult to say that theatre is not democratic, or that autocratic theatre is distinctly different from democratic theatre, or that autocrats just indulged it against their best interests. There may be specific instances where one of these responses may seem to fit, but none of them can explain the phenomenon of autocratic theatre as a whole. There is perhaps a fourth option that need not pit autocratic uses against democratic forms, or the one against the many, by any mutually exclusive either/or logic. In respect of tragedy, Mark Griffith and David Carter have declared: “the ‘politics’ of surviving tragedies can appear at times BOTH (a) highly ‘democratic’ and (b) markedly not democratic (even within the same play)”.56 Can this statement perhaps be generalised to other aspects of theatre? What we mean to suggest is that the same medium can work differently in some pragmatic contexts and even both ways in others. The case could be made (and has), for example, that the internet is a fundamentally democratic medium in its universal accessibility and the fact that, with contemporary social-media platforms, it gives all an equal chance to express their point of view. Over the last few years especially, however, serious concerns have been raised about use of the internet and indeed precisely these social-media platforms in undermining democracy. In particular, ‘authoritarian populists’, have used the internet to bypass traditional media, to delegitimise traditional media, and 49 Beacham 1991, 154–198; Arnaud 2004, 229–232; Manuwald 2011, 98–119. 50 Jones 1994; Peterson 2019, 73–76. Note also the suggestion aired in this volume by Ewen Bowie that, in Greek cities under Roman Imperial rule, the reperformance of Old Comedy would perhaps more likely have had its barbs aimed not against a distant Emperor, but at members of the local civic elite. 51 See Peterson 2019, 52–81; Bowie, this volume. 52 Friedländer 1881, 397–399; Arnaud 2004, 230. 53 Le Guen 1995, 80–82; Chaniotis 2007; Ceccarelli 2010. 54 Skotheim 2016, 176–198. 55 Assassinated in or on their way to the theatre: Philip II of Macedon; Clearchus of Heraclea; Caligula. 56 Griffith and Carter 2011, 3. An important instance of such ideological complexity or apparent dissonance is studied in this volume by Lucia Athanassaki. In an analysis of the ways in which Euripides portrays mythical kings, especially Theseus and his sons, she argues that his shift from advocate of democracy (Suppliant Women) to tyrant (Hippolytus), or the lack of correlation between his stated attachment to democratic values and his actions (Suppliant Women), drew the attention of the audience to the fragility of their democracy, never entirely free from the risk of a return to autocratic rule.

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to manipulate public opinion through unedited ‘fake news’ of their own creation. In this way they use an essentially democratic medium to bypass and undermine normal democratic process. This does not mean that the internet is not still fundamentally in its structure democratic, simply that its usage need not exclusively serve democratic ends. There is, however, another aspect to this analogy that is worth exploring. The authoritarian populists who use the internet to bypass democratic process are also very much concerned to present themselves as champions of the people, and, unlike traditional elites, men of the people who embrace the popular democratic culture of their supporters.57 The modern literature on populism sometimes cites Aristotle on Classical tyranny (Pol. 1310b: “the tyrant derives his power from the people and the majority in opposition to the establishment (ἐπὶ τοὺς γνωρίμους) to defend the people against being wronged by it”).58 The possibility that at least some ancient autocrats liked theatre, not just as a useful tool for propaganda, but as a useful tool with a democratic heritage and form, is perhaps worth consideration.59 Might it be possible that in some cases democratic culture was welcome, because the autocrat was able to present himself as the guarantor of freedom, autonomy, and popular rule (or the guarantor of the conditions that make them possible)?60

Theatre History’s Most Disabling Cliché We mentioned above that scholarship has traditionally encouraged us to expect deep and fundamental differences between fifth-century Athenian drama and later drama, but that in recent years the study of later drama has surprised us by stressing continuities. It will be helpful therefore to confront the presuppositions of the more remote scholarship that made us suppose otherwise, especially because its presuppositions have left a deep and still lasting impression on how we think about almost every aspect of non-Athenian and non-democratic theatre. For the most part these presuppositions may be grouped together under the single broad rubric of ‘decadence-’ or ‘decline-theory’. Belief in a post-fifth century decline in theatre remains the single biggest obstacle to understanding both autocratic and post-Classical theatre history. The theory takes its cues, on the Greek side, from such sources as Plato’s complaints about cultural democracy, which in Laws he called ‘theatrocracy’. Theatrocracy, essentially the power of the theatre audience to express its likes and dislikes, was in Plato’s view the cause of the degeneration of all musical and dramatic forms. Equally influential is Aristotle’s remark in the Rhetoric that actors in his day were more important in the theatre than poets.61 These comments need to be understood as expressions of elite disaffection with contemporary Athenian democracy. They appear to be reinforced by the idealisation of fifth-century Athenian culture that begins already in the fourth century BC, as if the phenomenon constituted a reliable confession of inferiority on the part of later ages.62 On the Roman side, we find Republican writers adapting Plato’s model, notably Cicero, who “used music [including theatre music] as a way of framing the political conflict between optimates and populares, associating ‘good’ music with the aristocratic mos maiorum and ‘bad’ music with a disruptive kind of popular entertainment”.63 During the Empire, particularly in the second century AD, our sources give expression to “the political and cultural elite’s aspiration to revive the role it once played, and the (long-vanished) influence it once exerted, in the constitution and management of theatre policy”.64 For these elite writers, nostalgic for a past in which (they believed) people like 57 Helpful guides to contemporary populism: Mişcoiu 2013, 24–26; Higgins 2017, 3; Schroeder 2018, 60–81; Norris and Inglehart 2019, 55, 66. 58 Delsol 2013, 36. 59 Bosher 2012, 8–9; Wilson 2017. 60 Le Guen 2003, 349–350. Nor should we assume that all autocrats were incapable of embracing nuanced or ambivalent representations of (their own) autocratic power. Bob Cowan (this volume) makes a powerful case that it is possible to reconcile the report that Octavian gave Varius a million sesterces for his Thyestes, produced after the victory at Actium, with that play’s likely less than idealised depiction of Atreus. At the dawn of his becoming an autocrat upon the conclusion of the last civil war of the Republic, Augustus may well have embraced the image of a tyrant willing to employ violence in the hope of securing a positive issue and the possibility of building a more peaceful future. 61 Pl. Leg. 700a–701a; Arist. Rh. 1403b33. Scholars may have taken Aristotle’s comments out of context. Le Guen argues that he intended to limit his remark to the power of the actor’s voice in securing victory in contests, as opposed to an earlier time when poets themselves performed in their works (1995, 71–72; 2007a, 109–111). Also of particular importance here are passages in Aristophanes’ Frogs, jokes that past scholarship did not hesitate to take directly for evidence, well discussed by Petrides 2018, 1–2. 62 Hanink 2014a. 63 Morgan 2018, 69–129. 64 Garelli, this volume (quotation); Skotheim 2016, 198–217.

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themselves had a firmer grasp on social and political power, the moral and aesthetic trajectory of post-Classical theatre is determined by the impetus of the ideological freight it carries. Decadence theory was re-purposed to other political ends in the modern era. Most critically for the historiography of ancient theatre, decadence theory re-emerged in German scholarship of the late eighteenth and – especially – early nineteenth century, where the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars awoke a fierce appetite for liberty, democracy and nationhood.65 Writing cultural history was at the time an exercise in aspirational self-definition and ancient culture served as a testing ground for developing theories about Volksgeist and its historical expression. To this end a paradigmatic role was played by the narrative of the great cultural bloom in fifth-century Athens that followed the defeat of the Persian invasion and that encompassed what was regarded as ancient Greece’s two greatest achievements, democracy and tragedy.66 Equally instructive was a supposed simultaneous decay of liberty, democracy and tragedy at the end of the fifth century BC, followed by a final loss of these pure expressions of Greekness when Macedon took control of Athens in the later fourth century BC. This highly stylised opposition between a great spiritual blossoming and an ever sharper decline, revised and re-presented in various forms for new audiences, has had a surprisingly long academic shelf-life. Whether decline is measured from the Spartan conquest of Athens in 404 BC or Macedon’s final defeat of Athens in 322 BC, the rest of antiquity came to be reckoned mainly in terms of an absence of all that made fifth-century Athens great: in the political sphere primarily democracy, liberty, popular participation, free speech, and in the theatrical sphere the spiritual expression of these same values in tragedy and comedy. Decline theory’s double-birth, from both ancient critics of democracy and from modern aspirants to democratic nationhood, is responsible for the bizarre ambivalence decline theory often shows toward democracy in writing theatre history. Democracy is represented as what makes the Golden Age of fifth-century Athenian theatre so golden, while at the same time it is democracy (in the guise of the ‘theatrocracy’) that ruined theatre. This confusion about whether democracy is the cause of theatre’s greatness or of its decline continues to be an internal contradiction in many expressions of decline theory, often resorting to vague distinctions between types of good and bad Athenian democracy (‘moderate’ vs. ‘radical’, ‘conservative’ vs. ‘ochlocratic’, ‘true’ vs. ‘crypto-oligarchic’), depending on where one pegs the end of the plateau of greatness and the brink of the escarpment of decline. This ambivalence is even more pronounced in the work of scholars less sympathetic to democracy, of whom there were several especially towards the end of the nineteenth century (see, e.g., on Friedländer, below). But the important theme of the narrative is decline, and the narrative indifferently invokes democracy and its absence as a primary cause. Thanks to its apparent sanction by the best writers of antiquity, decline theory has long shaped the way we read evidence (or the way we ignore it). The critical points in the narrative are all places at which democracy is supposed to have lapsed, the almost invariable favourites being those of the violent disruption of democracy in Athens or of the Republic in Rome: the Spartan victory of the Peloponnesian War at the end of the fifth century; the subjection of Greece to Macedon in the late fourth century; and the replacement of the Republic by the Principate in first-century Rome. But these external causes have little explanatory power beyond leaving the impression that they all seriously impaired popular government. The fact that the disruption of Athenian democracy in 404 BC was very brief and in 322 BC also temporally limited often induces those who invoke decline theory to seek recourse to additional causes, too often of an intangible and undisprovable nature, like ‘spiritual exhaustion’, ‘loss of character’, or, most question-beggingly, ‘change of popular taste’ (which by themselves hardly amount to plausible explanations of an alteration that headed consistently in the wrong direction for nearly a millennium of theatre history).67 The decline model is highly relevant to the way we are disposed to think about the topic of theatre and autocracy. It leaves the impression that each of the moments marking the beginning of decline are moments where democracy failed and, in every case, past scholarship determined that each of the perceived democratic aspects of theatre also consequently failed. One does not have to go far to find claims that at the end of the fifth century (or fourth) theatre died, or the writing of new tragedies stopped, or the chorus disappeared or dwindled, or actors bent on sensationalism 65 For the origins of decadence theory in early nineteenth-century German nationalism, particularly the Schlegel brothers, see Le Guen 2007a, 114–119; Csapo et al. 2014, 1–5. 66 The direct connection between Athenian democracy and greatness of Athenian art is as early as Winckelmann 1764, 130–133. 67 A number of such baffling theatre-historical explanations are collected by Csapo 2000 for the end of the fifth century and by Le Guen 1995 for the late fourth.

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made plays incoherent and episodic, while pipers did the same with music, or that the political and religious contents of drama yielded to empty aestheticism. But in every case more recent scholarship suffices to show that reports of theatre’s death, or decay, are greatly exaggerated. The very fact that, since the 1990s, post-Classical Greek and post-Republican Latin drama and theatre have become increasingly popular fields of research is a sign that this long-standing paradigm of decline is losing its allure. Since then decline theory has received increasingly direct challenges, and especially in the last fifteen years.68 But for many scholars, particularly those with a focus on fifth-century Athens, decline theory may remain so completely naturalised that such challenges can be dismissed as aberrations or themselves symptoms of a modern academic decline: Samons for example states “by the early fourth century, the Athenians were [. . .] entering a period of literary decline from which they never emerged” [and, though] “many classicists and historians have understandably turned away from the muchplowed fields of the fifth century in order to focus on the less cultivated territory of fourth century sources, [a] need to defend this perfectly reasonable strategy may have inspired overly optimistic evaluations of Athens’s government, art, and literature in the 300s”.69 We feel rather that the concept of ‘decline’ belongs to mythic, not historical, discourse, and has little explanatory power for anyone concerned and willing to confront the details of the periods of cultural history to which it is applied. Thanks to a quarter century or so of close study of ‘later theatre’, it is now possible to muster evidence for substantial continuity (in form, invention or general vigour) between fifth and fourth century tragedy,70 comedy,71 satyrplay,72 choral participation,73 or any other aspect of theatre life. This does not mean that there were no changes, but they were far more subtle and less consistently unidirectional than decline theory allows, and some of them were distinctly positive. The belief that the conditions of theatre production were fundamentally altered in Athens or anywhere else from the end of the Peloponnesian War to the beginning of the Hellenistic Age is false. The one great change is the rapid spread of theatre at this time, not only to other democracies, but to autocracies, and this doubtless had an impact, but not one that can simply be defined or predicted in terms of decline. The model of cultural decline at the onset of the Hellenistic Age has also received serious challenge.74 Decline theorists overstate both the loss of democracy and the theatrical consequences of absorption into the Hellenistic kingdoms and later the Roman Empire. It is therefore worth examining the major themes that constitute the decadence model for post-Classical theatre. Some simply replicate themes familiar from the alleged early fourth-century BC ‘decline’; others are more specific to the post-Classical theatre. All are connected with an oligarchic or (more commonly) autocratic environment. The alleged causes/symptoms of decline are: – a transition from a public to a euergetistic model for funding the theatre (autocrats or wealthy donors or agonothetes picking up the bill, where earlier the poleis, through the appointment of choregoi, provided funding); – a shift from religious to secular occasions for the performance of drama; – a dwindling or disappearance of the chorus, or the professionalisation of the chorus, as a cause or symptom of loss of public participation; – a replacement in public theatres of Classical tragedy and comedy by pantomime and mime; – a removal of Classical forms of drama from the public to the private sphere either in the form of private theatre, recitation drama, or drama for reading only; – an excerpting of drama, so that only scenes or songs taken out of context were regularly performed on stage. Recent scholarship shows these claims, when not altogether wrong, are exaggerated or distorted through adherence to the traditional integrated decadence model. We will examine them in order.

68 See notably: Easterling 1993; Le Guen 1995; Le Guen 2007a; Gildenhard and Revermann 2010b; LeVen 2014; Csapo et al. 2014, 1–11; Skotheim 2016; Petrides 2018; Jackson 2019. 69 Samons 2004, 118. 70 The first real challenge to traditional attitudes came with Easterling 1993. See also: Nervegna 2014b; Hanink 2014b; Taplin 2014; Liapis and Stephanopoulos 2018; Duncan and Liapis 2018; Dunn 2018; Carter 2018b. 71 Csapo 2000; Papachrysostomou 2008, 18–23; Hartwig 2014. 72 Lämmle 2013; Shaw 2014. 73 Rothwell 1991; Duncan and Liapis 2018, 200–202; Jackson 2020 (1–12 for the effect of decline theory on fourth-century theatre scholarship). 74 Le Guen 1995.

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But first of all, it is necessary to qualify the notion that Greek democracy ends in the late fourth century BC.75 In the Hellenistic and Imperial eras most Greek cities were democratic “in name and in institutional practice”, a result of what John Ma calls the “great convergence”; and indeed a great many enjoyed more autonomy than they ever had in the Classical period.76 Just how ‘democratic’ these democracies were is debated.77 In Ma’s view “it involved the end of militant oligarchy (as Veyne calls it), the absorption of certain oligarchical critiques of radical democracy into the mainstream of political practice, and the generalization of a ‘moderate’ democratic political culture, displayed in honorific discourse and participatory institutions”.78 In these democracies, however, real power relations were very uneven. Angelos Chaniotis calls Hellenistic democracy “illusory”, arguing that the nomenclature masked both internal oligarchies and external autocracies. But if freedom and democracy were at some level illusory, the illusion was nonetheless precious. Chaniotis argues that, given the absence of real equality, ‘theatrical rituals’ were particularly important in making a show, in manner and form, of egalitarian discourse.79 An important part of these theatrical rituals took place in the theatre itself. Theatre symbolised democracy and could promulgate impressions of freedom and autonomy that had representational value, even if reality fell somewhat short. The point is nicely illustrated by Philo, writing in Alexandria in the time of Augustus or Tiberius (Every Good Man is Free, 141): The other day, at a tragic performance, when the actors delivered those trimeters of Euripides “The name of freedom is worth everything.  / Even if one has only a little, let him think it a great deal”, I saw the entire audience stand up stretched with elation and, in a voice that drowned out the actors, they burst into shout after shout of praise for the maxim and the poet who glorified not only actual freedom, but even its name.80

Symbolic, rhetorical and formal adherence to democracy was a feature of Greek cities in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods, and theatre was one of the most important of these formally democratic institutions.81 In the cities of the Latin West, there was in the Early Empire a parallel formal adherence to Republican institutions.82 In the theatre, similarly, libertas was showcased, prized, and exercised as the fundamental right of the masses. In this space they did as they pleased, and others did to please them. The theatre was “un espace où tout peut théoriquement être dit ou fait pour la delectatio ou la voluptas du people”.83 Given a recent willingness to recognise greater subtlety in the political differences between Classical and post-Classical states, it is no surprise that other traditional symptoms of post-Classical decline in the theatre have also been questioned: “scholars have perhaps been too quick to see the liturgy system as a sign mainly of democratic control of elites in the earlier period, but of elite dominance in the later period”.84 This distinction between democratic (public) and non-democratic (private, euergetistic) funding goes back to the publication in 1976 of Paul Veyne’s Le Pain et le cirque. Veyne chose ca 300 BC–300 AD as the start- and end-dates of ancient euergetism (“gifts to the community and acts of patronage to the city”).85 In practical terms the system meant that civic offices, like the agonothesia, were only available to those able to pay at least a large part of the associated costs from their own pockets. Veyne’s choice of start-date was meant to coincide with the supposed end of the Classical democratic polis. In Veyne’s view the phenomenon presupposed “an oligarchy of the notables”, which did not exist in Classical Athens.86 75 Le Guen 1995, 80–87. 76 Ma 2018, 281. In developing a vitalist view of Hellenistic democracy, Ma walks in the footsteps of (above all) Louis Robert (e.g. Robert 1969; cf. also Musti 1967; Quass 1979; Will 1998). 77 Ma 1999; Grieb 2008; Hamon 2009; Carlsson 2010; Wallace 2011; Bugh 2012; van der Vliet 2012; Canevaro and Gray 2018, 12. 78 Ma 2018, 281. 79 Chaniotis 2010. 80 Philo Quod omnis prob. lib. 141. The quotation from Euripides’ Auge (TrGF F 275) begins “To hell with all who rejoice in monarchy, or in the tyranny of the few”, as we know from the quotation in Stobaeus. One would like to know if these lines were also delivered in the theatre. Cf. Paillard and the comments of Nervegna cited by Paillard, this volume; also Perris, this volume, on the fragment’s engagement with oligarchic ideas. 81 Le Guen 2003. 82 Wilkinson 2012; Zuiderhoeck 2017, 78–93, 162–166. 83 Arnaud 2004, 227–228. 84 Canevaro and Gray 2018, 9. 85 Veyne 1976, 9 (definition), 209 (dates). 86 Veyne 1976, 15.

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There have been challenges to Veyne’s general definition and chronology of euergetism.87 Recently Domingo Gygax argued that “euergetism has two faces: the benefactions but also the honours granted by poleis to their benefactors”, and that due regard to this system of reciprocity made the ancient city not simply passive or reactive, but a fully active and consenting partner in this arrangement: “from this perspective, euergetism was not a phenomenon but an institution: a polis-sanctioned practice of exchanging benefactions and rewards”.88 With this refinement Domingo Gygax can argue that “civic euergetism was in fact invented by the Athenian democracy”.89 On this definition the choregia and the agonothesia no longer appear to belong to different worlds and different political regimes. In the past, in sympathy with decadence theory, the choregia was regularly supposed to have ended very soon after the final defeat of the Athenian democracy by Macedon at the Battle of Crannon. The abolition of the choregia was on this theory an oligarchic measure introduced during the regency of Demetrius of Phaleron (317–308 BC). But for this we have no better evidence than that Demetrius had criticised the choregia as an incitement to bankruptcy (but then why create an agonothesia which was an even greater lure to bankruptcy?). Our first evidence for an agonothesia for theatrical festivals in Athens comes after democracy was restored in Athens in 307 BC: an agonothetic monument of 306 BC, declares that “the Demos was choregos” – rhetoric indeed, but perhaps telling rather than simply empty! Several scholars have recently argued that the change in funding model was not the antidemocratic act that decadence theory prompts us to believe but a re-institution of public funding for the theatre on the model of an expanded choregia (to cover a whole festival and not a single production).90 This is not to argue that agonothetic funding did not have consequences that differed from choregic funding, but these consequences are more subtle than a simple surrender of the theatre to oligarchs and autocrats. The choregic system, in any case, did not finally disappear at this point. It survived in many cities throughout the Hellenistic period, and was revived in Athens during the Empire.91 In some places choregoi and agonothetai worked together. Decline theory treats these and other material changes in the theatre as symptoms of a spiritual malaise. As we have seen this malaise is just as often placed at the end of the fifth as at the end of the fourth century BC.92 The rise of the actor, on the one hand, is often supposed to have stimulated a taste for the merely technical; the alleged theatrocracy, on the other, is supposed to have given rein to empty aestheticism, leading to the loss of the political engagement and religious depth typical of fifth-century theatre. Pauline Ghiron-Bistagne, for example, claimed that “the taste for spectacle virtually ended up dominating all else to the point that it threatened to reduce the sacred character to a profane amusement [. . .]. Though originally conceived as a glorification of the civic cult of Dionysus, the theatre lost touch both with Athens and the god himself”.93 A decline in civic and religious engagement is hard to square with the vast increase in the number and magnificence of theatre festivals in the Hellenistic period. But it is arguably true that in some respects post-Classical festivals did become more secular: in the Hellenistic and Imperial periods there is a much greater preponderance of festivals created to celebrate political events (such as, e.g., the gain of freedom, autonomy and democracy), or powerful individuals, above all autocrats (a practice introduced by Classical autocrats)94 and wealthy donors, and this can be regarded as one way in which “the Hellenistic period made a considerable contribution towards increasing the profane element in festivals”.95 On the other hand, as Le Guen has argued, the essentially religious character of the proceedings never changed: festivals were dedicated to gods and always involved sacrifices to gods (even if new gods). The curious argument that actors, however good their technique, have less religious depth than poets also runs contrary to the evidence. The religiosity of Hellenistic actors is abundantly attested both through the structure and the activity of their unions: they called themselves Artists of Dionysus, were headed by Priests of Dionysus, and observed a variety of religious rituals as an organisation, while also in Egypt and Cyprus organising the cult of the Lagids, and in Ionia that of the

87 Good summary and extensive bibliography in Tomas 2020, 11–47. 88 Domingo Gygax 2016, 2–3. This institutional approach to euergetism was pioneered by Gauthier 1985. 89 Domingo Gygax 2016, 254. 90 O’Sullivan 2009, 177–178; Csapo and Wilson 2010; Bayliss 2011, 105; Hanink 2014a, 224–231. 91 Wilson 2000, 279–302; Shear 2013. 92 See the decadence-theoretical positions collected and cited by Le Guen 1995 and 2007a; Csapo 2000. 93 Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 205 (cited by Le Guen 1995, 87). 94 Csapo and Wilson, this volume. 95 See Chaniotis 1995 (quotation 163); Chaniotis 2005, 227–232.

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Attalids, and generally later serving Imperial cults. Their self-representation is one of deep piety and religiosity, and why should we doubt it, if not to squeeze them into the pre-set mould of decline?96 The loss of popular participation in theatre is another claim by decadence theory that needs qualification. The traditional view is that the chorus either dwindled or disappeared altogether. But claims that the chorus disappeared altogether in post-Classical theatre can be easily disproved (as they can for the fourth-century theatre). It is true that the chorus was variously absent from drama performed on the Republican stage, and arguably absent from some productions of old tragedy.97 But the chorus certainly did not disappear: there is plentiful evidence, mainly epigraphic, to prove its very long survival.98 A prize is offered a tragic chorus in an inscription from Aphrodisias, dated by letter-forms to the second or third century AD, and comic choruses are attested in the fourth century AD.99 Possibly, the number of choreuts in a chorus was sometimes less than we find in Classical Athens. There is epigraphic evidence for productions with seven or eight comic choreuts in Hellenistic Delphi.100 But these are probably professional choreuts, and the practice may have differed in other cases, for, contrary to another claim of decadence theory, community participation in drama through membership in the chorus did not disappear at the end of the Classical period. It is true that there is plentiful evidence for the existence of professional tragic and comic choreuts,101 but professional choruses were not the only option, nor necessarily the rule. The various professions listed in the guilds of the Artists of Dionysus do not include tragic choreuts, though they do include tragic chorodidaskaloi and hypodidaskaloi, which would seem to indicate that these chorus trainers made their living training local choruses. Le Guen hypothesises that choruses were locally recruited for those competitions for new tragedy that are marked in our inscriptions as the contest before which public honours were announced.102 The same might be argued for those places where honours are announced, unusually, at competitions other than tragedy.103 Such an arrangement would match the moment of community ritual with the contest which marked maximum community participation. For the theatrical competitions of second-century BC Arcadia we have, at any rate, Polybius’ testimony for local citizen choruses for boys’ and men’s choruses (‘dithyramb’, in this case ‘old dithyramb’).104 Inscriptions from Tanagra and Scepsis make local choruses highly likely.105 Local citizen choruses seem likely indeed for any city with a choregia, but virtually certain where the choregia is tribally based, as it was in Rhodes, Cos, Eretria and Delos.106 In the Greek East, at least, local choral participation, where affordable, appears to have been highly prized. Local choral participation is very likely to be an important factor in the survival of satyrplay in post-Classical times.107 Satyrs are the archetypical companions of Dionysus and, as autocrats from at least the time of Dionysius I of Syracuse came to realise the benefits of self-Dionysification,108 the theatrical analogue of the god’s companions was too valuable a resource to allow to deliquesce. In this volume Paul Touyz argues that the choreuts who performed in the satyrplays (a genre favoured by Alexander, the Ptolemies and the Attalids), were drawn from citizens of the local communities. The satyr-chorus offered the perfect opportunity for loyal subjects to participate in the cult of the ruler, both metaphorically, in the fictive world depicted on stage, and in reality, by taking an active part in festivals and performances that were orchestrated by autocrats who built their image and ideology through them. Ludwig Friedländer is the ultimate inspiration for several strains of decadence theory that particularly characterise scholarship on the transition from Roman Republican to Imperial theatre. Himself a member of the Prussian House of Lords (Herrenhaus), Friedländer accepted an undisguisedly elite (Platonic) view of the survival of the classical dramatic 96 Le Guen 1995, 87–90; Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 83–94; Lightfoot 2002, 211–226; Le Guen 2007c; Le Guen 2007f; Le Guen, this volume, studies the Associations established by the Ptolemies in Egypt and Cyprus, where they had the double role of officiating in the cult of Dionysus and that of the Ptolemies themselves. The Egyptian Association served the major political goal of having the ruling family legitimated to the Greek and Macedonian members of the community not only as successors of Alexander the Great, but as descendants of Dionysus himself. 97 Manuwald 2011, 174; Slater 2010a, 254. 98 Griffith 2018, 217–222. 99 IAph2007 11, 21; Nervegna 2013, 83. 100 Nervegna 2013, 82 101 Stefanis 1988a, 564–567. 102 Le Guen 2018a, 163–177. 103 Ceccarelli 2010. 104 Polyb. 4, 20, 8–21. 105 Slater 1993, 193; Manieri 2009, 268–277; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 744–749; Jackson 2020, 44–48. 106 Wilson 2000, 289–292. 107 Touyz, this volume. 108 On which see Csapo and Wilson, this volume.

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genres. He drew a sharp division between Atellana (“eine Art Pulcinellkomödie”) and mime, genres that appealed to the masses, and the traditional genres of comedy and tragedy that appealed only to a tiny circle of educated elites (“the stage could only maintain its attraction for the masses through ignoble means, through coarse hilarity and sensuality, and so rather than counterbalance the deleterious effects of those other spectacles, it contributed in no small part to the corruption and barbarisation of Rome”).109 On the subject of pantomime, which he likened to ballet, Friedländer was more ambivalent. He realised that it was primarily an upper-class passion, but the evidence showed that it was undeniably popular with the lower classes as well.110 According to Friedländer, then, the classical genres were pushed by the degenerate tastes of the plebs from the theatre, but received like refugees into the private houses of educated elites, where they survived largely as texts for recital at polite soirées. Friedländer has left a strong impression on how theatre historians think about causation and change in post-Hellenistic theatre history. In time the logic of decline theory worked to produce a more systematic alignment of new against old genres, so that both mime and pantomime have come to be regarded as plebeian genres sharply divided from the noble preserves of tragedy and comedy. Thus, in a standard handbook one reads of the Early Empire that: [. . .] poets started to write tragedies merely as literary exercises, intended for declamation [. . .] not for stage performance [. . .]. By the time of Seneca the stage was regarded with contempt by respectable Romans [. . .]. One reason for the decline of staged tragedy was doubtless the rise of the pantomime [. . .]. This curious form of entertainment was despised by the best-educated Romans.111

A more recent history of pantomime justly complains: “compared with the achievements of the great Greek theater of the fifth century BC, the pantomime always appears in cultural histories as marginal, corrupt, a debasement of a once great theatrical aesthetic, evidence of an almost interminable decay in literary, philosophical, and aesthetic values in relation to public pleasures”.112 Mime and pantomime probably did surpass traditional genres in general popularity during the Empire. But the notion that the traditional genres yielded in the public theatres to the new genres is greatly overstated. Competitions in the traditional genres, old and new tragedy, and old and new comedy, form part of dramatic festivals until the late second and probably well into the third century AD.113 The new genres, by contrast, long remained marginal to theatrical festivals in the Greek East, where they appear, from at least the first century AD, only as entertainment outside the main competitions.114 Only late in the second century AD do the genres become theatre competitions, and mime was never admitted into the prestigious ‘sacred games’.115 Even in the Latin West, mime and pantomime remained somewhat marginal. Though performed in Roman theatres from the Late Republic, they may only have been admitted in competition at the Sebasta in Naples, possibly as late as the second century AD.116 A more significant obstacle, however, for the theory that educated elites shunned the new genres, leaving the public theatre to the unruly and ignorant masses, is the fact that autocrats and elites were the major patrons of both pantomimes and mimes.117 It is in fact largely because of the enthusiastic patronage of Augustus that pantomime was included in Imperial cult, and mainly because pantomime was part of Imperial cult that it ever came to be part of Greek festivals.118 The clash of class cultures implied 109 Friedländer 1881, 391–406 (quotation 391). The volume was first published in 1862 and went through several editions. This is the earliest we could consult. Cf. Boissier 1861. Bratton 2003, on the rise of theories of ‘decline of drama’ based on popular/elite lines in nineteenth-century Britain, offers some insight into Friedländer’s own historical context. Bratton argues that modern decline theory began in the 1830s with the writing of the first professional histories of the theatre. 110 Friedländer 1881, 420: “Wenn die Vorliebe für Pantomimen auch in allen Schichten der Gesellschaft verbreitet war, so wurde sie doch von den unteren Klassen am wenigstens getheilt”. This is all the more striking as Grysar 1834, 66, claimed all Romans “ohne Unterschied des Alters, Geschlechtes, Standes” were passionate about pantomime. 111 Stanton and Banham 1996, 318. For the reclassification of pantomime as a vulgar art, cf. Zanker 1988, 149; Puchner 2017, 18, 36–37. 112 Toepfer 2019, 34. 113 Nervegna 2013, 101; Skotheim 2016, 215–219; Peterson 2019, 73; Le Guen 2018a, 179. 114 The chapters of Elodie Paillard and Mali Skotheim in this volume show, with different emphases, the necessary divergence in policy adopted by Roman Imperial authorities towards Greek theatre in Rome and Italy as opposed to Greece and the East. In Rome, theatre faced strong opposition from part of the Roman elite on moral grounds, whereas in Greece, it formed part of a long tradition that was not to be entirely discarded but prudently used and modified with the interests and sensibilities of local elites in mind. 115 Slater 1995; Slater 1996c; Maxwell 1993, 84–87; Skotheim 2016, 229–242; Garelli, this volume; Le Guen forthcoming. 116 Skotheim 2016, 229–230. 117 Gourdet 2004; Lada-Richards 2008; Csapo 2010, 172–185; Panayotakis 2010, 13–14. 118 Price 1984, 89; Hunt 2008; Skotheim 2016, 232–233; Le Guen forthcoming.

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by our elite sources (and enshrined by decadence theory) was always more ideological distortion than material reality (and ultimately far less important in real terms than the clash between Roman and Greek cultures).119 Friedländer is clearly wrong, therefore, that after the first century AD new dramas were only recited in private settings before small elite audiences.120 The evidence for competitions in new tragedy and new comedy at public festivals has been cited above. It is of course also true that drama could be recited for private audiences: the phenomenon is well attested.121 Opinion is evenly divided on whether Seneca’s dramas were ‘recitation dramas’.122 But there is no reason to think recitation was ever the rule for any form of drama. Even in private venues drama might be performed to the professional standards of the public stage.123 Friedländer is also the ultimate source of the claim that the tragedy that did survive on the Imperial public stage was abbreviated, usually radically so, and that eventually it was only ever staged in the form of mere excerpts, scenes or (preferably) songs: The natural consequence of this complete disappearance of interest in drama was the partition of tragedy. Coherent dramatic development, now of no interest to the spectators, was sacrificed and only those isolated scenes were retained that were most powerful and so gave the actors the best opportunity of showing off their skill. To be sure, still complete, if abbreviated, tragedies will have been produced in Rome and in the Greek provinces, but as a rule it will have happened no longer, at any rate from the second century [AD,] and tragedy was replaced with scenes with singing and pantomimic dance.124

In the twentieth century scholars, interpreting new papyrological and epigraphical evidence in conformity with decline theory, expanded the parameters of Friedländer’s extract-tragedy.125 Nilsson thought the performance of tragic extracts on the public stage began in the Hellenistic period.126 Gentili argued that they were normal from at least the third century BC.127 Dihle thought extracts were the general rule even from the fourth century BC.128 Some stated it as an invariable rule for tragedy in later antiquity.129 Others extended extraction to comedy,130 going back even as far as the Classical period.131 But Sebastiana Nervegna has demonstrated that there is no good evidence that tragedy (or comedy) was ever reduced in any public performance venue to excerpts or mere songs, let alone in dramatic competitions, and there is good evidence to the contrary.132 The only reduction that may have taken place is the possible omission of (some) choral odes from old tragedies.133

119 On the latter, see the contribution by Elodie Paillard in this volume, who argues that during the Republic, in spite of the negative perception of Greek theatre from at least a section of the elite, performances in Greek were being organized, for instance by victorious generals on the occasion of their triumphs in Rome. Far from being a declaration of any kind of philhellenism, this evinced a will to show the superiority of Latin culture, sometimes through the perversion of the performance or an open display of contempt for it. Emperors, on the other hand, found in Greek theatre a powerful tool to legitimate their rule. Through support of Greek theatre, they conveyed the message that they possessed sufficient paideia to reign over their vast Empire – at a time when paideia had become closely intertwined with the virtue of humanitas, deemed necessary for the proper exercise of power. 120 Friedländer 1881, 399. See Jones 1993, 48; Goldberg 2000, 224. 121 For the evidence and what ‘recitation’ might mean, see Bexley 2015. 122 Zimmermann 2008; Aygon 2016, 143–167. 123 On private drama: Jones 1991; Csapo 2010, 168–204; Nervegna 2013, 120–200. 124 Friedländer 1881, 403. 125 The process is mapped by Nervegna 2007, 24–25. 126 Nilsson 1904, 16. 127 Gentili 1979, 30–31. 128 Dihle 1981, 29–30, 37; Dihle 1983, esp. 167–168. 129 Leyerle 2001, 21; Zarifi 2007, 244. 130 Handley 2002, 169–175; Huys 1993, 32. 131 Kossatz-Deissman 1980 and others have argued that the Apulian vase showing the scene from Aristophanes’ Thesmophoriazusae (Würzburg H5697) shows an extract from the play. This is an unnecessarily complicated hypothesis, and it could be argued that the extract would make little sense unless the South Italian consumer knew virtually the whole plot of the play up to line 755. 132 Nervegna 2007, 25–41; Nervegna 2013, 78–88. See Bowie, this volume. 133 Slater 2010a, 254; Nervegna 2013, 82, 115; Le Guen 2018a, 176.

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Conclusion Despite a time-honoured, but now obsolescent, decadence theory, there is no easy distinction to be made between the form and contents of democratic and autocratic theatre. Certainly there is no distinction that can be made that would cover all epochs of ancient theatre history. Nonetheless, for all that, we need not doubt that the theatre that developed in the Athenian democracy, and which soon became the standard for theatre culture throughout the ancient world, had a distinctive democratic heritage that might, if desired, be activated. There are of course revealing differences between democratic and autocratic theatre, and between Classical and post-Classical theatre, that remain to be explored in each individual case, but they are not to be found in the crudely grand evolutionary patterns encompassed by decadence theory. We suggest that it is possible to understand autocratic theatre, not as a different species of theatre, but as pragmatically different, as a use of a democratic idiom for non-democratic ends. But it is necessary, we feel, to begin the study of autocratic theatre afresh, and without the traditional presuppositions and value judgments that have in various ways either undermined its importance and even negated its reality by denying its contiguity and continuity with Classical Athenian theatre. It is this pathway to understanding an old paradox that we hope to begin to explore in this volume.

Part I: Theatre and Greek Autocrats

Eric Csapo & Peter Wilson

1 Greek Theatre and Autocracy in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries It is in Classical Greece that the question of theatre and autocracy is most neglected and most problematic. The entrenched view that theatre was democracy’s cultural twin, born together at the dawn of the fifth century, has led to a studious avoidance of the clear instances of autocratic theatre that date from the fifth century. At the same time the notion that both theatre and democracy went into terminal decline in the fourth century has radically lowered the stakes for scholarly engagement with the subject of autocratic theatre in that century.1 A less biased approach reveals a rich and complex history of Classical autocratic theatre that sits alongside democratic theatre, often in direct dialogue with it. It reveals too the inherent flexibility of theatre as an institution, offering a more nuanced sense of its political capacities and a better understanding of how and why theatre as a whole changed and developed over the first two centuries of its existence.

The Growth of Panhellenic Musical Festivals in the ‘Age of Tyranny’ One advantage of attempting to write a history of early Greek autocratic theatre is a deepening of the historical field, drawing attention away from a single point of origin in late sixth-century Athens. Long before the appearance of formal drama and theatre, tyrants had to a significant degree all but colonised the medium and mastered its methods. It was in the period conventionally thought of as the ‘Age of Tyranny’ (ca 650-ca 500 BC) that the Greek poleis emerged from mainly agrarian communities to what might formally be called ‘state-level societies’ focused on an urban centre. Power shifted from the land and traditional aristocracy to these urban centres, as industry, commerce and trade generated a new wealth that could be concentrated through the new use of money, often into the hands of the tyrants who frequently assumed control over coinage.2 Self-serving as the tyrants’ motives may have been, the consolidation of the new states was largely their work and they facilitated this work through the cultural instrumentality of religious festivals. The mid seventh to sixth centuries saw the creation of major festivals, among them, within a decade after 582 BC, the (mainly) athletic panhellenic festivals of the Pythia, Nemea and Isthmia, located in rural sanctuaries. But the tyrants most actively promoted festivals centred on cities and on musical and poetic competitions. The main drivers are clear enough: the festivals united the often newly expanded states with a large rural hinterland and centred them on the polis and the person of the tyrant himself. Musical festivals appealed to a larger segment of the citizenry than athletic games, as one did not need to be a member of the leisure class to actively participate. Through the splendour of their processions and sacrifices, the magnificence of their choral performances, and through the contents of their song, they helped a wider citizenry receive a new collective identity centred on the strength and unity of the polis and its leadership. Though the evidence is slight for this early period, there is enough to suggest a strong interest, in central Greece at least, in festivals of Dionysus. Periander of Corinth (ca 628-ca 583 BC) is particularly remembered for his sponsorship of Arion who, Herodotus tells us, was the first to compose, name and instruct a chorus in the performance of a dithyramb, already ‘a fair song of Lord Dionysus’ and presumably integrated as an entertainment into a Dionysian festival.3 It is precisely from the time of Periander’s reign that in Corinth the production of komast vases show choruses performing within a Dionysiac sphere.4 The komasts frequently perform in procession or in relation to feasting and can at least in large part be connected to public parades and sacrifices for Dionysus: Pindar too saw Corinth as the birthplace of ‘the ox-driving dithyramb of Dionysus’.5

1 See Csapo, Paillard and Wilson in the introduction. The authors would like especially to thank Brigitte Le Guen for many helpful comments for the improvement of this paper, and Dick Green for help with matters related to theatre decoration. 2 See esp. Seaford 2004. 3 Hdt. 1, 23–24; Archil. fr. 120 W. 4 Steinhart 2007. 5 Pind. Ol. 13, 18–19. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-002

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The tyrant of nearby Sicyon, Cleisthenes (ca 600-ca 570 BC), re-designed his city’s major festivals with new poetic performances. At war with Argos, Herodotus understood the measures to be aimed at Sicyon’s main enemy, Argos. He put an end to a contest for rhapsodes, because of the epic poems’ philargive content.6 A festival for the Argive hero Adrastus that had included ‘tragical choruses’ was deleted and its choruses given instead to Dionysus.7 The result was a Dionysia with choral performances sufficiently like tragedy to have been assimilable to it by Sicyonian publicists in the fifth century.8 A related measure of tribal reform has recently been reinterpreted as an attempt to overcome regional and social divisions.9 The measures certainly demonstrate the tyrant’s capacity to redraw the city’s festival map, to control its performance content and to advertise changes in political alliances through festival forms that to later eyes shared a strong affinity with drama. Pisistratus, tyrant of Athens (on and off from ca 560, securely 546/5–528/7 BC), is usually credited with the creation of Athens’ two largest festivals: the Panathenaea and the Dionysia. In fact both festivals seem slightly to predate Pisistratus’ tyranny, though not necessarily the dates in which Pisistratus was politically active. The annual Panathenaea was reorganised and the (four-yearly) Great Panathenaea created around 566/5 BC.10 Our evidence for the creation of the Dionysia is mainly iconographic. Dionysian imagery first appears in Attic pottery around 570 BC, but by 560 BC there is a virtual explosion of scenes showing Dionysus or satyrs in processions, dancing animal choruses, and from 550 BC phalloi in procession for Dionysus, all clearly inspired by the creation of the main parade for the Dionysia.11 It appears therefore that the Panathenaea was reformed and the Dionysia created around the same time, and arguably for the same purpose. The Solonian reforms and the history of Pisistratus’ rise to power reveal a great deal of social and regional division in Athens. The Panathenaea served to create a sense of Attic unity centred on the goddess’ cult on the Acropolis. The Dionysia, the first major festival with no athletic component, served at this time of serious class and regional tensions to promote social solidarity with its carnival procession, a type of ritual whose purpose, in Victor Turner’s terminology, was the creation of a sense of communitas, a concrete experience of one another as equals.12 Dionysian cult, based on drunkenness, equality and ritual misbehaviour, had a broad popular appeal that complemented the more official, ordered, and hierarchical cult of Athena. If the Pisistratids did not create these festivals, they certainly did their utmost to promote them. A key innovation was the embedding of rhapsodic performances of Homeric epic in the Panathenaea.13 In addition to generating popular appeal (for festival and tyrant), the innovation also asserted control, by Pisistratid Athens, over the primary cultural asset of the age. This assertion put them in direct competition with another ambitious tyrant of the Aegean, Polycrates. Martin West plausibly argued that the first Panathenaea to witness the grand Homeric performance was that of 522 BC, probably the same year that Polycrates’ Delia and Pythia on Delos established a claim to stewardship of the Homeric heritage.14 It is possible that the promotion of Homeric epic by these tyrants was motivated not only by a desire to amass cultural capital but by the potential for epic to (in Nino Luraghi’s words) “construe monarchic power as traditional, and thereby as in some sense legitimate”.15 Pisistratid support for the Dionysia is not only attested by the continuous stream of Dionysian and particularly Dionysian processional imagery preserved in Attic vase-painting through the sixth century BC, but also by the development of the Sanctuary of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis. Our earliest datable remnant of the Sanctuary is a relief, probably belonging to an altar, showing dancing satyrs and maenads: it can be dated to the early years of the secure period of Pisistratus tyranny.16 It is clear that the Dionysia by this time included many colourful, elaborate 6 Hdt. 5, 67, 1. The Thebais is likely meant: Cingano 2004, 75–76. 7 Hdt. 5, 67, 5; Kowalzig 2007. 8 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 468–471. 9 Welwei 1998, 82–84; Stein-Hölkeskamp 2009, 105–106. 10 Parker 1996, 75–76; Shear 2001, 507–515. 11 Csapo 2015, 79–93. 12 Turner 1967, 1969. 13 Pl. [Hipparch.] 228b–c. 14 West 1999, 382. 15 Luraghi 2013a, 16. 16 The marble block with the relief is Athens NM 3131. Dated to ca 550 BC by Simon (1997, 1129 no. 201) and to ca 530 BC by Despinis 1996–1997, 198. Cf. Csapo 2015, 82–83, fig. 1.

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choruses both in its parade and at its terminus in the Sanctuary. We are reliably informed that Hipparchus brought some of the leading poets of the age to the city. The Aristotelian Constitution of Athens speaks of “poets such as Anacreon and Simonides, and the others”, both of whom could certainly have composed choral works for a Dionysia under the Pisistratids.17 But there is no evidence for drama before 508 BC. This date corresponds with the first written and iconographic records for dithyramb, and the date of the construction of the Temple of Dionysus on the south slope of the Acropolis, ca 500–490 BC, corresponds with the date of the earliest written and iconographic records for tragedy.18 (The activities of Thespis in the 530s BC are heavily post-fabricated and, even so, are situated in the countryside, not the city.) The evidence at our disposal does not therefore favour the view that drama was invented under the Pisistratids, but rather in the first years of the Athenian democracy, albeit on Pisistratid foundations. So while there is no solid link between theatre and the Pisitratids, it would be wrong to remove the Pisistratid tyranny from the discourse on the origins of drama and Dionysian choral lyric. There can be little doubt that, like Periander of Corinth and Cleisthenes of Sicyon, the Athenian tyrants found it beneficial to promote large festivals, the poetic and musical components of festivals, and most specifically the cult and choruses of Dionysus.19

Autocratic Reception of Theatre Whatever uncertainty surrounds the date of the first dramatic performances in Athens, undoubted are the rapidity, ease and spread of the reception of theatre culture by Classical autocrats. Around a third of the states that have left evidence of theatre culture in the fifth and fourth centuries BC were autocratic. That it was only a third might appear to sit uneasily with Plato’s claim that theatre – or at least tragedy – belongs equally, or indeed even more, to autocratic than democratic culture.20 But (like democracies) autocracies account for a similar percentage of the theatrical culture of their age when measured against the statistical prevalence of the political form.21 Nor was Plato a neutral observer. For him democracy and tyranny were not opposite poles of the political spectrum, but juxtaposed terminal stages in a symptomology of degeneration. His observation attests to a significant commonality of value attached to theatre by tyrants and democracies, and also, implicitly, to the relative disinterest in the cultural form on the part of oligarchies.22 Within a single generation of its appearance in Athens, Hieron I of Syracuse had brought tragedy to the West.23 Aeschylus’ production of the Persians in Syracuse is the earliest attested case of reperformance of any drama; his Women of Aetna the first instance of a tragedy thematically tailored to the needs of a patron. The sophistication of his propaganda machine shows just how attentive Hieron was to the possibilities offered by all media. A number of factors will have enabled such speedy adoption of the new form: the Sicilian tyrant’s access to enormous wealth, especially after the Battle of Himera; his city’s sophisticated festival culture;24 and its particular familiarity with a pre-existing local tradition of comic performance, from at least around 510 BC. The western autocratic theatrical tradition continued with particular vigour. We know more of theatre culture under Hieron and later Syracusan autocrats, above all Dionysius I (406–367 BC), than we do from the intervening period of democracy (466–406 BC). Dionysius himself composed tragedy; patronised dithyrambic as well as tragic poets; and blurred the boundary between theatre and politics. His theatromorphic politics seem in turn to have become a model for other autocrats (see further below). Two fifth-century theatres are found in Cyrene – one at the western end of the great urban sanctuary of Apollo on the Myrtousa terrace, the other in a sanctuary of Demeter and Kore outside the city walls. The excavators date the earliest skene of the city theatre to the first half of the fifth century BC, which places it in the time of the Battiad monarchy,

17 Arist. [Ath. Pol.] 18, 1. 18 Despinis 1996–1997, 205–206; Papastamati-von Moock 2015, 44; Csapo 2015. For the supposed earlier theatre in the Agora, see Csapo 2020b. 19 And possibly also circular choruses for Apollo at the Thargelia: Wilson 2007, 153. 20 Pl. Resp. 568c. 21 Csapo and Wilson 2020a. 22 Oligarchic lack of interest in theatre: Csapo and Wilson 2020a. 23 It is a possibility that already Gelon I had brought Phrynichus to Sicily: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 346. 24 The richness of Syracuse’s cultural history in the late Archaic period is not in doubt. By the end of the sixth century the city hosted a panhellenic festival with a rhapsodic contest that attracted Greece’s leading performers: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 331–332.

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probably under Arcesilas IV (465–440 BC).25 Like the Sicilian tyrants, Arcesilas was adept at using athletic achievement at panhellenic sanctuaries and epinician song to craft powerful messages: Pythian 4 (of 462 BC) presents him as virtually refounding Cyrene. While we do not know what performances were held in the earliest Cyrenean theatre, it is a plausible speculation that, like Hieron, the Cyrenean identified the even greater flexibility offered by tragedy and theatre (tragedy and dithyramb are attested for the fourth century).26 But Arcesilas stands out among the sole rulers studied here for being a legitimate, ‘constitutional’ monarch, the eighth generation of the Battiad monarchy, and was acknowledged as such among his peers in the wider Greek world. Macedon’s long and extremely influential engagement with theatre began around 410 BC with the tyranny of Archelaus, and was a central component in an energetic embrace of Greek culture by the Argead dynasty. Euripides and Agathon were invited to Archelaus’ court at Aegae, as were the melic composers Melanippides and Timotheus, among other leading poets, physicians, painters and architects. Theatre construction is attested already in the later fifth century. The Macedonian monarchs stand out for their patronage of theatre, for building many new theatres in their ever-expanding realm,27 and greatly increasing the spread of theatre culture. It is possible that theatre was adopted in Thessaly already in the fifth century BC. The Magnesians are reported to have decreed honours to Euripides during his lifetime, which may imply that theatre culture had already reached the region, though we only hear of it at Pherae and at Skotoussa in or shortly after 370 BC in relation to the tyrant Alexander of Pherae.28 Thessaly’s receptiveness to theatre has surprised some, but it fits the general pattern by which ruling elites and autocrats shift from the sponsorship of lyric and purely choral music to theatrical music and drama.29 Theatre and drama first appear in the Pontic region, at Heraclea, as early as the 360s BC, the time of the Clearchid tyranny; and by 353 BC in the Cimmerian Bosporus ruled by the Spartocids.30 In the south-eastern Aegean, theatre is known in the early fourth century in Caria under the Hecatomnid dynasty at Halicarnassus and probably also at Caunus.31 Tragedy featured in the memorialisation of Mausolus in 353 BC and had possibly been part of his cultural programme while alive. The kings of Cyprus shared the theatrical limelight as co-sponsors (choregoi) of a festival with Alexander in 331 BC, suggesting familiarity with the medium, and plans for the first phase of the theatre at New Paphos may go back to its foundation in 320 BC by King Nicocles.32 A close look at the evidence will show a suite of reasons why theatre proved irresistible to Classical autocrats: its high costs and complex logistics meant that, when autocrats paid the bills, control of the messaging lay potentially in their hands, while local rivals had no access to the new and powerful medium; as a physical space, theatre offered a direct channel of unmediated contact with the ‘people’, and in some cases with an even wider, international audience; it could focus attention on the autocrat and allow him a conspicuous role in the distribution of public honours. In both

25 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 791–808. Note that some (e.g. Mitchell 2000) would date the end of Arcesilas’ IV reign and the kingship of Cyrene to ca 450: see below. 26 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 792–808. The existence of a stage building dating to the first half of the fifth century is suggestive. 27 The theatres of Aegae, Dion and Pella were all probably begun by Archelaus and completed under Philip and Alexander. The theatre at Philippi appears to be part of Philip’s original plan, and he is also thought to have introduced theatres when he refounded Boeotian Orchomenus and Plataea. The view that Alexander founded the theatre at Babylon remains controversial. The theatres built or rebuilt at Sicyon, Corinth and Demetrias are credited to Demetrius the Besieger. For further discussion and bibliography see Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 465, 473, 536, 528, 530–531, 536–538, 590–597, 727–729. 28 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 584–590. 29 The Aleuads of Larissa and the Scopads of Crannon had patronised Pindar, Simonides, Bacchylides and probably Anacreon (Fearn 2009). Pindar’s Pythian 10 (of 498 BC) was for a victor from Pelinna. However it was commissioned not by the boy’s own family but by the Aleuads as a genos. This looks like an accomplished form of controlling beneficence, patronising the scion of a potentially rivalrous family as a means of claiming the glory and diverting attention to an Aleuad Thessaly, proclaimed as governed by a descendant of Heracles: Stamatopoulou 2007, 310. 30 Heraclea: Memnon FGrH 434 F 1.3.2–3, Hermippus FHG III, 46 with Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 788–790; Cimmerian Bosporus: Isoc. 17.52, Polyaenus, Strat. 5.44.1.1–10, SEG 52, 741, Machon, Sayings fr. 11.141–7 with Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 784–788; Braund and Hall 2014; Braund, Hall and Wyles 2019. 31 Halicarnassus: Theodectes of Phaselis’ tragedy Mausolus was composed to honour the Hecatomnid ruler at his death in 353 and the first phase of the city’s great theatre may date to his reign: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 767–773. A new dating of the first phase of the Caunus theatre on the basis of ceramic finds (Varkıvanç 2016, 920) puts it in the first half of the fourth century BC, when the city was under the Hecatomnids: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 733–736. 32 Green, this volume; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 736.

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form and content theatre was adept at shaping collective attachments and identity, especially valuable in autocratic societies where formal political institutions that gave voice to popular will were generally absent. Above all, theatre proved so malleable a form that it lent itself to highly effective autocratic personalisation: theatrical performances could be used to mark the foundation of cities, military victories, dynastic weddings, funerals or commemorations. Before the end of the fourth century, the personalisation of the theatrical event is total, when festivals are frequently named directly after the autocrat. Pursuit of these possibilities effected profound changes on theatre generally, including the way it was run in its Athenian metropolis.

Centring the Fringe The most striking feature that emerges from this survey of the autocratic reception of theatre is its general absence from what is called Central Greece. Autocratic theatre was a fringe phenomenon, adopted most enthusiastically by autocrats on the edges of the Greek world. In part location is shaped by the pattern of contemporary autocracies. Yet clearly much of theatre’s attraction lay precisely in the connection it forged with the mainstream culture of the Aegean. Theatre helped autocrats lay claim to membership in the wider Hellenic cultural community. But theatre had a legitimating function that extended well beyond this. It assisted autocrats with one of the greatest challenges that faced them: legitimation of their very position as sole ruler in contexts where legitimation by more traditional means was lacking. The concentration of autocratic theatre on what we might loosely call the ‘barbarian fringe’ – Sicily, North Africa, Thessaly, Macedon, Caria, the Black Sea and Cyprus – suggests a desire on the part of these autocracies to connect with the common culture of the Aegean. For these tyrants, theatre culture was already perceived as panhellenic, but for states bordering the Aegean and Black Sea, especially, it was a panhellenism largely defined in relation to the economic, political and cultural might of Athens. Certainly by the second half of the fifth century, Athens had become the centre that defined Greekness even for most Greeks, the “Greece of Greece” as (Milesian) Timotheus put it.33 Theatre’s Greekness, and particularly its Greekness of an Athenian stamp, was a major attraction. But the way this played out was somewhat different in each fringe location. In at least two striking cases – Macedon and Caria – theatre’s adoption is a remarkable instance of the embrace of a Greek cultural form by non-Greeks, or at least those whose Greekness was challenged in antiquity, but Greekness was precisely one of its great attractions for Macedonian and Hecatomnid rulers. Theatre culture made Archelaus and his successors appear Greek to Greek eyes and an international player to Macedonian eyes. Here a major component of this Greekness, especially in the early period, was Athenianness. The Macedonian elite had been exposed to Athenian culture from early in the fifth century BC, but a period of distrust under Perdiccas II led to an estrangement, as Athenian imperialism infringed on Macedonian interests and Athens formed an alliance with Perdiccas’ internal enemies.34 Perdiccas banned the export to Athens of a commodity over which he had monopoly, the weapons-grade timber of the silver fir that was essential for shipbuilding, and thus crucial to the maintenance of Athenian naval power. With the accession of Archelaus to the throne in 413 BC, a new coincidence of interests emerged. Athens needed to establish good relations with the Macedonian king in order to restore the supply of timber after the disaster of the Sicilian expedition, while Archelaus wanted to stabilise his own position by securing Athenian good will and reaping financial benefit from the renewed sale of timber to Athens.35 This helps explain the Macedonian’s energetic Athenianising, and in particular his embrace of the prime marker of Athenian culture, theatre. The sharp shift in diplomatic and commercial relations was marked by adoption of an Athenian cultural form that brought the Macedonian court closer to Athens. At the same time, both theatre and ties with Athens assisted Archelaus in solving the problem that had dogged his predecessor – struggle over succession to the throne (an Athenian decree makes him and his sons proxenoi and benefactors of Athens, which surely could be made to appear an expectation of his succession if not actually an endorsement of his dynastic

33 Anth. Pal. 7, 45; Plant 2015. 34 Perdiccas II may have made the first steps in embracing Greek poetical culture. Melanippides the dithyrambic poet is said by the Suda (μ 454) to have spent time at his court and ended his life there. Tuplin 1993–1994, 187 argues that the poet’s stay began under Perdiccas and continued into Archelaus’ reign (cf. Plut. Mor. 1095d). 35 Karathanasis 2019.

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ambitions).36 It is less clear why the Macedonians under Archelaus felt comfortable with an Athens re-equipped with a powerful navy and followed him in his cultural Athenianising.37 Possibly theatre was a sufficient sweetener to these Athenianising tendencies.  The importance of being Greek, and hence of theatre, greatly increased as Philip destroyed, enslaved, or absorbed Greek cities into his Macedonian empire. Theatre’s Greekness continued to be of great strategic help to the Macedonian kings. In 336 BC Philip needed to reassure Greece of his Hellenic credentials on the eve of his Persian campaign, launched ostensibly to liberate the Greeks of Asia Minor and avenge the destruction wrought by Darius and Xerxes. He lavishly hosted a theatre festival at Dion with the explicit intention of attracting “as many Greeks as possible to take part”.38 When Alexander eventually led the campaign that Philip died before launching, it was punctuated after each major victory with theatre festivals.39 Rather than being part of a zealous mission to take Greek culture to the edges of the known world, this had more to do with reassuring his own soldiers of their continued connection to the Aegean world, and the Greeks he left behind that his empire was Greek, not Macedonian, and hence theirs, and no foreign domination. The Athenian Greekness of theatre, and the economic relations it helped enable, were also important to the tyrants of the Black Sea.40 The Spartocids of the half-Scythian Cimmerian Bosporus in particular literally traded upon their Athenianness. They personally controlled the highly lucrative export in grain and raw material to Athens to the point that on one occasion Athens directly intervened to save the Spartocids from a coup and on another turned a blind eye to their occupation of an Athenian outpost, even while granting them Athenian citizenship and heaping other honours.41 The cultural affiliation with Athens could hardly have been greater: elite Bosporan families sent their sons to be educated in Athens, especially at the school of Isocrates, in the hope that they would acquire Athenian culture and form valuable networks with the Athenian elite. The same is true of the tyrants of Heraclea on the Pontus. The founder of the tyranny, Clearchus, studied with Plato and Isocrates. One of his countrymen, Heraclides, rose to be the deputy of the Academy in 361/0 BC, while another, Chamaeleon, wrote several books on the canonical Athenian dramatists, comedy and satyrplay. For these tyrants, as for the Macedonians, theatre appealed as the cultural side of a close economic and political linkage with an Aegean world dominated by Athens. The early Sicilian experience was, however, markedly different. The adoption of tragedy by the Deinomenids represented an assertive, even aggressive, political Hellenism that had little if anything to do with a perceived ethnic or cultural marginality from the Greek mainstream.42 Tragedy helped Hieron centre the position of the Sicilian tyrants within the wider Greek world in the aftermath of the Persian Wars. Hieron was busy in the 470s BC crafting a powerful counter-narrative in the face of the accusation that Gelon had failed to come to the aid of Greece in 481 BC and, to all intents, had Medised.43 The stain of Medism threatened to exclude Hieron from the sites of panhellenic competitions that had been built into the very power structure of the Deinomenid regime. According to Theophrastus,44 Themistocles challenged Hieron’s right to participate in the Olympics of 476 BC on these grounds. Whatever the historical veracity of the report, and of the deeper background case against the Deinomenids, it is clear that on his accession Hieron needed to resuscitate, if not fully launder, his family’s reputation as defenders of Greece. The simplicity of his invention

36 IG I3 117, ll. 31–36 (407/6 BC), partly but convincingly restored. 37 Cf. Moloney 2014, 247: “one way in which Macedonian kings seem to have fostered a united ethos among the ruling elite – among the aristocratic group around the ruling dynasty – was to exploit this shared interest in appropriated forms of Greek culture”. 38 Diod. Sic. 16, 91, 5; Moloney 2014, 243. For the location of the festival at Dion, as Diodorus has it (despite the contradiction in Arr. Anab. 1.11.1–2), and for the inclusion of dramatic competitions in the festival, see Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 594–596. 39 Le Guen 2014. 40 Braund 2019. 41 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 778–779, 784–790. 42 Note the description of Sicily put into the mouth of the ambassadors to Gelon prior to the Persian invasion, Hdt. 7, 157, 2: “as lord of Sicily you rule what is not the least part of Hellas”. 43 Hdt. 7, 157–158; 165–166. The counter-narrative was probably initiated by Gelon himself (d. 478 BC). His dedication at Delphi of a bronze column with golden Nike and tripod to celebrate the Battle of Himera, metres from the Serpent Column, asserts an implicit parallelism (Yates 2019, 106), though there is some doubt as to whether it was erected by Gelon or Hieron, who later dedicated his own matching column on the same base, presumably for Cymae: Morgan 2015, 35–36. Gelon’s commemoration of Himera at Olympia, in the so-called ‘Treasury of the Carthaginians’, also advances the claim that Himera mattered to all Greeks. 44 Plut. Them. 25, 1.

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obscured its fabulous qualities: far from Medising, the Deinomenids had been fighting their own wars against the Barbarian in the West, wars of the same magnitude of importance as those in the East. The key encounters had uncanny parallels to those of the Persian Wars. According to the version told by “those in Sicily”, which surely goes back to the Deinomenids themselves,45 the battles of Himera and Salamis were fought on the same day.46 Hamilcar’s army had the same impossibly vast number of men – 300,000 – as that of Mardonius.47 In addition to exculpating the Deinomenids, this narrative concealed the truth that the Battles of Himera and Cymae were ultimately of local significance only, and that Himera was largely an intra-Greek (and even intra-tyrannical) affair.48 Pindar is the most explicit crafter of this narrative into high-quality poetic product. In Pythian 1 (ll. 71–80), Cymae and Himera are set on equal footing with Salamis and Plataea. The account begins with Cymae, presented as a victory against Carthaginians (whose presence at the battle is not otherwise attested) as well as Etruscans, won by “the leader of the Syracusans”, who is declared by egregious exaggeration to have rescued Hellas (in its entirety) from grievous slavery.49 It concludes, chiastically, with Himera, in which Hieron is granted a place he did not deserve, thanks to the quietly ambiguous plural “sons of Deinomenes” (l. 79). Hieron’s command reperformance of Aeschylus’ Persians clearly served this same strategy.50 A plausible hypothesis holds that Aeschylus’ elder colleague, Phrynichus, also produced a tragedy for Hieron dealing with the defeat of Xerxes at Salamis and which influenced Aeschylus’ own treatment.51 These two dramas stand out from all known tragedies for their highly unusual focus on the Persian Wars.52 As a medium, tragedy had several key advantages over Pindaric epinician. Its (at this point) exclusive Athenianness forged valuable associations with the city whose energy in opposing the Persians was beyond question. The Athenianness of the Persians itself – its treatment of the largely Athenian victory off the Attic coast – will have intensified this value, while at the same time, as has been noted, the absence of any reference to a named Athenian and the text’s preference for “Greeks” over “Athenians” in the central Salamis narrative eased the availability of transferred identification by other Greeks.53 Unlike Pindar, whose origins in Medising Thebes ruled him out, Aeschylus was one of the ‘official poets’ of the Greek triumph, a status further burnished by his standing as a veteran of Marathon and possibly the later battles too. It has been said of the tyrant Dionysius I that his efforts to achieve success as a tragic poet at the Athenian festivals in the next century signified a wish to be “accepted as a respectable ornament of the Hellenic family by the city which was universally regarded as the cultural leader of Greece”.54 While this captures an important truth, Dionysius’ attitude to the rapidly panhellenising theatre culture of Athens was less deferential than aggressive. The story of his acquisition of the writing materials of Euripides after the poet’s death depicts him making a claim for Syracuse as the new ‘home’ in Greece of tragic theatre (below).55 The attraction of Central Greek culture is likely to have played a part in the reception of theatre by the Battiads of Cyrene. In the 460s BC, Arcesilas IV energetically embraced the culture of panhellenic athletic achievement and its commemoration in top-tier epinician poetry. In this he sought to outdo rival Cyrenean aristocrats for the special prestige such success brought; but also to signal a new alignment with Greece and a distancing, in the wake of the Persian Wars, from the Achaemenid support that the kings of Cyrene had long enjoyed. These two motives were connected, in that the Persian loss of control over Egypt meant that Arcesilas could no longer depend on the aid of the satrap for help against his political enemies at home.56 The motivations behind his adoption of the new preeminent form of Hellenic

45 Bonnano 2010, 178. 46 Hdt. 7, 165–166. 47 Hdt. 7, 165, 1; cf. 8, 113, 3. 48 Hdt. 7, 165; Luraghi 1994, 362–363; Morgan 2015, 300–346. 49 Pind. Pyth. 1, 75. Pindar deals in a specific rhetoric of freedom designed for mainland Persian War memorialisation: e.g. Simon. Epigr. 15 FGE (Plataea); Simon. Epigr. 17(b) FGE, an epigram at Delphi commemorating the end of the Persian Wars in 479 BC; Plataea elegy F11, l. 25 West; CEG 2(a), Marathon or Salamis: Bonnano 2010, 168–178, 225–227; Morgan 2015, 25–30; Yates 2019, 230–231. 50 Life of Aeschylus (TrGF T 1) 18. 51 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 345–346. Sommerstein 2012, 104 has posited that, with its chorus of Phoenician women, Phrynichus’ Phoenician Women might have treated Himera. If so, it is unlikely to have been designed for an Athenian audience (see below on Aesch. Persians). 52 Taplin 2006. 53 Hall 1996, 12; Taplin 2006, 6. 54 Caven 1990, 210. 55 Hermippus of Smyrna, FGrH 1026 F 84. 56 Mitchell 2000, 94.

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song-culture may have been similar, signalling a new orientation toward panhellenic cultural forms as a way of shoring up broader-based, popular political support in light of growing elite opposition. Like the tyrants of Macedon, the Black Sea region and possibly Arcesilas IV, the Hecatomnids of Caria found theatre culture useful as a way of creating a kind of Greek-speaking urban power-base as a buffer against their elite rivals. It seems that theatre could help redirect traditional identities. There had been centuries of interaction between the nonGreek populations of Caria and Greeks, both in Asia and further afield, but it was only with the rise of the Hecatomnid dynasty that the selective adoption (and adaptation) of Hellenic culture became deliberate policy.57 This is most visible in their use of Greek-style urban planning (notably at Mylasa and Halicarnassus), monumental architecture and forms of religious dedication, and the accelerated use of Greek as opposed to Carian language.58 It is with Mausolus (377–353 BC) that theatre first appears as a key component of this Hellenising trend. A large Greek theatre may have been part of the original urban plan of Halicarnassus as the new capital of Mausolus’ Caria.59 Caunus, near the border with Lycia, may also have acquired a theatre on its Great Acropolis in consequence of Hecatomnid development of polisstyle urbanism.60 Unlike other autocrats, Mausolus appears to have concentrated his attention on Caria itself, showing limited interest in dedications at panhellenic sites but with extensive programmes of construction in local sanctuaries (Labraunda, Amyzon and Sinuri). The primary audience for Mausolus’ cultural strategy thus appears to have been local and regional.61 In this context Greek culture, and Greek theatre in particular, served the Hecatomnids as a powerful tool against their rivals in the Carian elite. That the threat was real is clear from the numerous attacks on Mausolus’ rule attested by the evidence at our disposal.62 Mausolus eroded the influence of Carian elite families by dissolving their traditional economic and social power-base, as peasants and craftsmen from the local Lelegian villages were absorbed into the new polis structures. The innate attractions of drama will have helped capture and hold the support of a broad-based audience for the Hecatomnids. The physical structure of the theatre allowed the dynasts to address a polis audience at scale for the first time. Tragedy featured in Halicarnassus, and possibly comedy.63 The Athenianness of theatre is not so obviously relevant here: its allure as the preeminent panhellenic cultural form was paramount.

Legitimation Theatre could also assist autocrats with one of their greatest challenges: legitimation. Given that the notion of sole rulership inherently lacked legitimacy in Greek eyes and that virtually all Greek autocrats, with the exception of the kings of Sparta and Cyrene, had no constitutional, traditional or religious foundation, the need was great. We offer three examples of tragedies that fabricate monarchic legitimacy. The tyranny of Dionysius I had no firmer base than his (temporary) election as strategos autokrator in 405 BC.64 In a decree for the autocrat, Athens was careful to use the loudly neutral term “archon of Sicily”,65 suggesting that tyrannos, basileus, dynastes and monarchos were all unavailable or unacceptable, and the response he received at Olympia in 388 BC confirms Greece’s generalised antipathy to autocrats.66 Dionysius however wrote autobiographical tragedies in

57 Hornblower 1982; Ruzicka 1992; Chrubasik 2017. 58 Adiego 2013. 59 Its excavator was convinced of a mid fourth-century date under Mausolus for its first phase, citing but not describing architectural finds from the stage building (“architektonischen Fundstücken von der Skene”: Serdaroğlu 1982, 355). Pedersen and Isager (2015, 306–307) note the weight of circumstantial evidence for such a date, including the existence, around 360–350 BC, of both a need for a theatre and the financial resources to construct one. 60 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 734–735. 61 Chrubasik 2017. 62 See esp. I.Mylasa 1–3 = R-O no. 54; I.Iasos 1. For the full dossier of evidence and analysis, see Briant 1996, 686–689. 63 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 771–772. 64 Diod. Sic. 13, 94, 5–6. 65 IG II2 18, ll. 6–7. 66 Lys. 33; Diod. Sic. 14, 109.

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which he presented himself as a king, after the model of the paradoxical ‘democratic’ king Theseus from Attic tragedy, who combined regal standing with a willingness to accede to the will of the people.67 Plato dismissed Archelaus as the illegitimate son of a slave and a barbarian who acquired a throne through murder and intrigue.68 Euripides’ Archelaus tells the story of the foundation of Aegae, the Macedonian capital, by an ancestor of the same name as the tyrant. This ancestor is a grandson of Heracles. The play thus legitimises the tyrant with a ‘genealogical charter’, connecting him with the royal line of Argos, and ultimately with the greatest Greek hero of all. Moreover, a papyrus fragment of the prologue clearly indicates that Zeus took a particular interest in the birth and destiny of Archelaus, which implicitly extends to his homonymous descendant.69 In addition to granting legitimacy to his sole rule, the play served to declare the security of his dynastic succession, which was anything but secure, and leveraged internal and external acceptance and support for it.70 The Hecatomnids’ power rested on uncertain foundations. Nominal satraps of Caria under the Achaemenids, they wanted the appearance of a royal dynasty with a long, glorious past and future. The one drama we know to have been composed for a Hecatomnid was the Mausolus by Theodectes of Phaselis. We know little of this tragedy beyond it being (probably) designed for a memorial festival in honour of Mausolus, though we cannot rule out the possibility that it was performed while Mausolus was still alive (below). The Mausolus probably gave the Hecatomnid ancestry from a Greek god.71 And it is highly likely to have presented Mausolus to a massed audience in his new capital as the synoecist and founder of the Carian state.72 Victories in the athletic festivals of the periodos provided tyrants with huge prestige that they exploited masterfully. But no tyrant had ever managed to establish lasting control over one of the great sanctuaries or have himself identified with its capacity to grant charismatic authority. The short-lived effort of “the most arrogant of the Greek tyrants”,73 Pheidon of Argos, to control the Olympic Games lived in uncertain historical memory as the exception to prove the rule. With theatre festivals on the other hand, autocrats ran the show. The high cost and logistical complexity of theatre were, paradoxically, beneficial to them. Perhaps the single greatest advantage of this was that it removed potential competition from local elites. The autocrat’s control over the kind of money, infrastructure and administration needed to run theatre festivals gave them control of the medium. Theatre was in this respect a considerable improvement on the epinician. Many aristocrats could afford an epinician. None could afford a rival theatre festival. Just having a theatre was testimony to wealth and power. Archaic tyrants were famously attracted to the permanence and display of monumental architecture – temples, treasuries, technically challenging works such as the Corinthian diolkos or urban water systems.74 Their Classical successors devoted equal ambition to the construction of theatres.75 Autocrats vied with one-another in what looks like a race to build the largest or most magnificent stone theatre. It is possible that, as early as the 480s, Gelon constructed a large theatre on the Temenites hill in Syracuse that was not only grander than its Athenian counterpart of the time, but may have served as his tomb.76 Hard proof that his brother and successor Hieron I conducted work on the great theatre of Syracuse is currently lacking,77 but there are hints that he may have built a theatre in his new foundation of Aetna, the city designed to be his personal memorial.78 A century later, it is highly likely that Dionysius I devoted his energies to revamping the Syracusan theatre. Its most recent exca-

67 Duncan 2012; Athanassaki, this volume. 68 Pl. Grg. 471a; Moloney 2014, 235. 69 Eur. TrGF F 228; Stewart 2017, 117–138. 70 Pownall 2017, 220–221. 71 Hornblower 1982, 261, 335–336, drawing on Ps.-Plut. De fluv. 25, 1, suggests the tragedy traced descent from a homonymous son of Apollo. Jeppesen and Luttrell 1986, 107 posit Theseus and Heracles. 72 Ribbeck 1875; cf. Hornblower 1982, 333. Possibly performed while alive: Jeppesen and Luttrell 1986, 107. 73 Paus. 6, 22, 2. 74 Knell 1990; Hansen and Fischer-Hansen 1994. 75 Marconi 2012; Moretti 2014. 76 The evidence thus far provided by its excavator for this prospect is, however, very uncertain: Voza 1993–1994; Voza 2001; Voza 2007; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 299–301. 77 Largely because of the degraded state of the remains and because recent excavation remains unpublished. Bernabò Brea 1967 held that operations undertaken by Hieron II removed all signs of any structures that may have stood there before his time: de Lisle this volume. There is however little doubt that a theatre of some sort existed in Syracuse in the 470s BC. 78 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 380–382.

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vator claimed to have identified part of a retaining wall belonging to a phase of the theatre under his rule. The section in question is both curvilinear and sits at a much higher point in the theatron than its predecessor.79 This would represent both mastery of a new technical challenge and the construction of a theatre of an unparalleled capacity. It would predate the completion of the first curvilinear stone theatre in Athens by as much as half a century. This is no nicety of architectural history, but a central issue of cultural politics. We now know that the Athenians had a plan for their new curvilinear theatre that was begun in the Periclean era but had not the resources to finish for nearly a century.80 Dionysius may have deliberately taken advantage of Athens’ economic slump after the Peloponnesian War to produce a theatre in Syracuse that represented all that they had planned but failed to achieve.81 The Macedonians were also players in this game. Moretti finds it “not without some plausibility” that the Macedonian monarchs produced the first stone, tiered, horseshoe-shaped theatre, and that they may also have created the first ever proskenion stage-building.82 The stone theatre at Aegae is in any case not later than that of Athens, and very probably the earlier completion. In this context some plausibility adheres to the report that Alexander had wanted the proskenion of his theatre at Pella to be constructed of bronze, and was prevented on the advice of his architect that it would spoil the acoustics.83

Theatricalisation Theatre rituals permitted the autocrat to bond with his subjects. It was important to display an image consistent with leadership: accessibility, generosity, evenhandedness. At the very least the autocrat had to be conspicuous. Except when absent on military campaign (and so far as we can tell regular theatre festivals were set outside the campaigning season) autocrats are present themselves leading the sacrificial processions and conducting sacrifice, attending the performances, and awarding the crowns to the winning poets and actors. The autocrat’s accessibility, especially during the procession, make this the preferred site of assassination.84 Our sources frequently make the autocrat the centre of attention in the theatre (below). By contrast an autocrat’s sudden departure from the theatre is the stuff of scandal.85 Most consistently thematised by our more neutral or sympathetic sources are the autocrat’s displays of generosity in the theatre. In a democracy public funds paid for a large part of the proceedings.86 But theatre was very much the autocrat’s show: our sources suggest that autocrats generally took the lead role in instigating, planning and paying for festivals. The theatrical event was itself a gift which thematised the autocrat’s generosity to all and sundry. Like democracies, the autocrat also used theatre as an occasion to distribute honours and give special favours and distinctions. Unlike democracies, this could be done in a personal, ‘spontaneous’ and sometimes show-stoppingly sensational way. When the comic actor Lycon asked Alexander of Macedon for ten talants in the middle of a production,87 he doubtless calculated – correctly – that Alexander would be pleased to have the public gaze turned to him as he gestured his fiat, displaying himself to be the dispenser of fortunes to faithful friends. Conversely, the autocrat could show himself to be conspicuously fair, by displaying feelings of favoritism while withholding its rewards. Plutarch records, as if it were

79 Voza 2001, 209 with fig. 2 feature 2. Caution is advised: Voza 2001, 209 thought of it as the first phase of the retaining wall, with a fifthcentury date. Voza 2007, 78–79 describes it as the second phase of the retaining wall, ascribing its construction to Dionysius I. Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 301–302. 80 Papastamati-von Moock 2015. 81 Wilson 2017, 16–17 argues, on the basis of the Athenian decree honouring Dionysius, IG II2 18 of 394/3 BC, that the grounds for honouring him may have been to do with his material support for the Athenian theatre. 82 Moretti 2014, 136. For the possibility that there was a curvilinear theatre even earlier at Dion in Macedonia see Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 595. 83 Plut. Mor. 1096b. See Moretti 2014, 133–135. 84 Assassination of Clearchus of Heraclea ([Chion] Epist. 17, 1; Memnon FGrH 434 F 1, 1, 3; Diod. Sic. 16, 32, 3) and Philip II of Macedon: Diod. Sic. 16, 93–95; Baynham 1994 for the historicity and likely source. Diod. Sic. 16, 92–93 is explicit that his bodyguards were ordered to keep their distance as he processed into the theatre. Cf. [Chion] Ep. 17, 1: “I intend to attack the tyrant at the Dionysia [. . .] on that day there is a parade for Dionysus and his bodyguard will be less vigilant because of it”. 85 Note particularly Jason of Pherae (Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 586–588). Cf. the mental absence of Caesar doing his correspondence: Garelli, this volume. 86 Wilson 2008. 87 Plut. Alex. 29; Mor. 334e. Cf. the ‘drama’ between Laberius and Caesar in Garelli, this volume.

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something remarkable, that as the judges were deliberating on the tragic competition in the theatre at Tyre, Alexander made no show of partisanship. Evidently all eyes were upon him, and we are told he gave his approval of the award to the actor Athenodorus, though he declared that he would rather have given half his kingdom than see Thessalus defeated.88 We can infer from these passages that: Alexander sometimes assumed a conspicuous seat when in a theatre, was not infrequently its focus of attention,89 and normally adopted a formal role in approving the judgment. It was the autocrat who hosted the poets and paid the prizes that attracted the actors, and at Macedon’s Olympia at least it was Philip himself who placed the crowns upon the victorious actors’ heads.90 As many of these examples illustrate, theatre provided a place where the autocrat could show, in view of his assembled subjects, how generously he bestowed honour and wealth on those who served him well. In this we assume autocrats imitated democracy (though we cannot disprove the contrary: democracies may well have imitated autocrats in developing their pre-performance ceremonies). Like democracies, autocrats awarded prohedria. At Aegae, where the theatre had a single prohedric line of stone seating, Borza noted that it would hold “almost exactly the number who may have made up the king’s inner circle”, the select class of hetairoi. Prohedria was awarded in the Dion theatre in the later fourth century,91 and there can be no doubt that the Macedonian autocrats used these most visible of spaces to reflect social and political hierarchies. When in 324 BC Alexander disbanded 10,000 veterans from his Eastern campaigns, he gave them prohedria “at all public contests and in the theatres”.92 Interestingly we seem to have no examples of the announcement of honorific crowns in autocratic theatre.93 The awarding of honorific crowns is of course common during the fourth century in Greek democratic states.94 In Athens such honours are normally given to foreigners and very frequently to foreign autocrats (Athens gave honorific crowns to: Euagoras, Dionysius, Satyrus, Leucon, Spartocus and Perisaides).95 The only examples we have of honorific crowning in autocratic theatre are of the autocrat himself, as for example in 336 BC in the theatre at Aegae when golden crowns were placed on Philip by important individuals and delegates of Greek states, Athens included, in an orchestrated mass acknowledgement of his leadership of the Greeks.96 As we might expect, autocrats were reluctant to share the limelight. It is with Classical autocrats that we find the beginning of the intense ‘theatricalisation’ that Angelos Chaniotis and others have shown to be so characteristic of Hellenistic political life.97 Autocrats were careful to stage their appearance in the theatre or other public events. As Sara Monoson demonstrates, much of the very theatrocentric conception of tyranny that we find in Gorgias and Republic 4 is based on Plato’s personal experience in the court of Dionysius I, particularly his observation of the way that theatre could manipulate the thoughts and emotions of the public and that theatrical productions could be made to serve “as vehicles for promulgating a propagandistic view of [the tyrant’s] own rule and self”.98 In Dionysius’ case ‘royal self-presentation’ began with simply dressing like a tragic king.99 In the Republic, Plato seems to have Dionysius foremost in mind, when he speaks of the need “not to be dazzled (ἐκπλήττεται) when observing the display of grandeur that tyrants put on for external show” but to consider the tyrant at home “when

88 Plut. Alex. 29, 3–4. 89 Cf. the story of Bagoas, the choreut and love-object of Alexander, kissed by the king in a crowded theatre immediately after a victory on stage: Ath. 13, 603a–b; Plut. Alex. 67, 8. The location of the theatre is not named. 90 Dem. 19, 193. The reference is to the Olympia held at Dion: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 590–597. 91 Borza 1990, 255; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 591–592, 595. 92 Plut. Alex. 71, 5 (see next note). Le Guen 2003, 349 and n. 105. 93 Unless we are to infer this from Plut. Alex. 71, 5: [Alexander] γράψας πρὸς Ἀντίπατρον, ὅπως ἐν πᾶσι τοῖς ἀγῶσι καὶ τοῖς θεάτροις προεδρίαν ἔχοντες ἐστεφανωμένοι καθέζοιντο. 94 Wilson 2009; Ceccarelli 2010. 95 Matthaiou 2019, 15–34 (Euagoras, announced in theatre); IG II2 18 = Tozzi 2020, no. 1 (Dionysius; not well enough preserved to know if there was a crown or announcement in the theatre, but Orth 2015, 358, suggests that παρ’ Ἀθηναίων in Polyzelus PCG F 12 might allude to these honours that Dionysius had recently received “from the Athenians” and makes the plausible proposal that a gold crown might have been among them, as we know to have been the case in IG II2 103: Dionysius, but not announced in theatre); IG II2 212 (Satyrus and Leucon, but not announced in theatre); IG II3 298 (Spartocus and Paerisades). Both Philip and Alexander were given Athenian citizenship and other honours but our sources do not offer details (Plut. Dem. 22, 4; schol. Aristid. 178, 16). 96 Diod. Sic. 16, 91, 6–16, 92, 1. 97 Gebhard 1988; Schmitt 1991; Chaniotis 1997; Chaniotis 2003; Chaniotis 2009. 98 Monoson 2012, 170. 99 Monoson 2012, 160.

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he can be seen stripped of his tragic costume”.100 The allusive power of this statement rests on the fact that it has a literal as well as a figurative reference. Duris of Samos attests that in public appearances Dionysius normally wore: “a xystis [said by Pollux to be a typical tragic robe], a golden crown, and a tragic epiporpema”.101 This was a style of self-fashioning that gained a certain appeal among autocrats: Diodorus tells us that Clearchus emulated Dionysius’ ‘management style’ in Pontic Heraclea, a style which presumably included the practice, reported by Justin, of “wearing a purple robe, buskins like kings in tragedies, and a crown of gold” when he appeared in public.102 Clearchus moreover treated his face like a mask and his clothing like theatrical costume: according to Memnon, he used makeup, “to vary his face in various forms, to appear to viewers radiant or flushed, or even to change his garments to make himself more frightening or more elegant”.103 It would seem Dionysius I invented the fashion notoriously followed by Demetrius the Besieger, whose wardrobe Plutarch describes as “truly a magnificent tragedy” (ὡς ἀληθῶς τραγῳδία μεγάλη).104 In Dionysius’ case self-presentation as a tragic king had a more literal dimension. As mentioned earlier he himself wrote tragedies. Philostratus says he was prouder of them than of his tyranny.105 And though ancient sources are uniformly hostile it seems they had some merit since he won a few not inconsiderable international prizes. Modern scholars have dismissed these as honours for the autocrat despite the sins of the poet, but recent appraisals suggest the possibility that the opposite could be the case, that our ancient sources condemn the poet for the sins of the autocrat.106 Truly innovative were his autobiographical tragedies, in which, as noted earlier, he presented himself as a Just Ruler. While Dionysius shaped tragedy after his tyranny, Philistus, Dionysius’ kinsman and spin doctor, shaped his tyranny after tragedy. He described the funeral of Dionysius in terms that conjured to a later reader “a theatrical finale to the great tragedy that was his tyranny”.107 Theatricalisation was for Philistus no mere literary artifice, but essential to Dionysius’ rule. Autocrats said to have written songs or poems are extremely rare, and none before Dionysius wrote drama, yet his wayward example set something of a fashion. Mamercus, tyrant of Catane (ca 344–337 BC), “thought highly of himself as a writer of poems and tragedies”, and, in line with Dionysius’ theatre politics, is a likely candidate for a major restoration of the theatre in Catane.108 According to Athenaeus, Alexander himself was suspected of having written the satyr play Agen, an autobiographical drama in which Alexander is himself the eponymous hero, and which he in any case must have had a hand in commissioning and approving, thereby imitating Dionysius’ innovative use of drama for personal propaganda.109 In the late third century BC Ptolemy IV composed a tragedy called Adonis and the fact that both his male lover and his female lover’s brother are said to have written commentaries on it hints that it too had autobiographical content.110 In the first century BC Artavasdes of Armenia is also said to have written tragedies.111 But already by that time it was more common for autocrats to appear on stage, not by proxy, but as performers: Ptolemy XII ‘Auletes’ (brother of Cleopatra) earned his nickname from playing pipes to a chorus in the theatre; another Ptolemy, possibly of the royal family, acted on stage.112 Antiochus IV of Syria performed as a mime. Nero, the notorious ‘theatre emperor’, was no anomaly, but the product of a long tradition.

100 Pl. Resp. 577a–b; Monoson 2012, 159. 101 Duris FGrH 76 F 14; Poll. Onom. 4, 116; Duncan 2012, 151–153. There are no grounds to assume that Persian royal costume is the immediate prototype, as does e.g. Sanders 1991, 281. The Persian hypothesis is rooted in the theory of Alföldi 1955 that the tragic king’s costume is based on a Persian prototype: thus the reasoning is both circular and poorly supported by the Persian evidence. For the issues, see Wyles 2010. 102 Diod. Sic. 15, 81, 5; Just. Epit. 16, 5 (cf. Suda κ 1714). 103  Memnon FGrH 434 F 1. Among other indices of presumption ascribed to Demetrius of Phaleron appears the use of makeup (Ath. 12, 542d; Ael. VH 9, 9) at a time when the use of makeup was much frowned upon (Sassi 2001, 5–6). 104 Plut. Demetr. 41; Chaniotis 1997, 232. 105 Philostr. V S 1, 500. 106 Duncan 2012; Mojsek 2017. 107 Philistus of Syracuse, FGrH 556 F 40b. 108 Plut. Tim. 31; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 382–384. 109 Ath. 13, 586d; Le Guen 2014, 261, 266–268. 110 Ptolemy: schol. Ar. Thesm. 1059 = TrGF I, 119; 111 Plut. Crass. 33, 2. 112 Le Guen 2001a, TE 61 (= OGIS 51), and 300; Stephanis 1988a, 377–378, nos. 2161–2162.

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The Importance of Being Dionysus Dionysius, Clearchus and Demetrius of Phaleron were concerned not just to construct images of leadership and power from their own flesh, but to fill their respective cities with the same in marble and bronze.113 The custom of placing statues of human subjects in the theatre, widespread in Hellenistic and later times, cannot be traced earlier than the statues of poets in the Athenian Theatre of Dionysus, beginning with Astydamas a little after 340 BC, and followed soon after by the three tragedians.114 Philip II brought a statue of himself into the theatre along with the twelve gods (below), but it may have been intended not to serve as a permanent fixture, but to sit, like the icon of Dionysus in Athens, for the duration of the performances. Otherwise no statue of a fourth-century autocrat is reported in a theatre, despite it being the epiphanestatos topos of the city. Even in Hellenistic times poets, performers, and benefactors were given statues in general preference to politicians and autocrats; but the absence of statues of autocrats in the Classical theatre may be due to the paucity of our evidence: sculpture representing members of the imperial family was ubiquitous in theatres in Roman times.115 By contrast, representations of Dionysus and other divinities always had a place in the theatre.116 It is with some interest therefore that we find that Dionysius commissioned bronze statues (plural) of himself “dressed in the manner of Dionysus”, and that these alone of all the statues of the Syracusan tyrants, along with one statue of Gelon, escaped destruction at the hands of the Syracusans after the fall of the tyranny, possibly from fear of offending Dionysus.117 Though the Syracusan theatre probably belonged to Apollo (or Demeter), Dionysius, consistent with the panhellenic compass of his theatre politics, identified himself with Dionysus, the god whose theonym he bore. Sanders argued long ago that Dionysius I was the founder of what we know as ‘Hellenistic Ruler Cult’.118 The case for Dionysius’ self-identification with Dionysus depends heavily on the testimony of Favorinus (above) that he issued statues of himself dressed as Dionysus. The fact that Dionysius does not appear in the various lists of self-divinising tyrants that we find in the pages of writers such as Plutarch or Clement (see note 123) may indicate that Dionysius’ Dionysism was more suggestive than assertive. That is to say, Dionysius probably made no positive declarations, but nonetheless invited association with Dionysus.119 We know of a series of broad hints that tend in this direction. His mother dreamt when pregnant that she gave birth to a little satyr, satyriscum, a dream interpreted as a favourable omen that her son would be famous throughout the Greek world. The story certainly goes back to Philistus.120 In addition we know that Dionysius named his own second son Nysaios, after the supposed birthplace of Dionysus (the only person known to bear the name in antiquity). Suggestions such as these were not lost on his subjects or contemporaries: Eubulus, in a comedy named after the tyrant,

113 Suda κ 1714; Demetr. 1, 24–25 SOD. 114 Papastamati-von Moock 2014, 34; Hanink 2014, 60–125; Goette this volume. 115 Ma 2013, 90–94; Tozzi 2011 (for Athens). See Green, this volume, theatres during the Empire. 116 For statues of Dionysus (and other divinities) in the Greek theatre, see Schwingenstein 1977, 25–48; Lampaki 2012, esp. vol. 2, 29–43. For other theatre epochs, see Fuchs 1987, Rosso 2009, Deligiannakis 2015. During the fifth and fourth centuries BC, in general, statues of Dionysus (and other divinities) encroach on the theatre experience in three ways. Statues of the god(s) are visible in juxtaposed or surrounding sanctuaries (most frequently of Dionysus) as spectators approach the theatron (e.g. Icarian Dionysus: Despinis 2007; Lampaki 2012, no. ΙΚ 6) or the statues are visible in the surrounding area as spectators sit in the theatron (as at Rhamnus: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 237). This includes both cult statues and dedications, especially choregic dedications, which outside Athens, are frequently statues (as evidenced by the cuttings in surviving bases: Lampaki 2012, nos. AI 3, ΕΛ 2, ΘΟ 1, ΗΛ 1 = Csapo and Wilson 2020b, III J, Hi, Yiv, and add Ei, Hvi, Wi) and with some probability supposed to be statues of Dionysus since they are often expressly dedicated to him. A second kind is the statue of the god himself that was carried in procession into the theatre where it stayed during the performance at Athens and possibly Delos (Csapo and Wilson forthcoming I Aiii 5). This has some relevance to the procession of images of the gods at the time of Philip’s death, mentioned below. The third and most relevant form of divine statuary is that decorating the theatre itself. The statues of Dionysus that stood at between the skene and the parodoi at Euonymon (ca 370–330 BC) still survive (Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 112–121). Bases in the theatre at Megalopolis are argued to be for statues of Dionysus; parts of a statue of (probably) Dionysus were found in the theatre of Sicyon possibly of the fourth century BC (Lampaki 2012, vol. 1, 90, vol. 2, 36, cat. nos. ΜΕΓ 2–3). 117 Favorinus [Dio Chrys.] Or. 37, 21–22. The same speech reports the destruction of all (“1500”) statues of Demetrius of Phaleron (Or. 37, 41). Cf. Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 123; Ael. VH 13, 37. 118 Sanders 1991. 119 Hauben 1989 classifies the various strategies used by Hellenistic autocrats to enhance their power and authority through the manipulation of traditional religion; cf. Schorn 2014, 87. 120 FGrH 556 F 57a.

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mocks Dionysius for dressing like Dionysus.121 Dionysius’ Dionysism seems also to have rubbed off on his son, Dionysius II, whose courtiers were humorously known as “Dionysiokolakes”, “toadies of Dionysius”, after a derogatory name for actors “Dionysokolakes”, “toadies of Dionysus”, a most appropriate name for such courtiers as the Democles who is remembered for drunkenly dancing around Dionysius after declaring that the nymphs were wrong to dance around lifeless gods (implying that Dionysius was the living Dionysus).122 As Sanders points out, tyrants close to Dionysius were remembered for claiming to be descended from or incarnations of gods. Dionysius II seems to have claimed descent from Apollo; Clearchus of Heraclea claimed to be Zeus incarnate; Nicagoras tyrant of Zeleia (on the Propontis) dressed as and called himself “Hermes”.123 Sanders’ conclusion that they took inspiration from Dionysius’ Dionysism is not unlikely, but Dionysius seems to have been less ham-fistedly presumptuous than these more memorable avatars. There are others who pushed the limits without openly declaring immortal status. Philip processed into the theatre, along with the statues of the Twelve Gods, a thirteenth statue of himself, “suitable for a god [. . .] so that the king exhibited himself enthroned among the Twelve Gods”.124 Alexander, Demetrius the Besieger and Ptolemy Soter were adept at associating themselves with a variety of gods and heroes, without quite declaring their own divinity or fixing on one association to the exclusion of others.125 This was a trick they perhaps learned from Dionysius, as he too seems to have found a plurality of suggestive superhuman associations more helpful than any single precise divine identity. We know of another association Dionysius forged for himself, also centred on the theatre. Dionysius tried to confuse himself with Euripides. He is said to have acquired the instruments with which Euripides composed his tragedies, and, in Hermippus’ words, “dedicated them in the sanctuary of the Muses after inscribing them with his own name and Euripides’”.126 Philistus is probably responsible for the false synchronisation of Euripides’ death with Dionysius’ accession to power that appears in Timaeus, a suggestion, if not an actual assertion, of the reincarnation of the poet in the tyrant.127 Hieron received hero-cult as “illustrious founder” of Aetna;128 the Macedonian monarchs founded many cities, some of which bore their own name, but the blurring of boundaries between autocrat and Olympian deities on the part of Dionysius and especially Clearchus and Nicagoras are stark early examples of autocratic Gottmenschentum. Hieron’s inauguration of Aetna was ornamented by the performance of Aeschylus’ Women of Aetna, but Dionysius’ Dionysism established a claim to be the founder of theatre. Being confused with Dionysus had many advantages besides confusing oneself with the author of the gift of theatre. Dionysus had beyond all other gods a popular appeal through his connections with wine, food, sex, joyful processions, celebration and victory. Of the many divine associates of Alexander cultivated during and soon after his lifetime, it was Dionysus that Ptolemy I was most keen to develop for Alexander’s posterity and his own.129 The Ptolemies and Attalids generally developed strong associations with Dionysus (while the Seleucids are said to have associated with Apollo from whom they personally claimed ancestry).130 It is hardly a coincidence that two of the four main Actors’ Associations (Artists of Dionysus) are found in their realms, for the Associations not only organised festivals and theatre performances, but they were also closely connected with ruler worship, duties that were most comfortably united when patron god and ruler were openly one and the same. After Demetrius the Besieger, we count twenty-two ancient autocrats or would-be autocrats who associated themselves with Dionysus,

121 Eubulus PCG F 24; the source (schol. Ar. Thesm. 137) says Eubulus is “denouncing the inconcinnity of things in Dionysius’ household” (could ‘inconcinnities’ τὰ ἀνόμοια be a corruption of τὰ ἀνόμιμα ‘deviant practices’?). 122 Timaeus FGrH 566 F 22 and Stephanus in Arist. Artem. Rhetor. comm. 313, 22 with Ceccarelli 2004. 123 Dionysius II: Plut. De Alex. fort. 338b. Clearchus: Memnon FGrH 434 F 1, 1; Just. Epit. 25, 5, 8, 12; Plut. De Alex. fort. 338b. Nicagoras of Zeleia: Baton FGrH 268 F 2 = FGrH Cont. 1029 F 1; Clem. Al. Protr. 4, 54, 4; Alexinus in Euseb. Praep. evang. 15, 2, 4; Schorn 2014. 124 Diod. Sic. 16, 92, 5; cf. 16, 95, 1. 125 For Alexander, see Csapo and Wilson forthcoming, VI G. Demetrius: Fredricksmeyer 1979, 45–47; Thonemann 2005; Grainger 2017, 30. Ptolemy: Höbl 1901, 93–94: “The fact that he likened himself to the various gods was not so strange for an Egyptian because of the manifold aspects of Amun himself”. 126 FGrH 1026 F 84. 127 FGrH 566 F 105 with Wilson 2017, 13–15. 128 Pind. Pyth. 1, 31; Diod. Sic. 11, 49, 2–4. 129 Csapo and Wilson forthcoming, VI G. 130 Grainger 2017, 18; cf. Le Guen 2003: 353–355; Chaniotis 2003, 434; Paul 2016, 67–69; but see the three Antiochoi New Dionysoi, in the note below. Seleucid ancestry: Iossif 2011.

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including at least twelve who became living incarnations of the god, allowing themselves to be known as the “New Dionysus”.131 Dionysius’ long-term impact on theatre history is probably greater and longer than generally credited.

Privatising Theatre Autocratic Dionysification, evident already throughout the fourth century, introduces what has been noted as one of the most characteristic features of Hellenistic and Imperial religion. As Hauben puts it: Avec les cités, la religion typiquement poliade avait été reléguée à l’arrière-plan. À l’individualisme des sujets correspondait la ‘personnalisation’ du pourvoir, c.-à-d. que l’état se confondait de plus en plus avec le souverain [. . .]132

Autocrats hoped as much as possible to centre traditional religion upon their person. Theatre, the main medium of mass communication, was a primary tool. This explains why autocrats overwhelmingly preferred to merge their image with Dionysus. It should also help explain why autocrats continually experimented with the personalisation of theatre. No aspect was left untouched: the theatre space, the festival occasion, the performers, even, as we have seen, the dramas themselves might bear their imprint. Propaganda could be served by the very choice of location of the theatre. Those seated in the Halicarnassean theatre could scarcely fail to be reminded of the founder of their new Carian state, as their view towards the sea was “interrupted by the Mausoleum on its enormous podium”.133 At Aegae, under Philip, the theatre was rebuilt in conjunction with his palace, half-way between palace and market, as if half-way between the royal and public space, and centred on the palace whose wings extended protectively beyond either side of the theatron, as if to welcome the public into a space that was both public and part of the palace complex.134 As with the autocrat’s merging with divinity, ambiguity was sometimes helpful, perhaps because the ultimate step was more persuasive when taken voluntarily by courtiers and the public. Public theatre was suggestively personalised, but never made part of the autocrat’s home. It is worth noting that Philip and Alexander were also the pioneers of private theatre, namely theatrical performances for a select group of invited guests in spaces less ambiguously belonging to the autocrat.135 But private theatre had different rules and different effects. We have nothing from Classical autocratic theatre to compare with the division of the theatron into sections that bear the name of a member of the dynastic family in the theatre built by Hieron II in Syracuse.136 But we mentioned earlier the possibility that Gelon’s tomb was incorporated into the earlier theatre and Dionysius developed the shrine of the Muses, probably above and within the theatre precinct, where he dedicated and attached his name to the writing tablet of Euripides and other mana-filled objects. Such collections had traditionally been in the private houses of the very wealthy, but this was one of the first ‘museums’ in a public space.137 The autocrat’s name and power are also advertised by the donor’s inscriptions of private individuals in autocratic theatres. The propylon at Nymphaion, for example, is careful to name not just the donor but the autocrat he serves and acknowledge his power by listing the parts of his vast realm.138 The discovery in the theatre at Aegae of a fragment of what may be a treaty between Macedon and Sparta dating from the late fifth or early fourth century suggests that Archelaus or his successor used the theatre as a site for the publication of the positive results of his international diplomacy.139 This latter example, which imitates the practice in democratic states, underscores the importance of making the theatre also seem a public space. In Dionysius’ Syra-

131 New Dionysoi: Ptolemy IV, Ptolemy XII, Antiochus IV, Antiochus VI, Antiochus XII, Mark Antony, Mithridates VI, Caligula, Trajan, Antoninus, Commodus, Elagabalus. Much of the evidence is collected by Tondriau 1953; Cerfaux and Tondriau 1957. 132 Hauben 1989, 462. 133 Hornblower 1982, 301. 134 Drougou 2017. 135 Csapo 2010, 172–178. 136 De Lisle, this volume. 137 Mojsik 2017; Wilson 2017, 13–15; Csapo and Wilson forthcoming, VI E. 138 SEG 52, 741; Braund 2019, 91. 139 SEG 53, 587.

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cuse, the Syracusan assembly continued to meet (as it evidently had during the preceding democratic period) in the theatre, even if public debate was devoid of any real meaning.140 Autocratic personalisation of the occasion for theatre is often treated as the cause for the perceived ‘secularisation’ of theatre in the Hellenistic period. Though ‘secularisation’ is certainly an exaggeration,141 autocrats did in various ways separate theatrical performances from the traditional religious calendar. But the process by which autocrats made theatre occasional and used these occasions to mark milestones in their own cvs was well underway by the mid fourth century BC. Autocratic theatre festivals typically mark military victories, royal weddings, or funerals. We can find examples of the personalisation of theatre festivals back even in the early fifth century BC. Aeschylus’ Women of Aetna was performed to celebrate the founding of Hieron’s new city, probably in the context of a festival (and perhaps even cult) newly created by Hieron for the principal deity of the city, Zeus Aitnaios.142 Though this is a case of inventing a festival tradition rather than breaking with one, it is in the service of a boldly personal venture. Not only was the city, built on the ashes of Catane, treated as an entirely new foundation, for which Hieron would serve as founder, and with an entirely new Dorian population loyal to Hieron, but Hieron probably gave himself the priesthood of Zeus Aitnaios (a unique instance of a Classical autocrat holding the priesthood of a cult in which drama was performed that supported his régime).143 Archelaus too founded a new recurrent festival to Zeus and the Muses (a.k.a. Olympia) that included theatrical events. The degree to which Philip and Alexander broke with tradition is, however, sometimes exaggerated. Our Greek sources typically misrepresent specific enactments of this festival by the Macedonian monarchs as secular and occasional victory celebrations. The festivals that followed the victories of Philip at Olynthus in 348 BC and Chaeroneia in 338 BC are thus represented as victory celebrations.144 Demosthenes writes “When Philip took Olynthus he held the Olympia”. The scholiast correctly notes that this is a rhetorical conjunction designed to mislead and rouse indignation: “He tried to link them [the Olympia] with the events at Olynthus so that Aeschines would also appear to be celebrating and sharing in the festivities at the capture of Greeks”. Diodorus, probably under the influence of Demosthenes, calls them ἐπινίκια (‘victory celebrations’). This is anachronistic. The Macedonian Olympia, to Zeus Olympios, was held in autumn in the month of Dios (roughly October), which began the Macedonian year, and was probably therefore an annual New Year’s festival. Olynthus was taken, and the Greeks defeated at Chaeronea, in autumn, at the end of the campaigning season, and the anti-Macedonian bias of our sources has made a traditional festival look like a spontaneous celebration.145 It is the same festival that Alexander celebrated in 335 BC, following the fall of Thebes – one would think ‘immediately’ by Diodorus’ account – but Thebes fell in August and two or three months intervened.146 If there is any truth in the story, the same festival is likely the venue in 355/4 BC for the three dithyrambs entitled Cyclops that allegedly competed at games organised by Philip “a little before” he lost his eye during the capture of Methone.147 The biggest break with tradition came during Alexander’s eastern campaigns. Traditional festivals were tied not just to times, but places, so things were quite different in locations where there were no traditions Alexander or his soldiers could be expected to observe. Alexander’s eastern campaign also frequently outran the natural seasonal rhythm of the wars in Greece where one might be free to enjoy festivities at a fixed time of year. Instead, he held several festivals at lulls in his campaigns and, particularly after notable victories, to reward his troops and to draw attention to his conquests. Of the twenty festivals we know of, half were elaborate enough to involve theatrical events.148 The ‘musical contest’ he arranged, while convalescing at Soli in the summer of 333 BC to mark the victory of his troops at Halicarnassus, possibly included drama. Two events that celebrated his victory over Egypt at Memphis in 331 BC almost certainly did. The festival at Tyre in 331 BC is reported to have included dithyrambs and tragedies. Games with a musical contest were held on the bank of the Hydaspes in 326 BC. In very late 325 BC, in thanks for his victory over India (Charisteria), 140 Wilson 2017. 141 See Csapo, Paillard and Wilson, this volume. 142 On the evidence provided by the Pindaric scholia (schol. Pind. Ol. 6, 162a, c; Nem. 1, 7a, b) see Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. 143 Pind. Ol. 6, 158–162 with schol. 158a; Wilson 2019, 330; Lewis 2020, 145–147. 144 Olynthus: Dem. 19, 192; Diod. Sic. 16, 55, 1; Suda α 1982; Moloney 2014, 241–242. For Chaeroneia: Dio Chrys. Or. 2, 2–3: the Olympia are mentioned right after the battle (τότε δ’ οὖν ἀπὸ στρατείας ἥκοντες [. . .]). 145 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 594–596. 146 Diod. Sic. 17, 16, 3–5. Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 590–596. 147 Marsyas FGrH 135–136 F 16; Duris FGrH 76 F 36. 148 Le Guen 2014.

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dramatic contests were held.149 In a lull in the campaign at Ecbatana in 324 BC drama was almost certainly part of the musical contests reported for a festival ‘in honour of Dionysus’. Two of the most elaborate festivals, both involving drama, at Susa in 324 BC and at Babylon in 323 BC were purely occasional, the first being the wedding of Alexander with the daughter of Darius III, in conjunction with marriages arranged for eighty of his officers with Persian noblewomen in Susa in 324 BC, the second being the funeral games for Hephaestion. In the use of drama for weddings and funerals, at least, Alexander followed precedents established by earlier fourth-century autocrats. Philip planned “magnificent musical contests”, including a performance by the tragedian Neoptolemus, for the dynastic marriage of his daughter Cleopatra at Aegae in 336 BC to Alexander of Epirus. According to Diodorus, Philip’s explicit intention was to attract “as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities”.150 While the event had the appearance of celebrating a union between the two powers, they were in fact a demonstration of Macedonian domination.151 Even more than a wedding, the death of an autocrat demanded timely and sensitive management as a public event: succession, in a world without constitutional monarchy, was almost always contested. Theatre proved a helpful tool in staking and publicising claims. In one case at least we have evidence for funerary drama as a special commission. On the death of Mausolus in 353 BC, his widow, sister and successor, Artemisia sponsored funeral rites in the dynast’s honour. Central to these was “a contest in enunciating his praises”,152 on the occasion of the dedication of the great Mausoleum. Theodectes’ tragedy Mausolus is likely to have broadcast the divine ancestry and status of Mausolus as founder, glorifying the dead ruler and – crucially – legitimating his successors at the same time.153 Our sources leave it unclear as to whether the tragedy formed part of the funeral contest or was a separate affair, possibly at a subsequent memorial commemoration. An exact pattern for the latter (so exact as to raise the possibility of imitation) is found in Pontic Heraclea in 338 BC. Upon the death of the tyrant Timotheus, his brother funded dramatic competitions, “some at the funeral and others yet more splendid later on”.154 The performances at the funeral of Hephaestion in 323 BC by a mass entourage of 3,000 Artists from Greece raise him to dynastic status.155 According to Arrian’s sources, the same performers competed at Alexander’s own funeral soon after. But the trend for autocratic funeral drama may have been set decades earlier, by Dionysius I. Two short fragments suggest that the tyrant may have composed a tragedy on the occasion of, and certainly in response to, the death of his wife Doris, which probably fell in the 380s BC. Conjugal and funeral themes appear together in both.156 Δωρὶς τέθνηκεν ἡ Διονυσίου γυνή οἴμοι, γυναῖκα χρησίμην ἀπώλεσα ‘Doris is dead, the wife of Dionysius’ ‘Ah! I have lost a good wife!’

If these fragments belong together, the speaker of the second line must be ‘Dionysius’. The first sounds like the words of a messenger, and the second a response to the news brought, but it is also possible, perhaps more likely, that the first was also spoken by ‘Dionysius’ himself. The resulting oblique, third-person reference to himself would lend a quality of regal magnification. Some have seen here the introduction to tragedy of the personal and intimate ‘life experiences’ of Dionysius.157

149 Arr. Anab. 6, 28, 3 calls them kharisteria rather than epinikia. They also celebrated the army’s successful crossing of the Gedrosian desert and the safe arrival of Nearchus and the fleet. 150 Diod. Sic. 16, 91, 5. 151 Bosworth 1994, 840. 152 Gell. NA 10, 18, 5. 153 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 767–772. 154 Photius’ summary of Memnon’s History of Heraclea, Books 9–10 (= FGrH 434 F 1, 3, 2–3); Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 788–790. 155 Le Guen 2014, 259, 266, on Arr. Anab. 7, 14, 10. 156 TrGF 76 F 9–10, both quoted by Lucian, Ind. 15. Lucian’s quotation does not specify a close relation or direct contiguity between the two fragments (they are separated by “and again: καὶ πάλιν”) but nothing speaks against it. The certain reference to a wife in both is highly suggestive and we can safely conclude that they came from the same work. The name Doris was relatively uncommon (and unfamiliar in the Attic-Ionic tradition). Süss 1966, 302–303; Duncan 2012, 145–146. 157 Duncan 2012, 144.

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 Eric Csapo & Peter Wilson

The personalisation of the theatrical event is total, and powerfully advertised, when the festival takes on the name of the autocrat.158 This probably began already during Alexander’s lifetime with the Alexandreia.159 By the end of the fourth century there were theatre festivals named the Antigoneia, and the Demetrieia;160 to be followed in the third by the Ptolemaia, the Dionysia Antiocheia and the Dionysia Attaleia. This kind of fully personalised festival, with its implication of divine cult for a living man, probably goes back to the Lysandreia created by the aspiring tyrant Lysander in 404 BC on Samos. In his case, however (and perhaps fittingly for a Spartan),161 there is no sign of drama at his festival, but a contest – judged by Lysander himself – in epic encomium.162 It was a short step from here to having theatre professionals become the main operatives in ruler-cult. Autocrats personalised theatre in other ways. When they created their own theatres, occasions, or even prescribed the themes of the dramas, or wrote them themselves, this had little effect on other cities and other festivals. But the personal relationships autocrats developed with theatrical artists did. Personalisation first took the form of guest friendships with poets: we have already mentioned Hieron’s relationship with Aeschylus and Phrynichus, and Archelaus’ with Euripides and Agathon, the dithyrambists Melanippides and Timotheus and possibly also the comic Plato. To these we can add Dionysius’ hosting of the dithyrambists Philoxenus and probably Cinesias, the mime writer Xenarchus, and probably the tragedian Antiphon.163 An innovation practiced by Philip and Alexander was to foster close relations with actors as well as poets and even in preference to poets. Aristotle’s perception that in his day the actors were more important than poets is due to numerous cultural and economic developments, chief among them of course the great expansion of the theatre industry in the fourth century BC, but autocratic policy was also an important factor. In some ways actors were more useful than poets. For one thing, they typically belonged to an inferior socio-economic group, and so were financially less independent, and socially less secure: as a profession generally they were openly despised by elites, and therefore far more grateful for the attentions of great men. In their dealings with poets, Hieron or Dionysius had at least to make a pretence of equality (in the case of the latter there are many anecdotes which portray the unhappy results when poets actually acted on this principle). But the relationships between autocrats and actors was more feudal. Autocrats could openly and unconditionally buy their loyalty. Besides, actors were charismatic, mobile, enjoyed all the freedom of movement custom granted to performers at sacred festivals, and, with their acting skills, proved ideal for undertaking diplomatic missions, especially secret or sensitive negotiations, where a good memory was helpful, and still more precious, perhaps, was their practiced professional complacency in delivering other people’s scripts with fidelity and without necessarily adding anything of their own. The histories of Philip and Alexander show that they frequently put these qualities to the autocrat’s personal use.164 The greatest advantage of loyal actors was that they would be there when they were needed, a virtue that became increasingly important to Alexander the more he departed from the regular festival schedule, and the farther he moved from Central Greece. When for example Plutarch tells us that in distant Ecbatana Alexander “dealt with urgent business and once more turned his attention to theatres and festivals, when three thousand scenic artists arrived from Greece”, we have to suppose that many artists broke contracts at other festivals for Alexander, with all the attendant consequences for cities’ attempts to plan smooth-running festivals.165 We have an illuminating example of this in 331 BC, when the star tragic actor Athenodorus broke his contract with the Athenian Dionysia in order to appear at Alexander’s festival in Tyre. He calculated – correctly – that Alexander would pay his fine for non-appearance and offer other

158 Chaniotis 1995. 159 Evidence presented and discussed in Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. 160 A Demetrieia on Delos was created by the Nesiotic League, probably in response to the defeat by Demetrius of a Ptolemaic fleet at Cyprian Salamis in 306, prompting Antigonus to claim kingship in both their names. It was held in alternating years with a pre-existing Antigoneia: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 644, 657. Samos created an Antigoneia and Demetrieia at this time: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 704–705, 707–708, and a Demetrieia is likely for Sicyon: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 470–471. The Dionysia and Demetrieia in Athens and Euboea are about a decade later: Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 667, 708. See also Le Guen 2010b (where 501–504 list only those festivals that are undoubtedly associated with theatrical events). 161 Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 435–436. 162 Plut. Lys. 18, 4–6 (Duris FGrH 76 F 71); IG XII 6, 334; Habicht 1970, 3–6, 243–244; Flower 1988, robustly defends the testimony of Duris. 163 Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. 164 Csapo 2010, 172–174; Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. 165 Plut. Alex. 72; Le Guen 2014, 259–260.

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rewards besides.166 No democratic state could compete with the scale of largesse that Alexander lavished on actors (see the story of Lycon, mentioned above). Alexander threatened the affordability of theatre for cities, even for Athens, and in the last decades of the fourth century BC raised the salaries of actors to astronomical levels.167 It is no coincidence that, at precisely the time of Alexander’s festival in Tyre, Athens started decreeing civic honours to theatrical performers, generally passed at assemblies in the Theatre after the Dionysia, to actors who, among other things, demonstrated “fidelity” to the Athenian people;168 or to poets169 who displayed “excellence”, “justice” and a long record of being “well-disposed to the Athenian people, both now and in the past”;170 or to a piper “who continues to compete at the contest of the Dionysia in a fine and ambitious manner”.171 We can suppose that “continues to compete” is just as important as the manner. Another example of the financial lure of autocratic festivals is the event planned by Antigonus the One-Eyed in 302/1 BC to inaugurate his new capital, Antigoneia-on-Orontes. Antigonus had gathered the most illustrious actors and athletes with the lure of “great prizes and payments”, but the emergency created when Lysimachus crossed into Asia forced Antigonus to call it off. Even so, “he gave the athletes and actors no less than two hundred talants”.172 Such cancellation fees are unlikely to have been offered to performers at the Athenian Dionysia. The complexity of organising performers for the increasing number of dramatic festivals, some of them called at very short notice, created a need to organise actors. Alexander must have developed a fairly sophisticated bureaucracy to move theatre performers, together with more vital food and equipment, along his supply lines. It is no surprise to find that the most powerful, and probably the first, branches of the Dionysiac technitai (so far as they are visible to us after ca 390 BC) are to be found in the kingdoms of his successors. They learned from Alexander the importance of organising and controlling performers. Direct patronage by the Ptolemies of the technitai ensured imperial control over drama as an instrument of dynastic legitimisation, and there was a similar if slightly less successful exercise by the Attalids over the Tean-Pergamene branch.173 It is possible that the later, central Greek organisations, including the Athenian, were formed in response to these prior establishments, as an attempt to stem the growing autocratic monopolisation of theatre. Democratic states had little choice but to adapt to the profound changes Classical autocrats introduced to theatre culture. The introduction of the agonothesia in Athens in 306 BC is probably one such adaptation. It reflects the democratic city’s attempt to deal with the growing expense and complexity of organising festivals in a world increasingly dominated by autocrats. By placing administrative and financial control of festivals in the hands of a single man, the agonothete, while at the same time considerably relaxing, by virtue of the agonothete’s own substantial financial contribution, the previous system’s extensive apparatus of public control and scrutiny over the expenditure of public money, democratic cities like Athens created a festival organiser with nearly unlimited power and discretion to compete for top theatrical talent with autocrats. In many ways, therefore, characteristics traditionally ascribed to theatre in and after the later fourth century BC were already present at an earlier date: the monumentalisation of theatres, the separation of theatre from traditional festivals, departures from the typical concerns and canonical myths of tragedy, ‘reperformance culture’, the proliferation of theatre rituals, the increased importance of the actor, the increased pressure for grandiosity and spectacle, and the reliance on single individuals to co-ordinate planning and finance. Autocratic adoption and adaption of theatre was a primary contributor, if not the main driver, of all these developments.

166 Plut. Alex. 29. 167 Csapo 2010, 87; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 704–710; Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. 168 IG II3 1, 344 and 346 with Csapo and Wilson 2014, 418. 169 IG II3 1, 347; Le Guen 2014, 257. 170 IG II3 1, 347, ll. 11–15. 171 IG II3 1, 929, ll. 11–15. Cf. IG II3 1, 423 with Lambert 2008, 79–81. 172 Diod. Sic. 20, 108. 173 Le Guen 2003; Le Guen 2007c; Le Guen this volume.

Brigitte Le Guen

2 Artists of Dionysus and Ptolemaic Rulers in Egypt and Cyprus Shortly after the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC), the business of organising theatre professionals underwent considerable change throughout the Greek world. This was due to the increasing demand for performing artists, itself the consequence of the proliferation of festivals with agonistic programs that included ‘musical contests’ (μουσικοὶ ἀγῶνες) – a term by which the ancients referred to competitions for instrumental music and chorus, as well as epic, lyric or dramatic poetry. At this time indeed we witness the birth and the development of associations of an entirely new kind, at the same time religious and professional.1 Composed solely of free2 males with an expertise (τέχνη) in music,3 in the broad sense defined above, the associations were essentially (but not exclusively) dedicated to the worship of the god Dionysus, who was the patron of their art, and for this reason they bore the name of Associations of Artists (τεχνῖται) of Dionysus.4 An additional novelty is the fact that these associations also constituted micro-states, endowed with their own decision-making authorities (assemblies), with their own magistrates (priests, treasurers, etc.) and with their own ambassadors. As such, these miniature cities maintained diverse relations with the local authorities of the places in which they were established as well as with external powers. Among the main guilds of Artists of Dionysus known to us5 only two had their headquarters in territories dominated by Hellenistic kings: one in the kingdom of Pergamum, controlled by the Attalids,6 the other in Egypt, where the Ptolemies ruled.7 However, a similar type of association is later attested in Cyprus,8 which came under Lagid domination from the beginning of the third century BC onwards.9 As recent studies of the inscriptions on this island modify the chronology of those documenting the Artists of Dionysus,10 it is on the Egyptian and Cypriot guilds that I shall focus my analysis here, keeping in mind that the sources for each guild are of different dates: the activity of the τεχνῖται in Egypt is known to us practically only in the third century, that of the τεχνῖται in Cyprus from the middle of the second century to 30 BC. At first I propose to examine, in order, the birth and the development of the Egyptian and Cypriot guilds in an attempt to shed light not only on their specific links with monarchic power, but also on the relations between these guilds.11 Afterwards, I will study how the ruling dynasty made use of the religious vocation of the Artists of Dionysus, and I will attempt to explain why they acted as they did. Finally, I will analyse the consequences these actions had not only for the artists, but also for those who formed the Ptolemaic court both in Alexandria and in Paphos12 or supported the royal power. 1 The Greek terms used indifferently to qualify these associations are κοινόν (pl. κοινά) and σύνοδος (pl. σύνοδοι). 2 To tell the truth, none of our sources clarifies what conditions were needed to become a member of such an association, whether social, moral, financial, or professional. However, the fact that each artist is, generally, named in inscriptions with his own name, the name of his father and that of his country virtually proves that they were all free men and citizens with full rights: no slave nor woman was ever included. One cannot infer, however, that artists from a given city belonged to the nearest geographical guild. 3 See below, 45. 4 There are today two relatively recent syntheses on these associations: Le Guen 2001 and Aneziri 2003. See also Lightfoot 2002; Le Guen 2004 [2006] (on the work by Aneziri 2003). 5 Two other main associations existed in the Hellenistic period, besides the Egyptian and Pergamene guilds. One was based in Athens (οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται οἱ ἐν Ἀθήναις); the other one, the Isthmian and Nemean Association (τὸ κοινὸν τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται τῶν ἐξ Ἰσθμοῦ καὶ Νεμέας), participated among others in the world-renowned contests set up at the Corinthian Isthmus and at Nemea, and had branches in numerous cities (below, 39 and note 36). 6 Le Guen 1997b; Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 199–291 and vol. 2, 27–34; Le Guen 2007c. 7 Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 293–300, and vol. 2, 5–11, 34–36; Le Guen 2016. 8 Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 300–315 and vol. 2, 34–36; Le Guen 2016. 9 The Lagid presence in Cyprus stretches from the early days of the reign of Ptolemy I to the death of Cleopatra VII, i.e. from 295/4 BC to 30 BC (See Bagnall 1976, 38). It is known to us mainly through epigraphic texts relating to the στρατηγός (military governor), the most important officer on the island and first dignitary of the Ptolemaic administration, all territories combined (Bagnall 1976, 38–49; Mooren 1977, 180–192). 10 See Cayla 2017 and Cayla 2018. However, to date, we still do not have a corpus of all the Cypriot inscriptions. 11 In my book (Le Guen 2001) and in a previous article on the associations in Egypt and Cyprus (Le Guen 2016), I took for granted that the Artists of Dionysus based in Cyprus were a branch of the main guild attested in Egypt, an assertion that needs re-examination. 12 See below, 49–52. Note: This is a thoroughly updated version of my article published in 2016. I warmly thank Eric Csapo for correcting the English of my text. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-003

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 Brigitte Le Guen

The associations of Artists established in Egypt and Cyprus The Case of Egypt Unlike other Hellenistic associations of Artists of Dionysus, the one operating in the Ptolemaic kingdom is illuminated both by epigraphic13 and literary sources. The oldest testimony appears in a passage of On Alexandria, a book probably written in the second century BC by the historian Callixeinus of Rhodes and quoted by Athenaeus in his Deipnosophists a few centuries later.14 It evokes the gigantic and luxurious procession organised in Alexandria by Ptolemy II,15 in which πάντες οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται (“all the artists devoted to Dionysus”) participated (198c), specifically in the long and detailed section dedicated to the god (197e–202a). It is true that no terms explicitly referring to an association appears in the text.16 However, from the fact that the τεχνῖται are described as a group whose unity is centred on the god Dionysus,17 and from the fact that it employs terms found elsewhere during the Hellenistic period that, without the slightest ambiguity, designate other artists’ guilds,18 we can assert that the artists did not exercise their professions independently, and can feel confident that their gathering at this festival was no haphazard or unique occurrence. One other indication lends support to this hypothesis: Callixeinus specifies that the τεχνῖται walk before the wagon in which Dionysus makes his first appearance in the parade, and they march behind their colleague, the poet Philiscus,19 who is said to lead them in his capacity of priest of Dionysus,20 a priesthood known to be the most important office in all the Dionysiac associations, because its responsibility involved dating letters,21 decrees22 and agonistic lists.23 An alternative hypothesis, that Philiscus was the annual civic priest of Dionysus in Alexandria, is improbable. As a matter of fact, further in the description of the procession, it is said that the same wagon carrying the statue of Dionysus was followed by “priests and priestesses, the attendants of the sacred objects,24 all kinds of religious societies, female bearers of the mystic van” (τὰ λῖκνα φέρουσι). In other words, if this distinction is meaningful, all those who served in

13 The epigraphic evidence amounts to two decrees. 14 Ath. 5,197c–203b. See also FGrH 627 F 2. 15 An extensive bibliography exists on the subject. See mainly Rice 1983; Dunand 1981, 11–40; Köhler 1996; Thomson 2000; Caneva 2010, 173–189; Caneva 2016a, 81–127. 16 See note 1 here. 17 The formula οἱ περὶ + acc. is traditionally used to indicate the circle of acquaintances of a person, sometimes with the person him/herself. As pointed out by Ceccarelli 2004, 109, the choice of the artists to use the periphrasis in their official title, and substituting the name of a deity (here Dionysus) instead of that of a mortal, is not common. However, I still do not agree with her interpretation of the origin of the name, as it may very well not come from the artists themselves. If, as I believe (following Rice 1983, 56, who deems this hypothesis probable), the first association to have ever been born was the one in Egypt (but unfortunately we cannot date with precision the documents which could confirm it), and if it was created at the initiative of Ptolemy (I or II), it is from the Ptolemies that it may have received its name. The rulers only added the name of Dionysus to the one the deified couple formed with their wives, because they had a very clear idea of the role they wanted the Artists of Dionysus to play (see below). The use of περὶ + acc. of the name of the deified rulers would have extended to include the name of Dionysus to form a not unwelcome parallelism. 18 See IG XI, 4, 1060 and I. Olympia 405. Cf. the Concordance table at the end of this article with references to my own corpus (Le Guen 2001, vol. 1) and those of Aneziri 2003, Cayla 2018 and Michel 2020. 19 The sources concerning Philiscus (or Philicus) are conveniently compiled in TrGF I, no. 104. See also Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 66–74. If several of these documents make of the poet a member of the Pleiad of tragic authors, who would have worked at the court of Ptolemy II Philadephus, they fail to provide a more precise date for his birth and death. 20 It seems to me appropriate to associate a causal value to the participle of the verb ‘to be’ in the expression ἱερεὺς ὢν Διονύσου which follows the mention of the capacity of the poet Philiscus. 21 OGIS 325. 22 IG VII, 2447 and CIG 3068A. 23 IG XII, 9, 910. 24 Bernand 1998, 338, translates it as “priests responsible for dressing the gods”, because he retained the correction ἱεροστολισταί proposed by Rohde (according to the apparatus criticus provided by the edition of Athenaeus by Gulick 1927–1941, vol. 2, 398, n. 3). But Dunand 1986, 97, n. 60, dismisses it because she considers that their presence would be more appropriate for an Egyptian rather than a Greek cult. She insists that one can recognize a term referring either to the initiated (τελεσταί) or the initiations (τελεταί) in the last syllables of the corrupt word. Caneva 2016a, 97–98, discusses the different proposals, while adding (98) the alternative emendation ˂οἱ/αἱ˃ περὶ τὰ τέλεστρα, that I adopted here.

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the various Dionysian cults then in existence, public as well as private, had their own distinct place in the procession.25 The priest of the city cult of Dionysus is most certainly included in this later group. It remains to date the event in order to provide a terminus ante quem for the constitution of the association in Alexandria, but also in order to help determine what role the Ptolemies may have played in the birth as well as in the naming of the association. If the great majority of scholars agree on the fact that the ‘procession’ (πομπή) was part of the quadrennial festival of the Ptolemaia26 created by Ptolemy II Philadelphus in 279/8 BC in honour of his late father Ptolemy I Soter (Saviour), they disagree on the date associated with it. Some consider it to be the first celebration of the festival; others believe it the second (in 275/4 BC), while still others incline towards the third if not the fifth celebration (respectively in 271/0 and 263/2 BC).27 In the current state of our knowledge, it seems safest to leave the question open. On the other hand, in Upper Egypt, an association of Artists of Dionysus was undoubtedly active at this time in Ptolemais.28 This is proven by two almost contemporary decrees promulgated by members of the guild. Although the subject of heated debate for many years,29 these documents that honour two of the city’s eminent personages (both described as prytanes for life)30 must now be attributed without any hesitation to the years 272/1–246 BC,31 because the mention of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί (‘Sibling Gods’),32 following that of Dionysus in the titulature of the association, refers to the royal couple in power, not to their deceased parents.33 At this point, it is worth noting that, whether we consider the text of Callixeinus or the inscriptions of Ptolemais, no precise geographical indication can be found in the designation of the Artists of Dionysus that would give evidence of the location of their headquarters or of the territory in which they preferred to practice their profession. A contrario, Athens is mentioned, for example, in the name of the guild attested in that city.34 Isthmus and Nemea35 also appear in that of the association of federal structure which operated in different cities of central and northern Greece, the Peloponnese and Euboea.36 And Ionia and the Hellespontine region are named in the Anatolian association’s titulature, both before and after the date that it comes to be dominated by the Attalids.37 Should we deduce, therefore, from the absence of geographical indices in the denomination of the Dionysiac association of Egypt that it was formed of τεχνῖται who were spread throughout the kingdom and whose gatherings in particular places were determined haphazardly by their individual professional engagements? Or should we consider that Alexandria and Ptolemais, a city founded by Ptolemy I to be the capital of the Thebaid instead of Thebes, were the

25 As Caneva 2016a, 95, puts it rightly, “when dealing with cult personnel, arguing for a clear-cut distinction between ‘public’ – i.e. dependent on civic institutions – and ‘private’ agents is often risky”. 26 Rice 1983 rejects the association of the πομπή with the Ptolemaia and suggests a date between 279 and 275/4 BC. 27 See the convenient summary of the different datings proposed by researchers in Caneva 2010, 175, n. 3. See also Caneva 2016a, 89, where the author, following Hazzard 2000, underlines that the presence of the double cornucopia in the parade (an attribute allegedly introduced by Ptolemy II to honour his wife Arsinoe II) would suggest a late terminus post quem for the procession in the second half of the 270s. 28 OGIS 50 and OGIS 51. 29 Some scholars asserted that the mention of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί in the titulature of the association made reference to the deceased parents or the reigning sovereigns, transposing to Egypt a hypothesis put forward by Mitford in an attempt to resolve dating problems relating to inscriptions from Cyprus in connection with the local association of Dionysiac technitai (Mitford 1953, 186, n. 14; 1959, 121, and n. 93; 125, n. 108). Consequently, they attributed the two decrees to 246–222/1 (i.e. the reign of Ptolemy III). 30 On the role of prytanes of Ptolemais, see Bernand 1992, vol. 2, 24. 31 The addition of the cult of Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί to Alexander’s cult dates back to 272/1 BC (Hölbl 2001, 325) and provides the terminus post quem. Klaffenbach 1914, 21–23, followed inter alios by Bernand 1992, vol. 2, 21, considering however that the first celebration of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί took place in 269, defers it just as much. As for the terminus ante quem, it is provided by the date of the death of Ptolemy II. 32 OGIS 50, line 2 and OGIS 51, line 2. See also Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 294, n. 877. 33 The recent article by Jean-Baptiste Cayla (2017) invites us to now firmly and definitively reject Mitford’s assumption (see below, 41). 34 CID IV, 12, lines 67–68 and lines 83–84. However, this is not always the case. If it was not mandatory for the Athenians τεχνῖται to use such precision in the documents they authored and displayed in their sanctuary, this was not the case for the documents issued by others, which do designate the association as ‘Athenian’. 35 See, e.g., Syll.3 460, lines 3–5. 36 Thebes is mentioned as the headquarters of one of its branches in IG VII 2484, line 3; Opus in IG IX 1, 278, lines 2–3; Chalcis in IG XII 9, 910, line 4 (restitution); Argos in IG IV 558, lines 2–3. Membership of the Isthmian and Nemean guild is listed in most of these texts before the indication of the headquarters in question. 37 From that date, the guild possesses two headquarters, respectively in Teos and in Pergamum, the capital of the Attalid kingdom; see Syll.3 507, line 7, and IG XI 4, 1136, lines 1–3.

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two headquarters38 of a permanent association which may well have included other headquarters,39 as suggested by the example of the Isthmian and Nemean guild? The name of the Egyptian association, in any event, did not refer to a specific location or territory. The available documents prove that the focus was exclusively put on its double cult function – this will be developed later – and jointly on the deep-seated dependence of the Dionysiac artists on monarchic power. Considering the effective control the Ptolemies exercised on the cultural, religious and economic life of the early Ptolemaic kingdom, and considering the strong political will that would be needed to govern gatherings of artists of different specialities in a kingdom where the Greek population remained a very large minority, we might legitimately wonder if the sovereigns might themselves have created the association of Artists of Dionysus.40 As Egypt was undoubtedly the richest of the Hellenistic monarchies, the Lagids possessed considerable financial resources to attract artists. Thus, it may not be too adventurous to suggest that it was Ptolemy who took the initiative to establish a professional association of Artists of Dionysus, either when he was still a satrap and had just appropriated the body of Alexander the Great in order to legitimise his power in the face of other Diadochi, or when he became king. By doing so, he would have attempted to imitate the Macedonian conqueror who, on several occasions during his expedition, brought from the Greek world an impressive quantity of τεχνῖται, as much to assure the celebration of important events in his eyes as to disseminate his ideology of power.41 If the creation of the association cannot be attributed to Ptolemy (either as satrap or king), it can be credited without doubt to his successor Ptolemy II Philadelphus whose major cultic and cultural role is well attested. Whichever hypothesis one prefers, once given the first impulse, the other Dionysiac associations documented in the third century BC would have been formed by the artists themselves in cities where they knew they could enjoy total freedom. Careful to distinguish themselves not only from the Egyptian association but also from one another, they would have inserted geographical references in the titulature of their respective guilds.

The Case of Cyprus In total, eight relatively homogeneous documents allow us to study the Artists of Dionysus in Cyprus, if we leave aside a text inscribed on a gem, now lost, where, according to some scholars, the expression ‘Παφίης σύνοδος’ perhaps refered to the Cypriot guild attested in the second half of the first century BC.42 Among the eight documents mentioned, only one is a decree, issued by the association between 124 and 58 BC in honour of one of its members, named Isidoros.43 The other seven are inscriptions engraved on statues bases. Six of them are public offerings: from the Dionysiac guild on four occasions,44 from the city of Paphos in two cases,45 and from the ‘κοινὸν τὸ Κυπρίων’ in one case.46 The seventh statue base was erected by a father in honour of his two children.47 38 These two cities were two major centres of dynastic cult, the latter being at the heart of the activities of the Artists of Dionysus (see below, 43–46). According to Rice 1983, 56, the association of Ptolemais represents a ‘local branch’, while the τεχνῖται established in the capital of the kingdom occupied a more important position. Even though at first the structure of the Egyptian association may seem closer to that of the Isthmian and Nemean guild, in operation the two corporations were entirely different: one was free, while the other depended on royal power. Moreover, let us recall that Alexandria and Ptolemais, while enjoying the status of πόλεις, did not enjoy full and complete autonomy. 39 Also, one cannot exclude the establishment of Dionysiac τεχνῖται, whose activity and practices are typically Greek (see below, 44–46), in Naucratis, the third of the three cities for which artists are attested in Egypt during the Hellenistic period, or in a nome, such as the nome of Arsinoite, where the presence of numerous artists has recently been highlighted. Cf. Clarysse and Thompson 2009, vol. 2, 133–135. 40 See Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 11; Aneziri 2003, 16. With the creation of the famous Library of Alexandria, the Lagids could avail themselves of a cultural and political tool. Creating an association of Artists of Dionysus allowed them to add a religious dimension to their objectives. 41 See below, 46–49. 42 I.Paphos 96. According to Cayla 2018, 220–221, this document could be dated to 41–31 BC. 43 See I. Paphos 91. I am now completely in agreement with Cayla 2018, 218–219, to say that Isidoros showed honesty during the magistracy that he exercised within the Dionysiac guild and that they are the archons of the association successively in post who were responsible for celebrating one feast day per year in his memory. 44 I.Paphos 90; OGIS 161; I.Salamis 5 and 6. 45 I.Paphos 92 and 94. 46 I.Paphos 93. On the κοινὸν τὸ Κυπρίων, see Cayla 2018, 255–259. 47 I.Paphos 95.

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Because these documents are sometimes very incomplete, poorly developed and, with one exception, dateless,48 they are difficult to use for the historian who seeks to describe the birth and development of the Cypriot association. They can only be chronologically ordered thanks to internal data like personal names that are also known from other sources, or mentions of aulic titles, or changes in the titulature of the Dionysiac association. It was precisely to understand the latter and in particular the mention of the Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται (Benefactor Gods), following the name of Dionysus, on three dedications to Paphian Aphrodite, that Mitford developed a theory from which he derived a chronology. According to him, on the one hand, the deified couple which appeared in the name of the association did not refer to the reigning sovereigns, but to their deceased parents, and, on the other hand, this couple was only indicated if the reigning sovereigns shared the same parents. Although it is widely adopted by the scientific community, this theory must be completely abandoned. Jean-Baptiste Cayla quite rightly identified Antony and Cleopatra as the Theoi Euergetai mentioned on the three documents in question and so dated the documents to the years of the Lagid ‘restoration’ in Cyprus,49 i.e. the second half of the first century BC. They are now the latest inscriptions that we have for the Cypriot Artists of Dionysus. Devoted to both the god of theatre and the Theoi Euergetai, this guild has the same kind of titulature as that known from Ptolemais in the third century BC (two centuries ago) and its functions are most certainly the same.50 But was this the case earlier? On the island of Cyprus the oldest inscription that certifies the presence of an association of Artists of Dionysus names it “[τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ἐν τῷ κ]ατὰ Πάφον γραμματεω περ[ὶ τὸν Διόνυσον. . .? τεχ]νιτῶν.”51 In the unusual term γραμματεῖον52 some experts have seen the mark of the Ptolemies. The term is used around this time to designate the secretariat of armed troops based on the island, and the Artists of Dionysus probably adopted the term from such usages to designate their own headquarters. Indeed the text appears engraved on a statue base erected by the Artists of Dionysus in honour of Theodoros, son of Seleukos,53 and can be compared to another contemporary inscribed base54 for the same man, who there bears, among other titles, that of secretary of the infantry and cavalry forces stationed on the island: ἐπὶ τῆ[ς] κατὰ τὴν νῆσον γραμματε[ί]ας τῶν πεζικῶν καὶ ἱππικῶν δυ[νάμεων].55 In both documents, use is clearly made of related terms (γραμματεῖον and γραμματεία) as well as the preposition κατὰ + acc. to indicate a place. For this reason we might hypothesize that the military formula inspired the person (or people) responsible for the creation of the Dionysiac association, which seems to date back to a period close to that when the first inscription to mention it was engraved.56 This period is in the years 142–131 BC, judging by the titles borne by Seleukos and Theodoros respectively.57 48 See I.Paphos 94, line 6. The date mentioned at the end of the inscription in honour of Kallipos, secretary of the city of Paphos, honorary member of the Dionysiac association and gymnasiarch, if it does not designate a twelfth year of gymnasiarchia, must be understood as the twelfth year of Cleopatra’s reign, 41–40 BC. Cf. Cayla 2018, 218. 49 See Cayla 2017. Cayla’s new dates are mainly based on paleography and vocabulary. 50 See below, 43–44. 51 See I.Paphos 90, line 3. This statue base was found near the theatre of Nea Paphos, before or in 1918, given that the text of the inscription was “preserved among the Cyprus Museum papers in the note-book of the late M. Markides under the heading “Police. Ktima. September 20, 1918” (Mitford 1953, 136). The stone was lost after 1927 (not discovered in 1927, as said by Green et al. 2015, 325, followed by Michel 2020, 215). Seleukos? instead of Theodoros? has been written mistakenly in the title of I.Paphos 90. 52 Mitford 1953 wrote on 137: “It is notable that for the secretariat of the Artists in Cyprus the word γραμματεῖον is used exclusively; but for the military secretariat we find the more correct term γραμματεία.” In any case γραμματεῖον is not employed elsewhere for any other guild. 53 The name of the honoured personage has disappeared in the stone’s gaps, but because he alone is known to have carried the aulic title of member of the ‘King’s First Friends’, and because his father was a governor and navarch of the island, the document most certainly concerns Theodoros and his father Seleukos, as proposed by Mitford. The alternative hypothesis evoked by Cayla, but which does not have his preference (212) and to which I do not adhere, is that the man honoured by the Artists of Dionysus could be a son of Theodoros, when the latter was governor of the island (124–118 BC). 54 The inscription from Arsinoe is subsequent to that from Palaipaphos, where Theodoros, who is also said to be a member of the ‘King’s First Friends’, does not yet bear the title of commander of the city of Salamis. It is also anterior to that from Salamis (?) engraved in honour of Olympias, wife of Theodoros, now endowed with the aulic title of ‘Parent of the King’. 55 Troops stationed on Cyprus are also referred to as γραμματεῖα of the armed forces in the available documentation. 56 The mistake made by the engraver in line 3 of the inscription (γραμματέων has been written instead of γραμματείωι) is most likely due to the recent character of the association of artists. 57 The father of the honorand most certainly carries the titles of governor and navarch (appeared in 142 BC), to which we must doubtless add that of high priest (an office which, among others, included Alexander’s cult and that of the Ptolemaic dynasty). According to Cayla 2018, 75–81, Seleukos was στρατηγός in 144–131 BC, Theodoros in 124–118. Contra Bielman-Sánchez and Lenzo 2015, 403 sqq. In this book (ignored

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Does the meaning ‘office’, given to γραμματεῖον in this inscription,58 allow one to conclude that the Cypriot koinon is a dependency of the Egyptian Dionysiac association? And, if it is a secondary branch, might one then be able to specify its relations with the Ptolemaic power? In his new edition of this epigraphic text, J.-B. Cayla deleted from the titulature of the Artists of Dionysus the reference to the deified couple introduced by Mitford,59 arguing that it had imposed itself on the specialist, who had chosen the longest possible restitutions for the first lines of the document.60 However, in his commentary, Cayla does not explain the absence of any mention of a deified couple, though one might legitimately expect it given their place in the very name of the Dionysiac artists association in Egypt in the third century BC.61 Although it is difficult to account for such an absence, it should be noted that we know almost nothing about the Dionysiac guild performing in Egypt after the end of the third century – its nomenclature could therefore have been modified over the centuries. I would add that, with the exception of the three dedications dating from the Lagid restoration (i.e. from the years 48/7–30 BC, during which the island regained its dynasty), no inscription documenting the τεχνῖται of Cyprus refers to deified rulers. As we know of no event between 142 and 131 BC that could explain why the Artists of Dionysus would have first placed themselves under the joint patronage of Dionysus and a deified couple and then renounced their decision, it seems more reasonable to me to adopt the position of J.-B. Cayla.62 This in no way casts doubt upon the hypothesis that the Cypriot association may have been created by Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II in the years 145/4 BC. This date corresponds to the death of Ptolemy VI Philometor (‘Loving His Mother’), to the return to power in Egypt of Euergetes II, and also to the time when Ptolemaic troops were ejected from their last holdings outside Egypt (Itanos, Thera, Methana). Since the control of Cyprus was of vital importance to the regime, it is highly probable that Ptolemy VIII, after he inaugurated his reign by an amnesty for all armed enemy troops throughout the kingdom (the Larnaca amnesty), and after he dispatched a letter to the infantry, cavalry and marine forces stationed on the island,63 would have sought to reinforce his legitimacy and ensure the loyalty of his soldiers by creating an association likely to support his views.64 In so doing, he would have enlisted the aid of the father of Theodoros, Seleukos, then governor of Cyprus, but also high priest of all the cults of the island. One more point remains to be elucidated: why did the technitai take the decision to erect a statue in the theatre in honour of Theodoros and to date it with the names of their principal magistrates, a practice known from decrees promulgated by other Dionysiac guilds, but quite unusual in this type of document? A plausible explanation would be that, on behalf of the king and/or at the instigation of his father, Theodoros played a role in the organization of dramatic competitions that had important significance for Ptolemaic power and in which the technitai were called to participate.65

by Cayla 2018), Roesch’s theory, according to which Theodoros would have performed two strategiai at two different times, is adopted with only a few modifications in the classification of the inscriptions relating to him. It is, however, to be rejected. It is indeed difficult to justify the claim that the absence of an aulic title for Theodoros, though he is qualified simultaneously as στρατηγός, ναύαρχος and ἀρχιερεύς, is because of Ptolemy VIII’s mistrust of him. We must rather posit a scribal error in the attribution to the father, instead of the son, of the aulic title of ‘Parent of the King’: in the about ten inscriptions in which Theodoros appears as a governor, his father is always mentioned without any title (Koenen 1977, 191–192). 58 It is unfortunately not possible to know if there existed at this time “an office of the Artists of Dionysus” in Alexandria, in Ptolemais or elsewhere in Egypt, because we no source any longer mention them. We therefore do not know whether the title of the association in Cyprus was a copy of that in Egypt. 59 Mitford 1953, 137, no. 10, lines 3–4. 60 I.Paphos 90, lines 3–4. The emendation by Cayla is adopted by Michel in CDL 88, lines 3–4, without any explanation. 61 He nevertheless writes, 213: “If it was proved that it was necessary to restore the names of sovereigns, the most likely would be to complete with a mention of the living sovereigns, namely the Benefactor Gods”. 62 Until 131, the official name of the trio formed by Ptolemy, his sister and first wife Cleopatra II, and his niece and second wife, Cleopatra III was that of Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται. Then civil war broke out between the two successive spouses, Ptolemy VIII fled to Cyprus, while Cleopatra II ruled alone in Alexandria, the title of Θεὰ Φιλομήτωρ Σώτειρα now accompaning her name. At that time Ptolemy VIII and Cleopatra III were still Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται. The use of Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται to designate the king, his sister and his second wife nevertheless reappeared at the end of the war (see, for example, I.Paphos 45). These changes do not explain the title of the Dionysiac artists of Cyprus. 63 Lenger 1980, 95–102; Aneziri 1994, 188, n. 38. 64 See below, 46, 49. 65 Perhaps it was a way to celebrate the completion of the second phase of work at the Paphos theatre, which the Seleukos family could have supported as well. See Green et al. 2015, 325.

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In texts later than the inscription discussed above66 the association’s titulature presents a new modification. Under Theodoros’ generalship (124–118 BC), it is in fact the Office of the Dionysiac Artists of Cyprus (τῶν ἐν τῶι κατὰ] / Κύπρον γραμματε[ίωι περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον] / τεχνιτῶν),67 and no longer that of Paphos that honours Olympias (granddaughter of Seleucos and) wife of Theodoros. This indicates, in my opinion, an extension of the artists’ activities rather than a change of their original headquarters.68 Thereafter, the titulature of the Dionysiac association remains the same, including the period 106/5–88 BC when, after several unsuccessful attempts, Ptolemy IX Soter II finally established his reign over Cyprus independently, without any connection to the rulers of Egypt.69 A final transformation appears with the total disappearance of any mention of the Cyprus office on the last three inscriptions from the second half of the first century BC. From that time onwards the Artists of Dionysus are referred to under the double patronage of Dionysus and of a deified couple (at that time that of the Benefactor Gods): οἱ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον καὶ Θεοὺς Εὐεργέτας τεχνῖται. At this point, we can conclude that, in Egypt as well as in Cyprus, the establishment of a Dionysiac association provided the Ptolemies with a wonderful instrument for serving monarchic power and royal propaganda. Let us examine in detail the implications of the relationship between kings and artists.

The Ptolemies and the Artists of Dionysus established in Egypt and Cyprus Artists in the Service of Royal and Dynastic Cults The unique patronage of the associations established in Egypt in the third century BC and later in Cyprus clearly reflects the double religious mission conferred on its members: to participate actively in the cult of Dionysus, like their counterparts in the Greek Aegean world, and also to serve the ruler cult, both royal and dynastic. In that respect these Dionysiac Artists were particularly distinguished from the other τεχνῖται associated with a guild, with the exception of those who came under the domination of the Attalids following the peace of Apamea (188 BC).70 Let us focus again on the honorary decrees issued at Ptolemais by the “Artists Devoted to Dionysus and the Sibling Gods”.71 The latter term refers to the couple formed by Ptolemy II and his sister-wife, Queen Arsinoe II, in whose honour Philadelphus had created a cult in 272/1 BC while both of them were still alive. In so doing, the king actively took part in the development of the cults organised in their honour (and/or in honour of certain family members) by the rulers in office. These cults, in critical studies since Ernest Bickerman’s seminal work,72 have usually been distinguished from “royal civic cults”,73 which were decreed by the cities themselves.74 Regardless of their specific nature and their histories, these various cults are a characteristic feature of the Hellenistic period,75 in that they make of the king (and/or the

66 See OGIS 161, I.Salamis 5 and 6, I.Paphos 91 and 92. 67 Even if the right part of the stone is broken on the right, it does not seem possible to follow the name of Dionysus with the mention of a deified couple. 68 Cayla 2018, 212, supports my view, whereas Michel 2020, 216, suggests that the mention of Paphos reflects a gradual change in the city’s status both vis-à-vis other cities on the island and, more generally, within the Ptolemaic kingdom; one could even go further and admit that Paphos was chosen by the Ptolemies as the headquarters of the Artists of Dionysus in Cyprus because they wanted to emphasize its preeminence over other cities. 69 I.Paphos 91 and 92 can date from this period. Soter II reigned from 117–116 to 80, except between 114–113 and 107–106 (Cypriot reign of Alexander I). Cyprus represents a kingdom separated from Egypt until 88 BC. 70 See Le Guen 2007c. However, the sovereigns of Pergamum never inscribed their names in the title of the association, transformed after 188 BC into τὸ κοινὸν τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται τῶν ἐπ’ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλεσπόντου καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Καθηγεμόνα Διόνυσον (“guild of Artists of Dionysus who are active in Ionia and the Hellespont and of those devoted to Dionysus Kathegemon”); e.g. IG XI, 4, 1136, lines 1–2. 71 See OGIS 50 and 51. 72 Bickerman 1938. 73 See Habicht 1970. 74 On the overlap between these two cults, see Debord 2003. 75 The bibliography on royal cults is extensive. I shall mention only two titles for their methodological virtues: Hauben 1989 and Chaniotis 2003.

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queen) a charismatic being whose power is comparable, in their lifetime, to those of traditional deities, albeit perceived by the population as, in the short or long term, less effective.76 It is even highly likely that Ptolemy II used the cult of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί to reconcile the Greek-Macedonian population in Egypt to his incestuous union with Arsinoe II by the Greek-Macedonian population in Egypt, by portraying the union as a sacred marriage following the model of Zeus and Hera. However, the sovereign went even further. While his father had been at the origin of the first state cult77 when he established a priesthood of Alexander in honour of the late conqueror, Ptolemy II laid the foundations of the dynastic cult. He effectively transformed the priesthood of Alexander into a priesthood of Alexander and the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί (Sibling Gods). The process was certainly not complete, as in this new priesthood that served several titleholders, the king had not yet inserted the cult of Θεοὶ Σωτῆρες. That cult was created in 279 BC for his late parents Ptolemy I and Berenike I.78 But even in its incomplete form, the plan was designed to consolidate Ptolemy II’s position at the head of the kingdom. Indeed, Ptolemy I had six children from his marriage to Eurydike, the daughter of Antipater, and even though Philadelphus’s father had associated him with the throne for about two years, he may not have appeared in all eyes to be the most legitimate heir. Under these circumstances the creation of the cult of Θεοὶ Σωτῆρες can be regarded as a means of promoting the legitimate successor. Furthermore, the resemblance of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί to the Θεοὶ Σωτῆρες, the first and legitimate royal couple, suggested that Ptolemy II was the sole legitimate successor and that the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί would in turn produce the next Ptolemaic king in line, and so on.79 It is easy to see that the Dionysiac τεχνῖται represented a major component of a carefully developed system, if we take into consideration the Greeks and Macedonians in the army as well as at court, and perhaps even the entire Hellenic and Hellenized population. In their capacity as ancient and renowned servants of a traditional deity (here Dionysus), the artists had first to support the idea that Ptolemaic kings were themselves also gods, and that their descendants had sole authority to rule. It was also their responsibility to support the king’s political and ideological agenda, as expressed through the choice of cult epithets adorning the successive deified couples. This means that they had to contribute to the sovereign’s efforts towards unreserved acceptance by the Greek-speaking community of the kingdom, but also to reassure the population in times of war, which was constant, whether external or internal. In short, the Ptolemies expected full cooperation from the τεχνῖται in highlighting the principal virtues of their lineage: filial and familial love, care and benevolence.80 The creation and further development in Egypt of an association of Dionysiac τεχνῖται, patronised by a royal couple, projected the image of the ruling power’s protective, if not paternal, concern towards artists and its ability to show the same sentiments towards all those who supported and relied on it. In order to best fulfil the mission assigned to them, the Artists of Dionysus had to participate in royal and dynastic cults intended for the Greek-speaking population of the kingdom;81 all sorts of additional media ensured their distribution (coins, statues, reliefs, poems). Nevertheless, they had no relevance for the native population, whom the Ptolemies did not forget either: they relied on Egyptian priests and their synods to translate their conception of royal power into terms and forms acceptable to Egyptians.82 Foremost among the numerous events requiring the collaboration of the τεχνῖται was the Ptolemaia, dedicated – one should be reminded – by Ptolemy II to his father. Of equal rank to the Olympic Games (isolympic),83 it included a

76 The assimilation of human beings to divinities was possible in ancient Greece, where the border separating the world of humans and gods was blurred. 77 Ptolemy I placed the title of the priesthood for the late conqueror at the top of the priestly hierarchy and had the priest’s name inscribed immediately following that of the ruling king in dating formulas of documents written in Greek, demotic as well as hieroglyphic. 78 This was only done under Ptolemy IV, in 215/214 BC. The creation of new royal couples, whose names, upon every regime change, followed those of all their predecessors on official documents, definitively confirmed the dynastic aspect of the “cult of Alexander and the Ptolemies”. 79 For example, the cult of Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται, Ptolemy III and Berenike II, was created in the summer of 243. 80 The religious attributes chosen by the sovereigns, generation after generation, highlight at times their love for family (as well as Φιλάδελφος, ‘Who Loves His brother and Sister’, Φιλοπάτωρ, ‘Who Loves His Father’, Φιλομήτωρ, ‘Who Loves His Mother’), as well as a concern for others, such as Σωτήρ, ‘saviour’, or Εὐεργέτης/-αι, ‘Benefactor(s)’. 81 See Burkhalter 2012. 82 As far as the Egyptians are concerned, they easily accepted the cult names of the Ptolemies, as these had been translated by the Egyptian priesthood in terms of the Pharaoh’s traditional cultic role. See Koenen 1993. 83 As a matter of fact, the equivalence concerns the prizes awarded to winners not on site but in their cities of origin. The cities had to grant them the advantages (financial and others) usually given to winners of the corresponding Olympic competitions. However, the Ptolemaia included a musical component absent from the Olympic Games. Therefore, it is impossible to know what prize was awarded to winners of these

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triple contest (gymnic, hippic, and musical). Indeed, this quadrennial festival (penteteric) constituted the major celebration of the Ptolemaic dynasty in and outside of Egypt. It was attended by large numbers of competitors coming from all over the Greek and Hellenized world, as well as by ambassadors sent by all the cities and confederations that recognised the status of the festival and agreed to be in attendance. If, as reported by Callixeinus, members of the Dionysiac association officially took part in two key moments of the Alexandrian festival (the procession and the banquet), they probably also competed in the Ptolemaia’s musical contests, in the strict sense of the term. Considering the composition of the guild that was active in Ptolemais in the third century BC,84 and judging by the evidence of the one preserved list,85 the τεχνῖται were bound to participate in the musical contests by virtue of their recorded specializations. In the left column of the document arranged in three rows, whose lower part is missing, the names of three epic poets are engraved, a citharode (a singer to the cithara) and a cithara player, while the name of a trumpeter can be found in the right column. But the term ‘musical’ applied to the Ptolemaia may also have referred to choral and dramatic contests.86 Six hundred male chorus singers participated in the Alexandrian parade. After the τεχνῖται, headed by a tragic poet, were borne two tripods of different height, qualified as “prizes for the χορηγοὶ τῶν αὐλητῶν”,87 while the smaller tripod is said to be for ‘the boys’ and the larger ‘of the men’: this means they were prizes for the choregoi who competed in the two main competition age-categories of boys (παῖδες) and adult men (ἄνδρες) in dithyramb.88 Moreover, the presence of satyrs in the pompe, as well as characters personifying time periods89 suggests that the festival also had a theatrical component. A man playing the role of ‘The Year’ (Eniautos) walked in tragic costume with a mask, followed by a handsome woman in a fine tunic, who had in her hands attributes symbolising victory (palm branch and crown of persea90), and whose name, ‘Five-Year Period’ (Penteteris), evoked the periodicity of the most famous Greek competitions which served as models for the Ptolemaia. Immediately after her, walked four Hours or Seasons (Horai), all also elegantly and appropriately costumed. The Ptolemais list confirms that the artists affiliated with the association – whose capacity to partake in contests (ἀγῶνες) or performances of epic poetry, instrumental music (cithara, trumpet), if not music accompanied by singing (κιθαρῳδία), has been stressed – could also perform new dramatic plays,91 both tragic and comic, as well as repertory works of ‘old drama’. In their ranks, we can read the names of two tragic poets, two comic poets, a dancer, a tragic actor, six comic actors, four supporting actors (συναγωνισταί),92 one (or several) chorus trainer(s),93 a tragic αὐλητής,94 and a designer of costumes or theatre props (depending on how we translate the Greek term σκευοποιός). It is also likely that the τεχνῖται competed at the Ptolemaia that took place in Hiera Nesos (in the northeast of Fayoum), as suggested by a papyrus from there,95 as well as at the Basileia, which included an athletic, hippic and competitions. In similar cases, the festival was sometimes deemed ‛isolympic’ for the sports competitions and ‛isopythian’ for the musical ones (based on the model of the Pythia of Delphi, a renowned and very ancient festival that included musical competitions). 84 The mention of the same οἰκονόμος, Sosibios, in both texts (OGIS 50 and 51) allows us to say that they are chronologically close. 85 From I.Paphos 90 we know that the guild attested in Paphos included (at least) the following members: a citharode, a tragic poet, a comic poet, a poet of satyr drama, and a supporting tragic actor. The available inscriptions for other associations confirm the diverse specialties of the Artists of Dionysus active in Ptolemais. 86 See Le Guen 2010, 499–501. 87 According to the correction of the text by Robert 1938, 31. Contra Olson 2006, 456. 88 See Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 345–347. The formula used (χορηγοὶ τῶν αὐλητῶν), found from the end of the fourth century BC, indicates that from then on the αὐλητής played the lead role and the chorus was content to accompany him. 89 On the relationship of the Hellenistic kings to time and their ability to master and reshape it, see Thompson 2000, 375–376; Savalli-Lestrade 2010a, 55–83 (especially 71). 90 See Caneva 2016b, 39–66. 91 The fact that the association included in its ranks poets in these two different genres indicates that actors were not confining themselves to the performance of previously award-winning plays that formed part of the repertory. Moreover, their performances could take place both in or outside of competition, depending on the customs of the time. 92 This term was used to designate actors who contributed to the performance of the play, but who were not entitled to awards. See Aneziri 2003, 317–335; and Lightfoot 2002, 215. 93 OGIS 51, line 43, in the middle column, it is possible to recognize the partial name of the chorus trainer, [χορ]οδιδάσκαλ[ος]. But the word may have been a plural and may have included trainers of tragic as well as comic choruses. In the Hellenistic period, comic choruses now performed between the acts, and tragic choruses which took part in the action also continued to exist. See Le Guen 2018a. 94 He plays a reed instrument whose shape is similar to a double flute (αὐλός). 95 See Perpillou-Thomas 1993, 153, and n. 10.

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musical contest and which perhaps dated back to Alexander. This festival may have been established in various places around the kingdom for the purpose of celebrating “the enthronement of the conqueror in Egypt and the establishment of Greek sovereignty over the country”,96 because it was held on the 12 Dystros, the presumed date of the coronation of Alexander in Memphis. In addition, Ptolemy II even associated the Basileia with the ceremonies celebrating his birth, under the name Genethlia.97 Moreover, with their presence, the τεχνῖται certainly enhanced the competition of the Theadelphia, linked to the cult of the Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί, already mentioned. Known until recently only by an agonistic prize list, which evoked horse competitions, the games are today documented by a fascinating new papyrus from the necropolis of Deir el-Banat, attributed to the year 243 (or early 242) BC.98 It teaches us not only that at this date the grandiose festivities (lasting 55 days) followed the Ptolemaia of the same duration, but also that the various contests did not all have the same status (only some of them were stephanic), and that to athletic and hippic contests were added musical competitions stricto sensu as well as cyclic and dramatic agones. Although the text only speaks of the participation of τεχνῖται, with no reference to their membership of any association, it is certain that these artists belonged to the koinon that was based in Alexandria and placed at that time under the double patronage of Dionysus and the deified reigning rulers, Ptolemy III and Berenike II. We can even see in the inclusion of the Genethlia of Berenike II in the Theadelphia, described in the papyrus, the will of the Ptolemaic power to further strengthen the dynastic cult, and hence the legitimacy of the sovereigns, by associating typically Egyptian traditions (birthday celebrations of sovereigns) with typically Greek practices (festivals with agones). When in Cyprus, in the second half of the first century BC, the Dionysiac association was placed again under a double patronage (that of Dionysus and the Benefactor Gods), the message was just as clear. At such a troubled time, the duty of the guild was first and foremost to reconnect clearly with the past by officially supporting the legitimacy of the deified couple and by spreading the ideology of Antony and Cleopatra, the New Dionysus and the New Aphrodite.99 The role the artists played at that time in the celebration of royal and dynastic cults100 was certainly comparable to the role they played in Egypt two centuries before. However, we do not know the name of the festivals they supported. We just learn, from the archaic vocabulary used in two dedications to Ἀφροδίτη Παφία,101 that they must have participated in rites specific to the city of Paphos, more particularly rites that associated Antony and the Queen and assimilated the latter to the protective goddess of the fleet, the Heavenly Aphrodite of Paphos. At any rate, the will of the sovereigns was paired with other attempts to implicate the associations of τεχνῖται in the various royal cults they were creating.

Artists at the Service of Dionysus and Royal Dionysism Dionysus The first part of the titulature of the Dionysiac associations in Egypt and Cyprus implies that scenic professionals such as the τεχνῖται quite naturally had to serve the cult of the god who presided over their art. In Ptolemais, for example, they were given the responsibility of organising the Dionysia, which was celebrated annually as well as every second year, with increased grandeur, one assumes, with the longer periodicity,102 and at a date corresponding to that of the

96 Perpillou-Thomas 1993, 152. 97 Perpillou-Thomas 1993, 153. The festivity may not have been the actual date of birth of the king, but it was deliberately chosen for its symbolic value. 98 I would like to warmly thank Elena Chepel for her generosity. Before its publication, she indeed offered me the opportunity to read her article (with text, translation and commentary) on the newly discovered papyrus. 99 Cayla 2017; on Antony, Neos Dionysos, see inter al. Couvenhes 2013, 234; Caneva 2016c, 103–108. 100 Aneziri 1994, 179–198. 101 See I.Paphos 93, on the use of the term ἡγήτωρ (217), and I.Paphos 94, on the use of the verb ἀρχεύω (218–219). 102 The decree found in Ptolemais (OGIS 51) indicates that the organizer of the annual and of two-yearly Dionysia was the tragic synagonist Zopyros (line 42), who for that purpose received the help of his two brothers Dionysius and Taurinos.

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Great Dionysia in Athens.103 Unfortunately, we do not have any details to indicate if the festival program included lyric choruses and drama, as in Athens, or if it was limited to a single contest.104 Other Dionysia are attested in Naucratis by Athenaeus (Ath. 4, 149d).105 However, we do not know if members of the association took part in it, because the festival is only mentioned for the sake of its menu and the volume of food given participants invited to dinner in the πρυτανεῖον (town hall). It is also to Athenaeus (7, 276a–b)106 that we owe the allegation that the famous scholar Eratosthenes, director of the Library of Alexandria, said in the second half of the third century BC that “Ptolemy established all sorts of festivals and sacrifices, especially in relation to Dionysus”. Although it is impossible to determine which Ptolemy he refers to, the key issue resides elsewhere: at that time one particular god was favoured by royal power, and that god was Dionysus. Why? The first answer that comes to mind is that Dionysus embodies theatre. The dramatic performances in his honour, thanks to the τεχνῖται, were a convenient way, not to hellenize the Egyptians, but to transmit Greek culture in a Greek speaking environment. However, we should also look for additional reasons that could explain the Lagids’ affinity to Dionysus.

Dionysus and the divine origins of the monarchy Dionysus and the Ptolemies were connected from the inception of the monarchy. Over the years, their connections were increasingly exploited and highlighted. As indicated by Françoise Dunand,107 portraits (contemporary or posthumous) represented Ptolemy I under the guise of Dionysus.108 Ptolemy II then consolidated the idea of a kinship between Dionysus and the Ptolemies,109 also including Alexander,110 through the carefully designed scenario of the πομπή of the Ptolemaia, in which the Artists of Dionysus took part. In effect, images of Alexander and Ptolemy I crowned with chaplets of ivy leaves (the emblematic foliage of Dionysus, golden for the occasion) were shown on a wagon that also carried Dionysus flying to the altar of Rhea and that appeared in the parade before the other gods. This arrangement suggests that Dionysus was considered to be the ancestor (ἀρχηγέτης) of the dynasty, and that Alexander and the Ptolemies also maintained a very close relationship. Nevertheless, it was only under the reign of Ptolemy III that the Adulis inscription111 proclaimed in 240 BC that the king was descended from Hercules on his father’s and from Dionysus on his mother’s side, both of whom, incidentally, were sons of Zeus. Shortly afterwards, a pious genealogy, preserved thanks to a fragment of the Hellenistic historian Satyrus, connects the lineage of the Lagids to that of the Argeads and further beyond to their mythical ancestor Dionysus.112 We can conclude that the cycle was henceforth complete.

The Lagids, Dionysuses in the making As descendants of Dionysus, the Ptolemies sought public recognition of the god’s qualities in them, which differed from those highlighted in the royal and dynastic cults. Before the Ptolemies, Alexander sought and achieved the same

103 According to Perpillou-Thomas 1993, 82, the 11th of the Macedonian month of Peritios corresponded at that time to the Egyptian month of Mecheir (March-April). 104 The term Dionysia did not automatically imply a festivity built on the strict Athenian model. 105 See Gulick 1927–1941, vol. 2, 182. 106 See Gulick 1927–1941, vol. 3, 240. 107 Dunand 1986, 85–91. 108 On those two archaeological documents (a relief and a statue), see Dunand 1986, 85. 109 See a good synthesis in Goyette 2010. 110 Let us repeat that Ptolemy I was the first to create a cult in his honour (see above, 44). 111 OGIS 54. 112 It is part of Satyrus’ work on the Alexandrine demes (FGrH 631 F 1): Hyllos, son of Hercules (himself son of Zeus) and of Deianira (daughter of Dionysus, himself son of Zeus), was the father of two brothers, respective ancestors of Philip II on one side and Arsinoe, the daughter of Lagos, on the other. Alexander and Ptolemy I were therefore cousins of divine origin. See also Theoc. Id. 17, 26–27 (Cholmeley 1901, 127), where Alexander and Ptolemy are said to have Hercules as a common ancestor.

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ends by various means, but especially through the increase of musical and dramatic competitions in the course of his victorious return from India to Babylon, and through the attribution of a new political meaning to satyr drama,113 the most Dionysian dramatic genre of all.114 By imposing himself as a new Dionysus embodying the same virtues as the nurturer god – rich, victorious and a liberator – he had tried to consolidate his power and make it more acceptable at a time of strong protests.115 For their part, the Ptolemies achieved their aim by establishing an association of Dionysiac τεχνῖται, inscribing in its title, after the name of Dionysus, the name of the deified couple they formed with their respective sister-wives, in Egypt first, and later in Cyprus. The purpose of the τεχνῖται was to serve and guarantee the Dionysism of the Ptolemies; the procession during the Ptolemaia provides the best of illustration of this policy.116 During the festival created by Ptolemy II, the Artists of Dionysus paraded in a central position, while the section dedicated to the ‘return from India’ of the god, accompanied by fabulous booty, evidently referred to the Indian expedition of Alexander, and it constituted the key moment of the dramatic event.117 Through the manipulation of images and symbols in this grandiose setting, the figure of Alexander merges with that of Dionysus, while their divine essence and combined power shine as much on the dedicant (Ptolemy Philadelphus) as on the dedicatee of the festival (the late Ptolemy Soter). Even without officially claiming the title of New Dionysus, the Ptolemies could appear as such, like Alexander. Wealth and luxury, displayed as much in the pageant (πομπή) as in the royal tent erected for the banquet,118 were expressed by the abundance of food and drinks distributed during the ceremony. Their military power was also exhibited at the end of the festivities through a parade by cavalry (3200 men) and infantry forces (57600 men).119 This army undoubtedly echoed the one that had previously marched in procession with Dionysus.120 By their close association with Alexander-Dionysus and with the Dionysiac τεχνῖται, as well as by the exaltation of the Dionysian nature of power embodied by the Hellenistic kings, and by imitating the Macedonian conqueror, the Ptolemies tried to achieve a double political and religious aim. Again, they were not reaching out to all the inhabitants of the kingdom, but to their circle of acquaintances, as well as to the Greek and Hellenized population. Indeed, the Dionysus who dominates the πομπή of the Ptolemaia and who serves the court, the army and the Greek and Macedonian immigrants, is an eminently Greek god:121 his Greek character is demonstrated by all his attributes such as the θύρσος (a pine-cone tipped staff), as well as costumes and ritual objects (craters, gold and silver drinking cups), while the episodes of his life, staged in a lavish procession,122 only bear meaning for people who had received a Greek education. As for the association formed by Dionysiac τεχνῖται, there is little doubt of its composition: it consisted only of Greeks123 whose dramatic performances in Greek were primarily aimed at those likely to understand them. In spite of the strong imagery associated with the Ptolemaia, the assimilation of the Ptolemies to Dionysus was not immediately made official. When Ptolemy IV Philopator (‘Loving his Father’) was first given the epithet of ‘New Dionysus’, the latter kept a symbolic significance because it was uttered by a poet named Euphronios of Chersonesos.124 Clement of Alexandria seems to confirm the epithet when he reports in a passage of the Protrepticus (Clem. Al. Protr. 4, 54, 2) 113 See Le Guen 2014, 273, and Paul Touyz, this volume. 114 As a matter of fact, his chorus was always composed of satyrs, the faithful companions of Dionysus in mythology. 115 It was not the Ptolemies who turned Alexander, after his death, into a ‘New Dionysus’, as some historians argue. They only recovered the legacy of Alexander-Dionysus (as they recovered his body) to consolidate their own power over Egypt and outside, against other rival monarchies. See Le Guen 2014, 249–274 and plate 10. 116 Indian and other women were accompanied by camels transporting spices, carriers of presents made of gold, ebony, elephant tusks, and many exotic animals. 117 See, inter alios, Rice 1983; Goukowsky 1992; Caneva 2016a. 118 Clothes, statues and objects made of precious metals were its most visible elements, corresponding to the legendary τρυφή (‘luxury/ extravagance’) of Dionysus, god of abundance as well as nurturer (in his quality of god of wine and young vegetation). 119 We understand better why scholars trying to fix a date for the process seek to associate it with a military victory by the Ptolemies. 120 These are 500 girls dressed in purple tunics held by golden belts, 120 satyrs in arms, 5 squadrons of donkeys ridden by Silenus and many other animals, as well as wagons mounted by young boys. 121 See Dunand 1986, 89. This does not mean that some natives did not enjoy the festivities. 122 A wagon carried a statue of his nurse Nysa, another the cave where Dionysus spent his childhood. The Greek character of the show staged by Ptolemy II was not related to the fact that for the Egyptians, Dionysus was a divinity in which they recognized many attributes of their own god Osiris. 123 This is shown by the list from Ptolemais, as well as by inscriptions documenting the other Hellenistic associations of Artists of Dionysus. 124 See Powell 1925, 176. By Chersonesos, one should see here an Egyptian peninsula located on the coast of Alexandria.

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“Ptolemy IV was called Dionysus” (Πτολεμαῖος δὲ ὁ τέταρτος Διόνυσος ἐκαλεῖτο).125 We do not know, however, who gave him this designation and under what circumstances. On the other hand, the taste of this ruler for theatre, especially for dramatic composition, is well known, since a tragedy entitled Adonis is attributed to him.126 Furthermore, in 215/14 BC he published an edict concerning the cults and Dionysian associations of a private nature that then existed in Egypt, which continues to divide the scientific community.127As a matter of fact, Ptolemy XII was the first Ptolemaic sovereign overtly to adopt in his title the name of Νεὸς Διόνυσος Φιλοπάτωρ Φιλάδελφος in the first century BC.128 In Cyprus, it should come as no surprise that when Antony, the New Dionysus according to Plutarch,129 and Cleopatra both returned to power after the meeting in Tarsus (41 BC),130 as Cayla proposes, they renewed the tradition attested in Egypt in the third century BC and placed the Dionysiac association under the patronage of Dionysus and themselves as divine couple under the name of Benefactor Gods.131 The main mission of the artists was to exalt the Dionysism of Antony and to serve the assimilation of Cleopatra VII to Aphrodite in order to legitimize their joint reign.

Royal Patronage, Dionysiac Artists and Members of the Ptolemaic Court We have seen the political and religious reasons behind the Ptolemaic rulers’ decision to promote an association of the Artists of Dionysus, while simultaneously controlling it. To conclude, let us examine what implications the existence of such an association patronised by the Ptolemies may have had for the artists themselves as well as for external political supporters or for members of the Alexandrian and Paphian court. The incorporation of the island of Cyprus into the Lagid kingdom had, among other consequences, that of making New Paphos (a foundation of the beginning of the Hellenistic period) the seat of a court of Alexandrian officials in Cyprus,132 which was joined by members of the Cypriot elite from the second half of the second century BC onwards. Keep in mind also that on several occasions Cyprus received, on a more or less permanent basis, sovereigns exiled from Alexandria, and the members of their courts along with them.133

Benefactors of the Association in Egypt and Cyprus Thanks to the inscription from Ptolemais containing the list of the τεχνῖται affiliated with the association based in Egypt, we know their various specialities.134 Interestingly, the document also attests the involvement of other members135 who were not artists. Some (five of them) are designated by the terms πρόξενοι (a kind of honorary consul). In their capacity as citizens of Ptolemais, and perhaps of other cities in Egypt, they had to act as intermediaries whenever artists from outside of the kingdom136 had to deal with local authorities. A second group (at least six of them) bearing the name of

125 See Mondésert and Plassart 1949, 116. 126 See TrGF I, no. 119. Ptolemy IV would have imitated in his play a passage of the Andromeda of Euripides. 127 See below, note 154. 128 See, e.g., Bernand 1975–1981, vol. 1, 38, no. 11, lines 1–3 (inscription from Arsinoë/Crocodilopolis [100 km southwest of Cairo], 69–58/55–51 BC). 129 Plut. Ant. 60, 2–3. 130 See Couvenhes 2013, 234. 131 According to Cayla 2017, Antony could not take the cult name of Cleopatra and Caesarion, the Theoi Philopatores. Even if that of Benefactor Gods is not known elsewhere for Cleopatra and Antony, it seems justified by the qualifier euergetes attributed to Antony as well as by the tradition of the previous Cleopatra. Cleopatra III was indeed honoured as the goddess Aphrodite in Cyprus with the epithet of ‘Benefactress’. On Θεοὶ Εὐεργέται as cult name referring to Antony and Cleopatra VII, see also Caneva 2020, 310. 132 See Michel 2016, 291. The court assembled around the strategos who was a major figure on the island. 133 For a good synthesis, see Michel 2020, 25–31. 134 See above, 45, and n. 85. 135 Cf. the formula of sanctions of the contemporary decree promulgated by the Artists of Dionysus (OGIS 50, lines 2–3), where the expression τοῖς τὴν σύνοδον νέμουσιν (“those who administer the association”) follows the mention of the τεχνῖται themselves. 136 As the names of the τεχνῖται are given without their patronymic in OGIS 51 (with the exception of the comic actor Asklepiodoros, line 35, and the tragic synagonist Apollonides, line 39), and especially without their ethnics, their cities of origin remain unknown. The presence of a significant number of πρόξενοι is an indirect clue that most, if not all, of the τεχνῖται of the association were not originating from Ptolemais.

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φιλοτεχνῖται137 (‘Friends of the Artists’) should be considered as benefactors who most likely supported the association financially. However, we can hardly say more about their identity or their potential political role in Ptolemais or at court because prosopographical investigation has yielded no conclusive results, largely because the preserved list only gives first names and not patronymics. This is different in the case of individuals to whom the τεχνῖται of Egypt and Cyprus voted various honours, including the erection of statues whose bases have been found with the inscriptions they bore. These people, who showed ‘goodwill’ (εὔνοια), ‘zeal’ (προθυμία), and ‘generosity’ (φιλανθρωπία) towards the artists138 – who in other words principally helped them with financial contributions – belonged, in most cases, to the court, to the royal circle of acquaintances, or to the most important civic officers connected to the Ptolemaic power. Let us consider some examples. When, in the third century BC, the Dionysiac τεχνῖται decide to honour Lysimachos, son of Ptolemaios, they mention his responsibilities as hipparch and prytanis for life in Ptolemais.139 In the introductory paragraph of the decree they also recall that this exemplary magistrate “had shown goodwill towards the King and his parents even before, and still more so in the present time” (τήν τε / εἰς τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τοὺς τούτου γονεῖς εὔνοιαν / καὶ πρότερον μὲν καὶ νῦν δὲ διὰ πλειόνων ἀπο- / δέδεικται), before evoking his pious disposition “towards Dionysus and the other gods” (πρὸς τὸν Διόνυσον καὶ τοὺς ἄλλους / θεούς),140 as well as his ‘generosity’ (φιλανθρώπως) towards the association. In the statement of rewards, they insist again on the dual attitude of Lysimachos: ‘piety’ (εὐσέβεια) towards the gods, and “goodwill towards the king Ptolemy, his parents and the Artists” (εὐνοίας / τῆς εἰς τὸν βασιλέα καὶ τοὺς τούτου γονεῖς καὶ τῆς / εἰς τοὺς τεχνίτας, lines 19–21). In 142–131 BC, the τεχνῖται of Paphos grant a statue to Theodoros, the son of the governor of the island, Seleukos.141 Although its base has a lacuna in this place, the Artists’ benefactor must have been one of “The First Friends of the King” (τῶν πρώτων φίλων), a title from the aulic hierarchy bestowed for the first time under Ptolemy V (197–180 BC) with the aim of distinguishing the best servants of the monarch.142 In the last decade of the first century BC, the Cypriot artists erected a statue of the governor of Cyprus, Helenos,143 at the gymnasium of Salamis. On its base the responsibilities he held on the island are mentioned alternatively, as are his goodwill towards the artists (εὐνοίας, line 6), and his aulic titles of ‘Kinsman’ (συγγενῆ, line 1) and ‘Tutor’ (τροφέα, line 1) of the King.144 In Cyprus we know that many of those endowed with important military and political responsibilities were also members of the Dionysiac association. This is shown, for example, by another statue base found at Kouklia (formely Palaipaphos), dated to 117/116–88 BC.145 The city of Paphos, honouring a woman named Aristonike by the erection of the monument, does not fail to recall that she is the daughter of Ammonios146 and the wife of Aristokrates, himself ‘Kinsman of the King’ (the term συγγενής represents the highest of aulic titles), who is not only responsible for the administration of the ‘Royal Chancellery’ (ὑπομνηματογράφος),147 but also a member of the Association of Artists of Dionysus.

137 To my knowledge, this is the first and only time the word is attested. When we know the importance of the title of friend at the court of the Ptolemies, we cannot help but relate the ‘Friends of the Artists’ to the ‘Friends of the King’. 138 In these documents, one finds the traditional vocabulary of honours in use all over the Hellenistic world. 139 OGIS 51, line 3. 140 The following part of the text shows that the Lagid sovereign is one of these other gods. 141 See I.Paphos 90. 142 We shall recall the dissociation which takes place between titles and functions around 198/7, the aulic title no longer serving to reveal an individual’s proximity to the royal person, but the importance of his function, whether military or administrative. Cf. Mooren 1977. 143 I.Salamis 6. He was στρατηγός for the first time in 118–117 BC; for the second time, from 114–113 to 105 BC (Cayla 2018, 81). As expected, he also bore the title of ἀρχιερεύς (line 2). 144 See also OGIS 161 for Olympias, the wife of Theodoros, ‘Kinsman of the King’ (line. 2–3); I.Salamis 5 for a dithyrambic poet ‘of the First Friends’ (τῶν πρώτων φίλων). On the other hand, the man, named Isidoros, and honoured by the Artists of Dionysus between 124 and 58 BC (I.Paphos 91) is not necessarily to be identified with Isidoros, son of Helenos, from Antioch, who bears the titles of ‘Kinsman of the King’ and ἀρχεδέατρος (Mitford 1959, 120). 145 I.Paphos 92. 146 It is not impossible to identify this man with the Ammonios described as ‘Kinsman of the King’ in I.Paphos 85, line 2. 147 This function suggests that there was then a court in Cyprus, formed on the model of that in Alexandria.

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In this text as in others, it is clear that we are not dealing with stage artists, but with individuals comparable to those qualified as φιλοτεχνῖται on the inscription of Ptolemais, that is to say ‘benefactor members’. Some of them originated from Alexandria, others from the island of Cyprus, like the son of Stasikrates, whose name is typically Cypriot,148 or like Kallipos, son of Kallipos, a Paphian secretary of the city and gymnasiarch,149 and Potamon, son of Aigyptos,150 who held eminent offices both in Paphos and in the Ptolemaic administration. Nevertheless, mentioning their membership in the local Dionysiac association was a way for everyone to let the reigning rulers know that they supported their ideology and their cult. The association formed by the Dionysiac τεχνῖται was therefore a wonderful political and religious instrument for the Lagid sovereigns, as well as for those of their entourage, who were able to reaffirm through it their unconditional allegiance to the Ptolemies.

Dionysiac Artists, Members of the Court and Royal Patronage What is true of members of court is also true of the τεχνῖται themselves, who also openly demonstrated their dependence on the Ptolemaic kings, granting honorary privileges to members of the court as well as to supporters of the royal power. Hence, they pursued a double objective: to keep their own position in close proximity to the ruling sovereign, and to benefit continuously from generous contributions given by benefactors. However, profits made by the artists also came from the Ptolemies themselves, which provides an additional explanation for the loyalty they had to show towards them, following exactly the role allotted to them in the ideological agenda. If we consider a few verses of the Idyll in which Theocritus praised Ptolemy II (Theoc. Id. 17, 112–113),151 the king did not miss a chance to send a “present worthy of his talent” (δωτίναν ἀντάξιον [. . .] τέχνας) to “the man able to sing a harmonious song and who competed in the contests organised in the honour of Dionysus” (Διωνύσου τις ἀνὴρ ἱεροὺς κατ᾽ ἀγῶνας / ἵκετ᾽ ἐπιστάμενος λιγυρὰν ἀναμέλψαι ἀοιδάν). A passage where Polybius trenchantly caricatures the regent of Egypt when Ptolemy V was still a child (Polyb. 16, 21, 6–9)152 deserves to be mentioned in illustration of the royal rewards. We are informed that whenever Tlepolemus dedicated time for audiences instead of indulging in his binge drinking, “he devoted it to distributing, or rather, to say what we saw, to squandering the king’s money for the benefit of ambassadors arrived from Greece or Artists of Dionysus, and especially for the officers and soldiers of the court” (ἐν τούτῳ διεδίδου, μᾶλλον δ᾽, εἰ δεῖ τὸ φαινόμενον εἰπεῖν, διερρίπτει τὰ βασιλικὰ χρήματα τοῖς ἀπὸ τῆς Ἑλλάδος παραγεγονόσι πρεσβευταῖς καὶ τοῖς περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνίταις, μάλιστα δὲ τοῖς περὶ τὴν αὐλὴν ἡγεμόσι καὶ στρατιώταις). Although the description is highly judgemental, showing the willingness of the historian to stigmatise all those who, since Ptolemy IV, allegedly led the kingdom on the path of decline, it confirms the generosity shown by the Ptolemies towards the artists, which symbolizes their royal virtues. As for the place given to them on the list, it clearly shows the aura they enjoyed at court, which may reflect some form of compensation for their loss of freedom. We should add that the τεχνῖται did not pay the salt tax (ἁλική) imposed since the third century BC on all adult men and women living on Egyptian territory.153 The professional categories exempted by Ptolemy II from its payment by a decree dated to 256 BC include only representatives of Greek culture, among them “individuals taking care of Dionysus’

148 I.Paphos 95. 149 I.Paphos 94. 150 I.Paphos 93. 151 See Cholmeley 1901, 130. 152 See Paton 2012, 51, 53. 153 It is attested for the first time on an ostracon preserved in the collections of the Ägyptisches Museum, Berlin (cf. Wångstedt 1978–1979, 5–27, 6 no. 1 = Berlin, Ägyptisches Museum, P 6359), and dated to 263 BC. See Clarysse and Thompson 2009, 39, n. 23, and 135–138. For both authors, these are 228 individuals (including 107 males) who would have belonged to the group they call ‘actors’ in the meris Herakleides (capital included), six (including a single male) in the meris Polemon and six (including three males) in the meris Themitos. The Arsinoite would thus have counted 230 ‘actors’ including 111 males. Even if all the listed people did not exercise an artistic profession, since members of their families were counted with them, the total number appears very high, and to use the conclusions of the two experts, it shows the degree of penetration of Greek culture in this area, in the middle of the third century. However, it is not known how many among those belonged to the association of τεχνῖται of Egypt.

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domain” (οἱ ἐπιδεύοντες τὰ περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον).154 Clearly all kinds of benefits distinguished the τεχνῖται living in Egypt or Cyprus. We may conclude that the placement of the Artists of Dionysus under royal patronage allowed the Ptolemies to turn them into an instrument for the legitimation of their power. Furthermore, it was a means of expressing loyalty towards themselves as well as towards their dynasty, and it was also a tool for projecting their protective virtues and their Dionysism. In addition, it allowed them to channel the potential danger the artists might otherwise have represented for the monarchy, being a group worshipping a god closely linked mythologically to challenging the established order.155 Thus the Ptolemies defended themselves against a potential threat to which the various political entities hosting associations of τεχνῖται also attempted to respond. The Athenian civic authorities generously granted citizenship to the members of the guild established in the city, so that two distinct communities were not obliged to coexist in the same place, especially as their interests would not always have coincided.156 In Anatolia, the peace of Apamea (188 BC) had, among other impacts, a considerable increase of the territory of the kingdom of the Attalids which brought the free city of Teos under their domination. As a consequence, the local association was reattached to the one officiating in Pergamum, under the following name: “The Guild of Artists of Dionysus who are Active in Ionia and the Hellespont, and of Those Devoted to Dionysus Kathegemon” (τὸ κοινὸν τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνῖται τῶν ἐπ’ Ἰωνίας καὶ Ἑλλεσπόντου καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Καθηγεμόνα Διόνυσον). However, an economic dispute erupted between the τεχνῖται of Teos and the city, which lingered. Following his unsuccessful attempts at appeasement and conciliation, Eumenes II eventually suggested in a letter157 sent to both parties the establishment of a convention leading to synoecism.158 But the process failed (perhaps due to the death of the king) and the τεχνῖται were forced to leave Teos, and the situation came close to a civil war, according to Strabo (14, 643).159 When comparing the policies pursued by the Attalid and Ptolemaic monarchies, one cannot help but attribute (at least partially) the lack of success of Eumenes II to the fact that the Attalids never officially patronised the association present on the territory they ruled. They were content to spread their cults and ideology, relying mainly on the branch of the association in Pergamum, which worshipped Dionysus Kathegemon, a divinity of the utmost importance for their dynasty.160 For their part, the Ptolemies never allowed the association of τεχνῖται in Egypt to form a miniature city, or, in other words, a self-governing body of citizens. In the decree of Ptolemais, mentioned above,161 the association is in fact designated with the revealing term of τεχνίτευμα. Nowhere else attested, the term is composed in the same way as the word πολίτευμα, used in Ptolemaic Egypt to qualify an ethnically based organisation, whose members (such as the Jews) enjoyed considerable legal and executive prerogatives.162 By contrast, the group formed by the artists only existed because of its professional qualities, which were aligned – as shown above – with the political and religious objectives of the ruling dynasty.

154 This decree appears in a letter sent by the diocese Apollonius to the οἰκονόμος of the Arsinoite nome, Zoilos (PHal. 1, 260–265; cf. Clarysse and Thompson 2009, 52, n. 103). 155 It is from this perspective that one must understand the Edict of Ptolemy IV. 156 See Le Guen 2007e, 361–364. 157 See RC 53. The letter is dated on paleographic criteria to the second half of the second century BC. The fact that the Teians as well as the τεχνῖται each pleaded their case to Eumenes II confirms, in my view, that its writing should be placed after 188 BC and before the death of the king in 158 BC. 158 RC 53, III A, line 8. See Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 100–101. 159 See Jones 1929, 237. 160 Under this particular cult epithet meaning ‘the leader’, Dionysus was the god to whom the theatre of Pergamum was dedicated, and who was the object of a specific cult performed by the Attalids, perhaps even in a room of their palace (see Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 29 and n. 123). This cult included mysteries in Pergamum, and the priest in charge of it was not only elected for life by the sovereign, but also chosen within the entourage of the royal family. 161 OGIS 51, line 11. 162 See, e.g., Kruse 2008, 166–175.

2 Artists of Dionysus and Ptolemaic Rulers in Egypt and Cyprus  

Concordance table CID IV, 12: CIG 3068 A: IG IV 558: IG VII 2484: IG VII 2447: IG XI 4, 1060: IG IX 1, 278: IG XI 4, 1136: IG XII 9, 910: I.Olympia 405: I.Paphos 90: I.Paphos 91: I.Paphos 92: I.Paphos 93: I.Paphos 94: I.Paphos 95: I.Paphos 96: I.Salamis 5: I.Salamis 6: OGIS 50: OGIS 51: OGIS 161: OGIS 325: Syll.3 460: Syll.3 507: RC 53:

TE 2, 57–61; AV: A5A, 348. TE 48, 250–253; AV: D11a, 386. TE 36, 190–197; AV: B9, 364–366. TE 27, 176–177; AV: B12, 367. TE 21, 140–141; AV: Gc, 417. TE 19, 133–134; AV: Dubia 1, 417–418. TE 31, 181–183; AV: B11, 366–367. TE 45, 231–239; AV: D10, 383–386. TE 32, 183–185; AV: B10, 366. TE 37, 197; AV: B16, 368. TE 62, 300–304; AV: E3, 398; CDL 88, 215–216. TE 66, 308–310; AV: E6, 399; CDL 92, 217–218. TE 67, 310–311; AV: E8, 399. TE 69, 312–313; AV: E10, 400; CDL 93, 218. TE 68, 311–312; AV: E9, 400; CDL 71, 204–205. TE 70, 313–314; AV: E11, 400. TE 71, 314–315. TE 64, 305–307; AV: E5, 398; CDL 90, 216–217. TE 65, 307–308; AV: E7, 399; CDL 91, 217. TE 60, 293–296; AV: E1, 395–396. TE 61, 296–300; AV: E2, 396–397. TE 63, 304–305; AV: E4, 398; CDL 89, 216. TE 49, 253–255; AV: D14, 393. TE 17, 129–132; AV: B1, 357. TE 38, 199–202; AV: D1, 375. TE 47, 243–250; AV: D12, 387–391.

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Christopher de Lisle

3 The Autocratic Theatre of Hieron II Hieron II of Syracuse reigned for fifty-four years, from 269 to 215 BC – longer than any other Hellenistic monarch. His kingdom was relatively small and always required the support of external powers: first the Ptolemies and then the Romans. It survived his death in 215 BC by a mere eleven months, indicating how crucial Hieron himself had been to its preservation. The literary tradition on him is unequivocally positive. His success lay in defining his position in Syracuse and Sicily as traditional, benevolent, popular, divinely favoured, and unshakeable. This definition took place in a vast range of media, but here I argue that the theatre that Hieron built in Syracuse was fundamental to the construction of his autocracy.1

Description of the Theatre The theatre is cut into the south face of the Temenites Hill, which forms the south edge of the Epipolai plateau. The hill had been inhabited before the arrival of the Greeks in Sicily and became an extramural sanctuary shortly after Syracuse’s foundation.2 The eastern part of the hill was a major quarry. To the north there was a large necropolis. Under Hieron, the area became part of the urban conglomeration, the centre of his new sub-city: Neapolis.3 Hieron’s theatre is only briefly mentioned in the literary sources. Most information must come from the physical remains of the theatre.4 Unfortunately, the archaeology of the site is difficult. The structure was repeatedly modified over a long period of time, starting in the classical period and continuing until late antiquity. Whereas normally ancient builders constructed new buildings atop the foundations of the old, with a rock-cut structure like this each new phase removed the previous one, so there is no stratigraphy. Moreover, the structure has been poorly treated since antiquity. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was repeatedly spoliated. From 1576 until 1921, it was the site of a number of water mills. The cuttings for the foundations of these structures and for the drainage channels connected to them run all over the site and are often difficult to distinguish from ancient cuttings. The water from them, which was constantly flowing over the whole site, has heavily damaged the soft Sicilian stone. As a result of these archaeological difficulties, it is difficult to reconstruct the history of the site and its setting. Whether there was a theatre on this site before Hieron is a topic of great controversy. I am of the opinion that there were theatrical performances on the site from the fifth century BC, but very few of the arguments in this chapter depend upon this.5 What is necessary is to describe what Hieron’s theatre looked like, starting from the bottom and working upwards, with a particular stress on the evidence that places various components of the theatre in the time of Hieron, rather than earlier or later. The complex as a whole is depicted in Fig. 3.1, a detailed plan of the theatre in Fig. 3.2, and an overview in Fig. 3.3. The theatre had a stone skene (A on Fig. 3.1), probably two stories high, known to us only from foundations and a couple of architectural fragments which were reused as building material in the Roman period. These indicate that 1 Thanks to Peter Wilson and Eric Csapo for inviting me to contribute, to Juliane Zachhuber, Harry Morgan, Panagiotis Christoforou, Elodie Paillard, Peter Wilson, and Dick Green for helpful comments, and to the British Academy for the funding that enabled this research. On Hieron generally, see De Sensi Sestito 1977; Eckstein 1980; Hoyos 1985; Bell 1999 and 2011; Portale 2004; Lehmler 2005. Coinage: Caccamo Caltabiano et al. 1997; Wolf and Lorber 2011. Epigraphy: Dimartino 2006 with further bibliography; Walthall 2011. 2 Polacco et al. 1989, 118–119. 3 Portale 2015, 699–705; pace Voza 1993–1994, 1287–1291. 4 Diod. Sic. 16, 83; Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 119. Main archaeological discussions: Rizzo 1923; Bernabò Brea 1967; Polacco and Anti 1981; Polacco 1990a; Polacco et al. 1989; Wilson 1990, 68–72; Campagna 2004, 171–183. Full bibliography in Todisco 2002, 223 n. 17. Hellenistic theatres generally: Hesberg 2009. 5 That there was a theatre in Syracuse in the classical period is not in doubt: there are some literary references to it from the fifth century onwards: e.g. Eust. Od. 3, 68; Diod. Sic. 13, 94, 1; Plut. Tim. 38; Hermipp. FGrH 1026 F 84. Peter Wilson points out that depictions of theatrical scenes on late fourth-century phylax vases consistently depict a substantial stage building (pers. comm.). The dispute is whether that theatre was located on the same site as Hieron’s theatre. Against: Bernabò Brea 1967; Mertens 1984; Campagna 2004, 171. For: Polacco and Anti 1981, 157–190; Pöhlmann 2015, 153–155. Others identify the earlier theatre with the so-called teatro rettilineare (P on Fig. 3.1), slightly west of Hieron’s theatre; see n. 18. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-004

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Fig. 3.1: Neapolis theatre complex plan. Drawing: C. de Lisle after Polacco and Anti 1981 and 1989, Gentile 1952, Voza 2006, and Wolf 2016.

Fig. 3.2:  Neapolis theatre plan. Drawing courtesy of Polacco and Anti 1988, pl. 28.

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Fig. 3.3:  Modern view of the Neapolis theatre. Photo courtesy of R. Fox.

it had a raised stage – possibly connected to the orchestra by steps. Behind this, was a lower story with Ionic columns and architraves, into which pinakes were inserted to form a backdrop, and an upper story in the Doric order.6 The architectural fragments can be dated to Hieron’s reign on stylistic grounds. Three sculptural elements have been recovered from the skene of Hieron’s theatre: an ornamental lionhead waterspout, and two telamones: a satyr and a maenad (Fig. 3.4a–b).7 On either side of the skene there were narrow parodoi running in a north-south direction, and beyond them were two large rectangular blocks of living rock, referred to as piloni (B), which had been carved into the shape of squat rectangular towers. Both of them are separated from the koilon by deep ditches 25.5 m long and 3.5 m wide, which served as skenothekai – sheds which contained a wooden stage that was rolled into the orchestra when required. The tracks for the stage can still be seen in places at the base of the ditches. It is unclear whether these were in use in Hieron’s time or belonged to an earlier period of the theatre.8 The orchestra (C) was horseshoe-shaped. It is now a mess of different drainage systems, from different stages in the life of the theatre. The relative chronology is very contentious and fortunately it is not necessary to go into it here. The prohedriai are no longer visible because of Roman period modifications, but their size and location are shown by the euripoi (drainage ditches) that used to run in front of them.9 Behind the orchestra rises the koilon, which had a diameter of 130 metres and a capacity of around 15,800 people (assuming 0.5 m2 per person). It has nine wedges of seating and is split into a lower (D) and an upper (E) part by a passageway, commonly known in modern scholarship as a ‘diazoma’, which is clearly dated to Hieron by a monumental inscription discussed below in more detail. This means that the whole koilon as we see it now is substantially that of Hieron’s theatre. However, the colonnade directly behind the koilon, depicted in Figs. 3.1 and 3.2, is likely to be a Roman addition.10 Above the theatre was an L-shaped stoa (F), with two rows of columns. Architectural fragments preserve traces of blue and red paint and certainly date to the Hieronian period, since they are of the same style as the skene fragments.11 In the centre, at the back, is a grotto now known as the Grotto delle Nymphe (G), an artificial expansion of a natural

6 Rizzo 1923, 87–101; Bernabò Brea 1967, 115–132; Polacco and Anti 1981, 69–103, 193–197; von Sydow 1984, 287, 322. 7 Rizzo 1923, 101–105. 8 Bernabò Brea 1967, 105–111; Polacco and Anti 1981, 55–68, 182–183. 9 Rizzo 1923, 53–62; Bernabò Brea 1967, 111–115; Polacco and Anti 1981, 105–124, 191–193. 10 Rizzo 1923, 29–52; Bernabò Brea 1967, 101–105; Polacco and Anti 1981, 125–152; Wilson 1990, 68. Moretti 2018, 195-202 has shown that this use of the term ‘diazoma’ is anachronistic and that the actual term was dihodos. 11 Rizzo 1923, 119–123; von Sydow 1984, 307–308; Polacco 1990b, 34–41.

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Fig. 3.4: (a) Satyr telamon, Museo Paolo Orsi, inv. 916. Photo: Rizzo 1923, Fig. 43. (b) Maenad telamon, Museo Paolo Orsi. Photo: Rizzo 1923, Fig. 42.

hollow in the cliff-face. A torrent of water flows into it through a 1.3 km long subterranean aqueduct – part of a system of underground aqueducts built under Hieron.12 This area was heavily modified in order to feed the early modern watermills on the site, so it is not clear how the water left the grotto in Hieron’s time, but it probably flowed along a drain at the back of the koilon and on towards the Great Altar. A votive plaque depicting Pan was recovered from this grotto. At the northwest corner of the stoa, there was a rock-cut chamber (H), now largely open to the air, with benches carved into the walls. This is probably the Mouseion, which is mentioned as a meeting place in second century BC honorific inscriptions of the Dionysiac and Aphrodisiac artists found nearby. Three statues of female figures found here may be Muses and a large number of votive bowls and Rhodian and Syracusan amphora handles dating to the third or second century BC suggest that this chamber was in active use for ritual feasting in Hieron’s time.13 From this corner of the stoa, a rock-cut road with ruts for wagon traffic, now known as the Via dei Sepulchri (J), leads up to the flat area above and behind the theatre. There, Hieron built a square courtyard, measuring 110 x 90 metres surrounded by a stoa on three sides. In the centre, perfectly aligned with the axis of the theatre below, there was or had been an archaic temple, usually identified as the temple of Apollo Temenites (K). This was modified in the fifth century BC to incorporate two tombs. At some point it was demolished.14 At the southeast corner of this stoa there seem to have been two temples (L), perhaps the temples of Demeter and Kore mentioned by Cicero, looming over the theatre 12 Rizzo 1923, 114–119; Polacco 1990b, 41–46; Wilson 2000; Guzzardi 2001. 13 Orsi 1909; Rizzo 1923, 123–134; Polacco 1990b, 46–49; Inscriptions: I.Sicily 832–833, 1579; Gentili 1961; Moretti 1963; Fountoulakis 2000; Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 319–326 ; vol. 2, 77, 86; Aneziri 2001–2002. Dionysius I is reported to have dedicated various relicts of Euripides in a Mouseion (Anon. Vit. Eur. 80–85 = Hermipp. FGrH 1026 F 84; Wilson 2017, 14–15), but the structure here discussed must post-date him. In POxy. 3202, l. 32–36, a papyrus copy of a first-century AD inscription, the Syracusan demos grants a victorious poet oikesis (right to reside) in the space. 14 No archaeological evidence for the date of demolition has been published. Voza 1993–1994, proposes that the tombs belonged to Gelon I and his wife Demarete. There is no positive evidence for this and it cannot be reconciled with the description of Gelon’s tomb in Diod. Sic. 11, 38, 3–5, which places it in a field (κατὰ τὸν ἀγρὸν) with nine towers, owned by Demarete, 200 stades (about 40 km) outside the city of Syracuse. Gelon’s tomb is reported to have been demolished by Carthaginian besiegers, but the Temenites hill was inside the walls from 415 BC (Thuc. 6, 75) and so can never have been accessible to a Carthaginian force.

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below. Architectural fragments of these have been found in the Latomiai (R), buried in the silt at the base of the cliff, where they fell sometime in the Middle Ages. These are of the same style as the other Hieronian architectural fragments discussed so far.15 West of the stoa was another structure, known as ‘Podium A’ (M), which seems to be a temple, in an enclosure entered through a large propylon to the north. An artificially flattened courtyard to the west of Podium A, contains forty-five regularly spaced square pits cut into the stone. These may be offering pits related to the thesmophoria or planters for trees.16 There are three ditches for offerings to the north of Podium A and another ditch (or tomb?) inside it. The complex probably continued to the north – part of a ‘theatroid’ structure is visible at the very northern edge of the archaeological park, but is mostly covered by modern building. There are yet further structures at the bottom of the hill, at the level of the orchestra. To the west of the orchestra there is another temenos (O) with an area of 21.75 x 20 metres. This contains a sacred hearth, and a large table which might be an altar or a base for a pair of large seated statues. Votive deposits go back to the seventh century but a fragmentary inscription on the table is of Hellenistic date; it may identify the area as a sanctuary of Demeter Pyrphoros.17 Slightly further to the southwest is the set of steps known as the teatro rettilineare (P), sometimes proposed as a predecessor to the theatre of Hieron, although there is no firm evidence for its dating.18 To the southeast of the theatre is the Great Altar of Hieron (Q), the largest Greek altar ever built. Fragments of the altar’s entablature are identical to those from the skene of the theatre, indicating that they were built in a single moment. Topography and votive deposits show that it too had been an active religious site before Hieron.19 Thus, Hieron’s theatre was part of a large religious complex, whose individual components were interlinked. Processions up to the sanctuaries at the top of the hill had to pass by the theatre. The water for rituals conducted at the Great Altar probably reached it after flowing through the Grotto delle Nymphe and down along the eastern side of the theatre. The clamour and stench of sacrifices at the Great Altar would be impossible for people in the theatre to ignore. Although this complex is imperfectly known to us, the individual sanctuaries in this space all seem to have been active for centuries by Hieron’s time and almost all of them were completely remodelled during his reign.

Autocratic Building Any kind of large-scale construction had an autocratic tinge in Greek discourse – as shown by Athenian experiences of and responses to large-scale construction.20 In Greek Sicily, this connection was particularly strong and had several strands. Firstly, the individual in charge of construction held an immense amount of power. The archetypal Sicilian tyrant, Phalaris of Acragas, is said by Polyaenus to have been appointed chief of works for a temple on the Acragantine acropolis in the sixth century BC. Polyaenus emphasises how the position gave him control over money, men loyal to himself rather than the demos, and a fortified centre – all of which made him independent of those who had appointed him and enabled him to seize control of Acragas.21 Secondly, construction allowed rulers to demonstrate their efficacy. One of the defining stories of Dionysius I’s rise to power was his construction of the massive fortification system encircling Epipolai. Diodorus describes the construction process, which saw the massive five-and-a-half kilometre wall built in thirty days, by pulling in vast numbers of

15 Voza 1984–1985, 673–677; Voza 1993–1994, 1288–1291; Voza 2007; Wolf 2016, 83. For the association of Demeter and Kore with the theatre in Sicily, see n. 54. 16 Megara for the Thesmophoria: Polacco et al. 1989, 111–115. Planters: Voza 2007. There are more of these ‘pozzetti’ to the northeast of (L). 17 Stucchi 1952; Manganaro 1977, 158; Polacco 1990c, 144–149. 18 Gentili 1952; Ginouvès 1972, 61–62; Pöhlmann 2015, 148. A Hieronian date might be indicated by the fact that the structure shares its axis with a tomb of that date. 19 von Sydow 1984, 285–287; Karlsson 1996; Bell 1999; Parisi Presicce 2004; Vonderstein 2006, 137–141; Wolf 2016, 33–56. 20 Pisistratus: Shapiro 1989, 1–17, 125–126, 133–141; Pericles: Cratin. PCG F 73, F 258; Herodes Atticus: Tobin 1997. 21 Polyaenus, Strat. 5, 1, 1.

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citizens (reportedly 60,000) and organising them intelligently.22 The message of large-scale construction was thus not just, “look how much the ruler can accomplish” but “look how much we can accomplish under the ruler’s direction”. A third aspect is illuminated by the explanation Eustathios, the twelfth-century AD commentator on Homer, gives of a reference in the fifth-century BC Syracusan comic poet, Sophron: [Εὐδαίμων] ἱστορῶν καὶ ὅτι τοῦ Συρακουσίου τούτου κύριον Δημόκοπος ἦν ἀρχιτέκτων. ἐπεὶ δὲ τελεσιουργήσας τὸ θέατρον μύρον τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ πολίταις διένειμε, Μύριλλα ἐπεκλήθη. [Eudaimon] records also that the name of this Syracusan was Demokopos, a chief of works. Since he distributed myrrh to his own citizens after he completed work on the theatre, he was called Myrilla.23

The story is fictionalised: Demokopos is not a real name, but a synonym for ‘demagogue’ and Sophron’s reference is part of a discourse against individual power in the second Syracusan democracy (467–404 BC). The idea is that construction was one of the best venues for assertive individuals to weaponise euergetism, using building projects to place the populus in their debt, both through the benefits arising from the construction process itself and through the spectacle that followed its completion. The permanence of the structure helped turn that moment of euergetism into a concrete and enduring relationship of debt.24 Construction is a temporary process that results in a permanent structure; it embodies the routinisation of a ruler’s charismatic authority. All of this is relevant to Hieron’s decision to build his theatre on such a scale: it demonstrated forever his power apart from and over the Syracusans and immortalised the unequal relationship of benefaction and debt between them.

A Building Programme Hieron’s theatre was not a lone structure, but the centrepiece of a building programme. Parts of this complex, such as the Great Altar, the large network of aqueducts, and the new sub-city of Neapolis, have already been mentioned. Other construction under Hieron included a new Temple of Olympian Zeus in the agora, a new palace on Ortygia, and expansion of the Euryalos fortress. That building programme as a whole had an autocratic tinge.25 The fact that there is a unified style that dates architectural fragments to Hieron’s time has already been mentioned. This style, which combines features of the Hellenistic mainstream with features that referred back to earlier Sicilian models, is characterised by distinctive forms of the Doric and Ionic orders (Fig. 3.5a–b). Often both orders are combined in a single structure. Some features of the decoration of the Dorian order are diagnostic: the foliage on the kymation foliage, lion-head waterspouts (ornamental, not functional), and rosettes. There appear to be late fourth-century precursors for the style, but it became common throughout eastern Sicily during Hieron’s reign, before spreading through western Sicily in the second century BC.26 It is tempting to associate buildings with elements in this style in other cities within Hieron’s kingdom with Hieron himself – notably at Akrai, Heloros, Morgantina, and Tauromenion. Wilhelm von Sydow identified some technical features of the style in Hieron’s time, such as the shape and location of the brackets for metal clamps, which suggest that it was the product of a single architect or group of architects, but Lorenzo Campagna has emphasised that we cannot know and should not assume that all structures in the style, especially outside Syracuse, were initiated by Hieron, rather than local notables.27 Nevertheless, the consistent use of this style in Hieron’s buildings in Syracuse (and

22 Diod. Sic. 14, 18. 23 Eust. Od. 3, 68 = Sophr. PCG F 123; Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 352–355 IV Aviii. 24 Demokopos: Pöhlmann 2015, 153–154; Wilson 2017, 6–8; cf. Greenhalgh 1981, 54–60 (Theatre of Pompey). Euergetism: Veyne 1990 [1976], esp. 147–149; Gauthier 1985, 24–38; Ma 1999, 182–194. 25 On this building programme, see especially von Sydow 1984, 340–346; Campagna 2004; Lehmler 2005; Portale 2015; Wolf 2016, 101–102. 26 von Sydow 1984, 255–324, 335–339. Much of von Sydow’s material is reviewed in Wolf 2016. 27 von Sydow 1984, 342–343; Campagna 2004, 152–157. The influence of this style and of the theatre in particular is also visible in the theatres at Monte Iato, Solunto, Segesta, and Tyndaris. Direct involvement of Hieron can be ruled out in these cases, owing to their late date and/or their location outside Hieron’s realm.

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Fig. 3.5: (a) Doric cornice, from the theatre skene. Drawing: von Sydow 1984, Fig. 37. (b) Ionic cornice, from a Syracusan tomb, Museo Paolo Orsi, inv. 40098. Drawing: von Sydow 1984, Fig. 51.

perhaps elsewhere) would have encouraged viewers to see all Hieron’s buildings as part of a unified whole, encompassing the whole city of Syracuse (and possibly the whole kingdom). One motif that does seem to be associated with Hieron himself is the use of telamones (also called atlantes). These were corbels or engaged columns carved as figures bending forward to support blocks on their shoulders and forearms (to be distinguished from ‘caryatids’ which take the form of columns and bear the weight on their heads). Their first appearance was as the gigantic figures on the Temple of Olympian Zeus, built by the tyrant Theron at Acragas in the early fifth century. In the theatre, the motif takes the form of the satyr and maenad on the skene, which were mentioned above (Fig. 3.4a–b). The pose of the maenad and satyr of the theatre is directly modelled on that of Theron’s telamones, suggesting the motif was intended to hearken back to the ‘good tyrants’ of the early Classical period, whom Hieron sought to co-opt as models for his own rule. The importance of these telamones and the link created by them is shown by their recurrence on other Hieronian structures: the Altar of Hieron, where only the feet now survive, and even on the deck of the Syrakosia, Hieron’s luxury yacht.28

28 On telamones generally, see Vitr. De arch. 6, 7, 9; Schmidt 1982, 112–123 and King 1998, 275 and 289–301. For Hieron’s telamones: Ath. 5, 208b = Moschion FGrH 575 F 1; Campagna 2004, 164–171; Lehmler 2005, 139, 228; Wolf 2016, 53–56. Telamones become common in Italy and

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It is striking that this element was drawn from temple architecture in particular and generalised to all Hieron’s structures, including the theatre. A parallel is offered by Susan Walker who has argued that Augustus’ extensive use of the Corinthian order on all buildings, which had previously been reserved for the most sacred part of the temple, was a conscious effort to emphasise the exceptional status of his Rome; we might see Hieron’s generalisation of elements of temple architecture in a similar way.29 The unified style of Hieron’s buildings calls to mind the Augustan building programme in Rome more generally, too – it made Hieron an omnipresent feature of the urban landscape, a new founder, and allowed him to emphasise links between his new regime and an idealised past. This sort of totalising project required Hieron to leave his mark on all the major buildings in the city. It especially required him to leave his mark on the theatre, since in the poleis of Hellenistic Sicily theatres were viewed as crucially important structures. When the historian Diodorus Siculus indulges his civic pride by eulogising his tiny hometown of Agyrion in north-eastern Sicily, he starts with the theatre, and only then moves on to temples and political structures.30 The theatre’s central role in the community’s entertainment, education, worship, deliberation, and local history meant that in Hellenistic Sicily, as Marconi puts it, [. . .] theatres took on the role that temples once held [. . .] as symbols of the political independence, wealth, and power of the communities – even small ones – that built them.

Thus Hieron’s all-encompassing remodelling of Syracuse had to include – had to focus on – the theatre.31

Olympian Zeus and the Diazoma Hieron also took advantage of specific features of the theatre’s structure to communicate specific themes of his ideology of power. This is most apparent with the set of monumental inscriptions running along the wall of the diazoma (IG XIV 3), which have been mentioned already for their value for dating the koilon.32 There were originally nine of these inscriptions, one in front of each wedge of theatre seating, from west to east: [βασιλέος Γέλωνος] βασιλίσσας Νηρηίδος βασιλίσσας Φιλιστίδος [β]ασιλ[έος Ἱέρω]νος Διὸς Ὀλυμπίου [– – –] [Ἡρ]ακλέο[ς κ]ρατε[ρό]φρονο[ς] [– – –] [– – –]

[Of King Gelon] Of Queen Nereis Of Queen Philistis Of King Hieron Of Zeus Olympios [– – –] Of Herakles Kraterophron [– – –] [– – –]

These would have been used by visitors to the theatre in order to navigate to the part of the theatre where they were sitting. The centre is inscribed with the name of Zeus Olympios. On the wedges to the east, there seem to have been the names of further deities, but unfortunately, the inscriptions have been heavily damaged by the elements and only the name of Herakles Kraterophron is recoverable. To the west of the centre are the names of King Hieron, his wife Queen Philistis, his daughter-in-law Queen Nereis, and (nearly certainly) his son and co-regent, King Gelon II.

Sicily in the Hellenistic period, especially on theatres (King 1998 provides a thorough list). The only examples that might predate Hieron are those of the Monte Iato theatre, which Isler, the excavator dated to the late fourth century BC. I follow the arguments of Wilson 1990, 69–71 for dating these around 200 BC. 29 Walker 2000, 64. 30 Diod. Sic. 16, 83, 3. 31 Marconi 2012. Todisco 2002, 167–192 provides a full list of Sicilian theatres known in 2002, to which must now be added the theatre at Acragas: Caliò et al. 2017; and the unpublished theatre at Halaisa: Costanzi 2021. 32 IG XIV 3 = I.Sicily 824; Rizzo 1923, 50–51; Polacco and Anti 1981, 45–46; Dimartino 2006.

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The first feature to note is the prominence given to Zeus Olympios. This god had always been important to Syracusan civic identity – the priest of Zeus Olympios was the eponymous official of Syracuse, and the list of Syracusan citizens was kept in the temple of Zeus Olympios. He was also important for the Syracusans’ understanding of their connection to the wider Greek world. It was said that the river Alpheios flowed from Olympia, under the Adriatic Sea, and bubbled up in Syracuse as the spring of Arethousa, the emblem and sacred heart of the city, thereby linking Syracuse to Olympia. Thus, Zeus Olympios was a feature of the Syracusan urban world, and a key part of the Syracusan conception of themselves as part of the Greek world.33 He was also the monarchical god par excellence, linked with kings by Hesiod, Attic Old Comedy, and Hellenistic poetry, honoured with massive temples by autocrats like Theron of Acragas and Pisistratus of Athens.34 In periods of democracy at Syracuse, Zeus Olympios usually lost some of his prominence in favour of Zeus Eleutherios.35 Hieron’s building programme included the replacement of the extramural temple of Zeus Olympios at Syracuse, one of the oldest temples of the city, with a new temple in the agora, so there is a definite sense in which Hieron was reasserting Olympian Zeus’ central place in the city.36 The diazoma inscription insured that in the theatre, too, Zeus Olympios’ position was literally central – with Hieron at his right hand. Syracusan civic identity and Hieron’s monarchy were presented as totally in sync.37 The second aspect of the inscription is the presentation of a royal family or dynasty. Dynasties are not objective facts: they have to be publicised, which is what this inscription does, making a clear statement about the centrality of the royal family to Syracusan life. It also constructed a particular image of that dynasty as connected to the past, in line with international norms of the present, and with a future beyond Hieron himself. We see the construction of a dynastic past in a number of other contexts. Hieron had a set of paintings set up in the Temple of Athena depicting a range of earlier Sicilian rulers, as if they were a series culminating with Hieron, for example.38 The diazoma inscription’s contribution to this construction of a dynastic past is that, between them, the four royals presented here had (putative) genealogical links to all the previous monarchs of Syracuse.39 In terms of the international norms of the present, the emphasis on the husband-wife pair obviously recalls those of Hieron’s closest allies among the Hellenistic monarchies: the Ptolemies. We see this idea in coinage too, where Hieron’s wife Philistis appears (more often than Hieron himself, in fact), in a guise closely modelled on the Ptolemaic coinage depicting Arsinoe II and Berenike II – the wives of Ptolemies II and III respectively.40 As for the dynastic future, by presenting two royal pairs in succession, the inscription emphasises the idea that the regime was a dynasty which would continue beyond Hieron himself. This schema was not the only way that Hieron’s family could have been presented – Hieron had daughters, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, but they would have complicated the message about the dynasty’s future, so they are left out.41 The fact these inscriptions had a practical purpose in helping people find their seats means that, unlike most inscriptions, which most passers-by probably ignored most of the time, visitors to Hieron’s theatre were forced to engage with the diazoma inscriptions. Thus, we see Hieron (or his architects) taking advantage of specific features of the structure of the theatre and the way in which people would use it to propagate central themes of Hieron’s dynastic and religious ideology.

33 Diod. Sic. 16, 70, 6; Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 137; Strab. 6, 2, 4; Plut. Nic. 14, 5; Vonderstein 2006, 119–143. 34 E.g. Hes. Op. 241–251; Callim. Hymn. 1; Theoc. Id. 17. Theron: Diod. Sic. 13, 82; Polyb. 9, 27, 2; Broucke 1996; Pisistratus: Shapiro 1989, 112–117. 35 Diod. Sic. 11, 72; Vonderstein 2006, 143–145. 36 Diod. Sic. 16, 83, 2; Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 119; Livy 24, 21, 9; Campagna 2004, 157–161; Lehmler 2005, 135–150; Vonderstein 2006, 132–140. 37 I leave aside the question of a ruler cult for Hieron; I intend to argue for its non-existence in a forthcoming publication. In favour: Consolo Langher 2004, 86–89; Serrati 2008; against: Lehmler 2005, 148–150. 38 Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 122–123; Lehmler 2005; Portale 2004. 39 De Sensi Sestito 1977, 183–184; Cf. OGIS 54; Satyr. FGrH 631 F 2; POxy. 2465 (Ptolemaic claims of Argead descent); Hekster 2015, esp. 111–233 (Roman emperors). 40 Caccamo Caltabiano et al. 1997, 53–60, 65–76. Hieron and the Ptolemies: Caccamo Caltabiano 1995; Wolf and Lorber 2011. 41 Cf. Péré-Noguès 2013 on Dionysius I’s use of his wives and daughters; Rose 1997, esp. 11–45 on Julio-Claudian statue groups; Severy 2003, 68–77, 161–165 on Augustus.

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Theatrical Templates The idea of the dynastic past was also emphasised by construction on sites where earlier Syracusan monarchs had already been active. Hieron thereby built himself into key loci of power within the city and was able to situate himself in relation to his predecessors.42 For example, as we saw earlier, Dionysius’ fortification works had been a key demonstration of his power; Hieron therefore invested enormous amounts of energy in rebuilding the centrepiece of those fortifications, the Hexapyla fortress. This phenomenon is at work with the theatre, which had been an important place for almost all earlier Syracusan monarchs. There were two key exemplars in this sphere: Hieron I and Dionysius I. Hieron II sought to tap into the positive aspects of the former’s engagement with the theatre while avoiding aspects of the latter’s engagement with the theatre which were more negative or (perhaps worse) laughable. Hieron I’s association with the theatre is well-known, because it is connected with Aeschylus, who was brought in to give two theatrical performances: Women of Aetna and The Persians.43 A summary of the Women of Aetna survives on papyrus and it reports that the play’s action moved through a number of places of contemporary political relevance, very probably ending at the Hill of Temenites, which may indicate that it was the site of the play’s performance.44 By building on the same site, Hieron II associated himself with the earlier Hieron, as a patron of literary culture. By contrast, the negative aspect of Dionysius’ relationship to the theatre focussed on his excessive involvement in the process of theatrical production – the decision to write and possibly even star in dramas.45 Our sources’ disapproval of Dionysius’ conduct is part of their general criticism of his relationship to society: his control of all aspects of civic life, orchestrating (rigged) competitions for status in the polis, rather than competing with other rulers on behalf of the polis on the global stage.46 Hieron II avoided this. By focusing his attention on the structure of the theatre, rather than productions in it, Hieron II firmly presented himself as one who enabled productions, like Hieron I; not an orchestrator like Dionysius I.

Theatre of the Kingdom Hieron’s rule was not restricted to the city of Syracuse itself – he ruled over most of southeastern Sicily. The cities of this kingdom were ostensibly symmachoi (allies), probably organised as a Koinon ton Sikeliotan (League of the Sikeliotes), known from coinage and Cicero’s Verrines.47 By Cicero’s time its central institution was the lex Hieronica, which governed all agriculture in the realm, extracting a tithe of grain from every city, to be auctioned off at Syracuse. Whether this system operated in the same way – or at all – in Hieron’s lifetime is disputed, but it is likely that the basic institution does go back to Hieron, since the law was named after him, the system seems similar to the grain tax system of third-century Ptolemaic Egypt, and because a number of standardised grain measures, inscribed with Hieron’s name, have been found in different parts of his realm.48 According to Cicero, the grain tithes from the cities were customarily auctioned off annually in a grand assembly (maximo conventu) in Syracuse, attended by representatives from throughout the province of Sicilia.49 This grand assembly must have taken place in the theatre, since it is the only venue that could accommodate them. Karlsson has proposed that this grand assembly went back to Hieron’s time and that the nearby Great Altar – built at the same time as the theatre, for sacrifices of hundreds of cattle at a time – was the site of sacrifices associated with these meetings. If

42 Cf. Augustus’ building programme in Rome: Zanker 1988, 101–238; Walker 2000; Severy 2003, 165–184. 43 Vit. Aesch. 9–10, 18; schol. Ar. Ran. 1028; Paus. 1, 2, 3; Kowalzig 2008; Bonanno 2010, 139–147; Bosher 2012; Morgan 2015, 96–109; Smith 2017, 11–18. 44 POxy. 2257. An improved text appears in Arata et al. 2004; they note that it is more likely a commentary than a hypothesis. The papyrus draws a parallel between Women of Aetna and the transfer of action from Delphi to the Areopagus in Eumenides. For other potential fragments: Smith 2018, 19–30. 45 Diod. Sic. 15, 6; 15, 74; [Plut.] X orat. 833c; Duncan 2012; Wilson 2017, 10–17; Coppola 2019. 46 Xen. Hier. 11 with Sordi 1980; Bonanno 2010, 231–238; Hieron II is seen engaging in ‘correct’ competition on Rhodes: Polyb. 5, 88. 47 Polyb. 1, 62, 8; Cic. Verr. 2, 2, 114; 2, 2, 154. Manganaro 1965; De Sensi Sestitio 1977, 117–123; Karlsson, 1996; Bell 2011, 197–198. 48 Pinzone 1979; Bell 2007 and 2011; Walthall 2011. 49 Cic. Verr. 2, 3, 14; 2, 3, 149.

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Karlsson is right, then the theatre was the site where Hieron’s power over the kingdom (viz. his ability to levy tax) was annually affirmed. The moment was an important one because the ability to ensure agricultural prosperity and to dispose of the profits had been a central aspect of Sicilian autocracy since the time of the Deinomenid tyrants and was a key component of kingship throughout the Hellenistic world.50 It was emphasised by Hieron, both domestically and internationally: he wrote a book on agriculture, built royal granaries next to his palace, and his massive pleasure cruiser the Syrakosia was ostensibly a grain transport. Theocritus’ encomium of him, too, stresses agricultural prosperity.51 Regardless of whether Cicero’s conventus took place in the theatre in Hieron’s time, the theatre was important to this aspect of Hieron’s self-representation because it was a key site where city and countryside met. Architecturally, a key example of this is the Grotto delle Nymphe, where water from the Syracusan countryside erupts into the civic environment, which was carved in a rough style so as to look like a natural cave. The votive relief of Pan found in the grotto supports this rupestral dimension.52 On the skene, the satyr and maenad telamones played a similar role, as Dionysiac figures of the wilderness incorporated into this civic building, to watch over theatrical performances and civic deliberations alike. The theatre also functioned as a meeting place of city and country, as the site of theatrical festivals, when people of the countryside came into the city – as audiences and as characters in comic performances. At Syracuse, the link between comic performance and the countryside is clearest with the festivals of Artemis Lyaia, in which men of the countryside (agroikoi) came to the city in stereotypical rustic dress and sang satirical songs.53 The theatre, then, had an important symbolic role in tying together the rural and urban aspects of Hieron’s kingship. These themes meet in Demeter and Kore, who were the patron goddesses of agricultural production and of Sicily, as well as being closely associated with drama in Sicily – apparently more so than Dionysus.54 As the patrons of Sicily, they were frequently invoked by Syracusan autocrats as supporters of their efforts to unify the island and as defenders of the Siceliotes from barbarian threats.55 As remarked above, Hieron’s theatre seems to have hosted an abundance of cult sites connected with these goddesses in the Syracusan polis religion: the temples on the upper terrace, the pozzetti on the upper terrace which may have been used for the thesmophoria, and the possible sanctuary of Demeter Pyrphoros west of the orchestra.56 Thus, the theatre was also a key location in which the ideas discussed in this section, about Hieronian Syracuse’s connection to broader units – the countryside, the kingdom, Sicily – were tied firmly into the polis’ religion and topography of power.

Theatrical Assemblies Cross-culturally, a ruler’s approach to theatre is often a metaphor for the ruler’s approach to social and political life. But in Syracuse it was a particularly natural metaphor because the theatre was also the central venue of political life, as the site of the assembly. Every Syracusan assembly that our sources localise takes place in the theatre.57 It was the main place where the whole demos gathered as a body and exercised agency. As a result, demonstrating supremacy in the theatre was a key part of establishing political supremacy generally. This is why it is so significant that the theatre’s style, inscription, and location in the centre of the Neapolis made it such 50 Deinomenids: Kowalzig 2008, 134–137. Hellenistic kings: Bringmann 2001. 51 Book: Varro, Rust. 1, 8, 1; Columella, Rust. 1, 1, 8; Plin. HN 18, 4, 22. Granaries: Livy 24, 21, 11–12; Lehmler, 2005, 176–177. Syrakosia: Moschion FGrH 575 F 1 = Ath. 5, 206d-209e. Encomium: Theoc. Id. 16, 85–99; Bell 2011, 198–206. 52 Polacco and Anti 1981, 217. 53 Lyaia: Diom. GL I, 486 and schol. Theoc. Proleg. B; Favi 2017 argues that the establishment of this festival dates to Hieron II. Cf. Arist. Pol. 1448a; Jones 2004, 192–207. 54 Hinz 1998. Demeter-Kore and theatre: Diod. Sic. 5, 4, 7 (aischrologia); Maclachlan, 2012 (terracotta votives); Polacco, 1990b, 155–158; Kowalzig 2008. 55 Demeter-Kore and Sicily: Pind. Nem. 1, 13–14; schol. Theoc. Id. 1, 65 = Simonid. fr. 200b Bergk; Diod. Sic. 5, 2–4; Strabo 6, 1, 5. Demeter-Kore defeating foreigners: Timaeus FGrH 566 F 102b (413 BC); Diod. Sic. 14, 63, 1–2; 14, 77, 4–5 (397 BC); Plut. Tim. 8 (344 BC); Diod. Sic. 20, 7 (317 BC). 56 See n. 15, 16, and 17 above. 57 Diod. Sic. 13, 94 in 406 BC; Plut. Dion 38, 2 and 43, 1 in 355 BC; Plut. Tim. 34, 4 in 343 BC; Nep. Timol. 4, 2 and Plut. Tim. 38, 6 after 338 BC; Just. Epit. 22, 2, 10 in 317 BC; Chariton 1, 1, 12, set c. 400 BC. Parallels are often drawn between theatre and assembly audiences in ancient sources: Thuc. 3, 37–38; Dem. 19, 337; Roselli 2011, 44–62.

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a Hieronian space, as discussed above. But supremacy was also demonstrated through performances in the theatre. The idea that the Athenian theatre was used to stage the domination of the demos over powerful individuals and of the polis over its empire is a familiar one.58 This also meant that the theatre was a key venue for the interface between the polis and the autocrat – most famously in the case of Demetrius Poliorcetes’ rule over Athens.59 There is a clear tradition of this in Syracuse. We have accounts of election for almost all of Syracuse’s rulers.60 Particularly telling for the practical importance of this is the account of the succession of Dionysius II to power after his father’s death in 368 BC: Ὁ δὲ Διονύσιος ὁ νεώτερος διαδεξάμενος τὴν τυραννίδα, πρῶτον τὰ πλήθη συναγαγὼν εἰς ἐκκλησίαν παρεκάλεσε τοῖς οἰκείοις λόγοις τηρεῖν τὴν πατροπαράδοτον πρὸς αὐτὸν εὔνοιαν, ἔπειτα τὸν πατέρα μεγαλοπρεπῶς θάψας κατὰ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν πρὸς ταῖς βασιλίσι καλουμέναις πύλαις, ἠσφαλίσατο τὰ κατὰ τὴν ἀρχήν. When Dionysius the Younger had inherited the tyranny, first he gathered the masses in an assembly and called on them with appropriate words to maintain the good will towards him which had been handed down by his father, then he buried his father magnificently on the Acropolis near the ‘Royal’ Gates, and his regime was secured.61

The smoothness of the succession is remarkable since Dionysius II’s rule would prove very unstable as a result of latent conflicts with members of his family and the wider Syracusan elite who wanted more power in the regime. It was because he had secured such a visible display of popular support for his claim to exclusive possession of his father’s legacy that he was able to take power in the first place.62 Sicilian historiography is dotted with examples of people ruining this kind of political scene by speaking out of turn or going off-script.63 The best example of this comes from POxy. 2399, an unknown historian’s account of an assembly in 310 BC: Δι[ό]γνητος ὁ Φαλαίνιος ἐπικαλούμενος διεφθαρμένος ὑπ’ Ἀμίλκου καὶ τῶν φυγάδων καὶ παρεσκευασμένος ἂν δύνηται μεταστῆσαι τὴν πόλιν. ἐκκλησιαζόντων τῶν Συρακοσίων ὑπὲρ τοῦ πολέμου τοῦ παρεστῶτος ἐξαίφνης ἀναστὰς καὶ προανακρουσάμενος ἐπὶ τοῦ βήματος [. . .] Diognetos ‘the Whale’ was corrupted by Hamilcar and the exiles and made preparations however he could to betray the polis. When the Syracusans were holding an Assembly about the ongoing war, he suddenly stood up and thrust forward up onto the speaker’s platform [. . .]

This sort of event was shocking when it occurred, because of its power – Diognetos’ intervention caused the whole meeting to collapse into chaos – and because of its rarity. Social conventions shared by theatrical performance and political oratory built a particular relationship between performer and audience. On the one hand, the performer had a privileged right to the audience’s attention. On the other, the audience as a collective had the right to judge the success of the performance – by their interventions (applause, hissing, heckling) during the performance and by their votes after it was over. The audience as individuals had much less power – intervening out of sync with the audience, much less breaking the fourth wall by invading the stage, was described by Theophrastus as ‘abhorrent behaviour’ (βδελυρία). There was powerful pressure to conform to the majority will, once it was discovered.64 Successful autocrats took advantage of these social conventions to stage displays that emphasised the audience’s unanimous support for them. How exactly were these displays to be staged? There were two iconic scenes of Syracusan history, which provided models for autocratic display. The first is the Apology of Gelon, set in 479 BC: διὸ καὶ τῆς ὁρμῆς ἐπισχών, τὴν προθυμίαν τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀποδεξάμενος, συνήγαγεν ἐκκλησίαν, προστάξας ἅπαντας ἀπαντᾶν μετὰ τῶν ὅπλων· αὐτὸς δὲ οὐ μόνον τῶν ὅπλων γυμνὸς εἰς τὴν ἐκκλησίαν ἦλθεν, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀχίτων ἐν ἱματίῳ προσελθὼν ἀπελογίσατο μὲν περὶ παντὸς τοῦ βίου καὶ τῶν πεπραγμένων αὐτῷ πρὸς τοὺς Συρακοσίους· ἐφ’ ἑκάστῳ δὲ τῶν λεγομένων ἐπισημαινομένων τῶν ὄχλων,

58 Individuals: [Xen.] Ath. pol. 2, 18; Dover 1972, 30–38; Goldhill 2000a, 44–47. Empire: Isoc. 8, 82 (display of tribute at the Dionysia, perhaps a parallel for the meetings of the koinon ton Sikeliotan discussed in the previous section). 59 Chaniotis 1997, 234–248; Bell 2004; Plut. Demetr. 34; Thonemann 2005. 60 Dionysius I: Diod. Sic. 13, 94–96; 14, 45; 14, 64–70. Dion: Diod. Sic. 16, 10, 3; 16, 20, 6; Plut. Dion 33; 42, 8–43. Agathocles: Diod. Sic. 19, 9; Just. 22, 2. Pyrrhos: Diod. Sic. 22, 8, 4. 61 Diod. Sic. 15, 74, 5. 62 Frisone 2015, 183–184. 63 Cf. Diod. Sic. 13, 91, 3–4; 14, 64, 5; Plut. Dion 34; Plut. Tim. 37, 3. 64 Thuc. 3, 37–38; Pl. Leg. 659b; Theophr. Char. 11, 3; Revermann 2006a, 160–162; Roselli 2011, 19–62; Wilson 2017, 4–5.

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καὶ θαυμαζόντων μάλιστα ὅτι γυμνὸν ἑαυτὸν παρεδεδώκει τοῖς βουλομένοις αὐτὸν ἀνελεῖν, τοσοῦτον ἀπεῖχε τοῦ τυχεῖν τιμωρίας ὡς τύραννος, ὥστε μιᾷ φωνῇ πάντας ἀποκαλεῖν εὐεργέτην καὶ σωτῆρα καὶ βασιλέα. So, when [Gelon] was ending the campaign [against the Carthaginians], he perceived the enthusiasm of the soldiers, and gathered an assembly, ordering everyone to meet armed. But he himself came into the assembly not just stripped of his arms, but he came forward in a himation without even a chiton, and gave a defence of his whole life and of the things he had done for the Syracusans. At each of the things he said, the crowd indicated its approval and was especially astonished that he had offered himself, naked, to those who might want to kill him – he was so far from receiving punishment as a tyrant that all in one voice they all declared him benefactor, saviour, and king.65

The episode has an anachronistic Hellenistic flavour; it illustrates how Diodorus – a Hellenistic Sicilian – expected a ruler to be acclaimed. The whole episode is thoroughly ‘theatrical’: the autocrat determines the form which the scene will take, with a particular focus on the use of creative costuming and staging to construct the right relationship between himself and the audience. In the meeting between the autocrat and the people, it is the latter who determine (apparently for good) what kind of ruler he is, but he has organised the encounter so that they can only reach one conclusion.66 The other iconic scene is an honour granted to Timoleon during his retirement after liberating Syracuse in 338 BC. We have versions of this from Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos, clearly derived from a single source. Plutarch’s version goes like this: καλὴν δὲ καὶ τὸ περὶ τὰς ἐκκλησίας γινόμενον ὄψιν εἰς τιμὴν αὐτοῦ [Τιμολέοντος] παρεῖχε· τὰ γὰρ ἄλλα δι’ αὑτῶν κρίνοντες, ἐπὶ τὰς μείζονας διασκέψεις ἐκεῖνον ἐκάλουν. ὁ δὲ κομιζόμενος δι’ ἀγορᾶς ἐπὶ ζεύγους πρὸς τὸ θέατρον ἐπορεύετο, καὶ τῆς ἀπήνης ἧσπερ ἐτύγχανε καθήμενος εἰσαγομένης, ὁ μὲν δῆμος ἠσπάζετο μιᾷ φωνῇ προσαγορεύων αὐτόν, ὁ δ’ ἀντασπασάμενος, καὶ χρόνον τινὰ δοὺς ταῖς εὐφημίαις καὶ τοῖς ἐπαίνοις, εἶτα διακούσας τὸ ζητούμενον ἀπεφαίνετο γνώμην. ἐπιχειροτονηθείσης δὲ ταύτης, οἱ μὲν ὑπηρέται πάλιν ἀπῆγον διὰ τοῦ θεάτρου τὸ ζεῦγος, οἱ δὲ πολῖται βοῇ καὶ κρότῳ προπέμψαντες ἐκεῖνον, ἤδη τὰ λοιπὰ τῶν δημοσίων καθ’ αὑτοὺς ἐχρημάτιζον. And what was done in the assembly provided a beautiful sight in [Timoleon’s] honour. Although [the Syracusans] decided most things by themselves, for the more important issues they would call him. And he would come through the agora in a wagon to the theatre, and when the vehicle in which he happened to be sat was brought in, the demos greeted him by name all in one voice, and he greeted them in return, gave some time for the plaudits and praise, then heard the matter of the moment and declared his opinion. After they had voted for this, the servants took the wagon back through the theatre, and the citizens sent him off with shouting and applause, then dealt with the rest of the public business on their own.67

The key aspects of this passage are the way that theatre is again the venue in which the people affirm their respect for the ruler, the fact that they do so in unison, and the fact that Timoleon is represented as letting the Syracusans run their own show until and except when they need him. This last point links back to the distinction between Hieron I and Dionysius I emphasised above, contrasting with accounts of Dionysius I attending the assembly with an armed bodyguard.68 Both of these iconic scenes represent the importance of creating a space in which the consent of the governed can (appear to) be freely given. We see the same ideas in Hieron’s relation with the people. Hieron’s rise to power is described to us very briefly by Polybius, who tells us that Hieron was spontaneously appointed archon by the Syracusan army while it was on campaign and then broke into the city and seized control. But, he says, Hieron proved so compassionate and generous to his opponents that the Syracusans: [. . .] ὥστε τοὺς Συρακοσίους, καίπερ οὐδαμῶς εὐδοκουμένους ἐπὶ ταῖς τῶν στρατιωτῶν ἀρχαιρεσίαις, τότε πάντας ὁμοθυμαδὸν εὐδοκῆσαι στρατηγὸν αὑτῶν ὑπάρχειν Ἱέρωνα. [. . .] although not approving of the soldiers’ decision to appoint archons at all, nevertheless were all of one mind in approving of Hieron being their commander.69

65 Diod. Sic. 11, 26, 5–6. Cf. Diod. Sic. 19, 9 (Agathocles); Plut. Caes. 61 (Caesar); Suet. Aug. 52 (Augustus). 66 Chaniotis 1997; Bell 2004, 52–150; Hesberg 2009, 294–295. Anachronism: Rutter 1993. 67 Plut. Tim. 38; Nep. Timol. 4, 2. Cf. Suet. Aug. 58. 68 Diod. Sic. 20, 63, 3. 69 Polyb. 1, 8, 3–4

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We do not get the same details of costuming and props that we receive for Gelon and Timoleon, but we are presented with the same idea of the importance of the masses in determining the character of the ruler and with the same emphasis on the masses’ unanimity. IG XIV 7, a badly mutilated inscription from Hieron’s reign takes us a bit further. Most of what survives seems to be an oath by Hieron (and possibly his heir and co-regent Gelon II as well) and the start of a reciprocal oath of the Syracusans:70

(5)

(10)

(5)

(10)

- - - Λ[.]Ι - - - - - ὑμῖ]ν φροντίζειν - - - βασιλέων καὶ τὰν - - - -ίδων πᾶσαν παρ - - - -ν εἰς ἁμὲ εὔνοιαν - - - ἄρισ]τα μόνον παρεσκευ [άσασθαι τοῖς Σ]υρακοσίοις. φανερὸν δὴ - - - ἐ]ν ̣τοσούτοις ἔτεσι ὡς - - - οὐδενὸς τῶν π]ρ̣ὸτερον ἁγημένων - - - τα]λικαῦται ὑπάρχ[οντι] - - - τριακ]άδι τὸ τε κοινὴ̣[ν - - - - τ]ε ἀμεῖς ο̣ ι̣̣ [- - - - -ς ται ̣ [- --------- - - for you] to consider - - - of the kings and the - - - -ing all - - - good will towards us - - - to furnish only the [best things] for the Syracusans. Clearly - - - in so many years, like - - - [none of the] earlier leaders - - - are so much - - - thirtieth and the shared - - - we - - ------

(15)

(20)

(15)

(20)

--------- - μ]̣ηδενί εξου- - - διδῶτε, πράσσειν αδ̣- - - πραξεῖν ἔτι δὲ καὶ τ- - - οἱ πατέρες ὑμῶν καὶ τ̣ - - - - - - - - - - - - - τὰ ὅρκια διαφυλάσσειν ἃ ἐντὶ [ὀμόμενα - - Ὄρκιον βουλᾶς κα[ὶ στραταγῶν?] καὶ τῶν ἄλλων [πολιτᾶν?] ὀμνύω τὰν Ἱστίαν τῶ[ν Συρακοσίων, καὶ τὸν Δία] τὸν Ὀλύμπιον καὶ τὰ̣ν Γ[ᾶν καὶ τὸν Ἥλιον καὶ τὸν] Ποσειδ[ᾶνα - - - - - ---------

- - nothing - - you shall give, is doing - - was doing. And also - - Your fathers and - - to maintain [the oaths] which are [sworn] Oath of the Council and [generals?] and the other [citizens?] I swear by the Hearth of the [Syracusans, and by Zeus] Olympios, and Earth [and Sun and] Poseidon - - -

In general, this inscription seems to confirm earlier points. The importance of tradition is seen in the reference to ‘earlier leaders’ and the importance of popular support in the reference to eunoia (good will). But these oaths also provide the script for a ceremony, in which those ideals were redeclared. For logistical reasons, this probably took place in the theatre. The representatives of the polis (the councillors, probably the generals, and the other citizens or perhaps the other magistrates) would then demonstrate their overwhelming support for Hieron – literally all in one voice. This encounter was important enough to be inscribed on stone. Since new magistrates took office each year, this ceremony was probably intended to be repeated annually. This was not the only such mass-proclamation of loyalty to the king; three honorific dedications of the Syracusans to Hieron and Gelon survive (as well as one from the demos of Tauromenion), and literary sources mention further dedications. The legend ΣΥΡΑΚΟΣΙΟΙ ΓΕΛΩΝΟΣ, “the Syracusans (order this coin?) of Gelon” on a set of didrachms may also be the result of a decree of the Syracusans. All these dedications must have been the product of votes at assembly meetings in the theatre. In the theatre, the will of the people was (ostensibly) in flux – to be tested, determined, and demonstrated. Once the crowd had dispersed, it was set in stone.71

70 IG XIV 7 = I.Sicily 827; Manganaro 1965 and 2005; De Sensi Sestito 1977, 125–135; Dimartino 2006. Syracusan oaths: Wareh 2007. 71 Syracusan dedications: I.Sicily 823, 3009, 3331; Paus. 6, 15, 6; Tauromenion: SEG 19, 332; Levi 1970. Coins: Caccamo Caltabiano et al. 1997, 77–82. Cf. Wilson 2009 on IG I3 102 in Athens; Bielfield 2012 on Priene.

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Shaping the Crowd The ‘people’ and the ‘demos’ don’t actually exist – they are ideological constructs. In modern politics we imagine we see ‘the people’ and their ‘will’ in elections and protests. In the Greek polis, one of the major places that the demos and its will was seen in this way was the theatre. Creating the space in which the people gathered thus gave Hieron the power to determine how the demos would see itself. This idea is attested in Athens from the fifth century BC and in Hellenistic poleis generally, where front seat rights (prohedria) were awarded to benefactors, priests, officials, and ambassadors, there were assigned seats for bouleutai and ephebes, and citizens may have sat in their tribal groups. In a slightly different form, the lex Roscia theatralis and lex Iulia theatralis, it also occurs in Republican and Imperial Rome. The result of this practice was that the seated audience was a manifestation of the community in its ideal form, arranged according to merit – where merit is (ostensibly) defined not by wealth, or birth, or virtue, but solely in terms of service to the community. Those seated at the front were very much on show. Their prominence was a glorious honour, but the weight of the eyes upon them was simultaneously a heavy burden. Challenges to individuals’ right to prohedria, which are ubiquitous in ancient texts, were implicitly a challenge to the individuals’ social and political prominence generally.72 The design of Hieron’s theatre compounded this phenomenon. The diazoma splits the koilon in half. Today, there are steps leading both up and down from this point. But originally, there was a continuous wall between the diazoma and the upper koilon. The steps leading up from the diazoma were cut subsequently, as can be seen from the continuity of the base moulding of the diazoma across their cuttings, the greater steepness of the first eight steps, and the way that the steps have to double-back on themselves to reach the front seats of the upper koilon.73 Until these steps leading up from the diazoma were cut, probably in Roman times, the upper koilon could only be accessed from above, by walking all the way up the east side of the theatre to the stoa and then descending. The very fact that steps were subsequently cut in the diazoma shows that this was very impractical – which implies that its original purpose was not practical, but ideological. Although the theatre as a whole could hold around 15,800, only about 3,500 of these could fit below the diazoma. This is significantly more than the possessors of prohedria in the community, but it is still a sub-set of the whole. By having the people who sat in the front, honoured seats, enter by a completely different entrance from hoi polloi, the distinction between those groups was further stressed. Did prohedria in Hieron’s theatre signify value to the demos or value to Hieron? One point of making the theatre such a Hieronian space, as discussed above, was to elide this distinction – to present the idea that value to Hieron and value to the demos were the same thing. To the people who used the monumental diazoma inscription to find their seats, the role of Hieron in placing them at the forefront of the community would have been particularly apparent, but it would also have appeared that in doing this he enjoyed the unanimous and unassailable support of the demos. The same factors that have led scholars to talk about the theatre in Athens as a democratic (or civic) space – its role as a place where the community saw an approximation of itself, discovered its will, was simultaneously carefully regulated and at its most powerful – are exactly those that made it crucial to Hieron and his fellow autocrats.

72 Athens: Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 268–270; Maass 1972; Goldhill 1987, 61; Roselli 2011, 63–86. Le Guen 2018b, 151–157. Hellenistic poleis: Hesberg 2009; Moretti 2014, 123. Leges theatrales: Rawson 1987. Challenges: Ar. Eq. 702–704 (Kleon); Malnati 1988 (Juvenal and Martial). 73 Polacco and Anti 1981, 141–142, 211. Cf. the late third-century BC theatre at Delos: Moretti 2014, 122.

Paul Touyz

4 Autocratic Rulers and Hellenistic Satyrplay Introduction Long in the shadow of its more popular siblings, tragedy and comedy, in the last twenty years satyrplay has finally received extensive scholarly attention.1 It is satyrplay of the fifth century BC, however, that has monopolised curiosity.2 The result is an Athenocentric picture of satyrplay shaped by the remains of the genre from the classical period, and above all by the work of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripdes. On such a view, satyrplay was bound tightly to tragedy as part of a tetralogy, and its chorus was an extension of tragedy’s. The satyric chorus is therefore seen as being implicated in the democratic ideology and civic function of the tragic chorus. This contribution will instead examine the relationship between theatre and autocracy by looking at satyrplay of the late fourth century BC and Hellenistic period, and question assumptions about the postclassical fate of satyrplay and the role of its chorus. It will be argued that satyrplay became an independent type of dramatic performance only after the fifth century, and one in which Hellenistic rulers were peculiarly invested. After a brief survey of the evidence for postclassical satyrplay, this contribution will concentrate on how satyrs and satyrplay were used to consolidate the Dionysian self-fashioning of Alexander, the Ptolemies, and the Attalids. Autocratic interest in satyrplay in turn supported its development as a freestanding, competitive theatrical specialisation. Finally we will consider how the emphatic role of the chorus of satyrs could have functioned as a site for subjects to participate in royal ideology.

Postclassical Satyrplay Scholarly preoccupation with classical satyrplay is hardly in want of explanation. Most fragments, and of course Euripides’ Cyclops, come from the fifth century BC, when satyrplay was staged in Athens as part of the tragic competition at the City Dionysia. The dominant notion that satyrplay was defined by its early relationship to tragedy entails a narrative of early-onset decline.3 According to this story, the inauguration of a tragic competition without satyrplay at the Lenaea around the 440s BC, and Euripides’ decision to replace the usual satyrplay with Alcestis in 438 BC, signal the end of satyrplay’s popularity and relevance. The fragments of the Didascaliae inscription covering the tragic contest for the years 342–339 BC have normally been cited as confirmation of this decline. The notice for the Dionysia of 341/0 BC survives more or less in full, and conveniently demonstrates the new position of satyrplay:4 ἐπὶ Νικομάχου σάτυρι Τιμοκλῆς Λυ̣κούργωι παλαιᾶι : Νεοπτόλεμο̣ [ς] Ὀρέστηι Εὐριπίδο π̣οη : Ἀστυδάμας [Π]αρθενοπαίωι ὑπε : Θε[ττα] [Λυ]κ̣ά̣ονι ὑπε : Νεοπτόλε[μος] [. . . .]κλῆς δεύ : Φρίξωι

1 The publication of Krumeich et al. 1999 in particular has spurred research. Cipolla 2003 drew particular attention to the fragments of poets other than Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Important recent volumes include Lämmle 2013; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013; Shaw 2014. 2 Exceptions are relatively few. Lämmle 2014 now provides the fullest overview of Hellenistic satyrplay. See also Sifakis 1967, 26–27, 124–126; Gallo 1991; Ghiron-Bistagne 1991; Le Guen 2001: s.v. drame satyrique; Le Guen 2003: 343–344; Shaw 2014, 123–148; Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 43–48; Hornblower 2018, 120–123. 3 On the decline of satyrplay, see now Lämmle 2013, 29–50. 4 For the full text with commentary, see Millis and Olson 2012, 61–69. Note: I am grateful to the organisers of the Sydney conference for the invitation to present this work, and to the participants for stimulating and helpful discussion. Special thanks to Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson for advice and comments on an earlier draft of the chapter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-005

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 Paul Touyz

[ὑπε :] Θετταλός [Οἰδί]ποδι̣ ὑπε : Νεοπτόλ[εμ] [Εὐάρ]ετος τρί [Ἀλκ]μ̣έω̣νι̣ ὑπε : Θεττα[λός] [. . . . .]ηι : ὑπε : Νεοπτό[λε] [ὑπο : Θε]τταλὸς ἐνίκα In the archonship of Nicomachus, in satyrplay Timocles, with Lycurgus. In old tragedy Neoptolemus, with Orestes of Euripides. (First-place) poet: Astydamas with Parthenopaeus, Thettalus acted; with Lycaon, Neoptolemus acted. [. . . .]cles second, with Phrixus Thettalus acted; with Oedipus, Neoptolemus acted. Euaretus third with Alcmeon, Thettalus acted; with [. . .], Neoptolemus acted. (First-place actor:) Thettalus won.5

A single satyrplay stands at the head of the tragic offerings, before the performances of old and new tragedies. According to the standard negative reading, satyrplay’s reduced status is clear: only a single satyrplay is staged, displaced from the tragic tetralogy, and it appears to be non-competitive.6 The extent of satyrplay’s downfall, however, is likely overstated. Fewer satyrplays certainly appear to have been staged in fourth-century BC Athens, but a change in quantity or its relationship to tragedy does not necessarily equate to a loss of meaning or favour. To the contrary, the new status of satyrplay as a non-competitive event at the head of the festival, as indicated by its position in the Didascaliae, is remarkable for its prominence, and comparable to the position of old tragedy.7 Precisely because of its removal from the tragic competition, for the first time satyrplay occupied an independent position at the festival.8 Moreover, satyrplay’s new position in Athens prefigures its later development, as it would continue to be performed as a separate genre well into the period of Roman rule.9 Although the evidence for later satyrplay is lamentably patchy, it nevertheless confirms that it endured as an active and innovative performance tradition long after its supposed decline in Classical Athens. The early Hellenistic period, in particular, seems to have been especially important. Only then do we find evidence that satyrplay had become a competitive event in its own right with separate prizes in a regular competition and with poets and occasionally actors who specialised in the genre. The epigraphic record of performance offers a useful way of gauging the extent of satyrplay’s transformation. Mette’s collection of inscriptions mentioning dramatic performances, though incomplete and now out of date, nonetheless provides an instructive starting point.10 Mette lists fifteen postclassical festivals outside Athens that included drama.11 Satyr-

5 IG II2 2320 col. II, l. 18–31. 6 Even if the poet of the satyrplay, Timocles, can be restored in the fragmentary ]κλῆς of the second-place tragic poet (l. 25), the presentation of events, and seemingly non-competitive status of satyrplay, differentiate it firmly from the tragedies. On the restoration of the text, see Millis and Olson 2012, 68. 7 On the significance of the introduction of non-competitive old tragedy, see Hanink 2015. 8 As noted already by Gallo 1991, 157; Ghiron-Bistagne 1991, 104. Shaw 2014 also considers satyrplay’s development beyond the Classical period as a genre distinct from tragedy, but stresses satyrplay’s relationship to comedy. 9 I.Thespiae 177 and I.Thespiae 178 record satyrographoi in the second century AD. 10 Mette 1977. 11 Mette 1977, 43–82. The festivals are: Rhomaia, Magnesia on the Maeander; festival in Teos (on which see further below); Heraia, Samos; Dionysia, Samos; Sarapieia, Tanagra; Charitesia and Homoloia, Orchomenos; Amphiaraia/Rhomaia, Oropos; Mouseia, Thespiae; Soteria, Akraiphia; Kaisareia, Isthmus of Corinth; an agon in Thessaloniki; Ptolemaia, Delos; Soteria, Delphi; the fourth (mistakenly listed as the third, see Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 11, n. 349) Athenian Pythaïs, Delphi.

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play is recorded at eight of these.12 Additionally we have several other references to satyrplay from private and honorary inscriptions, and new finds confirm the performance of satyrplay elsewhere.13 Not only is satyrplay relatively well attested, these records show that a distinct competition for poets of satyrplay (σατύρων, ποιητὴς σατύρων, σατυρογράφος) had become widespread. The uniquely detailed inscription from the Sarapieia at Tanagra in ca 85 BC confirms that the separate competition came with prize-money.14 The extent of satyrplay’s consolidation as a distinct genre is further suggested by a certain Demetrius of Tarsus, who was remembered in antiquity exclusively as a satyrographos.15 The state of the evidence does not allow for certainty, as there is an unfortunate gap in the record between the Athenian Didascaliae and the later inscriptions, but it is reasonably clear that the chief developments came early. Most epigraphic references to satyrplay date to the second and first centuries BC, but an inscription from Athens records performances of old drama that included satyrplay as a separate category around the mid-third century BC.16 We can only guess at the circumstances surrounding this contest, but at a minimum it demonstrates that, in the space of a century, satyrplay, in some form, had gone from a pre-competition warm-up act to being fully integrated within the agonistic schedule.17 It is precisely in this space of time that satyrplay seems to have experienced something of an efflorescence. Agen, a satyrplay attributed to Python of Catania, was staged for Alexander, possibly as far away as the Hydaspes (the modern river Jhelum in Pakistan) in 326 or 324 BC.18 Sositheus and Lycophron, active in the first half of the third century BC, were also famed for their satyrplays.19 Little can be said with confidence about the works of these poets. Yet it is notable that, from all appearances, Agen was staged by itself as part of an ad hoc festival.20 Sositheus’ career might also point to the establishment of satyrplay as a distinct genre. Sositheus is numbered amongst the tragic poets of the Pleiad, but most of what survives by him is satyric. Meanwhile, a contemporary, the epigrammatist Dioscorides, singles out Sositheus’ achievements in satyrplay: κἠγὼ Σωσιθέου κομέω νέκυν, ὅσσον ἐν ἄστει ἄλλος ἀπ’ αὐθαίμων ἡμετέρων Σοφοκλῆν, Σκίρτος ὁ πυρρογένειος· ἐκισσοφόρησε γὰρ ὡνήρ ἄξια Φλιασίων, ναὶ μὰ χορούς, Σατύρων κἠμὲ τὸν ἐν καινοῖς τεθραμμένον ἤθεσιν ἤδη ἤγαγεν εἰς μνήμην πατρίδ’ ἀναρχαΐσας, καὶ πάλιν εἰσώρμησα τὸν ἄρσενα Δωρίδι Μούσῃ ῥυθμόν, πρός τ’ αὐδὴν ἑλκόμενος μεγάλην †ἑπτά δέ μοι ἐρσων τύπος οὐχερὶ† καινοτομηθείς τῇ φιλοκινδύνῳ φροντίδι Σωσιθέου.

12 Magnesia on the Maeander; Teos; Heraia, Samos; Sarapieia, Tanagra; Charitesia, Orchomenos; Amphiaraia/Rhomaia, Oropos; Mouseia, Thespiae; Soteria, Akraiphia; Pythaïs IV. See Le Guen 2003, 344, for discussion of satyrplay in the epigraphic evidence from Asia Minor in the Hellenistic period. 13 Dedicatory inscription from Delos, ID 1959 (Mette 1977, 199 VII 2); inscription from Kamiros, Tit. Cam. 63 (Mette 1977, 199 VII 5); proxeny decree for Zotion of Ephesus, SEG 57, 443; victory list for the Rhomaia, Thebes, SEG 54, 516. 14 SEG 25, 501, l. 33–34. On the prizes at the Sarapieia, with attention to the relative status of satyrplay, see Slater 1993, 189–191. See also Manieri 2009, 268–277. 15 TrGF 206 = Diog. Laert. 5, 85. 16 SEG 26, 208. The exact date and nature of the performances recorded is disputed. Summa 2008 argues for 279/8 BC and takes the inscription to refer to a competition in old drama. Millis and Olson 2012, 123-128, instead argue for 237/6 BC and understand the inscription to be a record of a qualifying event for actors, the winners of which would stage a non-competitive old play at the Dionysia. For my purposes, it is interesting that, on either interpretation, old satyrplay had become some sort of event for actors. Even so, as far as satyrplay is concerned, Millis and Olson’s argument against a fully-fledged competition is not compelling. They interpret the earlier change to a non-competitive exhibition piece as a demotion in status or popularity, and, on the assumption that the fortunes of satyrplay continued to wane, speculate that this newly composed exhibition piece was eventually replaced by a non-competitive revival. However, the fact that competitions in new satyrplay are well attested outside of Athens after the third century BC should caution against this line of reasoning. 17 For discussion, see Lämmle 2014, 953–954. 18 For an overview of the play and debate surrounding its authorship, date, and the location of its performance, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 593–601; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013, 448–455; Le Guen 2014, 261–263, 272–274. 19 For Sositheus, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 602–616. For Lycophron, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 617–623. 20 Lämmle 2014, 937.

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And I, the red-bearded Skirtos, tend the body of Sositheus, Just as in the city another of our brothers tends Sophocles, For Sositheus won the ivy worthy of Phleian satyrs, by the choruses! And he led me, who had been raised already in novel manners, To ancestral memory and restored archaic ways, And once more I forced the male rhythm On the Dorian Muse, and drawn to the great voice [. . . . . . . . .] newly cut, with the risk-loving mind of Sositheus.21

Sositheus’ restoration of satyrplay does not preclude a career in tragedy as well, but it is striking that he is praised solely in reference to his place in the history of satyrplay.22 Indeed, what is particularly interesting is that Dioscorides appears to treat contemporary satyrplay as being independent of tragedy. An implication of praising Sositheus for restoring only satyrplay to its origins is that it was a domain apart, with its own inventor, history, and character, the development of which, consequently, was no longer tied to that of tragedy.

Kings, Dionysus, and Satyrs Taken together, the fact that Agen was staged for Alexander and the timing of satyrplay’s transformation in the early Hellenistic period might suggest that the new political context inaugurated by Alexander’s conquests helped drive its development as an independent genre. Drama and its god had, of course, long been attractive to autocrats. Aeschylus’ sojourns in Sicily under the patronage of Hieron I demonstrate the usefulness of tragedy as a medium for the legitimisation of rule and the promotion of panhellenic ideals from the fringes of the Greek world.23 Later in the century, Archelaus of Macedonia similarly made use of drama, famously enticing Agathon and Euripides to his court.24 Beginning in the fourth century BC, drama not only acted as a medium for advertising panhellenic ideals and identity, but was used to promote a specifically Dionysian ideology presenting an image of rule centred on notions of youth, victory, and luxury.25 In this, Dionysius I of Syracuse seems to have been an important precursor for later rulers.26 He is known to have written tragedies, even winning at the Lenaea in 367 BC. Notably, his dramatic endeavours included at least one satyrplay, Limos.27 Unfortunately, aside from a scene in which Silenus attempts to administer an enema to Heracles, we know almost nothing about the play, including where and in what format it was performed. Nevertheless, Dionysius’ interest in drama and its deity was not limited to composition and competition. Sanders and Ceccarelli have argued that Dionysius presented himself as Dionysus in anticipation of Hellenistic ruler-cult, while Duncan contends that Dionysius used tragedy to craft a regal persona.28 Whatever the place of satyrplay in Dionysius’ self-presentation, a possible sign of its enduring autocratic connotations in Syracuse is found in the prominent role of satyric iconography in the architectural programme of Hieron II in the third century BC. In particular, a monumental telamon depicting a satyr wearing the woolly perizoma inspired by satyrplay was probably an addition to the decoration of the theatre dating to the renovations under his reign.29 Autocratic association and identification with Dionysus is clearer under later rulers, who promoted an image of themselves as new Dionysoi and actively cultivated the theatre to support royal ideology. Alexander is perhaps both the most famous and the most problematic case. His cultivation of the arts and fondness for drama and actors are wellknown, but whether or not Alexander actively represented himself as a god has been disputed.30 There is, however, 21 Anth. Pal. 7, 707. 22 On the epigram and its implications for Sositheus’ poetics, see Nervegna 2019. 23 On Aeschylus in Sicily, see most recently Smith 2017 with further references. On theatre in Sicily more broadly, see Wilson 2017. 24 Csapo 2010, 172; Moloney 2014, 234–240. 25 Stewart 1993, 263–266; Stähli 1999, 233–262; Le Guen 2010b, 505; 2014, 271–272; 2016, 244–247. 26 On Dionysius and drama, see Duncan 2012; Wilson 2017, 10–17. On his influence on later ruler cult, see Sanders 1991. 27 On Dionysius’ satyrplay, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 591–592; Lämmle 2014, 936–937. 28 Sanders 1991; Ceccarelli 2004; Duncan 2012. See further Wilson 2017, 12–13. 29 Lehmler 2005, 127–129 with fig. 53. 30 For overviews and bibliography, see Worthington 2003, 236–272; Chaniotis 2003, 434–435. Major contributions include: Tarn 1948; Habicht

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increasing agreement that Alexander presented himself as divine by the end of his life, and capitalised on parallels to Dionysus following the Indian campaigns.31 The cult of Alexander was later fostered under the Diadochi, particularly in Egypt, where it formed the foundation for the ruler cult and perpetuated Dionysian imagery.32 In the context of this royal ideology, satyrplay’s obviously Dionysian resonance could benefit the self-presentation of the kings. Python’s Agen is the most transparent demonstration of the potential of satyrplay as a medium for royal ideology.33 In fact, Athenaeus even attributes the play to Alexander himself.34 The attribution is otherwise unsupported, but it is difficult to avoid the impression that Alexander had some hand in its performance, or at least endorsed what he saw on stage.35 A reference to the grain sent by Agen to the Athenians (TrGF 91 F 1, l. 14–16) makes clear that the titular character represents none other than Alexander himself.36 It has been suggested further by Pretagostini that the name, ‘Leader’, alludes to Dionysus as the leader of his own expedition to India.37 And as Le Guen stresses, the timing of the play, in either 326 or 324 BC, coincides with both the promotion of Dionysian imagery and an increase in the number of theatrical performances.38 Whether or not Alexander actively projected a Dionysian image himself, therefore, Agen would certainly have taken advantage of satyrplay’s strong association with its patron god to associate Alexander with the god of drama.

Autocratic Satyrs At the same time, by trading simply on the general Dionysian character of satyrplay, previous studies have missed evidence suggesting that Alexander’s interest in satyrplay was not simply an extension of his cultivation of theatre generally, but was instead allied closely to specific aspects of his royal self-presentation. Dionysius I of Syracuse again figures as an antecedent. Although there is nothing to suggest that, compared to other plays he composed, his Limos was especially significant for Dionysius, a report by Philistus, an early supporter of the tyrant, suggests that Dionysius fostered a peculiarly satyric image of himself:39 Dionysii mater, eius qui Syracosiorum tyrannus fuit, ut scriptum apud Philistum est, et doctum hominem et diligentem et aequalem temporum eorum, cum praegnans hunc ipsum Dionysium alvo contineret, somniavit se peperisse satyriscum. huic interpretes portentorum, qui Galeotae tum in Sicilia nominabantur, responderunt, ut ait Philistus, eum, quem illa peperisset, clarissimum Graeciae diuturna cum fortuna fore. When the mother of Dionysius, the one who was the tyrant of Syracuse, was pregnant with Dionysius himself, as it is written in Philistus, a man who was learned, diligent, and a contemporary of those times, she dreamt that she had given birth to a little satyr. The interpreters of portents, who at that time used to be called Galeotae in Sicily, said to her, so Philistus says, that the boy, to whom she would give birth, would be the most famous man of Greece, with long-lasting prosperity.40

Within the more generally Dionysian ideology fostered by Dionysius, then, direct personal association with satyrs was deployed as a hallmark of success and power, a connection that was later exploited by other rulers, as has been discussed by Sorabella.41

1970; Edmunds 1971; Badian 1981; 1996; Cawkwell 1994; Bosworth 1996; Worthington 2004, 199–206. The sources are gathered and reassessed in Csapo and Wilson forthcoming. On Alexander and the theatre, see also Csapo 2010, 173–177; Le Guen 2014. 31 Edmunds 1971; Pretagostini 2003, esp. 171; Le Guen 2014, 271–274. 32 Chaniotis 2003, 435, with further bibliography. 33 On the political implications of Agen, see Sutton 1980, 79–81; Pretagostini 2003; Le Guen 2014. For further discussion, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 599–601; Pretagostini 2003; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013, 448–455; Lämmle 2014, 937–938; Shaw 2014, 123–129. 34 Ath. 2, 50f; 13, 586d; 13, 595e. 35 Pretagostini 2003, 163; Le Guen 2014, 268. 36 Krumeich et al. 1999, 599. 37 Pretagostini 2003, 165–166. 38 Pretagostini 2003, 163–166; Le Guen 2014, 271–272. 39 My thanks to Peter Wilson for the reference. 40 FGrH 556 F 57a = Cic. Div. 1, 39. 41 Sorabella 2007, 238–244, and below.

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Satyrs also occupied a singular place in the self-presentation of the Argeads from as early as the fifth century BC. This is suggested by Herodotus, in the oldest surviving account of the capture of the satyr Silenus by Midas: οἱ δὲ ἀπικόμενοι ἐς ἄλλην γῆν τῆς Μακεδονίης οἴκησαν πέλας τῶν κήπων τῶν λεγομένων εἶναι Μίδεω τοῦ Γορδίεω, ἐν τοῖσι φύεται αὐτόματα ῥόδα, ἓν ἕκαστον ἔχον ἑξήκοντα φύλλα, ὀδμῇ τε ὑπερφέροντα τῶν ἄλλων· ἐν τούτοισι καὶ ὁ Σιληνὸς τοῖσι κήποισι ἥλω, ὡς λέγεται ὑπὸ Μακεδόνων· ὑπὲρ δὲ τῶν κήπων ὄρος κεῖται Βέρμιον οὔνομα, ἄβατον ὑπὸ χειμῶνος. ἐνθεῦτεν δὲ ὁρμώμενοι ὡς ταύτην ἔσχον, κατεστρέφοντο καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Μακεδονίην. When the brothers reached another part of Macedonia they settled near the place called the gardens of Midas, son of Gordias, where roses grow wild, each flower with 60 petals and a scent that surpasses all others. According to the Macedonians, Silenus was also captured in those gardens. Inland is Mount Bermius, which is impassable because of the cold. Starting from there, once they had occupied the area, they subdued the rest of Macedonia too.42

The passage is surprising: although Gordias and Midas were kings of Phrygia, in Anatolia, according to Herodotus, the Macedonian account had relocated them to Macedonia. As many have suggested, the geography of the story may well be tied to the report that the Brygians, neighbours of the Macedonians, migrated to Anatolia, where they became known as the Phrygians, an account which Herodotus also ascribes to Macedonian sources.43 The location of the capture of Silenus, however, signals that the anecdote might have the character of a founding myth.44 After all, Herodotus is drawn into the digression precisely to explain the origins of the Argeads, while the ‘gardens of Midas’ are said to lie in the dynastic heartland around Aegae. Moreover, the story patently belongs to the stock of myth that asserted the Argeads’ Hellenic pedigree, since it makes the founders, the exiled sons of Temenus, Argives. The anecdote thus implies that Argead tradition was already exploiting the link between satyrs and political power as part of a broader programme of philhellenism. Alexander, in turn, made use of the Macedonian claim to Midas and Silenus. Plutarch tells us that, among the signs that Alexander had of the fall of Tyre in 332 BC, he dreamt that he saw a satyr: ἑτέραν δ’ ὄψιν Ἀλέξανδρος εἶδε κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους· σάτυρος αὐτῷ φανεὶς ἐδόκει προσπαίζειν πόρρωθεν, εἶτα βουλομένου λαβεῖν ὑπεξέφευγε· τέλος δὲ πολλὰ λιπαρήσαντος καὶ περιδραμόντος, ἦλθεν εἰς χεῖρας. οἱ δὲ μάντεις τοὔνομα διαιροῦντες οὐκ ἀπιθάνως ἔφασαν αὐτῷ· ‘σὰ γενήσεται Τύρος.’ καὶ κρήνην δέ τινα δεικνύουσι, πρὸς ἣν κατὰ τοὺς ὕπνους ἰδεῖν ἔδοξε τὸν σάτυρον. Alexander saw another vision in his sleep. A satyr appeared and seemed to mock him from a distance. Then, when he wanted to catch the satyr, the satyr slipped away. Finally, after much begging and chasing, the satyr fell into his hands. The seers, dividing the word ‘satyros’ in two, said to Alexander, not unconvincingly: ‘Tyre (Tyros) will be yours (sa)’. And today people point to a spring where Alexander dreamt he saw the satyr.45

The association of the capture of the satyr with victory seems evidently to have been a fixture of Argead ideology adapted by Alexander.46 And although the myths of satyrs cannot of themselves demonstrate the importance of satyrplay, when placed in the context of royal Dionysian ideology, in particular the connection between Dionysus and military victory, they help to explain the specific relevance of satyrplay to Alexander. In this light, Agen is not only ancillary to a royal predilection for Dionysus and drama, but can be seen as yet another expression of the prominence of satyrs in particular for the Macedonian kings.

Satyric Specialisation Despite its obvious interest, however, Agen is typically bracketed as exceptional in the history of satyrplay.47 Although the comic features of Agen, such as satirical political references and looser metre, have often been interpreted as a sign 42 Hdt. 8, 138, 2–3. 43 Hdt. 7, 73. On the Brygians and the setting of the Midas story, see How and Wells 1928, vol. 2, 284 ad Hdt. 8, 138, 2–3; Roller 1983, 303; Vassileva 1997; Korti-Konti 2003. 44 How and Wells 1928, vol. 2, 284 ad Hdt. 8, 138, 2; Vassileva 1997, 12. 45 Plut. Alex. 24, 8–9; cf. Artem. 4, 24; Eust. ad Dionys. Per. 911. 46 For the connection between Alexander’s satyr and the story of Midas, see Sorabella 2007, 239. 47 Snell 1971, 104: “Ein einzigartiges Satyrspiel”. Cf. Krumeich et al. 1999, 601; Lämmle 2014, 937–938.

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of a perceived trend away from Classical norms that is paralleled in the later satyric fragments of Lycophron, the play’s intimate connection to contemporary politics and its performance at the very edge of the Greek world have contributed to the impression that Agen was unique.48 Without doubt, Agen represents a break with earlier Athenian satyrplay, but in many respects it looks forward to later developments under the Diadochi, whose own political aspirations led to an intensification of the cultivation of both Dionysus and the theatre. Most importantly, the context of Agen might allow us to situate the development of the competition in satyrplay. We simply do not know when exactly the change occurred, but royal patronage, combined with the broader context of a cultural programme in which Dionysus’ attributes as a god of competition and victory were central, perhaps lend greater consequence to the fact that Agen appears to have been a freestanding work. But whatever the case under Alexander, with the Diadochi the conditions arose for the intensification of satyrplay’s development as a separate genre through the intersection of royal cult and the professionalisation of the theatre. As noted already, in Egypt, the connection of royal power to Dionysus was overt, and effected in part through the promotion of an image of Alexander as the god incarnate. The Ptolemies even claimed descent from Dionysus.49 Although there is no evidence of a play like Agen under the Ptolemies, there is nevertheless ample reason to suppose that satyrplay figured prominently in the cultural programme in Alexandria, and in the projection of a Dionysian ideology. The output of Alexandrian poets like Sositheus and Lycophron certainly suggests that satyrplay easily fit Ptolemaic interests. The close bond between drama and the monarchy is lavishly demonstrated by the procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, recorded by Callixenus and preserved by Athenaeus.50 The nature and date of the procession is debated, but at its core, it advertised the connection between the current regime, Alexander, and Dionysus. The procession replayed the return of Dionysus from the East, featuring a 15-foot-tall mechanical statue of Dionysus pouring out libations, an army of hundreds of satyrs and silens, juxtaposed with images of Alexander and Ptolemy I and a parade of troops.51 The overwhelming presence of men dressed as satyrs and silens does not necessarily reflect any particular significance attached to satyrplay.52 After all, satyrs were simply part of the Dionysian thiasos, and satyric costume had long appeared in Dionysian processions.53 Yet in at least one respect the costumes do seem to draw on satyrplay. Satyrs and silens are consistently differentiated throughout the procession and Rice is surely correct in seeing the difference as one of costume, distinguishing younger from older satyrs.54 But whereas Rice suggests tentatively that the distinction came about under the influence of Praxiteles’ sculptures of young satyrs, the more immediate model was surely satyrplay, where the old Papposilenus wore a full body suit, the woolly mallotos chiton, and younger satyrs of the chorus sported a loincloth, the perizoma.55 More importantly, Callixeinus’ description of the procession contains some indications that satyrplay was presented as a separate genre alongside tragedy and comedy. For example, Philadelphus’ banqueting pavilion, the description of which introduces the account of the procession, was decorated with scenes of characters drawn from the three genres: ἐν δὲ ταῖς ἐπάνω τούτων χώραις οὔσαις ὀκταπήχεσιν ἄντρα κατεσκεύαστο κατὰ μὲν τὸ μῆκος τῆς σκηνῆς ἓξ ἐν ἑκατέρᾳ πλευρᾷ, κατὰ πλάτος δὲ τέτταρα· συμπόσιά τε ἀντία ἀλλήλων ἐν αὐτοῖς τραγικῶν τε καὶ κωμικῶν καὶ σατυρικῶν ζῴων ἀληθινὸν ἐχόντων ἱματισμόν, οἷς παρέκειτοκαὶ ποτήρια χρυσᾶ. In the spaces above them (sc. decorative shields), which were eight cubits high, caves had been made. Along the long sides of the pavilion there were six, and along the short sides there were four. Facing each other in the caves were symposia of figures from tragedy, comedy, and satyrplay, wearing real clothes and with golden cups lying next to them.56

48 For recent discussion of Agen’s place in literary history, see Shaw 2014, 123–129. 49 On consanguinity with both Dionysus and Heracles, see, e.g., OGIS 54; cf. Theoc. Id. 17, 27; Satyros, FGrH 631 F 1. On the Ptolemies and Dionysus, see Stähli 1999, 233–255; Goyette 2010; Le Guen 2016 and this volume. 50 FGrH 627 F 2 = Ath. 5, 194a-203b. On the procession, see Dunand 1981; Rice 1983; Green 1994, 93–95; Walbank 1996; Thompson 2000; Goyette 2010; Le Guen 2016 and this volume. 51 For detailed commentary, see Rice 1983. 52 Cf. Nervegna 2019, 206, who makes the stronger claim that the processional satyrs do not have any bearing on contemporary satyrplay. 53 Seaford 1984, 5–6. 54 Rice 1983, 45–46. 55 For the origin of the costume of papposilenus in satyrplay, see Simon 1989, 142–145; Simon 1997, 1116, 1125. 56 Ath. 5, 196f-197a.

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In the procession itself, meanwhile, there was a statue of Dionysus drawn behind “all the Artists of Dionysus” (Ath. 5, 198c) and adorned with masks from all three genres: πρόσωπά τε σατυρικὰ καὶ κωμικὰ καὶ τραγικά (Ath. 5, 198d). Although satyrplay’s place in the procession is poorly attested, then, in both passages it is seemingly treated on an equal footing to tragedy and comedy. The involvement of the Artists here highlights the growing professionalisation of the theatre and raises the question of the role of the Artists in the development of satyrplay. The relatively frequent appearance of satyrplay as a prize event elsewhere would suggest that satyrplay had been accommodated within the organisational structure of the theatre industry, but it is unclear when and where this took place. The prominence of the Artists under the Ptolemies, together with the promotion of royal Dionysian ideology, at least makes Egypt a plausible location.57 Apart from the role they played in Ptolemaic self-presentation, the Artists themselves had a vested interest in perpetuating the link between the theatre and Dionysus, and in stressing their own role in his cult.58 However, in the very few records of the Artists from Egypt, we find no mention of satyrplay or a poet of satyrplay. This omission is surely only a reflection of the poor state of the record. Given the careers of Sositheus and Lycophron, and the presence of satyrplay in Philadelphus’ procession, it would be surprising if satyrplay were not somehow represented by the Egyptian Artists.59 In Cyprus, however, where the local guild was an extension of the association in Alexandria which advertised its connection to the Ptolemies, there is one reference to satyrplay amongst the Artists.60 The text comes from a fragmented honorary inscription, now lost, set up by the Artists, probably around 142 BC to honour the son of the first governor of Cyprus under Ptolemy VIII:61 [Θεόδωρον, τῶν πρώτων φίλω]ν, τὸν [υἱὸν τὸν Σελεύκου τοῦ συγγενοῦς] [τοῦ βασιλέως καὶ στρατηγ]οῦ καὶ ναυάρ[χου καὶ ἀρχιερέως τῆς νήσου], [τὸ κοινὸν τῶν ἐν τῶι κ]ατὰ Πάφον γραμματεω περ[ὶ τὸν Διόνυσον] [καὶ θεοὺς Ἐπιφανεῖς (?) τεχ]νιτν, εὐεργεσίας ἕνεκεν τῆς εἰ[ς ἑαυτό]· [ἱερέως τοῦ δεῖνος . . . .], ἀρχόντων Κρίτωνος κιθαρωι[δοῦ], [. . . . . .ca 12. . . . . . ποιητοῦ σατύ]ρων, Διονυσίου ποιητοῦ τραγω(ι)[διῶν, ταμιεύοντος . . . .ca 9. . . .] συναγωνιστοῦ τραγικοῦ, γραμ[ματεύοντος . . . . .ca 10. . . . . ποιητοῦ κωμ]ω(ι)διῶν. The Paphos branch of the Association of Artists of Dionysus and the Manifest Gods (honours) Theodoros, of the first friends, son of Seleucus, kinsman of the king, and general, admiral, and high priest of the island, on account of his good service to the Association. [When x was priest . . .], when the archons were Crito the kitharode, [. . . the poet of satyrp]lay, Dionysius the poet of tragedies, [when y was treasurer . . .] the tragic synagonist, and the scribe [was. . . poet of com]edies.62

Although highly fragmented, the word-end -ρων in a list of theatrical specializations appears to guarantee the restoration of σατύρων. As such, this is the only explicit evidence of a poet of satyrplay being involved in the official business of the Artists in his capacity as a poet of satyrplay. With the inclusion of poets of tragedy and possibly of comedy, it might even be the case that the distribution of official roles was intended to reflect the full array of specialisations represented by the Artists.63 Although admittedly late, then, the presence of a poet of satyrplay in the hierarchy of the local branch of Artists in Cyprus might hint at the earlier recognition of satyrplay in Egypt.

57 For the possibility that the Egyptian Artists were the first such Association, see Rice 1983, 65; Le Guen 2016, 233, n. 11, and this volume, 38 n. 17. Fuller discussion of the basic problems concerning the origins of the Associations in Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 5–11. 58 Le Guen 1995, 88–90; Lightfoot 2002. 59 On Phili(s)cus of Corcyra, who acted as a priest of Dionysus and led the Artists in Philadelphus’ procession, including discussion of the possibility that he wrote satyrplays, see Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 66–74. 60 On the Cypriot Association, see Aneziri 1994; Le Guen 2016 and this volume. I have not had access to the latest edition of the inscription by J.-B. Cayla, 2018. For an updated discussion of the Cypriot Association on the basis of this edition, see Le Guen, this volume. The new edition appears to remove the restoration of some reference to Ptolemies in line 4 as part of the Association’s title. However, even if the Ptolemies themselves were not part of the Association’s name, for my argument, it is enough that the Association is here honouring a local grandee. 61 Aneziri 1994, 188–189, 194 (no. 1); 2003, 398 (E3); Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 300–304 (TE 62 = I.Paphos 90). 62 Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 300–304 (TE 62). 63 Cf. Aneziri 1994, 185.

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Like the Ptolemies, the Attalids also claimed descent from Dionysus, and similarly promoted royal ideology through the cult of their patron, Dionysus Kathegemon.64 The appeal of satyrs to the Attalids is therefore no surprise. A famous example is furnished by the Barberini Faun. Although its origin continues to be debated, the sculpture has long been thought to have originated in Pergamum, and appears to come from a royal context.65 Sorabella has recently argued that it should be interpreted as the Silenus found by Midas, making the sculpture a successor to the satyrs of the Argeads and Alexander.66 The central place of satyrs and satyrplay at the Attalid court is confirmed by a verse epigram from a joint dedication to Attalus I and Dionysus dated to c. 230–220 BC:67 παῖς ὁ Δεινοκράτους με σοί, Θυώνης Κοῦρε, καὶ βασιλῆι τὸν φίλοινον Ἀττάλλωι Διονυσόδωρος εἷσεν Σκίρτον οὑΞικυῶνος – ἅ δε τέχνα Θοινίου, τὸ δὲ λῆμμα πρατίνειον – μέλοι δ’ἀμφοτέροισιν ὁ ἀναθείς [με]. The son of Deinocrates, Dionysodorus of Sicyon, has set me, wine-loving Skirtos, up for you, son of the Thyone, and for king Attalus (the work is Thoinias’, the theme is Pratinean). May you both care for the one who dedicated me.68

The poem is remarkable, demonstrating both the fusing of Bacchic and ruler cult, and the nascent literary culture under the Attalids.69 Indeed, this short but strikingly learned poem, in Doric dialect and stichic phalaecians, insistently weaves both elements, cultic and literary, together. This is seen in the emphatic presence of satyrs and satyrplay. The original context of the dedication is lost, but from the text it is evident that the stone of the inscription once supported the statue of the satyr, Skirtos, who is the speaker of the lines. A satyr is an obvious choice for a dedication to Dionysus, but here the appropriateness of this character is not limited to its suitability for the god. τὸ δὲ λῆμμα πρατίνειον – the Pratinean theme or substance – is an unmistakable reference to satyrplay. As Müller noted at its publication, the inscription responds to the epigram of Dioscorides for Sositheus, as signalled by the reference to Pratinas, the inventor of satyrplay, and Skirtos himself, who shares his name with the satyr who speaks over the tomb of Sositheus.70 The poem thus appeals to satyrplay, and specifically to the discussion around an Alexandrian poet of satyrplay already about half a century old, in order to articulate the dedicator’s participation in Dionysian ruler cult. Clearly, therefore, the interest in satyrplay suggested by the dedication is not an idle expression of Attalus’ refined tastes for Alexandrian vogues or obscure scholarly controversies. Rather, as Nicolucci has observed previously, the importance of satyrplay in Dionysodorus’ dedication is paralleled by the prominence of satyrplay in Teos while under Pergamene rule.71 Nicolucci points to only one of a number of inscriptions to survive from Teos, which together attest to a thriving local scene in satyrplay.72 Our understanding of these inscriptions has since been greatly enhanced by Ma.73 As Ma has shown, there are two festivals represented in the lists: the city’s own Dionysia, and a panegyris held by the local association of Artists, in honour of a member of the Attalid family.74 Satyrplay 64 On Attalid cult, see Hansen 1971, 453–470. For more recent discussion, see Stähli 1999, 256–262; Le Guen 2007c, 275–278 and Le Guen 2010b, 509–510. 65 Sorabella 2007, 219–230. 66 Sorabella 2007, 230–238. 67 Müller 1989, with corrections by Lebek 1990; Stähli 1999, 256–262; Nicolucci 2003. 68 SEG 39, 1334. 69 On the intertwining of cult, see Burkert 1993, 264–265. On the significance of the inscription for the dating of both Dionysian cult and the patronage of the arts in Pergamum, see Müller 1989, 538–539; Stähli 1999, 257–258. On culture and learning under the Attalids, see Hansen 1971, 390–433. 70 Müller 1989, 529–539. 71 Nicolucci 2003, 341–342. 72 LBW 92 (= Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, ΤΕ 46B); SEG 57, 1134–1136 (= LBW 91; Pottier and Hauvette-Besnault 1880, 176–178, no. 37; LBW 93; gathered in Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, as TE 46A, C, D), and SEG 57, 1137 (published in Ma 2007a, 232–245). 73 Ma 2007a. 74 Ma 2007a, 226–232, taking LBW 92 to refer to the Dionysia, and SEG 57, 1134–1137 to the panegyris. Previously all the inscriptions were thought to have pertained to the Teian Dionysia. For a balanced overview of the issue, see Le Guen 2010b, 503, n. 38.

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was present at both.75 In particular, its regular appearance as a contest alongside dithyramb and probably tragedy at the panegyris points strongly to the relevance of satyrplay to the Attalids. The relationship to ruler cult is demonstrated by the further function of the agonothetes as the priest of the king, Eumenes II.76 At least one of the later instantiations of the festival was dedicated specifically to another member of the ruling family, either the son or brother of the king.77 Satyrplay, as Nicolucci suggested, was thus implicated in the Artists’ celebration of Attalid power. But closer attention to the details of the victory lists from the panegyris further suggests that Attalid support also helped to spur the development of satyrplay. Normally, satyrplay, in contrast to tragedy and comedy, had no actor’s prize.78 The inscriptions from Teos, however, are replete with details of both the title of the play as well as the actor: Σατύρων Ἀναξίων Θρασυκλείδου Μυτιληναῖος δράματι Πέρσαις ὑπεκρίνετο Ἀσκληπιάδης Ἡρακλείδου Χαλκιδεύς (Victor of) satyrplays: Anaxion, son of Thrasyclides of Mytilene, With the drama ‘Persians’. Asclepiades, son of Heraclides, of Chalcis, acted.79

The added details raise satyrplay to the level of dithyramb and probably tragedy, the only other events documented at the panegyris, and for which poet, title, and kitharode or actor were recorded.80 The organisation of the Teian lists thus seems to imply that the position of satyrplay under the Attalids both encouraged and was in turn supported by increased specialisation among the Artists. Interestingly, satyrplay’s enhanced status in the region seems to have persisted to some degree even after the heyday of the Attalids. Victory lists from the Rhomaia in Magnesia on the Maeander in the 80s BC record a contest in satyrplay, making special note of the title (no actor is recorded).81 Much later, a funerary inscription for Aemilianus of Amastris from the second century AD refers to performances σατύρῳ at Cyzicus and Pergamum.82

Civic Satyrs So far, the appeal of satyrplay to Hellenistic kings has largely conformed with the trends in their cultivation of the theatre more broadly. Unlike their support of tragedy and comedy, however, monarchic support for satyrplay might also highlight the adaptation of the dramatic chorus as a focal point of political identity. The postclassical chorus of drama has often been overlooked, not least because of assumptions about the death of the chorus.83 Although the narrative of decline has been unpicked steadily in recent years, studies of theatre under Hellenistic autocracies still tend to dwell

75 LBW 92; SEG 57, 1134; SEG 57, 1136; SEG 57, 1137. 76 Ma 2007a, 224–226. 77 See Ma 2007a, 225–226 on SEG 57, 1136. Contrast Nicolucci 2003, 341–342, who mistakes the Attalus in the inscription for Attalus I. 78 Outside of Teos, there is a single recorded case of an actor’s prize from Orchomenus: IG VII 3197. 79 SEG 57, 1134. 80 See Ma 2007a, 226–228 for the restoration of ‘tragedies’ in SEG 57, 1134. Interestingly the mention of a kitharode performing the dithyramb implies solo, rather than choral, performance. See Ma 2007a, 231–232, with Bélis 1995, 1054–1055. See further below. 81 I.Magnesia 145, 146, 148, 149, 151. 82 SEG 35, 1327. 83 See Csapo and Slater 1995, 349–354 for a balanced overview. See Kotlińska-Toma 2015, 36–43 for a more recent, though brief and incomplete, discussion.

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on the relationship between kings – especially Philip and Alexander – and professional actors.84 On these accounts, the appeal of drama to autocrats has typically been seen to reside in theatre’s potential as mass communication and entertainment, as well as a form of largess.85 In effect, these factors would appear to militate against a continued civic role for the dramatic chorus, subordinating the theatre to the will of the king, and making it a site for the unidirectional display of the king’s power to his subjects. This picture of the Hellenistic theatre thus lends itself to the paradigm of the decline of the polis, with the fate of the chorus acting as a symptom of the broader erosion of public institutions under the rule of kings. Yet the cliché of the failure of the polis is no longer generally accepted. To the contrary, as is now well acknowledged, the polis and its institutions persisted into the Hellenistic period.86 Public sovereignty, shallow though it might have been in a rapidly changing era dominated by dynasts, remained a central part of public discourse and civic identity.87 The chorus was one such institution that continued to occupy a vital place in the civic and cultural life of communities. The organisation of choral and dramatic contests around tribal lines, as well as the announcement of civic honours before choral performances, speak clearly to the role of the chorus in shaping local identity in the Hellenistic polis.88 And although it is known that the Artists of Dionysus included choral trainers and even choreuts, there is also good reason to think that the Artists worked together with choruses drawn from local communities.89 The size of the chorus presumably restricted movement and added great expense for travelling theatrical professionals. As a result, to the extent that choruses continued to feature in postclassical drama, it can be inferred that they were often recruited from local amateurs. Against this backdrop, satyrplay’s development as a distinct genre in the Hellenistic period might be seen, at least in part, as a result of the special prominence of its chorus. Satyrplay, in contrast to tragedy and comedy, remained decidedly choral: it takes its name (σάτυροι) from its definitive chorus, which remained essential to the genre.90 And while the few fragments we possess of postclassical satyrplay come from actors’ parts, the presence of the chorus is felt nonetheless. For example, the satyrs presumably play the role of the magi who summon the ghost of Harpalus’ lover, Pythionice, in Python’s Agen, while TrGF 100 F 2 of Lycophron’s Menedemus opens with Silenus’ abuse of his sons: παῖδες κρατίστου πατρὸς ἐξωλέστατοι. Even at Teos, where we have evidence for specialist actors of satyrplay, the satyric chorus would still have stood out alongside the other genres, in which the role of the chorus had been reduced. In particular, satyrplay would have been in marked contrast to the performance referred to there as ‘dithyramb’, which, as mentioned above, was performed by a kitharode. If the ‘dithyramb’ was indeed the equivalent of the men’s chorus, then a chorus once made up of 50 choreuts had been replaced either wholly or in part by a professional performer. Moreover, satyrplay seems generally to have been resistant to the depth of professionalisation in evidence in tragedy, comedy, and even dithyramb. The rarity of prizes for actors of satyrplay, for example, is perhaps an indication of the choral focus of productions. In addition, unlike the other major genres, there is simply no record of a professional 84 See Csapo 2010, 173 on the preference of Philip II and Alexander for actors over poets. See also Moloney 2014; Le Guen 2014, 2016, and this volume. 85 Easterling 1997a, 213–214; Csapo and Wilson 2015, 329, 361. 86 Gruen 1993. See now Böhm and Luraghi 2018. 87 Chaniotis 2010. 88 For the continued civic role of drama, see Le Guen 1995 and 2003. See Wilson 2000, 286–288 on the choregia and local organisation of dramatic performance under Macedonian kings. On the phyletic organisation of choregic contests, see Wilson 2000, 289–292; Wilson 2003b, 165–167. On the announcement of honours, see Ceccarelli 2010 and Le Guen 2018a. 89 For choral professionals amongst the Artists, see Wilson 2000, 308–309, with the lists in Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 105–132, and Le Guen 2018a, 165–166. On the use of amateurs, see Wilson 2000, 289; Taplin 1999, 38; Taplin 2012, 239–241; Taplin 2014, 148, 153. Le Guen 2018a, 173–177 argues that the practice of announcing of civic honours before performances of new tragedy in the Hellenistic period is an indication of the use of citizen choruses. Cf. Dearden 1999, 226–233 on the chorus in the fifth-century export of drama. The question of amateur involvement in later periods hangs in large part on the interpretation of a lacunose law from Euboea regulating performances in the early third century BC (IG XII 9, 207), in which the status of the chorus is ambiguous and probably beyond recovery. See Le Guen 2001, vol. 1, 41–56 for the most recent text and commentary, with 53 for discussion of the chorus with further references. Slater 1993, 193, n. 18, is sceptical of amateur participation. See now Jackson 2019, esp. 44–48 for an overview and critique of current assumptions about the use of local choruses. Jackson is surely correct to argue that, based on the evidence currently available, the realities of choral performance could admit both locals and touring professionals. 90 As seen already by Sifakis 1967, 124–126; Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 233, 236; Gallo 1991, 154–156; Csapo, referred to by Slater 1993, 193 n. 18; Nicolucci 2003, 339–340.

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satyric chorodidaskalos or choreut.91 By contrast, among the specialisations attested for the Artists are tragic choro- and hypodidaskaloi, comic choreuts, as well as dithyrambic didaskaloi and choreuts.92 The absence of evidence for choral professionalisation in satyrplay cannot by itself prove the point. There is the added problem that the historical ties of satyrplay to tragedy might mean that the choral trainer and chorus of tragedy could double in satyrplay, as was in fact the case at the Sarapieia in Tanagra in the first century BC.93 Nonetheless, given the otherwise independent status of Hellenistic satyrplay witnessed elsewhere, the absence of choral specialists in satyrplay adds to the general impression that, beyond being distinguished by the central role of its chorus, satyrplay drew particular attention to the part played by local talent in that chorus. A tantalising hint of the local orientation of Hellenistic satyrplay comes from a record of a choregic competition in Rhodes, dated roughly to the third century BC.94 Lamentably little can be recovered about the event, but it is clear that there was a distinct choregic contest in satyrplay that was organised by tribes. Apart from the confirmation of satyrplay’s independent status, the inclusion of satyrplay within a tribal competitive framework under a choregos implies that the contest provided yet another venue for the display of civic consciousness through choral performance. Even poets of satyrplay often hail from close to the site of their victory. This is nowhere clearer than at the Sarapieia in Tanagra, where the poet of satyrplay is a relative of the agonothetes.95 Apart from being able to work more effectively with a local chorus, a reason might have been that, unlike other genres, less prize money was typically available for satyr play to make longer journeys worthwhile.96 However, it is difficult to gauge from the lists how exceptional this in fact was, and the picture is further complicated by the involvement of the Associations. Indeed, many of the performers from victory lists appear to have travelled only close to home.97 Thus in Teos, for example, most participants come from nearby Magnesia on the Maeander, Mytilene, Pergamum, or Phocaea, but the involvement of performers from Maroneia and Asklepiades, the actor of satyrplay from Chalcis, probably reflects the hand of the Ionian-Hellespontine Association.98 We cannot, therefore, be entirely certain about the local character of satyrplay and its performers. Nevertheless, the defining focus on the satyric chorus provides a strong explanation for satyrplay’s rise in importance in the Hellenistic period. From what we can infer about the make-up of its chorus, satyrplay drew more directly on local communities, and thus provided a platform for community participation at a time when tragedy and comedy were becoming increasingly professionalised. By extension, in the context of the Hellenistic kingdoms, satyrplay supplied a site for the participation of local communities in royal ideology. Ruler cult provides a helpful parallel. While there is some evidence for the central organisation of cult, the initiative came more often from the individual cities, and functioned as a way of integrating the ruler within the political life of the city.99 Satyrplay might have functioned in a similar way: serviceable for the self-presentation of kings, but attractive also as a way of embedding royal self-presentation locally. If nothing else, reconsidering the identity of Agen’s chorus raises intriguing new dimensions to the play’s political function. The original performers are unknown, but the most likely source of a chorus of satyrs on the banks of the Hydaspes or in Media was, as Le Guen has suggested, Alexander’s army.100 If we accept this idea, the soldiers themselves would have become active participants in Alexander’s self-presentation and in the politics at issue in the

91 Contra Slater 1993, 193, who seems to be referring to the list of professionals in Stefanis 1988a. The only satyrikoi choreutai gathered by Stefanis, however, are the individuals named on the ‘Pronomos Vase’. The early fourth-century BC date of the vase means that the choreuts depicted on it are better thought of as Classical tragoidoi. 92 See Le Guen 2001, vol. 2, 105–132 for the specialisations practiced by the Artists. 93 SEG 25, 501. See the discussion in Slater 1993, 191–196. On the inscription, see also Manieri 2009, 268–277, with 276–277 on the choruses of tragedy and satyrplay. 94 Inscription from Kamiros, Tit. Cam. 63 (Mette 1977, 199 VII, 5). 95 SEG 25, 501, with Manieri 2009, 268–277. In Thebes (SEG 54, 516) the prize in satyrplay goes to a Theban, but then, so do the other prizes. Locals also take the prize in Thespiae (IG VII 1773) and Oropos (I.Oropos 528), where other prizes go to performers from further afield. 96 At the Sarapieia the prize for satyrplay was worth less than tragedy or comedy. See Calvet and Roesch 1966; Slater 1991a. 97 Chaniotis 1990, 95–96. 98 LBW 92 and SEG 57, 1134–1137. 99 Chaniotis 2003, 435–437 for a brief, but clear overview. Habicht 1970 remains fundamental. For the role of individual poleis, see especially 160–171. 100 Le Guen 2014, 266–267.

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play. The participatory element of the chorus would take on even greater significance if Agen was indeed produced in 324 BC in Media, a date around which there is increasing consensus.101 In this case, a plausible context for its performance would have been in the autumn, possibly at the festival at Ecbatana, on the heels of the army’s mutiny at Opis.102 This was a moment of great urgency, stemming from the army’s grievances against Alexander and the adoption of Persian customs.103 In this context, the choice of satyrplay could well have been a strategic way of providing reassurance and Greek-style entertainment for demoralised troops, but it would also have staged the reconciliation of the troops with their king. If, as many have suggested, Agen ended with the triumph of the protagonist over an ogre-like figure, in the fashion of a typical satyrplay, the entrance of Agen-Alexander-Dionysus at the end of the play would have marked both his victory over Harpalus, and the reunion of the satyrs with their proper master.104 The soldier-choreuts would thus have been implicated in the triumphant vision of their king by enacting the reassertion of his authority over them onstage. The equivalence between army and satyrs is expressed more clearly in the Grand Procession of Philadelphus. In this procession, the victorious Dionysus was accompanied by an army of satyrs and silens, along with the booty of the east, just as Ptolemy’s army marched laden with the spoils of his conquests.105 Unfortunately, we do not know who dressed up as these satyrs and silens. The Artists of Dionysus formed a discrete group within the procession, and the army was engaged elsewhere. The satyrs, then, were most likely members of the public, citizen amateurs participating in the procession to honour the gods and their rulers. It is in Pergamum, however, where the role of satyrplay as a point of contact between ruler and subject is most pronounced. Dionysodorus’ dedication (SEG 39, 1334) intertwines public ideology and personal ritual with the aim of establishing a reciprocal relationship between dedicator and recipients: μέλοι δ’ἀμφοτέροισιν ὁ ἀναθείς [με]. Here, the evocation of satyrplay in the form of the poem’s ‘Pratinean theme’ is not simply an acknowledgement of Attalus’ literary tastes, but provides the medium for Dionysodorus to communicate directly with the ruler while engaging with the latter’s Dionysian self-representation.

Outlook We know very little about the fate of satyrplay under the Romans. Yet what little we can glean is enough to dispel the notion that it had disappeared or was largely overlooked by the new rulers.106 At the Mouseia in Thespiae in the second half of the second century AD we find the names M. Aemelius Hymettus and L. Marius Antiochus inscribed as victorious satyrographoi. It is impossible to tell whether the function of satyrs and satyrplay under Hellenistic kings was eventually picked up by their conquerors. If the satyric iconography from Syracuse under Hieron II does indeed reflect the use of satyrplay to support his rule, Sicily could well have acted as a bridge between Greek and Roman worlds in this regard. There is in fact some indication that at least one Roman did adapt the autocratic use of satyrs and satyrplay. Sulla was infamous for keeping company with actors and mimes, and like some of his predecessors celebrated military success with a festival.107 His cultivation of the imagery of Hellenistic kings appears also to have embraced satyrs of myth. Plutarch reports that a satyr was captured by Sulla’s men on the eve of his return to Italy and march on Rome in 83 BC.108 The narrative is clearly modelled on the myth of Midas and the satyr, and echoes the dream of Alexander during the siege of Tyre.

101 On the date, see Krumeich et al. 1999, 594, with n. 4 for further bibliography. See further Le Guen 2014, 261–263, 272–274, with n. 72–77. 102 As suggested by Lloyd-Jones 1966, 17. See Le Guen 2014, 262, n. 74, for further references. For the festival at Ecbatana and the issue of whether it included drama at all, see Le Guen 2014, 259–260. 103 On the mutiny, see Carney 1996, 37–42. 104 For the reconstruction, see Blumenthal 1939, 217–218; Snell 1971, 116–117; Pretagostini 2003, 165–166; O’Sullivan and Collard 2013, 449–450. 105 For detailed discussion of the procession and its order, see Rice 1983. 106 Wiseman 1988; Shaw 2014, 145–148. 107 On the festival following Chaeronea in 86 BC, Plut. Sull. 19, 11–12. 108 Plut. Sull. 27, 2.

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It is tantalising, therefore, to wonder what Nicolaus of Damascus means when he attributes to Sulla σατυρικαὶ κωμῳδίαι written in Latin.109 Wiseman’s suggestion that these were a contaminated version of satyrplay is at least plausible.110 We can only guess how or even if these works drew on a play like Agen or the Attalid legacy of satyrplay in Asia Minor. But Sulla, like other Romans before him, was evidently aware of the political power of theatre. If nothing else, therefore, his σατυρικαὶ κωμῳδίαι raise the possibility that satyrplay, as a distinct genre whose obviously Bacchic connotations had been uniquely apposite to the monarchic ideology of Alexander and his successors, could continue to serve Roman power.

109 Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 75 = Ath. 6, 261c. 110 Wiseman 1988, 2.

Part II: Theatre and Roman Autocrats

Elodie Paillard

5 Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances Introduction Both Roman elite during the Republic and Roman Emperors organised, in Italy, theatrical performances in Greek,1 even at times when Latin theatre was already well established.2 Those performances have, however, not left many traces. This chapter presents some of the results of my attempt at systematically collecting passages in literary and epigraphical sources that constitute good evidence that performances in Greek language took place in Roman Italy.3 In gathering the relevant literary passages and inscriptions, I have distinguished between texts that can be considered as providing clear evidence and those that provide more doubtful or indirect information. It will not be possible to give here an extensive list of all of them: this chapter focuses on the passages in literary sources that provide the clearest (and/or most noteworthy) evidence, for both the Republic and the Early Empire. The question of how exactly Romans came into contact with Greek theatre is complex and remains without a single or satisfactory answer. Greek theatre was present in South Italy before the Roman conquest, and Etruscans, Campanians, and other Italic peoples knew some sorts of theatrical entertainment, more or less linked to Greek theatre.4 Theatre in itself quickly became an important part of Roman life, as the number of theatres that were eventually built in and around Rome, as well as everywhere else in Italy, shows. However, quite excruciatingly, we only have a vague idea of what was performed within those theatres, as direct evidence is scarce. Nonetheless, at least part of the dramatic entertainments that took place in those buildings included words in Greek, either sung or spoken.

Greek Theatre in Roman Italy There is at first sight no straightforward reason why Roman elite, and subsequently Roman Emperors, would have felt compelled to include performances in Greek language in the scenic entertainments they organised, often as part of wide-scale competitions or celebrations, whose target audience was, more often than not, in good part a Latin-speaking crowd in an environment where Latin was the official language.5 Indeed, dramatic literature in Latin was developed quite early, admittedly at first strongly inspired – not to say simply translated – from Greek plays.6 However, as Hutchinson remarks, “At the very time when Latin literature is sometimes supposed to achieve independence from Greek, Greek literary activity is acknowledged in the capital with more 1 I should like to take the opportunity to thank here colleagues, on both sides of the planet, with whom I have shared stimulating discussions on this topic and/or whose comments on various papers delivered in Sydney, Melbourne, Paris, and Basel allowed me to considerably improve parts of this chapter. In particular, my thanks go to Anton Bierl, Eric Csapo, Jean-Paul Descoeudres, Andrew Hartwig, Brigitte Le Guen, Silvia Milanezi, Vanessa Monteventi, Sebastiana Nervegna, Christoph Riedweg, Jelle Stoop, and Peter Wilson. Finally, let me express here my gratitude to the late Professor Alexander Cambitoglou. 2 The term ‘theatrical performance’ encompasses here all kinds of performances (wherever they might take place) where the performer is impersonating a fictional character rather than performing as him/herself as an artist. Thus, acrobatic performances, for example, are not considered as ‘theatrical’, while mimes are. 3 My research project on this topic has been funded by two successive grants from the Swiss National Science Foundation. 4 For a survey of the presence of Greek theatre in Italy, and further references, see Paillard 2019a. 5 While Roman elites might have been familiar enough with Greek to understand a theatrical performance in this language (although this, too, is far from certain), it remains doubtful if the majority of the audience, in Latin-speaking areas of Roman Italy, would have easily understood the spoken or sung parts of the spectacle. One of the good examples that can be cited about this problem is to be found in Petronius’ Satyricon (59), where Trimalcio feels the need to translate into Latin for his guests the story that Homeristae are performing and reciting in Greek. On the question of bilingualism in the Roman world, see, e.g., Kaimio 1979; Adams 2003. The situation was certainly different in traditionally Greek-speaking areas, as for example Naples: see Leiwo 1994. 6 Livius Andronicus is said to have composed the first Latin dramatic play in 240 BC, from a Greek model. On the fact that this translation/ adaptation of a literary work from one language into another was something extraordinary, see Feeney 2016. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-006

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emphasis than before”.7 This is also true of theatre. Romans were familiar with local, Italic forms of dramatic entertainment. They could well have done without public performances of Greek plays (or other forms of dramatic entertainment that included words in Greek). So why put on a Roman stage a theatrical piece in Greek language? What did it mean to the organiser of the show and to the audience? What was the meaning of the act in itself, as distinct from the content of the words spoken during the spectacle, which was probably lost on at least part of the audience? And, for the Imperial period, what does it tell us about the links between Greek theatre and Roman autocrats? Theatre, and perhaps especially Greek theatre when performed in front of mass public audiences, was bound to remind of the links it entertained with fifth-century Athens. And indeed, theatre  –  and more particularly tragedy  – seems to have been perceived in Roman times as somehow linked to democracy, freedom, or, at least, to the political power and voice of the people.8 As Nervegna (2013, 113) points out with regard to the anecdote recorded both in Philo (Every Good Man is Free, 141) and Stobaeus (4, 8, 3): “Modern scholars can debate whether Greek drama is truly a product of democratic Athens and whether the ideas expressed in the plays are distinctively democratic, but Philo, his audiences and his readers at least were sure on this point: tragedy and freedom went hand in hand”. It is likely that this point of view was shared widely in the Roman world. Greek theatre was no doubt an elite product of consumption, in private, but when put on stage for everyone to attend, its links to democratic Classical Athens would perhaps have been felt more clearly. Although it is likely that the plays put on stage in Greek were not all masterpieces from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, Greek theatre remained ultimately linked, in Roman minds, to the grandeur of Classical Athens. We are bound to ask ourselves why Roman autocrats organised such performances in Italy when they could easily have done without them. Was it really because of the ‘democratic feel’ that might have been conveyed by Greek theatre, through its perceived links with fifth-century Athens?9 The aim of this contribution is thus to explore whether there was anything specific in the use Roman Emperors made of Greek theatre in Italy, by comparing the evidence for public performances in Greek during the Republic (in the areas under Roman domination) and during the early Empire (until the reign of Domitian). After surveying our best evidence for these types of performances, mainly in literary sources, we will explore some of the questions raised by the information available in ancient sources. Before beginning with the examination of ancient sources, the importance of focusing on public performances must be emphasised. It is something very different to have a Greek play, or part of it, performed or recited in a private environment, with a target audience that only included members of the Roman elite, and to have a Greek play performed in front of a large audience whose members certainly did not all belong to the elite. Likewise, the reading of a Greek play by individual members of the Roman elite, or the use of a Greek play as school material, has nothing to do with a public performance, open to everyone. Needless to say, the performance of an adaptation or a Latin translation of a play of, for example, Menander, or Euripides, does not mean, for a general audience, the same thing as having the play performed in its original Greek (or even recited). Finally, depictions, on a mosaic, or on frescoes, of a scene inspired (perhaps) by a Greek play, or the presence of material objects reminding of Greek theatre, such as masks, statues of Greek poets, or statues of satyrs, obviously still does not guarantee that the viewer or intended user would really have attended a performance of a Greek play. Therefore, it has been necessary to use strict criteria in the selection of passages that could be taken as good evidence that a specific theatrical performance in Greek language was organised at a particular time and place in Roman Italy. There is indeed something very specific about public performances (or re-performances) of Greek plays (of any genre): while Greek theatre could have been used, in a private elite context, as a mere marker of education, as a cultural object of consumption, the very act of putting it on the public stage meant that it re-acquired its original status as a medium of communication, whatever the messages it was used as a vehicle for. The decision of putting on stage for a wide audience, in Roman Italy, a play or other forms of theatrical entertainment in another language than Latin is a conscious act that requires us to question its motives and effects.

7 Hutchinson 2013, 51. 8 Cic. Sest. 115. 9 For the idea that tyrants in the Greek West, such as Gelon, Hieron I, and Hieron II, might have used drama as a way to “present themselves as enlightened and even, in a sense, democratic”, see Bosher 2012, 8–9.

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Literary Sources: Republic 1 Livy 39, 22 Decem deinde dies magno apparatu ludos M. Fulvius, quos voverat Aetolico bello, fecit. Multi artifices ex Graecia venerunt honoris eius causa. Athletarum quoque certamen tum primo Romanis spectaculo fuit, et venatio data leonum et pantherarum, et prope huius saeculi copia ac varietate ludicrum celebratum est. Then for ten days, with great magnificence, Marcus Fulvius gave the games which he had vowed during the Aetolian war. Many actors too came from Greece to do him honour. Also a contest of athletes was then for the first time made a spectacle for the Romans and a hunt of lions and panthers was given, and the games, in number and variety, were celebrated in a manner almost like that of the present time.10

This passage briefly describes the games organised in Rome by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior and Lucius Cornelius Scipio, in 186 BC. Livy draws the attention of his readers to the fact that athletic competitions were here for the first time displayed in Rome and mentions that performers came from Greece for the occasion. Although the text does not mention clearly what type of artifices came to Rome, it is likely that they were some sort of (scenic) performers, and the passage has often been taken as evidence for early contacts between Rome and the Artists of Dionysus.11 Marcus Fulvius Nobilior was well-known for his active interest in Greek culture, yet one might hesitate to call him a ‘philhellene’, since, as has been duly noted by Ferrary, it is unlikely that he was considered as such by the Greeks of his time.12 His attempts at importing Greek culture into Rome, however, were always accompanied by Roman elements, and we see in this passage that the games he organised in 186 BC also included a venatio, which was of course not part of traditional Greekstyle entertainment. Greek scenic culture, if one agrees to consider the artifices as theatrical practitioners of some sort (contra Gruen 1992, 195), makes its way into Rome (at an occasion which celebrates a Roman victory over Greece) but is modified and tailored to Roman tastes, put into the service of Rome.13 As Gruen (1992, 140) puts it, the promotion and importation of Greek artists in Rome by elites during the Republic “announced that the refinements of Greek art were now put to the service of Roman hands”. Our second source, a passage of Polybius reported by Athenaeus, describes a specific event that took place during the games organised by Lucius Anicius Gallus to celebrate his triumph, in 167 BC, over Gentius and the Illyrians.

2 Polybius 30, 22 (from Athenaeus 14, 615a-e) Λεύκιος δὲ Ἀνίκιος, καὶ αὐτὸς Ῥωμαίων στρατηγήσας, Ἰλλυριοὺς καταπολεμήσας καὶ αἰχμάλωτον ἀγαγὼν Γένθιον τὸν τῶν Ἰλλυριῶν βασιλέα σὺν τοῖς τέκνοις, ἀγῶνας ἐπιτελῶν τοὺς ἐπινικίους ἐν τῇ Ῥώμῃ παντὸς γέλωτος ἄξια πράγματα ἐποίησεν, ὡς Πολύβιος ἱστορεῖ ἐν τῇ τριακοστῇ. μεταπεμψάμενος γὰρ τοὺς ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος ἐπιφανεστάτους τεχνίτας καὶ σκηνὴν κατασκευάσας μεγίστην ἐν τῷ κίρκῳ πρώτους εἰσῆγεν αὐλητὰς ἅμα πάντας. οὗτοι δ᾿ ἦσαν Θεόδωρος ὁ Βοιώτιος, Θεόπομπος, Ἕρμιππος, [ὁ] Λυσίμαχος, οἵτινες ἐπιφανέστατοι ἦσαν. τούτους οὖν στήσας ἐπὶ τὸ προσκήνιον μετὰ τοῦ χοροῦ αὐλεῖν ἐκέλευσεν ἅμα πάντας. τῶν δὲ διαπορευομένων τὰς κρούσεις μετὰ τῆς ἁρμοζούσης κινήσεως προσπέμψας οὐκ ἔφη καλῶς αὐτοὺς αὐλεῖν, ἀλλ᾿ ἀγωνίζεσθαι μᾶλλον ἐκέλευσεν. τῶν δὲ διαπορούντων ὑπέδειξέν τις τῶν ῥαβδούχων ἐπιστρέψαντας ἐπαγαγεῖν ἐφ᾿ αὑτοὺς καὶ ποιεῖν ὡσανεὶ μάχην. ταχὺ δὲ συννοήσαντες οἱ αὐληταὶ καὶ λαβόντες . . . οἰκείαν ταῖς ἑαυτῶν ἀσελγείαις μεγάλην ἐποίησαν σύγχυσιν. συνεπιστρέψαντες δὲ τοὺς μέσους χοροὺς πρὸς τοὺς ἄκρους οἱ μὲν αὐληταὶ φυσῶντες ἀδιανόητα καὶ διαφέροντες τοὺς αὐλοὺς ἐπῆγον ἀνὰ μέρος ἐπ᾿ ἀλλήλους. ἅμα δὲ τούτοις ἐπικτυποῦντες οἱ χοροὶ καὶ συνεπεισιόντες τὴν σκηνὴν ἐπεφέροντο τοῖς ἐναντίοις καὶ πάλιν ἀνεχώρουν ἐκ μεταβολῆς. ὡς δὲ καὶ περιζωσάμενός τις τῶν χορευτῶν ἐκ τοῦ καιροῦ στραφεὶς ἦρε τὰς χεῖρας ἀπὸ πυγμῆς πρὸς τὸν ἐπιφερόμενον αὐλητήν, τότ᾿ ἤδη κρότος ἐξαίσιος ἐγένετο καὶ κραυγὴ τῶν θεωμένων. ἔτι δὲ τούτων ἐκ παρατάξεως ἀγωνιζομένων ὀρχησταὶ δύο εἰσήγοντο μετὰ συμφωνίας εἰς τὴν ὀρχήστραν, καὶ πύκται τέτταρες ἀνέβησαν ἐπὶ τὴν σκηνὴν μετὰ σαλπιγκτῶν καὶ βυκανιστῶν. ὁμοῦ δὲ τούτων πάντων ἀγωνιζομένων ἄλεκτον ἦν τὸ συμβαῖνον. περὶ δὲ τῶν τραγῳδῶν, φησὶν ὁ Πολύβιος, ὅ, τι ἂν ἐπιβάλωμαι λέγειν, δόξω τισὶ διαχλευάζειν.

10 Transl. Sage 1936, 281. 11 See, e.g., Tedeschi 2017, 69. Another passage, Tac. Ann. 14, 21, 2, has also to be taken as evidence of the presence of Greek artists at the triumph of L. Mummius in 145 BC. The text, however, is too vague to be securely interpreted as such. 12 See Ferrary 1988, 568: “Aussi bien doutons-nous que les Grecs de son temps aient tenu Fulvius Nobilior pour un grand philhellène, comme le font unanimement les Modernes”. See also Ferrary 1996, 191. 13 Ferrary 1988, 568: “La contribution de Fulvius à l’hellénisation culturelle de Rome est donc incontestable, mais cette hellénisation, ainsi que nous l’avons déjà remarqué dans notre premier chapitre, différait trop de ce à quoi les Grecs étaient habitués pour ne pas les déconcerter”.

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Lucius Anicius, who had been Roman praetor, upon conquering the Illyrians and bringing back as his prisoners Genthius, the king of Illyria, and his children, in celebrating games in honour of his victory, behaved in the most absurd manner, as Polybius tells us in his Thirtieth Book. For having sent for the most celebrated scenic artists from Greece and constructed an enormous stage in the circus, he first brought on all the pipers at once. These were Theodorus of Boeotia, Theopompus, Hermippus and Lysimachus, who were then at the height of their fame. Stationing them on the proscenium, he ordered them to accompany the chorus in unison with their piping. When they went through their performance with the proper rhythmic movements, he sent to them to say they were not playing well and ordered them to show more competitive spirit. They were at a loss to know what he meant, when one of the lictors explained that they should turn and go for each other and make a sort of fight of it. The players soon understood, and having got an order that suited their own appetite for license, made a mighty confusion. Making the central groups of dancers face those on the outside, the pipers blowing loud in unintelligible discord and sounding their pipes discordantly, advanced toward each other in turn, and the dancers, clapping their hands and mounting the stage all together, attacked the adverse party and then faced about and retreated in their turn. And when one of the dancers girt up his robes on the spur of the moment, and turning round lifted up his hands in boxing attitude against the piper who was advancing toward him, there was tremendous applause and cheering on the part of the spectators. And while they were thus engaged in a pitched battle, two dancers with musicians were introduced into the orchestra and four prizefighters mounted the stage accompanied by buglers and clarion players and with all these men struggling together the scene was indescribable. As for the tragic actors Polybius says, “If I tried to describe them some people would think I was making fun of my readers”.14

It might be useful to briefly emphasise some elements of this anecdote. Lucius Anicius Gallus has a certain number of famous scenic artists come from Greece, including tragic actors (but see discussion below), pipers (auletai), choral performers (singers/dancers), and dancers. As the pipers and the chorus started their performance in a regular way, the general sends someone to ask them to perform in a more competitive way (agonizesthai). At first, the performers do not seem to understand what is required of them. After a lictor explains that they must turn their performance into a sort of fight, they obey and soon fill the stage and the orchestra with the disorderly and inharmonious spectacle of a mockfight. The audience is said to cheer the moment when a chorus member began to behave as if he was about to engage into a boxing fight with a piper. Some more dancers and musicians are then introduced on stage. Athenaeus reports that Polybius did, on purpose, not want to describe the attitude of the ‘tragic actors’ present. It is to be noted, first of all, that since the performers are explicitly said to come from Greece, the performance was originally certainly meant to include songs and/or speeches in Greek, as indicated by the presence of the chorus (distinguished from the dancers who arrive on stage at the end and who cannot be considered as pertaining to the same category as the technitai, according to Garelli 2007, 96) accompanied by auletai as well as tragoidoi. The combined presence of auletai, tragoidoi, and choreutai renders it implausible to consider the latter as mere dancers. The chorus members should very probably be understood as singers as well. Whether the tragoidoi are to be understood as tragic actors, reciters, or singers, their presence indicate that the performance was meant to include words and not only music. If, as is likely in Polybius in this context (unless the word itself was not copied by Athenaeus from his source), the word refers to poets/playwrights, one can safely assume that, even if not on stage, they would not have been there if they had nothing to do with the performance.15 One can therefore conclude that what is described here classifies as a theatrical event, which included words spoken or sung in Greek. For the interpretation of this anecdote and of the event itself, one has to remember the games given by Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, mentioned above, and, most importantly, the games given at Amphipolis in 168 BC by Aemilius Paullus, which had scrupulously followed a Greek model.16 They included scenic performances, no doubt in Greek language . . . but they took place in Amphipolis, not in Rome. It is important to note that Aemilius Paullus’ demonstrated interest for Greek culture (manifested, e.g., in private, in the education he gave to his sons) did not go as far as leading him to import Greek-style games to Rome and Italy, and it did not prevent him from taking, following the Senate, a number of harsh measures against cities in Epirus either.17 This apparent divergence of attitude has been explained diversely: as a dichotomy between cultural and political philhellenism, or between private and public values, the latter for example by Gruen, according to whom individual philhellenism was distinguished from how the Greeks should be treated at an

14 Transl. Paton 2012, 139–141. 15 On the meaning of tragoidoi, see Griffith 2018, 219 with further references. 16 Livy (45, 43, 1) alludes to the fact that both triumphs were already put in parallel and compared at the time. On this comparison, see Edmonson 1999. 17 For a discussion of whether Aemilius Paullus might have disagreed with some of the measures decided by the Senate, see Ferrary 1988, 547–553.

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official versus political level.18 However, as noted by Ferrary (1988, 553) Aemilius Paullus’ positive perception of Greece was not entirely limited to the private sphere, since, when he organised the games at Amphipolis or travelled through Greece, he was not only doing so as a private Roman but as a public man, representing Roman power. Ferrary notes that, as such “il était porteur d’un véritable message à l’intention des populations grecques”.19 This last point, I would suggest, should be given a higher importance in the debate about whether Aemilius Paullus’ interest for Greek culture was limited to the private sphere or also appeared in his public actions. The ‘message’ (i.e. the meaning of the public actions that seemed to highlight his positive view of Greek culture) was indeed addressed to Greek populations, not to the Romans back in Rome and Italy.20 Organising Greek games in Amphipolis was an action whose target audience were the Greeks, not the Romans, although Roman troops could indeed have been present among the spectators.21 For this reason, they could be conceived as following a purely Greek programme. At this time, as the following pages will hopefully demonstrate, it would have been difficult to organise in public fully ‘Greek games’/Greek scenic performances in Rome without ‘Romanising’ (or criticising) them in one way or another. During the Republic, organizing Greek games in Rome or outside of Rome did not transmit the same kind of message. We will have to wait until the Imperial period to see the organisation of Greek theatrical performance, wherever in the Empire, acquire the same, unified message for all populations under Roman hegemony. Lucius Anicius Gallus’ event took place in Rome. It thus makes it all the more remarkable and questionable that it was supposed to include theatrical entertainment in Greek. Greek performers came at the invitation of the organiser. Two main possible interpretations of Lucius Anicius Gallus’ intentions have been given: either the general had genuinely in mind to provide his audience with a refined spectacle given by the most skilled Greek performers of the time (and everything did not go to plan because of the reaction of the audience, including himself), or his plan was from the beginning to invite those famous Greek performers only to have them perform on stage something very different from what they were expected to do. About the reaction of the audience, it is to be noted at the outset that the only element reported by Polybius is their cheering of the fake boxing match between a chorus-member and a piper. The reaction of the spectators to the beginning of the performance is not recorded.22 Franko (2013) has recently developed and refined the second interpretation, i.e. the idea that the exact staging of the whole event was intentional and fully intended from the beginning as a perversion of usual Greek refined theatrical performances.23 The organiser of the event had invited the best Greek scenic artists only to force them deliberately to perform a spectacle that looked much more like Roman entertainment. Franko demonstrates that the audience’s reaction (since it is not even mentioned at first) had nothing to do with the way in which the tone of the performance changed, but that it had all been carefully planned by Lucius Anicius Gallus, even the fake misunderstanding of the performers asked to turn their spectacle into something more agonistic. The original intention was in part to rival and criticise Aemilius Paullus’ games at Amphipolis by depreciating Greek-style entertainment compared to Roman, which was more familiar with violent fights and comical elements. More generally it allowed the Roman general to demonstrate that Rome was not only able to control Greek dramatic performers but also that Roman types of entertainments were superior to Greek ones.24 One also has to remember that the occasion for this performance was the Roman festival

18 See Gruen 1984, 267–268. This question of an apparent ambiguous relationship to philhellenism reappears for later great Roman figures, as Scipio, whose interest for Greek culture seems to be counterbalanced by the importance he gave to the mos maiorum (Ferrary 1988, 589–590), Cato, or Cicero (see below for a discussion of the possible reasons for his ambiguous relationship with Greek theatre). 19 Ferrary 1988, 553. 20 For the content of this message, see Ferrary 1988, 556: “[. . .] Paul-Émile s’efforça, par le spectacle the son eusébeia, de sa philanthrôpia et de sa paideia, de rétablir auprès des Grecs une image des Romains que les premières années de la guerre, en particulier, avaient fortement dégradée”. 21 Pace Edmonson 1999, 80. 22 The text does not support Edmonson’s statement that “the crowd reacted vociferously against Anicius’ novel program” (1999, 88). In this passage, no negative reaction of the audience is recorded, only the positive reaction of the spectators when the show turns into a mock-fight. Franko 2013, 350 has already pointed out this curious interpretation by Edmonson. 23 This idea was already present in Gruen 1992, 217, who, however, does not go as far as imagining that the reaction of misunderstanding of the performers was planned. Goldberg 1995, 39 also defends the idea of an intended staging by Lucius Anicius Gallus. 24 Contra Gruen 1992, 218, who makes the hypothesis of an underlying criticism of Roman crowds’ vulgar tastes regarding entertainment. If there is such a criticism, I would rather see it in Polybius’ presentation of the anecdote rather than in Lucius Anicius Gallus’ intention.

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of the Quirinalia, where the idea of comical inversion was important. The general thus had Greek performers come only to request from them to perform in a more typically Roman style in the context of a specifically Roman festival.25 Whether one is ready to follow Gruen’s and Franko’s idea, the passage unambiguously records Roman audiences’ preference for scenic entertainment that was not in Greek language and/or did not follow the refined codes of Greek culture. Even if the reaction of the audience to the first part of the spectacle is not explicitly mentioned, the fact that they display a positive reaction to the second part of the show is clear. This is not an isolated testimony of negative reaction from a Roman audience to a Greek show.26 Moreover, it is not only the seemingly uneducated crowd which does not seem to perceive positively the presence in Rome of unmitigated Greek scenic refinement: Lucius Anicius Gallus at least agreed, if not intended, to have it turned into something else. The question here is also to determine whether this picture of the Roman audience has any degree of historicity or whether it is entirely due to Polybius’ agenda in his presentation of the anecdote. It is indeed tempting to imagine that Polybius, a member of the Greek educated elite who had arrived not long before in Rome as a hostage and is likely to have attended this extraordinary performance himself, might have found in his descriptions of the anecdote the perfect opportunity to present Romans as ignorant and lacking any cultural refinement. Polybius’ opinion on the performance that took place on this particular day might indeed be biased but it would be a mistake to take it as a more general statement about the Romans. He was, after all, a recognised admirer of Aemilius Paullus and was close enough to Scipio Aemilianus to know that not all Romans were boorish and that some even demonstrated at least some cultural philhellenism.27 Moreover, the aim of his Histories is certainly not to systematically depict Romans in a negative way: on the contrary, it seems that, through his description of how the Romans managed to conquer so much of the world in 53 years, he aimed at convincing the Greeks that there were good reasons to choose Rome.28 His message to Rome, however, was of a different nature. Here, and it was no doubt even more important in his description of the years after Pydna (to which book 30 belongs), there seem to have been some form of encouragement to the Romans to think about how to use their new power in a way that would make their domination acceptable to the conquered people (and especially the Greeks).29 The problem addressed in his description of the spectacle organised by Lucius Anicius Gallus is thus not so much the question of the lack of cultural refinement of the Romans than that of the abuse of power by the Roman general when he forces the best Greek artists to ridicule themselves on stage in performing a much less-refined show than what they had the ability to do. As Gruen (1992, 248) puts it, the Greek artists were “conspicuously manipulated by the imperator in a stunning display of Roman power to exploit Hellenic culture”. Whatever the opinion of Polybius on this display has been, and whether his description of the anecdote can be considered as objective or not, it remains clear that the passage provides evidence for two points: first, Roman spectators were more interested in non-Greek types of scenic entertainment and, secondly, members of the Roman elite could bring ‘Greek theatre’ to Rome only to adapt and modify it, to ‘Romanise’ it.

3 Plutarch, Marius 2, 2 λέγεται δὲ μήτε γράμματα μαθεῖν Ἑλληνικὰ μήτε γλώττῃ πρὸς μηδὲν Ἑλληνίδι χρῆσθαι τῶν σπουδῆς ἐχομένων, ὡς γελοῖον γράμματα μανθάνειν ὧν οἱ διδάσκαλοι δουλεύοιεν ἑτέροις· μετὰ δὲ τὸν δεύτερον θρίαμβον ἐπὶ ναοῦ τινος καθιερώσει θέας Ἑλληνικὰς παρέχων, εἰς τὸ θέατρον ἐλθὼν καὶ μόνον καθίσας εὐθὺς ἀπαλλαγῆναι.

25 See Goldberg 1995, 38–39, for the idea that the staging of the pipers and chorus members in opposed lines, as well as the request to the pipers to play in unison might have reflected native parades or processions taking place at the ludi Romani. 26 See other passages below and, for the same phenomenon regarding even Latin theatre, see Hor. Epist. 2, 1, 182 ff.; Ter. Hec. 25–40. Goldberg 1995, 42 notes, about the prologues of Terence: “They never record strict truth, though there is surely truth in them”. Even if such literary testimonies cannot be taken as historical records, they must have been coherent with a feeling that was shared by the spectators and so they can still be taken as evidence for a general negative perception of refined theatrical entertainment by at least a meaningful section of Roman society. 27 It is possible, as Ferrary 1988, 565–566 points out, that Polybius’ rather negative presentation of Lucius Anicius Gallus’ games also owed something to his admiration of Aemilius Paullus. 28 See Ferrary 1988, 341–343. 29 Ferrary 1988, 350 and 488, for the ‘double message’ addressed to the Romans and the Greeks.

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Moreover, we are told that he never studied Greek literature, and never used the Greek language for any matter of real importance, thinking it ridiculous to study a literature the teachers of which were the subjects of another people; and when, after his second triumph and at the consecration of some temple, he furnished the public with Greek spectacles, though he came into the theatre, he merely sat down, and at once went away.30

Marius’ bad perception of performances in Greek is here directly linked to the fact that he is not familiar with literature in this language (see also Sall. Iug. 85, 32), which allows us to understand quite clearly that the ‘Greek shows’ (θέας Ἑλληνικὰς) included spoken or sung words in Greek and, very probably, dramatic entertainment, since the type of entertainment mentioned took place in a theatre (in Rome, in 101 BC). If, as we have seen earlier, the Roman crowd tended to dislike shows in Greek, why did Marius choose to organise Greek-style scenic entertainment? Was it only because the Greek performers were at the time thought to be the most skilled, and thus should be invited to take part in any Roman triumphal shows to enhance their prestige and show that Romans could absorb Greek culture, compete with it, be superior to it? It is not impossible that this is part of the explanation. However, the fact that he did put such Greek dramatic performances on stage only to be able to come into the theatre, be seen by everyone, and then also be seen to leave, points into another direction. As Gruen (1992) has demonstrated, in the early Republican times, interest for Greek culture was not totally absent from what defined Roman elites. However, Greek performers, artists, or works of arts, seemed to be consistently employed with the aim of defining the superiority of Roman identity. Roman educated elites demonstrated that they controlled Greek culture and could use it, transform it, as they saw fit. Marius’ attitude towards Greek language and literature, at least as recorded in written sources, is reminiscent of such a discourse. The message is not so much one of contempt for Greek culture than one of conscious and voluntary appropriation: one has Greek performers come to give a show in Rome, but one demonstrates his superiority by conspicuously leaving this show, as if it was bad (or not as good as Roman/Latin scenic entertainment). Gruen (1992, 269) argues that Marius had organised such a show “for the edification of the public” and wanted to demonstrate (as L. Anicius Gallus) that he could use Greek performers “for the advantage of his own citizens”. The message conveyed by this episode, I think, is slightly different: the education of the citizens was not only made through the content of the show or the admiration of the skills of Greek artists. It is to be seen in the whole act put by Marius himself: Romans of course had the power to summon Greek artists to perform in Rome, but they had better things (more ‘Roman things’) to do than spend too much time watching them. The message is not that different from having Greek performers come to Rome only to force them to perform in a more ‘Roman way’, as Lucius Anicius Gallus did. It would be hard to argue for the existence of a real ‘philhellenism’ at this stage in the use of Greek theatre.

4 Cicero, Letters to Friends (to Marcus Marius), (24) 7, 1, 3 non enim te puto Graecos aut Oscos ludos desiderasse, praesertim cum Oscos vel in senatu vestro spectare possis, Graecos ita non ames ut ne ad villam quidem tuam via Graeca ire soleas. As for the Greek and Oscan shows, I don’t imagine you were sorry to miss them – especially as you can see an Oscan turn on your town council, and you care so little for Greeks that you don’t even take Greek Street to get to your house!31

The ludi organised to celebrate the inauguration of Pompey’s theatre in 55 BC featured, according to Cicero, among other types of entertainment (see Plut. Pomp. 52, 5) Oscan and Greek shows. Just above in the same letter, performances of plays in Latin are mentioned (7, 1, 2), which allows us to conclude that the Graeci ludi mentioned in our passage refer to types of entertainment that included dramatic performances in Greek language. Shackleton Bailey (2001, 174 n. 10) remarks on the expression ‘Greek shows’: “Probably Greek plays performed in Greek, as distinct from Latin adaptations of Greek originals; cf. Letters to Atticus 410 (XVI.5).1”. Although it is not directly clear from the text of Cicero’s letter that the Graeci ludi mentioned here should only be understood as referring exclusively to Greek theatrical performances (since athletes [belonging to Greek-style entertainment] are, in the following sentence, opposed to gladiatorial shows [a more Roman type of entertainment]), it is at least a plausible interpretation, and this 30 Transl. Perrin 1920, 467. 31 Ed. and transl. Shackleton Bailey 2001, 174–175.

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particular section of the letter seems indeed to focus on what happened in the theatre (before Cicero moves on to other types of celebrations which were more likely to have taken place in other venues). That Graeci ludi, in Cicero’s letters, can indeed plausibly refer to theatrical shows in Greek will be reinforced by the examination (below) of his use of the same expression in his letter to Atticus (16, 5, 1). This passage can thus be taken as important evidence for the question of the perception of performances in Greek by the Roman elite. Marcus Marius, evidently a learned friend of Cicero, is said to be disinterested (to say the least) in Greeks and would not have regretted to have missed a play in Greek. This attitude cannot be simply attributed either to a widely shared negative conception of everything Greek or to a feeling that one had, among the Roman elite, to somehow hide one’s interest or love of Greek culture.32 The problem is a different one and will be more easily discussed after the examination of the second passage of Cicero’s letters below. As in the previous passage, it is clear that at least some of the Roman elite intentionally posed as disliking performances in Greek language (or at least of ‘Greek shows’) and wished on the contrary to promote more Roman/Latin forms of entertainments.33

5 Suetonius, Divus Iulius 39, 1 Edidit spectacula varii generis: munus gladiatorium, ludos etiam regionatim urbe tota et quidem per omnium linguarum histriones, item circenses athletas naumachiam. He gave entertainments of diverse kinds: a combat of gladiators and also stage-plays in every ward all over the city, performed too by actors of all languages, as well as races in the circus, athletic contests, and a sham seafight.34

In his descriptions of Caesar’s triumphs in Rome (46 BC), Suetonius mentions that stage performances were organised locally in all the city’s suburbs, and that histriones, actors/ performers of all languages took part in this. It is unlikely that none of them spoke Greek. Here Caesar literally brings theatrical entertainments to all Romans, outside the theatre. Although exactly what these ludi by histriones might have encompassed remains unspecified, it is nonetheless evident that they encompassed spoken or sung words pronounced by performers who impersonated fictive characters and were not mere singers or acrobats, since they are qualified as histriones.35 It reminds us that theatrical activity could take place outside of permanent theatre buildings, and had certainly always included, even for productions in Greek language, genres other than full tragedies and comedies.36 What could have been Caesar’s intention here? As we shall see, his use of theatrical performances in Greek (and other languages) to reach out to the various populations living in Rome and have them all take part in the celebrations of his triumphs foreshadows what various Roman Emperors were going to do after him. Greek theatre was a convenient tool to assemble non-Latin-speaking populations under the Roman ‘flag’. Tellingly, the exact same anecdote, in the same terms, is reported by Suetonius about Augustus (Suet. Aug. 43, 1), thus emphasising the continuity between Caesar’s and Augustus’ use of theatre in languages other than Latin.

32 See Gruen 1992, 256–257. 33 Such an attitude was of course not limited to the question of dramatic entertainment. Cato’s negative attitude towards Greek culture/education in general is emblematic of a trend that must have been shared by at least part of the Roman Republican elite. Greek culture was not seen as bad per se but knowledge of it was used to show that Roman culture/identity was better. For a nuanced view of Cato’s attitude towards Hellenism, see, for example, Gruen 1992, 52–83, and Ernst 2013. On the debate about Cato’s perception and use of Greek culture, and on the fact that his attitude was still coherently negative, see also Ferrary 1988, 539, with further references. 34 Transl. Rolfe 1998 [1st ed. 1913], 85. 35 For the idea that the word histrio is to be linked (through its etymology) to the visual component of a performance, and especially to the fact that what is shown on stage is something different from reality, see Paillard 2020. On histriones more generally, see Leppin 1992. 36 See, e.g., Tosi 2003, 671: “Ma a differenza di tutti gli altri ludi, quelli scenici avevano una diffusione capillare, regionatim, in ogni quartiere dell’Urbe, con artisti di professione, histriones, di tutte le lingue e di varia provenienza, per assecondare e diverire una popolazione residente in parte anch’essa di varia provenienza. In queste circostanze, se si considera l’evolversi dell’architettura romana, primeggia il Teatro di Pompeo, ma se si guarda al contesto urbano, civile, ludico, appare una realtà diversa, più viva ed esaustiva, per questa serie di apprestamenti scenici temporanei sparsi in tuta la citttà, forse perché il repertorio teatrale era il più vario e il più gradito al pubblico”. For the definition of what should be encompassed under the label ‘Greek theatre’, see Paillard and Milanezi 2021. For the idea that the reciprocal influence between Latin and Greek theatrical practices should encourage scholars to widen the definition of ‘Greek theatre’, see esp. Paillard 2021.

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6 Cicero, Epistulae ad Atticum (410) 16, 5, 1 Another passage records the Roman dislike for Greek theatrical entertainment. Cicero, once again, writes in a letter to Atticus that the audience was sparse at the Greek shows given in Rome for the ludi Apollinares of 44 BC. Tuas iam litteras Brutus exspectabat. cui quidem ego [non] novum attuleram de ‘Tereo’ Acci. ille ‘Brutum’ putabat. sed tamen rumoris nescio quid adflaverat commissione Graecorum frequentiam non fuisse, quod quidem me minime fefellit; scis enim quid ego de Graecis ludis existimem. Brutus is now waiting to hear from you. I brought him news about Accius’ Tereus – he thought it was the Brutus. Anyhow, gossip had wafted his way that the opening of the Greek show had been poorly attended, which was exactly what I expected. You know what I think of Greek shows.37

Cicero explicitly states here his own dislike of this kind of entertainment. Such a remark might appear to be in striking contradiction to what Cicero writes about himself elsewhere. His constant use of Greek models (philosophical, epistolary, among others) albeit adapted to serve his own purpose, as well as his frequent citation of Greek works, including dramatic ones, demonstrate his thorough knowledge, and presumably appreciation, of Greek culture. Perhaps the most conspicuous evidence for Cicero’s interest and love for Greek culture resides in his affirmation, in a letter sent to Atticus (1, 15, 1), that he himself and his brother Quintus praeter ceteros φιλέλληνες et sumus et habemur. How can this be reconciled with his self-professed dislike of Greek-style theatrical shows? This apparent tension between philhellenism and dislike of Greek-style public entertainment somehow resembles the attitude of earlier members of the Roman elite, such as Cato, Scipio, Aemilius Paullus, who, as we have seen, also seemed to behave with a certain ambiguity towards Greek culture, an ambiguity that is, nonetheless, easily understood in the framework of the constitution of Roman identity. Cicero’s attitude could also be explained as being part of the same movement, among Roman Republican elites, that sought to know and use Greek culture towards the development and promotion of Roman culture.38 Elsewhere (Cic. Fin. 1, 2), Cicero openly criticises the attitude (presumably of some members of the Roman intellectual elite who took their interest in Greek literature too far for his tastes) that consists in attributing value only to Greek models while considering Latin literary production as worthless. It is thus possible that his self-professed dislike of Greek shows stems from the same idea that Roman theatrical production was worth promoting as superior. Yet another phenomenon might have played a part in this apparent discrepancy between praise of ancient Greek authors and criticism of contemporary Greek shows. Unlike other forms of literature, Greek theatre still had a dimension of performance in Cicero’s time. One could both read, for instance, Sophocles’ Electra and, probably, attend a ‘reperformance’ of the play. What this performance looked like, however, was likely to be vastly different from what was performed in Classical Athens, and even more from what Cicero imagined it must have looked like in Classical Athens. As Webb (2018) has remarked about the perception of Greek tragedy in the Imperial period, there was a gap between what the intellectuals imagined about Classical performances when reading the texts of tragedies and the kind of almost grotesque, exaggerated shows they could see on stage. It is likely that this phenomenon of idealisation of Greek theatre (and perhaps especially tragedy) was already emerging at the time of Cicero, or even before him.39 If Classical Greek theatre could be considered by Cicero as a highly valuable cultural product, worth studying for the advantages its knowledge could bring to a Roman educated mind, this was not the case for contemporary Greek performances. It remains to examine whether Graeci ludi in Cicero’s letters can straightforwardly be understood as encompassing dramatic performances in Greek. Two points might help us decide that it was indeed the case. The mention of Accius’ Tereus is clearly separated from the rumour about the Greek shows. Thus, there seems to be a clear distinction between performances of Latin plays (even when adaptations of Greek plays) and Greek shows. Beaujeu (1988), in his study of the two expressions ludi Graeci and ludi Latini, had demonstrated that Wissowa’s hypothesis that the first one referred to Latin adaptations of Greek plays could not be taken as valid for many of its occurrences. Beaujeu concludes his short

37 Ed. and transl. Shackelton Bailey 1999, 310. 38 Gruen (1992) demonstrates that this attitude was coherent and did not proceed from an irreconcilable dichotomy in the way Greek matters were handled (on a cultural and political level) by elites during the Republic. 39 For the long-lasting effects of such an idealisation, see Paillard 2019b.

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examination by writing, about ludi Graeci: “son acception varie en fonction du context” and that it is sometimes impossible to decide what type of spectacle is designated. Even if Graeci ludi only meant wide-scale games ‘à la grecque’ (including athletic contests), it is safe to conclude, as we have done above for the other letter of Cicero, that they probably encompassed theatrical performances in Greek language. In this particular case there is indeed solid evidence that Greek performers came to Rome on this occasion, as another passage in Plutarch’s Life of Brutus reveals:

7 Plutarch, Brutus 21, 5–6 [. . .] καὶ τῶν περὶ τὸν Διόνυσον τεχνιτῶν αὐτὸς εἰς Νέαν πόλιν καταβὰς ἐνέτυχε πλείστοις· περὶ δὲ Κανουτίου τινὸς εὐημεροῦντος ἐν τοῖς θεάτροις ἔγραφε πρὸς τοὺς φίλους ὅπως πείσαντες αὐτὸν εἰσαγάγωσιν· Ἑλλήνων γὰρ οὐδένα βιασθῆναι προσήκειν. [A]nd he himself [Brutus] went down to Naples and conferred with a very large number of [technitai of Dionysos]; and regarding Canutius, [who enjoyed great fame in the theatres], he wrote to his friends that they should persuade him to go to Rome; for no Greek could properly be compelled to go.40

Brutus is here said to go to Naples to find technitai of Dionysos, for the ludi Apollinares of 44 BC in Rome. The passage especially mentions Canutius. There is no real hesitation about whether he was a Greek or a Roman performer.41 The whole point of Plutarch’s comment is to insist on the idea that Greeks would have to be persuaded (πείσαντες), rather than forced (βιασθῆναι), to go to Rome to perform at the games (presumably because it would be unfitting to force educated Greeks to do anything). As noted by Moles (2017, 235) in his commentary, this passage is intended to highlight Brutus’ philhellenism, but it also reflects Plutarch’s ‘strong patriotism’. There is thus little doubt that Canutius would have been performing in Greek language (or at least be involved in performances where Greek was spoken and/or sung), at what Cicero calls in his letter ludi Graeci. It would thus be wrong to exclude the hypothesis that Graeci ludi, in both of Cicero’s letters examined here, could indeed refer to theatrical performances in Greek language.42

Literary Sources: Empire Evidence for Greek performances in Italy during the Imperial period is provided by many more documents (both epigraphical and literary) than for the Republic.43 This, of course, might well have merely to do with the increased interest in theatrical activities in general that took place in the early Empire, but not only (an increased interest in theatre could have meant that more Latin plays were performed).44 During the early Imperial period, performances in Greek made their way into wide-scale festivals/competitions which were established (or re-established) by Emperors, and which gave Rome a place in the circuit of Greek games, still of great importance at that time. In such competitions it made sense to have categories for contests of Greek dramatic performances. Yet, those were by far not the only occasions at which performances in Greek were organised in Rome and Italy by Roman Emperors. In this section, passages that provide us with good evidence for public performances in Greek in the early Empire will be discussed. Documents that give us more indirect evidence, such as, for example, the large number of inscriptions (often funerary) mentioning theatrical performers with clearly Greek name and origin, will remain outside the scope of this chapter.

40 Transl. Perrin 1918, 173, slightly modified (modifications indicated in brackets). 41 See RE III, 2, s.v. Cannutius, no. 1 (Münzer): “Beliebter Schauspieler, Grieche”. However, see Stephanis 1988a, n°1374, who expresses doubts about the fact that he might have been an actor. 42 Contra Manuwald 2011, 21, n. 28, who believes that Cicero rather means athletic contests here. See, however, Beaujeu (1988, 15): “L’expression ludi graeci a été rarement employée pour désigner les jeux athlétiques [. . .]”. 43 A short survey of some of these sources can be found in Hutchinson 2013, 49. 44 For an estimation of the number of festival days devoted to dramatic performance under the Republic and the Imperial period, see Csapo and Slater 1995, 209. The numbers show a sharp increase.

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Augustus Suetonius records Augustus’ interest in Greek studies, and particularly in Greek poetry.

Suetonius, Divus Augustus 89, 1 Sed plane poematum quoque non imperitus, delectabatur etiam comoedia veteri et saepe eam exhibuit spectaculis publicis. Still he was far from being ignorant of Greek poetry, even taking great pleasure in the old comedy and frequently staging it at his public entertainments.45

In this passage, Suetonius mentions that Augustus appreciated what is called here ‘old comedy’. There is no doubt that the comedy alluded to here is Greek comedy, as the context of the quotation makes it evident, and not only Latin adaptations of Greek originals. Whether the ‘old comedy’ is to be understood as referring to what we call ‘Old Comedy’ (i.e. fifth-century comedy) is more debatable. Revermann (2006a, 86) notes that the expression is more likely to refer to what is nowadays known as ‘New Comedy’ (e.g., Menander). What exactly the public entertainments were, on the occasion of which Augustus had Greek comedies put on stage, is not mentioned. If the expression astici ludi is indeed to be systematically understood as referring to Greek scenic performances (see references below), it is possible that Greek comedies were performed at Augustus’ triumph for his victory in Actium in 29 BC, as Suetonius mentions that Tiberius presided over astici ludi.46 However, the fact that the inscription concerning the ludi saeculares of 17 AD (examined below) uses the expression Graeci astici suggests that astici ludi were not necessarily thought as Greek, otherwise the precision Graeci would be redundant. The astici ludi of 29 BC could thus have designated Latin theatrical entertainment.

Institution of the Sebasta (Naples, 2 AD) However, we do know that Augustus established in the year 2, in Naples, an ‘agon’, the Italika Romaia Sebasta Isolympia which included competitions for Greek tragic and comic actors. Strabo, in his Geography (5, 4, 7), alludes to these games, saying that they were similar to the most famous celebrated in Greece, and, as Hutchinson (2013, 72) points out: “The context in which Strabo mentions these contests, including music, makes it apparent that performances of poetry and the like would be in Greek [. . .]”.47 An inscription found in Olympia (I.Olympia 56), dated to the second century AD, advertises for the contests for tragic and comic actors, making it clear that it would be for Greek performers. These first real sacred games ‘à la grecque’ were interestingly established by Augustus in Naples, a place which, although under Roman domination, was still very much felt as being ‘Greek’, and where Greek was spoken more widely than in other parts of Roman Italy.48 As Ferrary remarks, “les îlots d’hellénisme qui avaient résisté (tels Naples ou Velia) connurent sous l’Empire une nouvelle énergie, sous l’œil bienveillant du pouvoir central”.49 We see already here the first steps in the direction of a more coherent and politically organised interest for Greek culture, and theatre within it, that will be traceable through the early Empire.

45 Transl. Rolfe 1998 [1st ed. 1913], 281. 46 Suet. Tib. 6, 4. 47 See also Beacham 1999, 214. 48 For the question of whether Naples was still considered as a Greek city in the early Empire, see Lomas 1997–1998. 49 Ferrary 1996, 189 and 195, where the author describes Naples as a “conservatoire de l’hellénisme soigneusement préservé en Italie par le pouvoir romain”.

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Ludi saeculares 17 AD We also know of theatrical performances in Greek that took place in Rome itself under Augustus. He revived in 17 AD the ludi saeculares, and an inscription (CIL VI 32323 = ILS 5050) mentions (lines 157 ff.) Greek plays. It is one of the rare inscriptions that describe in some detail the programme of such an event: [. . .] Graecos thymelicos in theatro Pompei h(ora) III Graecos asti[cos i]n thea[tro quod est] / in circo Flaminio h(ora) I[III] [. . .]

The distinction between thymelici and astici is here important: the first word seems to stand for what we would call musical performances, whereas the latter seems to refer to dramatic performances.50 So, even in a very Roman context at Roman ludi, Augustus introduced performances in Greek.

Claudius Claudius, too, even if indirectly, seemed to have found an interest in taking an active part in the performance of Greek theatrical events. Suetonius reports that he staged a Greek comedy at a contest in Naples (in 42, when he presided over the Sebasta).

Suetonius, Divus Claudius 11, 2 At in fratris memoriam per omnem occasionem celebratam comoediam quoque Graecam Neapolitano certamine docuit ac de sententia iudicum coronavit. In memory of his brother, [Germanicus] whom he took every opportunity of honouring, he brought out a Greek comedy in the contest at Naples and awarded it the crown in accordance with the decision of the judges.51

Since he did that in honour of his brother Germanicus, it is likely that the play was the comedy written by Germanicus himself, mentioned in Suet. Calig. 3, 2.52 Germanicus’ writing of comedies in Greek belongs to a well-attested tradition of young members of the Roman elite who composed dramatic pieces in this language (e.g., Plin. Ep. 7, 4, 2). It is likely that these literary essays were only exceptionally followed by a real performance. By choosing to have his brother’s Greek comedy performed in Naples, Claudius ensured that it would be well received by an audience that was, still at this time, certainly composed of many spectators who felt, if not Greek themselves, at least close to Greek culture.

Nero Nero’s interest for theatre is well known.53 Whether he himself performed on stage as an actor in the full sense of the term or whether he merely sung has been debated.54 In Italy, Nero’s appearances on stage before his tour of the festivals of Greece (66–67 AD) are limited to performances as a singer, as for instance in Naples, where he participated in the Sebasta in 64 (Suet. Ner. 20; Tac. Ann. 15, 33–34), and earlier, still in a private context, at the festival of the Juvenalia of 59 (Cass. Dio 62, 20, 1–2). For this period, 50 For the idea that this expression clearly refers to the Greek dramatic performances, see, e.g., Ferrary 1988, 520, n. 52; Wiseman 1988, 7; Beacham 1999, 118; Manuwald 2011, 21, n. 28. On the question of thymelici, see also Ernst 2013. 51 Transl. Rolfe 1997 [1st ed. 1914], 21–23. 52 See already Geer 1935, 214. 53 On Nero’s activities on stage, see Champlin 2003b, with references to previous literature. 54 For this discussion and a detailed summary of previous scholarship, see Nervegna 2007, 31–36.

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there is no mention that he might have done anything else than singing, and more often than not, it is even impossible to decide whether his singing was in Greek or Latin. Whether he ever really acted in a dramatic piece in Greek language in Rome or elsewhere on Italian territory after his return from Greece (where he seems to have performed as a tragic actor, according to Cass. Dio 63, 8, 2) is also debatable. He seems indeed to have not only performed as a citharoedus but also as a tragoedus. However, what was in reality encompassed under this word (and its Greek equivalent) when used by authors such as, for example, Dio Cassius, is delicate to determine. Nervegna’s careful examination of the evidence seems to indicate that Nero did sometimes more than merely sing (excerpts of) tragedies but also performed as one of the actors. No source, however, indicates without possible doubt that he acted in tragedies performed in Greek language in Rome or Italy. It is not unlikely, as he must surely have performed in Greek during his tour of the games in Greece. One cannot do much better than conclude, with Griffith, that “presumably Nero could and did perform some of his pieces in Greek”.55 Whether it was limited to his performances in Greece or also extended to Rome and Italy cannot be determined.

Institution of the Neronia Likewise, direct evidence for Greek dramatic competitions at the Neronia, a contest Nero established for the first time in 60 AD but that was only celebrated twice, is lacking.

Tacitus, Annals 14, 20 Nerone quartum Cornelio Cosso consulibus quinquennale ludicrum Romae institutum est ad morem Graeci certaminis, varia fama, ut cuncta ferme nova. In the consulate of Nero – his fourth term – and of Cornelius Cossus, a quinquennial competition on the stage, in the style of a Greek contest, was introduced at Rome. Like almost all innovations it was variously canvassed.56

Tacitus notes that the games were “ad morem Graeci certaminis”, but it would be difficult to affirm with any certainty that it included categories for Greek drama (understood as performances, in Greek language, of a tragic or comic play, rather than mere recitation of singing of excerpts) or if it was more generally meant to describe the large scale of the event and the fact that it included artistic, musical, and athletic competitions.57 Nero himself (Suet. Ner. 21; Tac. Ann. 16, 4) is said to have performed as a citharoedus at the second Neronia. Suetonius records that he announced that he would sing a Niobe (or ‘sing Niobe’) but this does not allow us to conclude that the performance was in Greek. Even if our sources fail to prove direct evidence for theatrical performances in Greek language either by Nero himself or organised by him in Rome, it remains clear that, as has been noted for Claudius, he found a personal, and no doubt political, interest in being associated with performances on stage in Greek language. As Hardie (2002, 126) puts it: “Within Nero’s complex motivation, the need to appeal to the cultural identity of the Greek East must have played a part, but he was also driven by a strong desire to prove his personal ability in competition”. Personal reasons, in the case of Nero, might have joined the political agenda to justify the reinforcement of the presence of Greek theatre in Roman Italy.

55 Griffith 2018, 216, with further references. 56 Transl. Jackson 1937, 137. On the general perception of Greek-style competitions organised during the Imperial period, see Arnold 1960, who tries to demonstrate that it was less negative than our (mainly elite) literary sources tend to affirm. Ferrary (1988, 520, n. 55) cites this passage among those providing evidence for “un succès grandissant des concours grecs auprès du peuple romain”. It does not, however, seem to provide particularly strong evidence for a positive perception of Greek shows. 57 On the Neronia, see Bolton 1948, where the contest is said (82) to have included “athletics, chariot-racing, and music (which included singing, and recitations in prose and verse)”.

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Domitian Under Domitian, the Capitoline Games were established in Rome in 86.58 For the first time, Rome truly became part of the circuit of the Greek games. As Bonamente (2003, 405) points out: “I Capitolia (altra denominazione dell’agon Capitolinus) avrebbero definitivamente inserito Roma stessa nel circuito mediterraneo delle città “agonistiche”, idealmente dunque a fianco di Olimpia, di Delfi, di Corinto e di Argo (che erano la massima espressione della koine agonistica greca), facendone una tappa importante per le compagnie di attori, latini e greci, che concorrevano negli agoni sacri”. Our best source for the Capitoline Games is Suetonius.

Suetonius, Domitianus 4, 4 Instituit et quinquennale certamen Capitolino Iovi triplex, musicum equestre gymnicum, et aliquanto plurium quam nunc est coronatorum. Certabant enim et prosa oratione Graece Latineque ac praeter citharoedos chorocitharistae quoque et psilocitharistae, in stadio vero cursu etiam virgines. Certamini praesedit crepidatus purpureaque amictus toga Graecanica, capite gestans coronam auream cum effigie Iovis ac Iunonis Minervaeque, adsidentibus Diali sacerdote et collegio Flavialium pari habitu, nisi quod illorum coronis inerat et ipsius imago. He also established a quinquennial contest in honour of Jupiter Capitolinus of a threefold character, comprising music, riding, and gymnastics, and with considerably more prizes than are awarded nowadays. For there were competitions in prose declamation both in Greek and in Latin; and in addition to those of the lyre-players, between choruses of such players and in the lyre alone, without singing; while in the stadium there were races even between maidens. He presided at the competitions in half-boots, clad in a purple toga in the Greek fashion, and wearing upon his head a golden crown with figures of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, while by his side sat the priest of Jupiter and the college of the Flaviales, similarly dressed, except that their crowns bore his image as well.59

While Suetonius’ mention of those games does not make it clear that there were categories for Greek dramatic competition (which could, however, be understood as being part of the ‘musical’ competitions), evidence for contest of Greek tragedy and comedy (perhaps only recited rather than fully performed, if one is to believe Hutchinson 2013, 51) is clearly provided by a passage in Artemidorus (4, 33, 14–20) and by an inscription (Moretti 1953, no. 74, 6 = IG II2 3161, 3–4).60 It is interesting to note in Suetonius’ passage that Domitian is said to preside the games clad in a toga Graecanica.61 The participants at those games, and the audience, must have felt that they were attending an event that had clearly as much to do with Greek culture as with Roman, and the Emperor’s dress must have reinforced this feeling. As Hardie (2002, 129) remarks: “We can only guess at the benefits that accrued, in terms of the impression made on easterners by a prince who, in his own city, so manifestly identified with their cultural traditions and aspirations”. The emphasis on ‘in his own city’ is of importance here: the Roman Emperor dresses in a Greek way in Rome. As in the case of Nero, the appeal to the Greek East is more generally apparent behind the establishment of the new, Greek-like, contest in Rome. Organising competitions of Greek theatrical performances was part of this political agenda and no doubt appealed to a wider audience (if not to all the Roman, Latin-speaking spectators, as we have seen) than other less-visual categories such as, for example, oratory. Behind this was no doubt the more general will of showing to the greatest number of Roman subjects possible the existence of a strong link between Rome and Greek education, something that might have had deeper implications than merely being an “appeal to the Eastern provinces”, as we shall see in the conclusion of this chapter.62

58 On the Capitoline Games, see Caldelli 1993. 59 Transl. Rolfe 1997 [1st ed. 1914], 329. 60 See also Arnold 1960, 248 for further references. 61 Claudius might also have worn Greek-style clothes at the Sebasta, see Cass. Dio 60, 6. 62 For the idea that the Capitolia represented a way to acknowledge the value of Greek education, see Hardie 2002, 127: “The new festival advertised imperial favour for competitive musical and gymnastic activity, integral to an educational system which had traditionally been disdained at Rome; it acknowledges the orators and poets who were the products of Greek education and their growing influence at Rome and in the western provinces; and it brought contemporary Greek talent to Rome for the festival and the pre-festival sojourns there to mix with western counterparts”.

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Conclusion This very brief survey of the clearest evidence we have for public performances in Greek in Roman Italy allows us to draw a number of conclusions.

Republic However biased the literary sources at our disposal may be, public performances in Greek during the Republic are regularly depicted as negatively perceived, by both part of the Roman educated elite and the uneducated crowd. Even if the authors of our sources are not to be entirely trusted, the tendency is nonetheless clear. While private reading, reciting, quoting, or even, more rarely, performing of Greek theatre was seen as something positive, to be linked with a high degree of education and social status, public performances of Greek plays or other types of theatrical entertainment containing words in Greek, when unmodified to suit Roman tastes, seem to have been perceived as problematic to many Romans during the Republic, for reasons that had in good part to do with the development of Roman identity and Latin literature. This phenomenon is not to be attributed to a criticism of Greek culture and literature per se. As Gruen (1992, 81) explains about Cato’s apparent ambiguity towards Greek culture: “[. . .] he undertook a lifelong campaign not to repress Greek culture but to employ it as a means to mark off the distinctiveness of Roman character”. I would argue that during the Republic, elites used Greek theatre with a similar aim in mind. It would appear that performances in Greek and/or by Greek scenic artists were more often than not organised only to be criticised, changed, translated or, in one word, Romanised. Greek theatre was used as a convenient communication medium to display the superiority of Roman culture, to show that Roman entertainments were superior, in a metaagonistic way one could say. Greek theatre was translated into Latin during this period, and as McElduff (2013, 10) has pointed out, “the overriding concern of Roman translation was not fidelity or free translation, but control. Roman translators were supposed to be able to dominate and manage their Greek sources, and translate them in ways that showed that control and enabled their own voice to be heard through their new text”.63 Greek performances were indeed still organised but only to be left after a few minutes, as Marius does, distancing himself from a particular form of elite culture that was felt to be un-Roman. More aggressive actions were perhaps taken against Greek performances, if one is prepared to see behind the law of 115 BC against non-local forms of entertainments something that was explicitly directed against Greek performers.64 The Roman Republican elite tried to control Greek culture, and Greek theatre, as perhaps the most obvious and public form that it could take, was used in an antithetic way to display this will at promoting Rome as superior to Greece. Greece was being conquered by Rome and the conquest of one of its most salient cultural creations, theatre, by putting it on stage only to be Romanised, was part of this process. In the latest part of the Republic, however, some Roman leaders seem to have used Greek theatre (and culture more generally, as it became increasingly clearly linked with values such as, for example, humanitas in Cicero) in a way that foreshadowed its use by Emperors, i.e. as a tool to justify their hegemonic ambitions.

Empire However, even when Greece was now securely under Roman domination, Roman Emperors not only continued to organise performances in Greek in Italy, but clearly did so on more occasions than had been the case during the Republic. Other reasons might thus be sought to explain this phenomenon. With the centralisation of political power in the hands of a real autocrat, theatre in general, as a medium of mass communication, assumed a new importance altogether. Various reasons might have led Emperors to include perfor63 The same phenomenon reveals itself in Lucius Anicius Gallus’ transformation, ‘Romanisation’ of a Greek type of entertainment. 64 See Jory 1995; Tedeschi 2017, 165 (with further references): “Fin dalla fine del III a.C. l’Atellana aveva attratto le classi conservatrici e nazionalistiche: la diffidenza per le innovazioni straniere, specialmente quelle provenienti dalla Grecia, aveva portato nel 115 a.C. all’emanazione di un editto censorio, con il quale erano bandite da Roma tutte le forme di espressioni culturali non autoctone”.

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mances in Greek in the public entertainments they were organising in Rome and Italy. Personal taste, of course, might have played a part in the selection of what was put on stage, as well as broader trends in intellectual life, such as archaising tendencies (for example under Hadrian) or the Second Sophistic, or more generally the long-lasting effects of cultural contacts between Greece and Rome that had kept intensifying during the last century of the Republic.65 However, I would suggest that the establishment of wide-scale games ‘à la grecque’ by Roman Emperors, their reinforced links with Greek associations of scenic artists, the will to attract talented Greek performers to Rome, and the distinct increase in the number of occasions at which Greek theatrical pieces were performed in Italy during the early Empire, reflect a clear intention at publicly showing a strong philhellenism.66 To convey their philhellenism to the greatest possible number of people, of all social classes, in Rome and Italy, and throughout the Roman Empire, Greek theatre was the best vehicle, the best tool, Roman Emperors could use. But what aspect of Greek theatre made it such an attractive vehicle? Was it because it was linked to a certain conception of elite education among the Romans? This is most unlikely. Was it because Greek theatre was felt to be somehow linked to democracy, freedom, or more generally to the power of the people, as I had mentioned as a hypothesis in the introduction to this paper? Did Roman Emperors like to organise performances in Greek to appear more democratic? It is very unlikely too, given how Greek theatre was associated with elite pursuits in the minds of many members of Roman society. We have to look for another aspect of Greek theatre: namely, its links to fifth-century Athens (that was certainly in Roman times felt to be strongly linked to Greek theatre, as mentioned in the introduction), but not Athens as a democracy: Classical Athens as an imperial power. As Ferrary (1988 and 1996) has demonstrated, Roman Emperors’ philhellenism and interest in Greek culture were intricately linked to the idea of hegemonic power. Greek culture was felt as a requirement to acquire hegemonic, imperial power. A remark in Strabo (9, 2, 2) compellingly illustrates the link that was felt between Greek culture, education, and hegemonic power (a link that can be traced back to Isocrates, through Ephorus):67 καὶ Ῥωμαῖοι δὲ τὸ παλαιὸν μέν, ἀγριωτέροις ἔθνεσι πολεμοῦντες, οὐδὲν ἐδέοντο τῶν τοιούτων παιδευμάτων, ἀφ᾿ οὗ δὲ ἤρξαντο πρὸς ἡμερώτερα ἔθνη καὶ φῦλα τὴν πραγματείαν ἔχειν, ἐπέθεντο5 καὶ ταύτῃ τῇ ἀγωγῇ καὶ κατέστησαν πάντων κύριοι. [. . .] the Romans too, in ancient times, when carrying on war with savage tribes, needed no education of this kind, but from the time that they began to have dealings with more civilised tribes and races, they applied themselves to this education also, and so established themselves as lords of all.68

The context of this passage makes it clear that Strabo is here thinking about Greek education (or at least a kind of education inspired by the Greek paideia): he has just been citing Ephorus, who explains that Boeotia is naturally wellsuited to hegemony but that it sometimes lost this ability when its leaders neglected culture and education and focused too much on military values. Strabo then adds two remarks of his own. First, he says that education and culture prove particularly important when one is dealing with the Greeks. The second remark (quoted above) concerns the Romans, who, according to Strabo, began to truly extend their power on “more civilised tribes and races” when they started to 65 Rawson 1985b, 3–18, identifies, after the Mithridatic Wars, the beginning of a sharp increase in the number of Greek intellectuals who came to establish themselves in Rome, and, conversely, of a trend for young Romans to travel to the Greek East for educational purposes. On the fact that the tendency, for young elite Romans, to travel to Greece for education only developed slowly and late, see Ferrary 1988, 606–607. For a short summary of the presence of Greek intellectuals in Rome, see Ferrary 1996, 203–204. 66 It is clear that the increasing activities and influence of the technitai of Dionysos and the will of successive Roman Emperors at establishing a cohesive power both in Italy and in traditionally Greek-speaking areas of the world around the Mediterranean went hand in hand. See Bonamente 2003, 406: “L’affermarsi di una koine artistica grecoromana, unitamente alla crescente richiesta di spettacoli anche nel settore scenico, spiega la diffusione degli attori greci che, accomunati nel culto di Dionisio [. . .]”. On the technitai of Dionysos, see Jory 1970; Le Guen 2001, 2010, and this volume; Lightfoot 2002; Aneziri 2003 and 2009; Caldelli 2012. On the fact that Juvenal’s poems might have been a reaction against an “ongoing influx of Greek comedic actors into the imperial capital”, see Hanses 2016. The situation during the Republic was very different, and the fact that the Athenian technitai of Dionysos had sided with Mithridates in 88 BC rather than with the Romans is telling: it must have been clear to them that Rome’s use of Greek culture at this stage was still not enough (and not clearly enough in favour of the Greeks themselves) to demonstrate that siding with the Romans would offer a decent alternative for the survival and development of their association (see Ferrary 1988, 521; Le Guen 2007f: 351–357). 67 See Ferrary 1996, 190. 68 Transl. Jones 1927, 281.

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practice this education and training. The use of the demonstratives in τῶν τοιούτων παιδευμάτων and ταύτῃ τῇ ἀγωγῇ strengthens the link between the education of the Greeks mentioned in the previous passages and the type of education the Romans began to apply themselves to. While it is true that Strabo expresses elsewhere respect and admiration for the Romans (see Jones 1917, xix–xx), there is little doubt that the model of education he had in mind was Greek. He was himself educated by Greek teachers and mentors, both in the Greek East during the first part of his life and in Rome. At the end of the Republic and in Imperial times, Greek education, philhellenism, and the notion of paideia began to be more precisely linked to the concept of humanitas, a quality that also ensured a lucid, benevolent, and self-restrained use of hegemonic power.69 For Emperors, demonstrating that Rome had acquired mastery of Greek education, showing their philhellenism, was not only a mere matter of displaying a cultural superiority that warranted their dominant position: it showed their subordinates  –  all the people who were conquered and included into the Roman Empire  – that they had acquired, through this paideia, the moral qualities that ensured they would treat them in a benevolent way. Roman Emperors, I would suggest, used Greek theatre as a tool to display to the widest possible audience, both in Italy and in the rest of the conquered world, that Rome possessed the necessary culture that went with their hegemonic position. Theatre, as the mass medium of antiquity, was the most powerful cultural product that could be used to reach the widest possible audience, and Greek language, as Cicero had already remarked in his times (although about written literature), was understood in every nation while Latin was understood in a more restricted area.70 While it is clear that Rome’s self-professed philhellenism had already served expansionist ambitions at various stages during the Republic, it only became a coherent and wide-scale cultural and political programme in Imperial times.71 The use of what could be seen as a certain philhellenism by Romans for political purposes began at least as early as Flamininus’ use of the idea of liberation of Greek cities in his war against Philipp V. It is clear, however, that Flamininus’ strategic move had more to do with Rome’s intentions to extend its domination on Greek territory than with a real wish to promote the liberty of Greece or with a true appreciation for Greek culture or education.72 The latter only seems to appear later, with Aemilius Paullus or Scipio. Yet, here again, cultural and political aspects of their philhellenism are never quite reconciled, and a degree of ambiguity in the attitude of Roman Republican elite members towards Greek culture and education remains well alive in the later part of the Republic. Moreover, what had begun as a matter of articulating the complex relationship between Romans and Greeks, expanded during the Empire into a coherent discourse linking hegemony, paideia, and humanitas addressed to all conquered people: total hegemony, now in the hands of an autocrat, was rendered more acceptable through the idea that subordinates could be confident they would be treated with humanitas, since Rome and the Emperor possessed the necessary paideia conferring such a quality. Real cultural and political philhellenism thus only seem to be reconciled during Imperial times, where Emperors truly used Greek education as a tool to reinforce, justify, and promote their hegemony. Greek theatre was the tool that crystallised this coherent union between political behaviour and action and cultural philhellenism, which had become so powerful through the development of the Roman idea of humanitas, something that was absent from the discourse of Hellenistic rulers (who had been the precursors in showing their interest in Greek culture). In a somewhat paradoxical development, Greek theatre, that appears so linked to democracy, thus found a renewed specific use under Roman autocracy. Thanks to Greek theatre, Rome could broadcast a coherent message to everyone in its Empire, in Rome and Italy and beyond.

69 Ferrary 1996, 190. On the late development of this specific link between philhellenism and humanitas from Cicero’s time onwards, see Ferrary 1988, 512–518, and 623–624, where the author argues that this link, sketched in Cicero’s first letter to Quintus, began to really be put into practice, or at least used as a political tool, by Augustus (after the civil wars). The first signs of the presence of a link between culture and moderation in the exercise of power (or at least values of humanity) were perhaps already present in Isocrates, Ephorus, as well as later in Plutarch (e.g., in his description of Marcellus), probably through Posidonius. See Ferrary 1988, 510. 70 Cic. Arch. 23. 71 See, e.g., Dio Cassius (40, 13, 1), who records that Greek cities under Parthian domination willingly pledged allegiance to Crassus upon his arrival in the region because they placed good hope in the philhellenism of the Romans. 72 See Ferrary 1988, 527, and Ferrary 1996, 186–187.

Marie-Hélène Garelli

6 Drama and Power in Rome from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (First-Second Centuries AD) In 14 AD Tiberius held games in honour of his predecessor Augustus. They were marred by rivalry between pantomime dancers (histriones).1 Tacitus attributed responsibility to Augustus’ policies which he thought too tolerant of the public and of the new genre: to his indulgence of Maecenas who adored the dancer Bathyllus, Tacitus adds the emperor’s personal fondness for pantomime, and his lack of severity towards the people. “He thought it politic (civile) to share the people’s pleasures”, writes the historian.2 To Tacitus’ eyes Augustus had made it politically dangerous for any of his successors to attempt to exert imperial control over pantomime artists.3 Cassiodorus uses similar language in his analysis of an event in sixth-century Constantinople. At the time of the riots provoked by pantomime factions in the Hippodrome in 501 AD, Theodoric pursued a policy of conciliation based on political arguments: the grandstand was a place where excess was permitted. Tolerance of garrulitas, the uproar raised by spectators in the theatre or at the racetrack, brought an emperor honour and could serve his political interests.4 These two examples, one at each chronological boundary of the Empire, are not isolated. Ancient historiography happily ascribes oscillations in the theatre politics of emperors to their extreme solicitude for the people’s desires. Must the emperors’ attitudes and their theatre politics be interpreted as a demagogic calculation, or a stratagem for gaining popularitas and maintaining power?5 What part did the people’s voice play and how exactly did it connect with imperial decisions? What part was played by the senatorial élite and the knights? How did the management of ludi scaenici by Augustus and his successors, differ from the management of cultural events by the Republican aristocracy (whose actual practices Erich Gruen has described in detail)?6 Was it limited to control over the organisation of the ludi, or did it extend to control over the dramatic genres and the authors themselves? Can we speak of continuity? The cultural and artistic context of the first and second centuries AD was effectively one of renewal and profound change for dramatic genres and texts, as for all types of performance that made use of spectacle. The theatre at this time had many and various forms.7 From Cicero’s day a growing number of genres, new and ancient, were integrated into ludi scaenici.8 In the first century BC mime adopted new forms. It acquired a truly theatrical dimension: dramatic mimes with dialogue, song, dance and music were performed on stage from the time of 1 In the reign of Tiberius these disturbances recurred in 15 and 23 AD. 2 Tac. Ann. 1, 54. Aubrion 1990, 198 does not hesitate to translate civile as ‘Republican’, a term that draws attention to the Republican background to Augustus’ theatre politics. 3 Alia Tiberio morum via: sed populum per tot annos molliter habitum nondum audebat ad duriora vertere (“Tiberius was of a different disposition, but the people had been indulged for so many years that he no longer dared to bend them to a stricter discipline”). 4 Cassiod. Var. 1, 27: Quidquid illic gaudenti populo dicitur, injuria non putatur. Locus est qui defendit excessum. Quorum garrulitas si patienter accipitur, ipsos quoque principes ornare monstratur (“None of the declarations of the happy crowd in these places should be considered offensive. The place [the Circus] is such as to excuse excess. It is entirely to the glory of the emperors themselves if they patiently tolerate the uproar of the crowd”). See the comments of Le Coz 2013. 5 Aubrion 1990, 198, apropos of Tac. Ann. 1, 54, puts the question in these terms: “L’historien suggère-t-il que les empereurs julio-claudiens ont eu une indulgence excessive pour les amusements de la foule ou qu’ils n’ont pu faire autrement que de satisfaire ainsi les besoins exprimés par l’opinion publique?” 6 Gruen 1992, 183–222. 7 It is not possible to speak during the Empire of ‘theatre’ in the restricted sense of classical genres like tragedy and comedy (to which Atellana is sometimes added in recognition of its ancient ‘Italic’ character). Slater 1996b stresses that it is inappropriate for scholars to study Latin theatre with an exclusive focus on texts, to the neglect of archaeology. For the Empire we have no texts apart from Seneca’s tragedies and we do not even know if they were intended for the theatre. Our evidence is mainly archaeological and epigraphic. The testimony of the ancient historians is politically biased. 8 For this period by ‘theatre’ or ‘scenic games/competitions’ we mean ludi scaenici, strictly speaking, as well as thymelic competitions (thymelici agones), that is, music competitions given by some emperors, which might include scenic spectacles of a dramatic character. This was the case at Gythion in Laconia where Tiberius had fifteen competitions of this type put on in honour of Augustus. For an overview of the artistic innovations relating to spectacles and the evolution of dramatic genres in the first century BC, see Garelli 2007, 32–135 and 158–168. Note: I am grateful to Eric Csapo who kindly accepted to translate this paper and I thank Brigitte Le Guen for her remarks and suggestions. All the translations from Greek and Latin are my own, with the useful help of Eric Csapo in English. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-007

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Caesar.9 New genres arrived from Greece like tragoedia cantata, or the singing of lyric extracts.10 Above all, pantomime (sometimes also known as fabula saltata or saltica) had occupied Greek and Roman stages since 23 or 22 BC.11 Without completely replacing tragedy, with which it cohabited for a certain time, pantomime was perceived by the public and the organisers of games as a theatrical genre: at Rome pantomime was designated a fabula and the text of its accompanying song was a canticum.12 The stories that the solo dancer performed were myths already known to the public and already treated by Greek and Roman tragedians. Indeed the first pantomimes adapted plots of Euripidean tragedies, as epigrams in the Palatine Anthology attest.13 To grasp the complex relationship between emperors and the stage in the first and second centuries AD, it is best to distance oneself from any moralising perspective based upon condemnation of the new spectacles or that might take an exclusive interest in dramatic texts (which however were not neglected in the so-called popular genres).14

The Emperors’ Taste: The Ideological Constructions of Historiography and the Roman Cultural Élite In the guise of a casual enumeration, Tacitus constructs an acute critique of Augustus’ options. The four arguments listed by the historian in connection with pantomime performances reappear, separately or grouped together, under the pens of Latin and Greek writers in connection with several emperors, at least up to the time of Marcus Aurelius. They are: the emperor’s personal tastes; his connections with intellectual élites (in this case a member of the equestrian order); his ability to exercise political control over theatrical shows in the context of a renewal of the theatrical landscape; and the political relationship he established with the populace. To the eyes of the Republican cultural élite, valuing and keeping company with actors, enjoying spectacles, songs and, above all, dance, was a mark of non-aristocratic tendencies, and consequently a sign of the un-citizenly behaviour of a potential enemy of Rome. Cicero describes Antony’s retinue as a thiasos and Antony as a Dionysus, whose depravity was proven by the mimes in his attendance (Volumnia, Sergius, others) who pillaged Pompey’s property at will. Plutarch backs up his condemnation of the dictator Sulla with the claim that he openly and frequently kept company with actors of every kind, save only tragedians.15 This is an argument that, with variations, was used to bolster the criticism of bad emperors. Without neglecting the importance of each emperor’s character (his education, cultivation, associations and ambitions) in the development of his theatre politics, the claim that certain emperors had close or distant relations with actors often supports moral judgments in the service of political points. Augustus and Vespasian are the most complex examples. Tacitus suggests that Augustus had a taste for pantomime and this is confirmed by Dio Cassius (54, 17, 4–5) and Macrobius (Sat. 2, 7, 18–19). By contrast the historian praises the budgetary restraint Tiberius exercised in his expenditure on spectacles and takes comfort in his likely indifference to pantomime and pantomime artists.16 In reality, Augustus probably put his well-known talent for personal propaganda to good use when he made 9 The first century BC saw the birth of what scholars call ‘literary mime’, modelled after classical comedy (palliata or togata) and represented by two major authors, Laberius and Publilius Syrus. 10 Chandezon 1998; Hall 2002, 25–27. 11 Cf. Jory 1981, 148, who dates the official introduction of pantomime to 23 BC and not 22 BC, as Jerome claims (Eusebius’ Chronicle). Jory nonetheless admits an introduction of the genre before this date, as do Csapo and Slater 1995, 369. 12 For an analysis of the Greek and Latin vocabulary for naming pantomime, see Garelli 2007, 299–308 and on the etymology of histrio, see Paillard 2020. 13 Anth. Pal. 9, 248 (Boethos) and Anth. Plan. 16, 290 (Antipater of Thessaloniki). 14 Our viewpoint differs in this from André 1975; Pociña 1981; and André 1990; though on other points their analyses are valuable. Poets like Ovid probably provided subjects, if not texts, for pantomime. 15 For Antony, cf. Cic. Phil. 2, 24–26 and Plut. Ant. 56–57; for Sulla, cf. Plut. Sull. 2; 26 and 36. The phenomenon is well known and has received frequent comment. The absence of the names of tragic actors in the allusions to Sulla’s close acquaintances in the texts seems to take on a special significance in the discussions by cultural élites of his moral and political tastes. Roscius (comic actor), Metrobios (lysiodēs) and Sorix (archimimus) are clearly mentioned (Roscius: Val. Max. 8, 7, 7; Plut. Sull. 36,2; Metrobios: Plut. Sull. 2, 6; 36, 2; Sorix: Plut. Sull. 36, 2. See Leppin 1992, 260 about Metrobios and 298 about Sorix). Tragedy, as a classical genre, is associated in Plutarch’s day with the cultural resistance of traditionalist élites. 16 Cf. the senatus consultum of Larinum of 19 AD which attempts a return to conditions before 22 BC, as shown by Suspène 2004. Tiberius’

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display of a passion for spectacles, thereby constructing for himself a better image as public benefactor than did Caesar, who used to read and answer his mail while attending the theatre.17 Suetonius for his part avoids Tacitus’ moralistic framework and draws a clear distinction between Augustus’ personal taste and his treatment of actors.18 In the guise of objectivity, Suetonius’ treatment casually reveals the repression of licentia as an autocratic act, and one that the emperor had taken from the magistrates into his own hands as a personal prerogative. Suetonius’ presentation, less moralising, is politically more astute. It would be cumbrous to describe the case of each individual emperor. With respect to Nero, Pliny and Tacitus are in agreement. Tacitus strongly suggests that “passion for the theatre and circus are symptoms of Nero, the despot’s, madness”.19 The more complex example of Trajan reveals the internal contradictions that arise when one has recourse to arguments about the taste or personal influence of the emperor. In the Panegyric of Trajan, Pliny’s exercise in flattery includes, among other things, exaggerated approval of Trajan’s banishment of pantomimes (date unknown). Pliny’s procedure recalls Tacitus’ comparison of Augustus and Tiberius: because he overindulged the dancers, Nerva is said to have made the whole phenomenon of theatre rioting worse. Consequently, this forced Trajan to bring in tougher measures. The object of Pliny’s criticism is in fact Nero and his politics (and, beyond Nero, his main target is Domitian). In Pliny’s account the act of banishment assumes the guise of a restoration of Republican morality, culture and art: Idem ergo populus ille, aliquando scaenici imperatoris spectator et plausor, nunc in pantomimis quoque aversatur et damnat effeminatas artes et indecora saeculo studia. Ex quo manifestum est principum disciplinam capere etiam vulgus, cum rem, si ab uno fiat, severissimam fecerint omnes. Macte hac gravitatis gloria, Caesar, qua consecutus es ut quod antea vis et imperium, nunc mores vocarentur. And so this very same people, who once watched and applauded an emperor acting on stage, now even in pantomimes condemns the effeminate arts and unworthy tastes of our age. This proves that even the mob learns lessons from princes, when, if a step is taken by single man, all follow, most severe though it be. Glory to you, Caesar, for the dignity of this stance. Thanks to it, you brought it about that a decision that before you was violent and authoritarian is now accepted as a matter of common morality.20

The political argument is constructed with the help of an ideological deformation of facts and a specious verbal distinction between good banishment (Trajan’s quasi-‘Republican’ measure) and bad banishment (Domitian’s autocratic act). Like his predecessors (excepting Domitian who deftly removed pantomimes from the stage, but did not exile them),21 Trajan was forced to recall them in 103 AD. This fact is passed over by Pliny. Dio Cassius mentions it, however, and claims that it was motivated by the emperor’s erotic passion.22 Dio’s comment impugns the credibility of Pliny’s construct. In reality the banishment of pantomimes (generally followed by a recall) was an authoritarian act perpetrated by just about every emperor from Augustus to Trajan. Domitian’s policy on this subject proved in practice much more severe than Trajan’s. Yet Domitian had a well-known interest in Greek contests, performers and popular spectacles like mime.23 Nothing proves, therefore, that Trajan’s private tastes had any influence whatsoever on his willingness to bring back a higher level of culture. Pliny’s moralising perspective alerts the reader to the political and cultural élite’s aspiration to revive the role it once played, and the (long-vanished) influence it once exerted, in the constitution and managepolicy created discontent that can be explained by the awkwardness of the emperor, who was just as culpable as Augustus for the riots during his regime. 17 Suet. Aug. 45, thinks that, as Caesar had been reproached for this behaviour, Augustus wished to avoid projecting a similar image. But the historian adds other explanations close to those of Tacitus, like “the interest and pleasure Augustus derived from shows” (studio spectandi ac voluptate). 18 Suet. Aug. 45: Augustus protected actors from the excessive severity of the magistrates, but, at the same time, he himself assumed the responsibility of punishing them on several occasions: the actor-dancer Stephanion was on three occasions beaten with rods. 19 Cf. Aubrion 1990. Note that the case of Nero is peculiar. His passion for theatre is rather exclusive: he was entirely preoccupied with citharody (not to mention chariot racing). 20 Plin. Pan. 46, 1. 21 Suet. Dom. 7: interdixit histrionibus scaenam, intra domum quidem exercendi artem iure concesso (“he banned pantomimes from the stage and only allowed them the right to practice their art in private houses”); later (Dom. 8), Suetonius records that Domitian denied an exquaestor, who was a pantomime enthusiast, entry into the senate. 22 Epitome ad Cass. Dio 68, 10: ἔν τε τῷ θεάτρῳ μονομάχους συνέϐαλε (καὶ γὰρ ἔχαιρεν αὐτοῖς), καὶ τοὺς ὀρχηστὰς ἐς τὸ θέατρον ἐπανήγαγε (καὶ γὰρ ἑνὸς αὐτῶν τοῦ Πυλάδου ἤρα): (“Trajan had gladiatorial combats take place in the theatre [because he liked them] and he recalled the pantomimes to the theatre [because he was in love with one of them, Pylades]”). 23 Domitian fostered the development of mime and in 80 AD introduced aquatic mime, an import from the East. Cf. Mart. Spect. 25; 25b (Hero and Leander); 26 (the Nereids); on the afterlife of such spectacles, cf. John Chrysostom, Homily VII on Saint Matthew, 6–7.

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ment of theatre policy. Like Tacitus, Pliny gives voice to the second-century AD élite’s desire to exert influence over the kind of shows that were put on.24 This implied the exclusion of grandiose (pantomime) or popular (mime) shows and the bringing back of the ancient genres of tragedy, comedy, and possibly even Atellana, as we will see.25 Before Pliny, Martial had sung nostalgically of the time before the Roman people had lost their culture and Juvenal repeated the same theme.26 Pliny and Tacitus, however, valued munera, which included gladiatorial shows. These shows they considered exemplary for giving the public lessons in valour.27 Through his praise of Trajan, Pliny openly welcomed the positive effects of the influence a traditionalist élite was attempting to exert over imperial policy

The Emperor’s Personal Influence upon Theatre Policy: Which Realities? Did the aristocratic élite’s aspirations really have a marked impact upon the development of drama and upon the selection of theatre programmes? Did the emperors themselves, from the Julio-Claudians to the Antonines, have the power to influence these developments in any way? Many emperors are said to have exercised personal influence upon the development of dramatic spectacles. We will assess these claims by taking a close look at three cases: Augustus, Nero and, in combination, the Antonine emperors Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius.

An Augustine Model? Only Augustus exerted any really tangible influence upon the development of new theatre shows in his time. This influence, nonetheless, requires precise evaluation both on its own terms and in terms of the emperor’s wider political ambitions. His interest was manifested by strong support for new shows. Augustus must have provided support to his nephew Marcellus whose magnificent games in 23 BC gave official sanction and a powerful boost to the production of theatre shows on a vast scale.28 The financial support for the games of Marcellus can be compared to other large productions organised at Augustus’ behest: the Secular Games in 17 BC, which included pantomimes, the games put on in Pompeii in 3 or 2 BC, where the great Pylades danced, or the Sebasta in Naples in 2 AD, which may have included pantomime. At the same time Augustus did not neglect classical theatre, though he financed it less often, but at times very conspicuously. The recompense given the classical tragedy, Thyestes of Varius, is indicative, although, to be sure, it was a propaganda piece performed for Augustus’ triumph in 29 BC and probably a lavish production.29 A new political criterion began to interfere with the classical socio-cultural hierarchy of genres and to lessen its importance, namely, the opportunity in the course of a performance of promoting the character and praising the actions of the emperor. Our sources mention attempts to create new genres during his reign. Most appear connected to Augustus’ desire to give recognition to different layers of society beyond the mass of the people. The attempt to create a trabeata (a ‘comedy in a trabea’ or ‘knight’s comedy’) was doubtless an answer to the equestrian order’s wish to have a comedy of its own;30 a pantomime in toga was also performed, without much success, at the Secular Games in 17 BC by Stephanion.31 Faced with a proliferation of artistic and literary products in his time, where classical palliatae comedies and tragoediae shared the stage with spectacles like mime, Atellana, and pantomime, Augustus probably just increased the number of his interests until such time as the public taste had expressed its enthusiasm for the new artists and genres. This was a nimble policy of performances that never lost an opportunity to make propaganda, already evident in the performance of Varius’ Thyestes. Augustus combined this policy with the construction of theatres throughout the 24 André 1975 has thrown light on the aspirations of the Republican aristocracy and their desire to influence, in Antonine times, the emperor’s stance on artistic and literary matters. 25 Plin. Ep. 7, 17 explains that in his day tragedy had been relocated to auditoria, though it deserved to be performed on stage by actors. He sponsored classical theatre in his own home: Ep. 5, 19, 3; Ep. 9, 36, 4. In aristocratic circles classical genres were cultivated: Pomponius Bassulus and Vergilius Romanus wrote plays that were not performed (Plin. Ep. 6, 21). 26 Mart. 8, 3 and 12, 94; Juv. 6, 634; 7, 1. 27 Cf. Plin. Pan. 33, 1; Ep. 6, 34; Ep. 7, 11, 4. Tacitus (Dial. 10, 5) employs the image of courage and strength, quality requirements for eloquence. 28 Cf. Cass. Dio 53, 31, 2–3. The magnificence of Marcellus’ games presupposes substantial financial backing. 29 Tac. Dial. 12; Quint. Inst. 10, 1, 98. Augustus paid Varius a million sesterces. See also Cowan, this volume. 30 Suet. Gram. 21: trabeata was invented by Caius Melissus, director of the libraries of the Porticus of Octavia. 31 Cf. Plin. HN 7, 159; Suet. Aug. 45, 7. Stephanion is identified as a togatarius (dancer in a toga?).

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empire and the giving of encouragement to a genre that tended in the direction of universality. The immediate success of pantomime had less to do with Augustus’ influence on the development of theatre than with his clever strategic exploitation, for political ends, of new public tastes and modernity. The exercise of personal power, reinforced by propaganda in the theatre or by theatre itself, was only one of Augustus’ political goals, and one revealed by actions visible to all. But there are other bigger and more general decisions the emperor made in connection to theatre that betray deeper reflexion on how best to take possession of the Republican heritage of theatre politics: we will return to this in the last section of this study.

Nero, Pantomime and the Perversion of Power: Legend and Reality Suetonius helped construct a skewed image of Nero’s interests that confused the boundary between his artistic pursuit, citharody, and his other private interests. His alleged taste for pantomime certainly went well beyond interest shown by other emperors.32 On this foundation was constructed the image of an emperor who was depraved and cruel, an image reinforced by the deliberate inconsistencies in Suetonius’ line of argument.33 The historian moreover elaborates the political image of a tyrant who uses theatrical performances to exert despotic power over the aristocracy in order to degrade them. Nero ‘obliged’ knights of illustrious families, and senators, to appear on stage during the Iuvenalia (an athletic and musical competition) of 59 AD, an act that provoked much criticism, scandalised Tacitus and profoundly displeased Suetonius.34 It was not the first time that the upper classes appeared on the stage, even if, for reasons Arnaud Suspène has brought to light, the practice was not as widespread as the ancient historians would have us think.35 Nero was opening the stage to classes for which it had been forbidden. The Greek way of organising competitions led him to innovate in a way that the cultural élite found unacceptable. But this innovation had no connection with the nature of the performances or the genres performed. Nero was interested in pantomime insofar as it was a grand spectacle suited to the kind of sponsorship that would enhance his image as a model public benefactor and afford him opportunities for high visibility and public recognition from the crowds.36 Nero’s regard for the model of Greek agones gave him a preference for musical and lyric performances in the Greek tradition. Tiberius had more actively promoted new genres like pantomime. This is evidenced by the importance given during his reign to the Sebasta in Naples, Greek quinquennial contests, which from 18 AD, in order to celebrate the imperial cult, were expanded with a lyric and theatrical section that included the classic genres as well as pantomime.37 This is also evidenced by the organisation of thymelikoi agones in celebration of the imperial cult in Laconia at Gythion in 15 AD. We know of this festival from an inscribed decree, accompanied by a letter from Tiberius to the organisers of the contests.38 The emperor there gives instructions for the installation of imperial portraits and theatre fixtures for lyric performances and mimes. Elisabeth Gebhard has shown that this organisation clearly served the imperial propaganda that exploited the images of Augustus, his wife Livia, and Tiberius himself.39 32 Garelli 2004a. The stimulus given by Augustus and Tiberius was much more important than that given by Nero. That of Marcus Aurelius, who later integrated pantomime into the sacred competitions, was also much more decisive. 33 Juv. 8, 211 and Suet. Galb. 14 put his citharodic performances on the same level as his parricide, as shown by Aubrion 1990, 200. 34 The Iuvenalia included citharody, pantomime and probably mime, if one follows Tacitus. In fact Tacitus alone suggests that there was any compulsion. Participation appears to have been voluntary. Suet. Ner. 11: Iuvenalibus senes quoque consulares anusque matronas recepit ad lusum [. . .]. Ludis, quos pro aeternitate imperii susceptos appellari ‘maximos’ voluit, ex utroque ordine et sexu plerique ludicras partes sustinuerunt (“For the Iuvenalia he even granted that men of consular rank and aged matrons perform on the stage [. . .]; at the games that he had put on for the eternity of the empire and which he called “very great games” a considerable number of people of the two orders and of both sexes received acting roles”). Tac. Ann. 14, 14: instituit ludos Iuvenalium vocabulo, in quos passim nomina data. Non nobilitas cuiquam, non aetas aut acti honores impedimento, quo minus Graeci Latinive histrionis artem exercerent usque ad gestus modosque haud virilis (“he instituted games which he called Iuvenalia and for which mass recruitments were made. Neither nobility of rank, nor age, nor the honours of office prevented people from practicing the art of a Greek or Latin actor, including the gestures and the effeminate songs”). The term histriones encourages one to think of pantomimes. 35 Suspène 2004. 36 Cf. Suet. Ner. 12. 37 See Geer 1935; Strasser 2000; Strasser 2004. 38 SEG 11, 923. 39  Gebhard 1996. The portraits of the three members of the imperial family were, at the same time, honoured by the spectators, and themselves (i.e. the portraits) ‘watched’ the competitions along with the others.

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The Antonines between Archaising Aesthetic and the Diffusion of Imperial Cult To the court of the Antonines in the second century AD there gravitated literary figures who advocated a return to the ancient genres, and gave strength to an archaising aesthetic movement that came to a climax in Hadrian’s reign. This cultural élite liked to advertise their belief that the emperors shared their tastes. The Historia Augusta makes reference to Hadrian’s refined tastes and his interest in the ancient dramatic genres and Atellana: fabulas omnis generis more antiquo in theatro dedit  (“he sponsored plays of every genre in the ancient manner”).40 By “in the ancient manner” we should perhaps understand Atellana, but above all the classical comedies and tragedies of Republican times, notably plays of Menander, which Quintilian still cited at the end of the first century AD,41 and of Plautus and of Terence. It is more difficult to specify what tragedies are referred to: one thinks of Accius as a possibility, but not Seneca who served as the dreaded model par excellence of modernity. The statement in the Historia Augusta in fact proves anecdotal when confronted with the full list of Hadrian’s actions relating to spectacles: he promoted them all, pantomime and gladiatorial shows included. In the second century AD, the avowed principles of the grammarian Fronto, an antiquarian who admired Plautus and made himself the theoretician of archaism, had considerable influence in cultivated circles. As tutor to Marcus Aurelius, Fronto made his student study Atellana, undoubtedly to track down matters of linguistic interest in the texts.42 In any case the emperors’ attitudes never congealed into a policy that could influence public taste. They never had such a policy. However much Trajan, Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius indulged their grammarians’ concerns to promote archaising tastes, there is no evidence to suggest that the Antonines ever encouraged such tastes, or that they gave any particular preference to performances of the ancient dramatic genres. Archaism’s domain was the plastic arts, and here the emperors matched the taste of the broader public. Literary archaism was a failure. Even Atellana experienced nothing more than a brief flash of recognition before promptly sinking into oblivion. The Antonines were institutors of contests and their theatrical policy spread new spectacles throughout the empire. Whatever archaising tendencies might be recognised in Hadrian, his policy in the creation of games in Greece (at Athens the Panhellenia and Hadrianeia) and in the development of circus games or of mime spectacles, differed in no way from the policies established by Augustus and Tiberius, who made Greek agones elements of the imperial cult.43 Marcus Aurelius played a still more significant part. It was during the time Marcus Aurelius shared power with his son Commodus (177–180 AD)44 that pantomime was admitted into the Greek sacred games, and thereby recognised as an agonistic discipline on a level (or nearly on a level) with the more ancient genres.45 But the Greek competitions that the emperors created in Italy from the time of Augustus onwards very probably included pantomimes, even if the genre had not yet the status of an agonistic discipline.46 (We know that pantomime had the status of an agonistic discipline in 100 AD in Campania.)47 In this, the creation of competitions is paralleled by the circulation of lyric artists and dancers who

40 SHA Hadr. 19, 6. The interpretation of the passage is confirmed by SHA Hadr. 26, 4 which is, however, confined to banquets (in convivio). 41 Nervegna 2013, 63–120, has studied, inter alia, Menander’s posterity in the theatres of the Roman world. 42 Fronto, De otio of 162 AD. See André 1971. 43 On the Greek competitions Hadrian created wherever he set foot in the Greek world (Hadrianeia and Olympia, at Ephesus, at Athens, and elsewhere), cf. Robert 1970; Strasser 2010. 44 Commodus was named Augustus in 177 AD and ruled with his father until 180 AD. 45 According to Slater 1996c, in his study of an inscription of Magnesia (I.Magnesia 192), the first pantomime to be performed as an official entry in a sacred competition in the East would date to 176 AD. These celebrations were part of the imperial cult (See Price 1984a). See also Strasser 2004 and Le Guen forthcoming. 46 The rapid rise in the popularity of the genre allows one to propose as a plausible hypothesis that the games in Campania, the Sebasta instituted at Naples in honour of Augustus in 2 AD and the Eusebeia, included sacred competitions in pantomime. The Neroneia, inaugurated by Nero, and the Capitolia, created by Nero, as they were conceived purely in the spirit of Greek competitions, seem not to have officially offered pantomime as a competitive discipline, but that does not mean that it was necessarily absent. The Eusebeia of Antoninus Pius in 138 AD (Artem. 1, 26; SHA Hadr. 27), and then the games created at Carthage or at Caesarea in Mauretania, included pantomime without doubt. The competition put on every third year by Aurelian in Rome in 274 AD and the competition of Athena Promachos of Gordian III probably also offered pantomime. See Robert 1970 for clarification and Slater 1995 on the introduction of mime and pantomime in the Greek competitions and the imperial cult. 47 Cf. Leppin 1992, 174 on SEG 33, 770 on the dancer L. Aurelius Apolaustus winner in Italy (Naples? Cumae?) in the dia pantōn in 100 AD.

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performed at sacred competitions. The new agonistic calendar as adjusted by Hadrian, who exercised a close control over the Greek contests, contributed to facilitating this circulation.48 The emperors brought their theatre policy into line with trends already widespread throughout the Empire. It was, as in the time of Augustus and Tiberius, a matter of incorporating theatrical entertainments into the propaganda machine that the imperial cult had unambiguously come to serve. To the local competitions in the Greek world, long under the control of the Greek cities themselves, were added the periodic competitions, sacred and stephanitic competitions, at four or two year intervals.49 During the Hellenistic period, the expansion of the Greek world had led to the creation, on the model of the periodic competitions, of stephanitic competitions which the Hellenistic kings or the cities had to make acceptable to Greece as a whole.50 This process continued during the Empire but with significant differences: the competitions were given by the emperors, or with the emperor’s express authorization, and the creation or transformation of games or of contests was due to the specific aspirations of individual emperors (in particular the Julio-Claudians, Hadrian, Commodus, and the Severans). Some competitions, like the Neronia, for example, did not survive the emperor who created them. But if pantomime had been made part of the sacred competitions in Italy from 100 AD, the sacred competitions of the Greek East resisted the introduction of pantomime and this limited the ability of the emperors to expand the art as much as they might have wished.51 The reasons for the resistance were cultural and peculiarly Greek. In his commentary on three inscriptions related to the pantomime dancer Tiberius Iulius Apolaustus, who was successful in competitions in Asia Minor and Greece at the end of the second century AD, William Slater shows that the introduction of pantomime into the sacred competitions of the Greek East was no earlier than the reign of Commodus (180 AD).52 None of the major sacred competitions in Greece, not even the Aktia of Nicopolis, admitted pantomime as a competitive art before this date. Slater restores the precise name of the competition in Pergamum, that Apolaustus won as Olympeia Asklepieia Kommodeia Sebasta koina Asias. The ‘koina Asias’, organised by cities of Asia Minor (Smyrna, Ephesus, Pergamum) and sponsored by the priest of the imperial cult, was at that time the only competition that allowed a pantomime to become simultaneously a hieronikes (‘sacred victor’) and an asionikes. The ‘koina Asias’ also admitted mimes into the competition and allowed them the opportunity to be titled asionikes. Pantomimes were admitted, it seems, because the programme of this competition was different from that of regular sacred competitions and specifically included performances that appealed to Roman tastes (gladiators, mimes and pantomimes). Louis Robert drew attention, before Slater, to this cultural resistance to mime and pantomime and showed that they were excluded from Greek sacred competitions for two reasons: the ‘classicising hostility’ of the agonothetes, which we might interpret as Greek resistance to Roman efforts to influence the content of their competitions, and ‘the power of tradition’.53 It was, moreover, the emperor’s reorganisation of the contents of the Asklepieia into Kommodeia Sebasta during the reign of Commodus that permitted the admission of pantomime as a competitive discipline. This admission was not one that could be envisioned in established and traditional competitions. The incorporation of pantomime in the imperial cult was another important reason for this admission. 48 See Le Guen 2010c and Strasser 2010 about three letters from Hadrian, found in Alexandria Troad. The inscription, published in 2006, shows that Hadrian was involved with all the aspects of the contests and in particular with the adjustments of the calendar. 49 Robert 1970: competitions at four year intervals in Olympia and Delphi, at two year intervals in Isthmia and Nemea. Periodic competitions formed the periodos, i.e. the complete tour of the great sacred Panhellenic competitions by a competitor. In the Classical period, the competitions of the periodos were the Olympia at Pisa, the Isthmia at Corinth, the Nemea at Argos, and the Pythia at Delphi. This ‘ancient period’ was extended under the Empire to the Aktia at Nicopolis, the Kapetōlia at Rome, the Hēraia at Argos, and perhaps, the Sebasta at Neapolis (Le Guen 2010c, 221; Ferrary 1996. Strasser (2000) adds the Eusebeia at Puteoli. A ‘stephanitic’ competition was a competition where the prize was a crown, but could also be a reward in money (see Strasser 2010). More significant was the distinction between ‘sacred contests’, where the prize was a crown and money, and ‘sacred iselastic’ contests, where the winner received a pension, syntaxis (see Le Guen 2010c). 50 See Vial 2003 about the contests created by Ptolemaic and Attalid kings and by the cities. 51 Pantomime was probably not admitted in all the competitions of the Greek East as an official competition allowing the performer to become a hieronikes. We do not in fact have evidence for official prizes at the competitions of Delphi, Olympia, Isthmia and Nemea, only evidence for special prizes given outside competition. 52 Inscription from Delphi (FD III 1, 551); inscription from Ephesus (I.Ephesos 2070 + 1071); inscription from Corinth (Corinth VIII 3, fr. 693; fr. 370); see Strasser, 2004 who established a new chronology for I.Ephesos 2070 + 1071, prior to FD III 1, 551. 53 Mime was never introduced as a competitive discipline there. The inscription from Tralles of a mime from Nicomedia (see Robert 1936) mentions no victory of this kind and the mime Flavius Alexandros Oxeidas was asionikes in competitions that also accepted munera of gladiators.

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I have elsewhere suggested that the catalogue of pantomime subjects that we find in Lucian’s On Dance (38–60) of about 164 AD is also a reflection of Greek resistance.54 The author seems to have set himself the task of demonstrating that pantomime was worthy of incorporation into the sacred competitions. His mythic geography and the ordering of his list of pantomime themes is politically charged in that it starts from old Greece and expands towards the confines of the Roman world. Clever sophist that he is, he inverts the reality of Roman cultural imperialism in that his argument departs from the facts by characterising pantomime as a thoroughly Greek cultural practice. This paradoxical argument, forged in the context of the Second Sophistic, certainly gave voice to an intellectual movement toward acceptance of the genre as a competitive art, but it does not belong to the actual start of this acceptance, which only took place some twenty years later.

Interpreting the Republican Heritage: A Reflected Autocracy and its Perversions Whatever their level of education and culture, the emperors of the first and second centuries AD shared the tastes of their era – an era that created a new pathway for theatre politics. The influence they exerted upon public taste in arranging the programmes of dramatic offerings was slight. There is no certainty that they deepened or quickened the existing trends, and they had, in any case, no interest in opposing them. I fully agree with the conclusion of Pascal Arnaud that, when attending a spectacle, the emperor had to choice but to ‘lend an obliging ear’ to the demands of the people.55 Studies of claques, acclamations and the emperor’s position in the theatre all show that in this context he became a mere spectator at the mercy of the people’s criticisms, complaints and political demands.56 He remained accessible. The question is much bigger than the emperors’ tastes, their ethics, or any influence they might have ‘tried’ to exert on the genres of performance. It is even bigger than the scope of the imperial propaganda generated from the reign of Augustus onwards (for which we get a good impression from such sources as the work conducted at the excavations in Aphrodisias).57

Autocracy and Theatre during the Empire: Republican Foundations An important part was played by what Jean-Marie André called the ‘enlightened despotism’ of the Republican period and the culture of benefaction (euergetism) of the first emperors.58 But the issue is more complex. Imperial autocratic policy on matters concerning the theatre entailed at least two facets, both inherited from Republican political practice: imperial control of Greek culture and social control of the auditorium. For the Republic, the widespread notion that a magistrate’s career depended on the quality of the scenic games he offered, and that the contents and organisation of ludi scaenici made or broke careers, is wrong. Erich Gruen demonstrated that, even if ludi circenses and gladiatorial combats could effectively play a role in the advancement of a political career, the case was different with ludi scaenici, which had a place all of its own in spectacle politics.59 From the time of the first official ludi scaenici in 240 BC, the Roman public went to the theatre to watch plays in Latin that were adapted from Greek models and brought a Greek world onto the stage. In the Republic the challenge for praetors and aediles of organising competitions under the watchful eye of the Senate lay in the choice and purchase of plays and in decisions related to funding the performance.

54 Garelli 2004b. 55 Arnaud 2004. 56 Potter 1996 notes that the expression of public opinion through acclamations gains importance the more autocratic the state becomes. The emperor had the same means of employing claques as did any other organised group in the auditorium. 57 See Roueché 1993; Gebhard 1996. 58 Dio of Prusa and Tacitus offer arguments with this tendency: Dio Chrys. Or. 3, 133; 32, 60; Tac. Ann. 15, 65, 2; 15, 67, 4. 59 Gruen 1992, 183–222: “The Theatre and Aristocratic Culture”.

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The allegedly moral grounds behind the ban by the senatorial aristocracy on the construction of permanent theatres (in 179, 174 and 154 BC) is an ideological historiographical construct.60 In fact the building and dismantling of wooden theatres was perceived as a conspicuous political act designed to demonstrate clear control over the organisation of scenic competitions by powerful Roman families, and, consequently, to demonstrate their political supremacy, as James Tan has recently shown in relation to the attempt to construct a permanent theatre in 154/3 BC.61 In this area aristocratic despotism entailed an assertion of total control, by Rome, of Greek culture. This control was exercised by way of the organisation of scenic games but did not necessarily affect the content of plays (whose political import and criticism of power remain topics of debate).62 Augustus made it his principle to assert Roman cultural control over Greek actors and dramatic productions. His nationalistic and imperialistic policy was expressed through the, in reality, quite complex connection he maintained with Greek performers. Macrobius’ testimony, which beyond any doubt draws on texts from the time of Augustus, reproduces part of the Greek text of a canticum danced by Pylades as well as some comments addressed in Greek to a colleague or simultaneously to Augustus that remind him of the power that the emperor held over the performer.63 The Greek competitions in Italy soon introduced pantomime (from the time of Tiberius), and thus assured the mastery and acculturation of a genre imported from the Greek East. Also under Tiberius mime served the needs of imperial propaganda in the Greek East, as we have seen in the case of Gythion. During the Empire the procedure for setting the programme was always entrusted to the magistrates, but the responsibility for organising spectacles passed in 22 BC from the aediles to the praetors, probably in response to the increased financial demands of the new spectacles. Imperial power was exercised through the new financial organisation: the emperor forbade praetors to increase finances by drawing on their own personal funds in order to prevent any kind of cultural control of the games by aristocrats after the Republican model.64 The emperor visibly exercised control during the spectacles, and at the same time received taunts and criticism, like that of Pylades or the mime mentioned by Suetonius.65

Firm Control over the Auditorium In addition to cultural control over spectacles imported from the Greek East, control over theatre performances was exercised through regulation of the public seating in the theatre cavea. Around 20 BC Augustus imposed a hierarchical seating order, described by Suetonius, which also had Republican roots.66 Republican legislation, from 194 BC, had tried to impose, despite strong resistance, honorific seating for senators after the manner of the prohedria in Greek theatres.67 In 67 BC the lex Roscia theatralis inaugurated, with no less resistance from the plebs, a prohedria for knights, reserving fourteen rows of seats for the order, something that, according to Cicero, was only the restoration of an even more ancient law.68 The regulation was later extended to the auditoria of gladiatorial shows. We know that from the time of Cicero the hierarchy in the theatre was still more nuanced, but we do not know the details.69

60 Tac. Ann. 14, 20; Val. Max. 2, 4, 2: standing preserves the dignity and virility of spectators; the absence of a permanent theatre prevented political gatherings. 61 Tan 2016 hypothesises that Scipio Nasica took advantage of a political crisis in Rome to put himself forward as a political leader by destroying, in the guise of morality, the theatre constructed on the political initiative of the censors of 154/3 BC. 62 See Gruen 1990, 78–157: dramatic authors, Plautus in particular, were neither political commentators nor moral reformers. 63 Macrob. Sat. 2, 7, 18–19 (Pylades, reprimanded for disturbances, brings home to Augustus his political interest in having the public occupy itself with pantomimes); Cass. Dio 54, 17, 4–5. 64 Cavallaro 1984, 34–35. The letters from Hadrian found at Alexandria Troas (see again Strasser 2010 and Le Guen 2010c) show that a narrow control was exercised by the emperor on the cities’ finances. 65 Suet. Aug. 68, 1: Augustus is accused of being effeminate and “of governing his disk with his finger”. 66 Suet. Aug. 44, 1–5; on the positioning, see Kolendo 1981; Rawson 1987. 67 Cf. Livy 34, 44, 5; 34, 54, 3–8: during Scipio Africanus’ second consulship the censors Sextus Aelius Paetus and Caius Cornelius Cethegus “ordered the curule aediles to set places for those of senatorial rank separate from those of the people” (ludis Romanis aedilibus curulibus imperarunt ut loca senatoria secernerent a populo). The affair stirred up negative reactions recorded by Livy, Asconius (69–70 Clark) and Valerius Maximus 2, 4, 3. 68 Cf. Cic. Mur. 39–40; Plut. Cic. 13, 2–4. 69 Cf. Cic. Phil. 2, 44: a specific section of the theatre was for example reserved for bankrupts.

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During the Empire the assertion of social hierarchy in the theatre auditorium was culturally accepted by the Romans, as it was by foreigners. But it continued to be sufficiently problematic to become the object of various political demands and adaptations. Even if Augustus forbade ambassadors to take a seat in the orchestra, on the grounds that their delegations sometimes included freedmen,70 Claudius (or Nero), by way of exception, granted German representatives the right to sit in the orchestra, as had indeed some Parthians and Armenians.71 Later, Trajan had to seat ambassadors of foreign kings among the senators.72 For the knights too there were important variations in the lex Roscia’s application. Martial tells us that its rigor lapsed after Augustus, making it necessary for Domitian to restore the old order along with the knights’ privilege.73 In themselves these changes demonstrate, on the one hand, the emperors’ regard for hierarchy at the games, and, on the other, the emperors’ ability to interfere politically in the organisation of spectacles. The fact that Augustus’ successors regularly had to restore this ancient hierarchy indicates that the Republican foundations laid by and for the senatorial aristocracy, and then at the end of the first century BC for the equestrian order in recognition of the social importance of the knights, were still politically important during the Empire. In addition to relaxation in the application of imperial legislation, the system of control over scenic competitions was subject to occasional perversions, though these were not specific to the imperial operations, since we already find examples in Republican times. An interesting case is provided by the games given by the propraetor Lucius Anicius Gallus in 167 BC.74 It has been supposed that the chaotic state, into which the performances were brought on the orders of the organising magistrate himself, was a consequence of his own lack of culture or boorish want of familiarity with Greek practice. But Erich Gruen once more offers an original interpretation in finding here a desire, in the context of Anicius’ rivalry with Aemilius Paulus, the conqueror of Persia, to leave a personal stamp on the games he organised in the Circus Maximus in Rome with imported artists (technitai).75 The assertion of Roman power over Greek performances took the exceptional form of organised chaos. We should probably modify this exclusively political interpretation of the games of Anicius, in line with Jean-Louis Ferrary, who draws a clear distinction between the personal actions of Aemilius Paulus in organising the festival at Amphipolis and that of Anicius in injudiciously bringing the technitai directly to Rome itself.76 George Franko offers the new theory that Anicius’ decisions, in response to the different expectations of the Roman audience, gave expression to the Roman carnivalesque spirit that we find in the comedies of Plautus.77 The famous Laberius affair at the end of the Republic also deserves mention in this context. The setting is a dramatic mime, a genre that was especially popular in this time before the rise of pantomime. According to our literary sources,78 Caesar forced the famous author of mimes, who was a knight, to perform in his own mimes, and in consequence to lose his status as a knight.79 But after this despotic humiliation Caesar gave him back his gold ring along with 500,000 sesterces to regain his equestrian status.80 In fact the behaviour of Caesar and Laberius suggests a prior arrangement for reasons that many scholars have advanced.81 The mime-writer could have played a part in a ‘staged’ event meant to put Caesar’s generosity into relief before the public eye and to consolidate his control over scenic games. The amount of money given to Laberius, at least symbolically equal to the census qualification for membership in the equestrian order, is one of a series of famous rewards for dramatists in ancient Rome, by Augustus to Varius, for his Thyestes, and by Vespasian

70 Suet. Aug. 44, 2. 71 Suet. Claud. 25, 12. The historian places in the reign of Claudius an episode that Tacitus, who locates it in the Theatre of Pompey, dates to the reign of Nero (Tac. Ann. 13, 54). 72 Cass. Dio 68, 15. 73 Mart. 5, 23. 74 Polyb. 30, 22, 1–12. The contradictory and chaotic directions that Anicius gave the actors, the chorus and the musicians, drove them into a final scrum which Polybius characterises as ‘beyond all description’. See Paillard, this volume. 75 Gruen 1992, 215–218. “Anicius manipulated and distorted a Hellenic performance to demonstrate Roman control of the dramatic genre” (218). 76 Ferrary 1988, 519; 566–568: Athenaeus, who cites the fragment (14, 615a-e), designates the performers with the term technitai, thus placing (according to Ferrary) the performance in the context of a Greco-Roman world whose construction partly depended upon the mutual acculturation of the two peoples. Rome’s Hellenisation in cultural matters is a rather ambiguous process. 77 Franko 2013. 78 Sen. Controv. 7, 3, 9; Suet. Iul. 39, 3; Macrob. Sat. 2, 3, 10; 7, 3, 8. For critical readings, see Dumont 2004; Lebek 1996. 79 Panayotakis 2010, 45- 57 offers a review of the scholarship on this question in the introduction to his edition of the fragments of Laberius. 80 The census requirement for a knight was 400,000 sesterces. Caesar therefore gave a greater amount. 81 See Dumont 2004; Potter 1996.

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to the actor Apelles.82 Through this public act, Caesar cynically advertised that the power to organise and disorganise scenic games, that is to say, the cultural control of these games, had passed from the hands of the magistrates to those of the dictator. The emperors followed their lead. The Palatine Games, given by Caligula and described by Flavius Josephus, illustrate, by way of a unique example, the extreme limits that despotic power could wield over the organisation of scenic games.83 In 41 AD the emperor had a wooden theatre erected close to his palace on the Palatine so that the Palatine Games, officially inaugurated by Livia in Augustus’ honour, could be held there. They included pantomime performances. Caligula’s despotic alteration was the elimination of all social hierarchy in the seating of the auditorium.84 Josephus draws a significant connection between this social chaos and the assassination plot against Caligula that came to fruition during the show: the death of the emperor came as a result of the humiliation to which senators, knights and free men, generally, had been exposed.

The Difficult Search for a Political Balance Let us return to the disturbances created by pantomimes in the theatre during the reign of Augustus. These situations were controlled by an alternation of periods of severity with periods of indulgence. The explanations offered by imperial historiography refer to the direct relationship the emperor had formed with the plebs, to his desire to cater to its tastes, or, in certain cases, to his desire to use entertainment to distract its attention from political issues. The problem is perceived to be the reconciliation of two opposed political postures: one, righteous and stern, encourages the repression of insurrections and the banishment of trouble-makers; the other, permissive and opportunistic. But this overlooks an important social factor: the part played by senators and the equestrian order. The disturbances in Constantinople in 501 AD lie beyond the scope of this study, but they are instructive. The explanations given by Cassiodorus are not altogether satisfactory.85 From 490 to 525 AD dancers were expelled and recalled at a rapid rate. Aurélien Le Coz has thrown light on the important part the senatorial class played in these disturbances.86 The influential members of the factions supporting the dancers had connections with the senators. The dancers served as “precision tools for the legitimation of established power” (“des outils d’un usage délicat au service de la légitimation du pouvoir en place”). How did things stand in the time period of our inquiry? This model does not altogether fit the theatre politics of the first and second centuries AD. There is nonetheless a significant parallel: the part played by the associations of Iuvenes or the knights. The riots that were repeated during the reign of Tiberius were the result of the emperor’s cutbacks in the budget for spectacles. When dancers refused to appear on stage, the riots erupted under the powerful impetus of the associations of Roman youths, the Iuvenes, which included many knights among their ranks, and had links to theatre circles and to the artists themselves, as William Slater has shown in the case of pantomime.87 These associations had long been connected to ludi and theatre shows. In his recent history of the equestrian order, Caillan Davenport has studied in detail the equestrian order’s place in the theatre and its influence, both sociological and symbolic, upon Roman society.88 Tiberius’ repression of the riots was also a demonstration of his authority over the equestrian order. It was not just a question of banishing pantomimes, but of repressing the claques and factions that supported the pantomimes. Tiberius had little familiarity with the phenomenon and consequently had trouble bringing it under control. Alongside the repression Tiberius published in 19 AD a senatus consultum that prohibited knights from appearing on

82 Suet. Vesp. 19. See Gebhard 1996. 83 Joseph AJ 19, 75–91. 84 Joseph AJ 19, 86: “At that moment the crowd headed toward the Palatine in joyful anticipation of the show, jostling and scrambling, because Gaius loved to watch the rush of the crowd on these occasions. As a result there was no separate space either for the senate or the knights, and one could see men sitting haphazardly beside women, and free men mixed together with slaves”. 85 Cassiod. Var. 1, 27. 86 Le Coz 2013. 87 Slater 1994. 88 Davenport 2019, 428–435 (“Equites as Performers and Gladiators: Ideology and Regulation”).

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stage or in the arena (even though this senatus consultum followed a text voted upon in 11 AD).89 The practice, or fashion, of senators and knights appearing on stage in pantomimes and mimes had no connection with the riots. These rather exceptional appearances, according to Arnaud Suspène, could enhance the prestige of games and so played to the advantage of the organisers or the emperor.90 Is this not what Nero hoped to do, even though Tiberius dismissed such a model of governance? Augustus’ regulation of seating at the theatre was a clear affirmation, in avowed adherence to Republican principles, of the importance of social hierarchy. It recognised unequivocally the places of senators and of knights in the political arena formed by the theatre auditorium. Jonathan Edmondson stresses that the more the principate evolved, the greater the segregation observed in the theatre.91 Paradoxically the emperors most hostile to the senatorial aristocracy did not undo this segregation, but sometimes reinforced it, as did Nero when Tiridatus was crowned, or Domitian.92 The emperors of the first and second centuries AD inherited a policy of control over scenic games that had been worked out in Republican times by the senatorial aristocracy and then reinterpreted by Augustus. Before him, the theatrical excesses of Caesar and, after him, the tyrannical caprice of Caligula represented the extreme limits of autocratic power beyond which it was risky for an emperor to pass. From the Julio-Claudians to the Antonines, the majority of emperors adapted their theatre politics to the fluctuating balance of Roman political life. The testimonies of Tacitus and Cassiodorus, cited in the introduction, never went beyond the binary relationship of emperor and plebs. Two important factors need to be taken into consideration. First, the foundation, from the time of Tiberius, of an imperial cult integrated large-scale spectacles as propagandistic components of the cult, quite independent of the contents of a performance or a text. Secondly, the senatorial and equestrian orders were important parameters in the emperor’s quest for political equilibrium. It is from the equestrian order that Nero recruited the claques he formed with the aid of the Alexandrian instructors that he had brought to Rome for the purpose.93 The rivalry between factions and claques (in which the emperor participated) often formed a substitute for political debate (which saw itself transferred to the theatre).94 The theatrical genres that were widespread during the Empire had become, through their star performers and the factions that supported them, a medium for political exchanges and power struggles.

89 On the subject of the senatus consultum of 11 AD and of 19 AD, see Levick 1983–1984; Demougin 1988. 90 Suspène 2004. 91 Edmondson 1996. The construction of the Flavian amphitheatre seems to have reinforced these separations. 92 Cass. Dio 63, 4, 2; Mart. 3, 95; 5, 8; 5, 14; 5, 23; 5, 25; 5, 35; 5, 38. 93 Suet. Ner. 20. 94 André 1990.

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7 Augustan Policy Towards the Greek Dramatic Festivals Greek agonistic festivals flourished in the Roman imperial period, increasing drastically from the age of Augustus through the early third century AD.1 Leschhorn identifies over 500 agonistic festivals (agōnes) in the Greek East during this time.2 Of these, at least 50 are known to have had competitions in drama.3 The foundation of the Sebasta in Naples in 2 AD, and Domitian’s foundation of the Capitolia in Rome in 86 AD, brought the circuit of panhellenic festivals, the periodos, to Italy, and further expansions occurred under Hadrian and Antoninus Pius.4 By the second half of the second century AD, the periodos included not just the major games of mainland Greece and Italy, but also games in Asia Minor.5 Performers traveling the circuit in pursuit of victories at the highest level contributed to the globalisation of this network. Augustus laid the foundations for these striking developments in Greek festival culture. The first and most direct intervention was his re-foundation of the Actian games at Nicopolis in 27 BC. The practice of upgrading contests was common in the Hellenistic period, and Augustus’ re-foundation of the Actia built upon this precedent.6 Throughout the imperial period, the establishment of new Olympia, Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea, echoing the most venerable contests of ancient Greece, reflect a classicising impulse which took hold under his rule, while new Actia referenced his own foundation, classicising the Augustan period in turn.7 Augustus also supported the continuation of existing customs, as in his affirmation of the rights and privileges of the technitai of Dionysus, re-affirmed by Claudius and later emperors.8 Additionally, Augustus showed his support for festivals inaugurated in his honour with his own attendance, as at the Neapolitan Sebasta, or with material support, as in the case of Herod’s Kaisareia. For changes such as the elevation of the Actian games to take hold required a buy-in on the part of the festival organisers, typically local elites, performers, and spectators, part of what Ando identifies as the process of consensus which characterised Roman imperial governance.9 As Ando shows, cities, led by local elites, promoted civic identity by situating themselves in the larger frame of the Empire or oikoumenē, by issuing coins, investing in building projects, and establishing, renewing, and expanding festivals.10 Aneziri argues that Greek festival programmes in the Roman period similarly reflect a self-conscious fashioning of civic identity which looked both to a Greek past, by resisting new types of competitions, and also connections to imperial power, in associating festivals with the imperial cult, and increasing encomiastic competitions.11 Roman imperial ideology was rooted in local communities, the poleis of the Greek East, and promoted through systems of local governance.12 This is seen clearly in the case of the festivals, as elites asserted status through benefaction and the assumption of offices relating to festival administration, and koina became primarily religious governing bodies, which administered imperial cult celebrations at an inter-civic level.

1 Robert 1984, 38. 2 Leschhorn 1998, 31. 3 Many of the relevant inscriptions were collected by Moretti 1953. Boiotia was particularly rich in musical and poetic festivals: Manieri 2009. 4 On the question of why Rome needed a Greek festival: Newby 2005, 34. Later circuit expansions: Caldelli 1993, 43–45; Strasser 2000 and 2010; Le Guen 2010c, 210–219; Remijsen 2015, 132. 5 Jones 2007; Gouw 2008. 6 The process is well attested in the case of the Leukophryneia at Magnesia on the Maeander, where the contest was upgraded in 208 BC to become crowned; this required other poleis to agree to the new status: Slater et al. 2006; Thonemann 2007, 151. On the increase in panhellenic festivals in the Hellenistic period: Parker 2004. 7 Weir 2004, 179–180, table 6.1 collects the evidence for the 30 imperial-era foundations of Pythia throughout the Empire. Upgrading of festivals: van Nijf 2001, 310–311. New festival foundations, particularly of imperial cult celebrations: Graf 2015, 30–32. Numismatic evidence for festival foundations: Klose 2005. The first use of the term isolympic was by Ptolemy II, at the establishment of the Ptolemaia in 279 BC: Remijsen 2009, 258–259. On the use of titles such as isolympian, isonemean, and isopythian to re-affirm connections to the past: Aneziri 2014, 428. See also Le Guen 2010c, 221. 8 POxy. 2476, l. 1–4, a letter of Claudius to the technitai of Dionysus, affirming privileges granted by Augustus. On imperial correspondence with the technitai: Geagan 1972 and 1975; Oliver 1974; Petzl 1974; Millar 1977, 456–464; Petzl et al. 2006. 9 Ando 2000. 10 Ando 2000, 51. 11 Aneziri 2014, 425–427. 12 Ando 2000, 175. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-008

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Client kings, in turn, used Greek dramatic festivals to situate their kingdoms in relation to the Greco-Roman cultural sphere, as a way of advertising political ties to Rome. The two areas in which this occurred had no prior history of engagement with Greek drama. In Mauretania, Juba II composed a Theatrical History in 17 volumes, of which a few fragments survive.13 Meanwhile, nearly simultaneously with Augustus’ renewal of the Actia, Herod began to build theatres and establish dramatic festivals in Judaea, establishing an autocratic theatre context within the larger imperial frame of the Augustan Mediterranean. These activities suggest that engagement with the theatre was part of a strategy of assimilation for client kings at the fringes of the Empire, men with personal experience of Rome, who had seen firsthand that Greek cultural competence and elite patterns of behaviour, including the demonstration of knowledge about Greek drama, in the case of Juba, and festival benefaction, in the case of Herod, was part of the language of diplomacy in the Roman imperial world.

Augustus, the Actia, and the Expansion of the Periodos In September of 27 BC, Augustus re-founded the Actia at Nicopolis, the first foundation of a cyclical Greek festival by a Roman political leader. This was a renewal of a prior festival of Apollo.14 By elevating the status of the Actia to that of the Olympia, Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea, Augustus looked back to the foundations of the panhellenic festivals of Archaic Greece, a neoclassicising move in line with, for example, his renewal of ancient styles of art and architecture in Rome and the provinces.15 He also founded an Actia at Nicopolis in Egypt, a festival of lower status than the one at the Nicopolis of the Greek mainland.16 At Rome, the first cyclic Greek festival was voted in Augustus’ honour after Actium, to be held on a penteteric cycle.17 The foundations of the Actia in Greece, Rome, and Egypt were political and cultural statements, which began to enmesh the city of Rome in the festival network of the Eastern Mediterranean. They also wrote Augustus’ own history into the Greek festival calendar. Augustus also used the Actia to bring together Apollo, his own patron deity, and Dionysus, associated with the defeated Antony, in a relationship of concord rather than antagonism.18 The Apolline festival included not only musical but also dramatic competitions from the time of its re-foundation, providing more opportunities for the technitai of Dionysus to attain the victories necessary to become periodonikai, victors on the periodos. Gaius Julius Julianus won the competition in tragedy at the Actia under Augustus.19 The first attestation of comedy at the Actia is from the late first century AD, in Arrian’s report of Epictetus’ Discourses, although it is certainly possible that comedy was part of the programme from the beginning.20 While he was living in Epirus after his expulsion from Rome by Domitian in 89 or 92 AD, Epictetus witnessed a comic actor (kōmōidos), Sophron, compete at the games in the theatre, presumably the Actia. This Sophron may be Marcus Julius Sophron, a comic actor from Hierapolis in Phrygia.21 In 128 AD, another kōmōidos voted on a decree of the world-wide technitai of Dionysus and Hadrian in Ankyra. If the reconstruction is correct (κωμ[ῳ]δοῦ ἀ[τιονείκου παραδόξου]), he was a victor at the Actia, suggesting that the dramatic competitions endured well into the imperial period.22 As a perpetually recurring event, the festival required ongoing support from local elites, performers, and spectators. While the ancient sources do not mention the endowment of the contest, Augustus must have provided a substantial sum to ensure its continuation. In addition, as was the case with other festivals, local elites served as organisers, and were responsible for operations, an investment of time and money. Performers traveled to Actium to compete, and audiences filled the theatre. All of these participatory acts were public performances of consent to the celebration of 13 Roller 2004, 174–177. 14 Suet. Aug. 18. Pre-Augustan Actia: Strabo 7, 7, 6. Date of the first Augustan Actia: Tidman 1950; Rieks 1970. The date rests on the attestation of Statius, who refers to the Actia occurring immediately after the Sebasta in Naples (Stat. Silv. 2, 2, 6–12). 15 On Augustan neoclassicism after Actium: Zanker 1988, 66. 16 Fraser 1972, 809. The Greek contests in Roman Egypt: Remijsen 2014a and 2014b. 17 Cass. Dio 51, 19; Gurval 1998, 122. 18 Galinsky 1996, 299. 19 I.Smyrna II 1, 656. 20 Arr. Epict. diss. 3, 4. 21 Jones 1987, 208–212. 22 Bosch 1967, 166, no. 130, l. 11.

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the festival. Throughout the imperial period, the festival attracted competitors from across Greece, the islands, and Asia Minor, and lasted into the mid-third century AD.23 The elevation of the Actia from the second-highest possible status, as a crowned festival, to the highest status, that of a hieros agōn, a sacred festival, on the level of the festivals of the periodos, used existing categories of games to re-orient the festival network.24 This change in status exploited the associations between the festivals of the periodos, peace, and inter-polis cooperation.25 The addition of a new panhellenic festival was possible because of the recent unification of the Empire, but it relied, crucially, on the consensus of the Greeks, not only in Nicopolis but across the poleis of the Eastern Mediterranean. In the wake of Actium, there was no clearer symbol of the new era of peace and prosperity than a panhellenic contest. This involved careful negotiation between the imperial centre and the political and religious institutions of Greek poleis in the provinces. Augustus was careful not to assert the cultural centrality of Rome with the renewal of the Actia. Rather, he gave priority to the Actia in Greece by making it of a higher status than the Actia in Rome, as if Rome was simply one of the participating poleis in the Greek festival network.26 Additionally, Nicopolis was geographically close to the other periodos contests, and did not drastically increase the distance that circuit-competitors would have to travel, as later circuit-expansions did. The recent political unification of the Mediterranean, and the resulting globalisation of the festivals, was soon reflected in the titulature of the organisation of musical and dramatic performers. By the time of Caligula, the artists based in Rome called themselves the technitai of the oikoumenē.27 The re-foundation of the Actia also addressed a local issue, the memory of the political power of the Leagues in the region of Actium. Augustus saw to it that the festival was no longer administered locally, as the sanctuary of Apollo had been the federal sanctuary of the Acarnanian League from the third century BC, but by the Lacedaemonians, due to their long-standing worship of Apollo and Eurykles’ service at Actium.28 At the same time, he assigned Nicopolis to the Amphictyonic League, with the votes of several other communities re-apportioned to them.29 With this complex re-balancing of power, Augustus ensured that Nicopolis would have a prominent place in the panhellenic world, represented by the restitution of the festival and the new dominance of Nicopolis in the Amphictyony, while also dissociating the communities of Aetolia and Acarnania from their prior political alliances and religious traditions. According to Pausanias, Augustus ordered cult objects to be taken from Aetolia and Acarnania and brought to Nicopolis, which Alcock identifies as the symbolic destruction of community and an anxiety about resistance to Roman rule.30 Just as Nicopolis was formed from the territory and populations of several of the cities of the former Acarnanian and Aetolian Leagues, effectively replacing these confederations of Greek poleis with a new imperial city, Augustus’ Actia built upon local Greek institutions, but transformed the festival in such a way that it began to shape a new agonistic culture for the imperial age.31 The violence of this foundational act, and its memory among the inhabitants of Nicopolis, should not be underestimated. While Augustus meant for the Actia to commemorate a decisive military victory, and the establishment of peace following civil war, the recently displaced people who sat in the newly-built theatre at Nicopolis may have had a different experience of the festival. There has been some uncertainty as to the precise point at which the Actia was considered to be on the periodos. The term periodos had only come to be used of the Olympia, Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea in the second century BC, although they were certainly regarded as the most important contests of Greece long before that.32 Jeanne and Louis Robert regarded the Actia as having become a part of the periodos from the early imperial period.33 Stefanis, however, argues that it was not until the late second century AD, when the Actia appears on lists of victories of periodonikai, that 23 Caldelli 1993, 28. 24 Strabo 7, 7, 6; Cass. Dio 51, 1. 25 Panhellenism at the sanctuaries of Olympia and Delphi: Scott 2014; Isthmia: Aristid. Or. 46, 23. 26 On Rome as a polis: Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 7, 70–73; Ando 1999. 27 POxy. 5202, l. 26; cf. POxy. 2476, l. 1. On cult networks in the Roman Empire, with discussion of globalisation, see Collar 2013. Aneziri argues that the technitai claimed to be “from the oikoumenē” in order to associate themselves with the emperor: Aneziri 2014, 434–437. 28 Strabo 7, 7, 6; Spawforth 2011, 160. 29 Paus. 10, 8, 3. 30 Paus. 7, 18, 9; Alcock 1996, 140. 31 Gurval 1995, 68. 32 On the Classical and Hellenistic usage of the term periodos: Remijsen 2015, 28–30. 33 Bull. Ép. 1954, no. 57. Pavlogiannis et al. 2009, 99, argue that Nero’s victory at the Actia in 66 AD proves the Actia was already a part of the periodos.

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it can be proven that the Actia was on the periodos.34 Della Bona offers a different interpretation, that there were two distinct periodoi in the imperial period, the old periodos (consisting of the Big Four) and a new periodos (the Capitolia, Sebasta, Eusebeia, Actia, and Heraea).35 This debate hinges on the way in which the Actia appears in relation to the festivals of the old periodos in the decades following the re-foundation at Nicopolis. In two inscriptions from Olympia from the first century AD, the status of the Actia is somewhat ambiguous. One concerns an athlete who won at the Olympia and “the rest of the periodos, with the Actia” (τὴν λοιπὴν περίοδον σὺν Ἀκκτίοισι).36 The other refers to the victories of Hermas, son of Ision, of Antioch, who won at the Olympia and “the rest of the periodos, in the cycle (i.e. in a single, four-year cycle), with the Nemea twice, and the Actia, and the Heraia,” (τὴν / λοιπὴν περίοδον ἐν τῇ [πε]-/ριόδῳ σὺν δ[ὶ]ς Νεμείοις [καὶ] / Ἀκτίοις καὶ Ἡραίοις).37 In both cases, victory at the Olympia is named separately because it was the greatest honour a Greek athlete could achieve, and also because these inscriptions were erected at Olympia. At a minimum, “the rest of the periodos” refers to the Pythia, Isthmia, and Nemea. The question is whether Hermas and the other athlete, whose name does not survive, won on the periodos and in addition, at the Actia, or whether they won on the periodos, including the Actia. While both meanings of σύν are possible, the fact that the Nemea is listed alongside the Actia and Heraia suggests that all three belonged to the periodos at this time. The victories of the poet Apion add another dimension. In a papyrus of the mid to late first century AD, which is a copy of an inscription honouring the poet, likely from the time of Caligula, Apion is said to have been “first of men to be twice victor in verse on the periodos” (καὶ ποιήμασι δὶς περιοδο-/νείκην πρῶτον ἀνθρώπων), with three victories at the Heraea at Argos, a victory in tragedy in Syracuse, and crowns at the Sebasta in Naples.38 While the text does not specify which victories earned him the title of periodonikes, the inclusion of Actium alongside Olympia, Delphi, the Isthmus, and Nemea as places where statues of Apion were erected suggests that the Actia was already considered to be of a similar or equal status.39 The statue at Actium, however, is not conclusive proof of the Actia being a circuit contest, because Apion would have qualified as a periodonikes with victories at the Pythia, Isthmia, Nemea, and Heraea. Also interesting, however, is the way in which Apion’s travels on and off the periodos, delineated other, less formal circuits, as he circled the festival network of the Mediterranean, from his home in Alexandria to Syracuse, Naples, and Rome, where the technitai had their main base, and through the contests of mainland Greece and the Peloponnese, certainly competing at lower-status contests along the way. Decades before Rome had a panhellenic contest, the movements of traveling competitors such as Apion were connecting the capital city to the festivals of the wider Greek world. What is clear is that, by the first century AD, and into the second and third centuries AD, victories at the Actia were among the most prestigious possible for a festival competitor. A record of the career of the wrestler Aurelius Septimius Ireneus, inscribed at Laodicea in Syria in 221 AD, refers to a victory at “Augustus Actia in Nicopolis, of the periodos” (Αὐγούστου Ἄκτια ἐν Νεικοπόλει τῆς περίοδου), while the Nemea is said to be “of the ancient periodos” (τῆς ἀρχαίας περίοδου).40 The inscribers rely on two different sources of prestige in distinguishing between the Actia and the rest of the periodos: an association with an emperor, in the case of the Actia, and with antiquity, in the case of the Nemea. One might also wonder whether distinguishing the Actia from the rest of the periodos was mildly subversive, keeping alive a memory of what the periodos once was, in a pre-Roman past.

Local Elites and the Festivals in the Early Empire The expansion of the Greek festival network relied significantly on the participation of local elites, who funded new celebrations and took on financial responsibilities as a part of their organizational duties as agonothetai. In Naples, it was 34 Stefanis 1988b. Gurval 1995, 78 n. 150, supports this view. 35 Della Bona 2012. 36 I.Olympia 230. 37 I.Olympia 231. For this interpretation of ἐν τῇ περιόδῳ, see SEG 62, 1844. 38 POxy. 5202, l. 3–4. 39 POxy. 5202, l. 30–33. As the Olympia did not have poetic contests, Rigsby suggests that its inclusion may be due to Apion’s composition of poems for athletes victorious there: Rigsby 2016, 398. 40 IGR III 1012.

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not Augustus who established the festival but the local council.41 Augustus must have approved the initiative formally before the festival could proceed, and he gave another stamp of approval by attending the festival in the last months of his life in the summer of 14 AD.42 Local elites voted many other contests in honour of the imperial cult under Augustus. According to Suetonius: Provinciarum pleraeque super templa et aras ludos quoque quinquennales paene oppidatim constituerunt. Many of the provinces, in addition to temples and altars, established quinquennial games in his honour in almost every one of their towns.43

Although Suetonius calls them ludi, the fact that these festivals were quinquennial (i.e. penteteric, held every four years) suggests that he was specifically thinking of Greek festivals in the provinces. While the Sebasta was unique among the imperial cult festivals at this time, in being of the highest status, as a hieros agon, the underlying motivation for such foundations must have been similar, as members of the councils of Greek poleis sought to demonstrate both loyalty to Rome and also the wealth and status of their own families and cities. For poleis and koina throughout the Greek East, establishing new festivals for the imperial cult was a way of engaging in inter-civic competition and negotiating local hierarchies, while simultaneously advertising political loyalty to Rome, just as festivals for the goddess Roma had been since the second and first centuries BC.44 From the time of Augustus, the imperial family was visible at Greek festivals in the form of moveable images carried in processions, images of the imperial family decorating ceremonial crowns, images on buildings which the procession passed, or in which cult activities took place during the festival, including theatres, decorated in many cases with statues of the imperial family in the scaenae frons, and as honorands of the days of celebration of the imperial cult.45 This allowed the imperial family, even while physically distant, to be incorporated into local civic hierarchies in the provinces. Gebhard argues that imperial cult rituals were held in the theatre so that the entire citizen body could observe the honours given to emperors and local elites, tying imperial authority to civic hierarchy and local history.46 Many cities celebrated the imperial cult by adding days to pre-existing festivals, what Buraselis terms “appended” festivals.47 For example, at Corinth, a Caesarea had been appended to the Isthmian games by 3 AD, with limited thymelic contests, including only a trumpeter, herald, poet, writer of encomium, aulete, citharist, and citharode.48 During the reign of Claudius, the contests also included prose encomia for the emperor, for Tiberius, and poetry for Livia Augusta.49 By 127 AD, the musical program had greatly expanded, and included drama.50 Because lists of victors survive from several different periods, it is possible to see the way in which local elites used the appended festival, the Caesarea, to express a connection with the imperial family, through its foundation as well as the gradual expansion of the thymelic contests, which would have required additional funds for prizes and other expenses. The expansion of the programme raised the status not only of the festival but also of the elites who organized it. The case of Epaminondas of Acraephium, who renewed a local contest for Apollo Ptous in the early imperial period, shows more clearly how these dynamics worked on a local level. Epaminondas had an illustrious career before his service to the festival, having provided the Acraephians with distributions and sacrifices, including for the imperial cult, sponsored a major repair to the dike of Lake Copais, and served as an ambassador from the Boiotian League to Caligula at the beginning of his reign, in 37 AD.51 After his return, he was appointed organiser of the Ptoia, a thymelic festival which had ceased 30 years prior. Epaminondas re-founded the festival as the Great (Megala) Ptoia and Caesarea, 41 Geer 1935; Arnold 1960; Caldelli 1993, 28–37. Victory lists of the Sebasta: I.Napoli 56, 57, 60. New fragments from the 1st century AD: de Martino 2007. The latest attestation of the Sebasta is in the late fourth century AD: CIL X 1487. 42 Suet. Aug. 98. 43 Suet. Aug. 59, transl. Rolfe 1914. 44 Wörrle 1988, 4–17. Price 1984, 44, discusses the cult of the goddess Roma as a reaction to Roman power, “expressed in a Greek idiom”. On the collective experience of Roman power through the Romaia: van Nijf and van Dijk 2020. 45 Zanker 1988, 324. 46 Gebhard 1996. 47 Buraselis 2012. 48 Corinth VIII 1, 14; Geagan 1968; Engels 1990, 18. 49 Corinth VIII 1, 19. 50 Biers and Geagan 1970. 51 IG VII 2712; Oliver 1971.

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suggesting both a restoration of past custom and an expansion and improvement in its new iteration. His distributions of wine and gifts in the theatre, during the festival, were so lavish that “his expenditures became the talk of even the surrounding cities”.52 The Acraephians honoured him with an inscribed copy of the decree detailing these services and benefactions in the sanctuary of Apollo, along with various portraits in the city and sanctuary. The interplay between benefactions directed at local and regional audiences, suggested by the note that news of the success of the festival circulated among neighbouring cities, and connections to Rome, through Epaminondas’ service to the imperial cult and diplomatic mission to the emperor, is characteristic of the provincial political environment of the early Empire. It is through the honours conferred on Epaminondas by the Panhellenes and his home city that his connections to the emperor take on meaning, and in the theatre, at the festival for Apollo and the imperial cult, that such honours were most likely announced to the assembled community, and remembered at future celebrations, as Epaminondas was called to his seat in the front row with other local benefactors. Epaminondas must have renewed the contest shortly after 37 AD, which puts the hiatus no earlier than 7 AD, and almost certainly late in Augustus’ reign. Alcock suggests that this was due to the increased tax burden which Greek cities bore in the early imperial period, raising the question of how widespread the under-funding of festivals was at this time, and to what extent Augustan economic policies undercut the support for religious institutions which Augustus claimed as his legacy.53 We might also detect in Epaminondas’ renewal of the contest something of the emphasis on restoration of past religious customs which was so characteristic of Augustan neoclassicism, also evident in the revival of the choregia in Athens in the first century AD.54 Elite Roman citizens living in the provinces also assumed offices associated with Greek festivals, as part of programmes of benefaction at a local level, as in the case of Gnaeus Calpurnius Helix, a Roman citizen and priest of Augustus, who organised the Dionysia in Opous, and paid for the festival from his own funds, along with various civic building works.55 Helix’s connection to the imperial cult, the local festival, and the provision of waterworks in Opous shows how Roman investment in Greek communities could be indirectly associated with the emperor, even without his direct involvement. Certain festival sites attracted more sustained attention from Roman benefactors for historical, literary, and political reasons. In the case of Thespiae, for example, which had long been loyal to Rome, and had a mythological and literary pedigree as the site of the home of the Muses and Hesiod’s inspiration on Mt. Helicon, the attention of wealthy Roman benefactors is documented in the many dedications found at the sanctuary of the Muses, and may have contributed to the flourishing of the Mouseia throughout the imperial period. Already in the first century BC, the Mouseia had a full dramatic programme, with competitions in old and newly written comedy and tragedy, as well as satyrplay.56 In the first century AD, a festival of the imperial cult was appended to the Mouseia, which became the Mouseia Sebasta.57 Five honourific inscriptions for organisers (agonothetai) of the Mouseia at Thespiae survive from the first century AD, three for Ariston son of Philinos in the first half of the century.58 In one, Ariston is said to have served as organiser of the Erotidea, Caesarea, Mouseia, and of Julia Augusta (i.e. of the Erotidea Caesarea and the Mouseia Sebasta).59 Livia’s connection with the Mouseia is attested not only in the addition of her name to the festival, but also in the addition to the programme of an encomiographer for Julia Augusta Mnemosyne after the death of Augustus (14–29 AD).60 The same inscription lists an encomiographer for Messalinus, perhaps M. Valerius Messalla Messalinus, and his stepbrother Taurus (i.e. T. Statilius Taurus). Manieri attributes these honours for Messalinus and his stepbrother to Messalinus’ friendship with Tiberius, although Tacitus’ description of their relationship is not particularly friendly.61 As at the Caesarea at Corinth, the theatrical programme of the early imperial Mouseia was a mixture of encomia for the members of 52 IG VII 2712, l. 77–78, transl. Oliver 1971. 53 Alcock 1996, 151. On the suffering of Greece in the early imperial period: Bowersock 1965, 85; Paus. 7, 17, 1. 54 E.g. IG II2 3157, an honorific for a choregos who “directed a new tragedy at the Panathenaea”. This development was localized to Athens, perhaps because the choregia was not elsewhere as strongly associated with the classical past: Wilson 2000, 276. 55 IG IX 1, 282; Spawforth 2011, 210 discusses the construction projects. 56 IG VII 1760, 1761, and 1763, joined with I.Thespiae 182 and 183. 57 I.Thespiae 358. 58 I.Thespiae 392, 376, 377 (Ariston); 358 (Athanias son of Euxenos); 405 (Lucius Furius Rufus). 59 I.Thespiae 376, l. 5–7. 60 I.Thespiae 174. 61 Manieri 2009, 408; Tac. Ann. 1, 8 and 3, 18.

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the imperial family and their associates, and competitions in music and drama, creating a space in which the cultural and literary heritage of Greece could be interwoven with a Roman imperial presence.

Festivals and Client Kingship: Herod of Judaea The impact of Augustan policy towards the Greek theatre can also be seen beyond Achaea, in the theatrical activities of Herod, client king of Judaea from 37 BC to his death in 4 BC. Having gained the kingship through close political relationships to high-ranking Roman officials, he maintained these relationships by proving his loyalty to Rome throughout his life, in many different arenas, including through festival foundations, advertising to his Roman patrons that he understood the cultural agenda of the emperor.62 Herod’s theatrical activities were ambitious and innovative. He built the first theatres in Judaea, at Caesarea Maritima, Jerusalem, and Jericho.63 These were the first Roman-style theatres built anywhere in the Eastern Mediterranean, designed and constructed within decades of the completion of the first permanent stone theatre in Rome, the Theatre of Pompey.64 Additionally, Herod established three Greek-style festivals for the imperial cult in close succession, in Jerusalem in 28 BC, Samaria-Sebaste in 27 BC, and Caesarea after 10/9 BC.65 The festivals in Jerusalem and Caesarea included dramatic competitions. Like Augustus at Nicopolis, Herod planned his buildings for public entertainment and the activities that would fill them simultaneously, as he established festivals when his theatres and amphitheatres were dedicated. As at Nicopolis, monument and event worked in concert. Weiss stresses the similarities in Herod’s hybrid Greco-Roman approach to his architectural projects, such as his Roman-style theatres, and events, which, for the first time, incorporated Roman spectacles, such as gladiatorial games and wild-beast hunts, into Greek-style festivals, with competitions in athletics, music, and drama, in the Eastern Mediterranean.66 Roman spectacles were new to both Greek and Jewish audiences, who reacted differently to such innovations. According to Josephus, “the foreigners” (ξένοι, i.e. the Greeks) were confused but entertained by the gladiators and wild animal fights at the Kaisareia in Jerusalem, while “the locals” (ἐπιχωρίοι, the Jewish spectators) immediately perceived these spectacles as destructive to their customs.67 According to Josephus, when he founded the Kaisareia in Jerusalem, a quinquennial festival, Herod notified his neighbours, presumably nearby Greek poleis, and invited the whole ethnos (i.e. the Jewish people) to the festival, although it was contrary to Jewish custom. He invited athletes and other competitors “from every land” (ἀπὸ πάσης γῆς), who were attracted by the prizes offered by the king: οὐ γὰρ μόνον τοῖς περὶ τὰς γυμνικὰς ἀσκήσεις, ἀλλὰ καὶ τοῖς ἐν τῇ μουσικῇ διαγινομένοις καὶ θυμελικοῖς καλουμένοις προυτίθει μέγιστα νικητήρια· καὶ διεσπούδαστο πάντας τοὺς ἐπισημοτάτους ἐλθεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν ἅμιλλαν. For Herod offered very great prizes not only to the winners in gymnastic games but also to those who engaged in music and those who are called thymelikoi. And an effort was made to have all the most famous persons come to the contest.68

Such announcements connected Herod’s new festival to the larger Greek network, suggesting that Jerusalem should be on equal footing with other prominent cities in the Mediterranean. The categories of competitions were important in this respect. Josephus distinguishes between three agonistic categories, those who win in the gymnic events, in music, and the thymelikoi, the theatrical artists. Θυμελικός has a range of meanings, in its broadest sense referring to any theatrical performers, including musicians, dancers, and actors.69 In this passage, however, Josephus distinguishes between thymelikoi and musical competitors, suggesting that he is using thymelikoi to mean dramatic competitors specifically.

62 Spawforth 2011, 85. 63 Segal 1995, 4 (Jerusalem); 64–69 (Caesarea); 87–89 (Jericho). The theatre at Jericho was designed for a much smaller audience of members of Herod’s court. 64 Segal 1995, 34; Roller 1998, 34. Theatre of Pompey: Monterroso Checa 2010. 65 Lämmer 1973; Graf 2015, 77–84; Bowersock 1965, 55. 66 Weiss 2014, 32. 67 Joseph. AJ 15, 274. 68 Joseph. AJ 15, 268–271, transl. Marcus and Wikgren 1963. On Josephus’ account of Herod’s festivals, see van Henten, 2008. 69 Leppin 1992, 79–83.

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Nearly two decades later, in 10/9 BC, Herod celebrated the completion of Caesarea Maritima with the foundation of another quinquennial Kaisareia. Like the festival in Jerusalem, Herod’s festival at Caesarea was a mixture of Greek and Roman elements, with musical and athletic contests, gladiators, wild beast fights, horse races, and other spectacles.70 While Josephus does not indicate whether the musical competitions included drama, epigraphical evidence from Caesarea suggests that they did. At some time in the imperial period, a comic actor (komoidos), Quintus Caecilius of Antioch-on-Daphne, dedicated a small marble column, possibly the base of a statuette, in the area of the theatre at Caesarea, “in fulfillment of a vow”.71 It is likely that Caecilius’ vow was related to a victory at the festival. The imperial family showed their approval for Herod’s festivals. At the completion of Samaria-Sebaste and the inauguration of the musical and athletic festival in honour of the imperial cult, Augustus sent the equipment for the games, while Livia’s contributions amounted to 500 talents.72 Herod’s outward-looking approach is represented by the incorporation of Greek and Roman events, in the entertainment of envoys from other communities, and in the acknowledgement of the festival by Augustus and Livia. For Herod, these Greek-style festivals provided an opportunity to build political relationships between Judaea and Rome, as well as other cities, which sent ambassadors to the festival. Josephus’ account represents Herod as an ideal benefactor, welcoming the crowds and envoys, providing them with lodging and feasts, and staging spectacles day and night. He also sent money to Olympia and presided over the games in 12 BC, on his way to Rome, for which the Elians named him agonothetes for life, an office created specifically for him.73 Josephus includes this gift to the Olympia at the end of a list of Herod’s benefactions, all the others of which are building projects in Syria and Greece. Josephus seems to be asserting that Herod viewed these two types of projects, building projects and festival foundations, as part of the same overall effort to build a new, Greco-Roman Judaea, with Herod as its leading benefactor. The introduction of drama to Judaea inspired at least some local participation in its performance. Apelles of Ascalon became a tragic actor (tragoidos). Afterwards, he moved to Rome and became a councilor to Caligula.74 Dio refers to Apelles as “the most famous of the tragedians of that day” (τὸν γοῦν Ἀπελλῆν τὸν εὐδοκιμώτατον τῶν τότε τραγῳδῶν).75 If Apelles’ acting career began at Ascalon, this would put his acting during the time of Herod’s successors, perhaps in the 20s or early 30s AD. If Dio is correct in his claim about Apelles’ reputation, and presumably it would take a certain amount of fame for a tragedian to infiltrate the inner circle of the imperial house, it may have been his acting career that led him out of Judaea and eventually to Rome. This suggests that there were some opportunities for actors in Judaea in the early first century AD, if not at Ascalon, then at the festivals of Caesarea and Jerusalem. Apelles also shows how individuals could utilise performance networks, established by high-level benefactors, to advance their own careers, and translate theatrical fame into political influence in the early imperial world. Herod’s successors continued to invest in theatres and festivals in Judaea. Herod Antipas, Herod’s son, built theatres at Tiberias and Sepphoris. Herod Agrippa, the last of the Herodian dynasty to hold the title of king of Judaea, from 41–44 AD, pursued construction projects in Judaea, including theatres and amphitheatres, and provided spectacles to fill them. Josephus says that he showed special favor to Berytus, where he built a particularly costly theatre and amphitheatre. At the dedication, he provided gladiatorial combats in the amphitheatre, and “in the theatre he exhibited spectacles, introducing every kind of music and all that made for a varied entertainment” (ἐν τῷ θεάτρῳ μὲν θεωρίας ἐπιτελῶν πάνθ’ ὅσα μουσικῆς ἔργα παράγων καὶ ποικίλης ποιητικὰ τέρψεως).76 Nothing in this passage suggests that this was a recurring festival, or that it included drama. The last attestation of Kaisareia at Caesarea Maritima occurs in the third year of the reign of Herod Agrippa, in 43/44 AD. Josephus’ report suggests that Agrippa had less commitment to the format of the Greek festival than Herod had. Josephus says that Agrippa celebrated theoriai in Caesarea in honour of Caesar, “knowing that this was some sort of festival for his safety” (ὑπὲρ τῆς ἐκείνου σωτηρίας ἑορτήν τινα ταύτην ἐπιστάμενος).77 Theoriai presumably refer to the same musical and dramatic competitions held in the theatre as in Herod’s time. Josephus uses the indefinite “some 70 Joseph. AJ 16, 137–139. On the Kaisareia in Caesarea: Lämmer 1974. 71 Lehmann and Holum 2000, no. 126; CIIP 1135. 72 Joseph. AJ 16, 139. 73 Joseph. AJ 16, 149; Roller 1998, 230. 74 Philo Leg. 203–205; Suet. Calig. 33; Cass. Dio 59, 5. 75 Cass. Dio 59, 5. 76 Joseph. AJ 19, 336. 77 Joseph. AJ 19, 343.

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sort” (τινα) in order to represent Agrippa as having a vague knowledge about the purpose of the festival, in contrast to the specific, targeted political motivations of Herod at the foundation of the event. Agrippa used the festival as an opportunity to show off his own wealth and power, as he entered the theatre on the second day of the theōriai wearing a garment woven entirely of silver, provoking the spectators to hail him as a god. He fell ill immediately, and died soon afterwards. This story belongs to a long tradition of tragic historiography, and the common trope of tyrants dying in or near theatres, in full view of the assembled community, such as Josephus’ account, told just a few chapters before, of the assassination of Caligula upon his exit from the wooden theatre where the Ludi Palatina were taking place, a story which itself references the assassination of Philip II in the theatre at Aegae.78 The Kaisareia in Jerusalem may have ended with the reign of Herod Agrippa, and at any rate, cannot have lasted past the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Such festivals were not unsuccessful, in their time, apparently attracting the interest of traveling competitors from surrounding regions, such as Antioch, but despite being well funded, failed to take hold beyond the Herodian dynasty, and seem to have lessened in their connections to the festivals of the Greek world even beyond the reign of Herod himself. What the short history of drama in Judaea suggests is that without the sustained interest of the local population, on the part of elite benefactors as well as spectators, even festivals with royal patronage were not long-lived. In the context of Judaea, drama was foreign rather than traditional. Regardless of whether Jewish spectators enjoyed drama, they had no reason to guard the format of the festivals that Herod had established, or to see to it that programmes remained constant from cycle to cycle.79 The case of Judaea, then, provides a counterpoint to the situation in Roman Greece, where the local population sought to protect the traditional format and competitions of their festivals, as a matter of identity and status, ensuring their continuation into the High Empire.

Conclusion Augustus portrayed himself as a restorer of past religious custom by acting as a benefactor of the Actia, while at the same time introducing changes that had a lasting effect on Greek festival culture. Augustus’ re-foundation of the Actia in Nicopolis was an Eastern counterpart to his activities concerning religious restoration in Rome, reflected, for example, in his re-building of 82 temples in the capital city in 28 BC.80 These formative early years of Augustus’ rule, a period of active intervention in the Greek festival network, are distinct from the later years, in which the pattern of petition and response is apparent in Augustus’ assent to the foundation of the Sebasta in Naples, and confirmation of the rights of the technitai of Dionysus. Those who implemented changes to the festivals of the Greek East, such as the upgrading of contests, or the addition of days for the imperial cult, worked within the framework of institutions with their own long-standing traditions, in line with a broader Augustan strategy to represent innovation as restoration. This is perhaps part of the reason that an anti-theatrical morality, often associated with elite Roman attitudes, did not exert more influence in the Eastern Mediterranean. Rather, morality was expressed in the theatre through the public demonstration of respect for past custom, which often took the form of improvement, expansion, and elevation of festivals, and loyalty to Rome and the imperial household. Also striking is the way in which Augustus, more than some of his successors, distinguished between policies towards the theatre in Rome, on the one hand, and in the Eastern provinces, on the other. One might see a contradiction between the negative view of the theatre in Augustus’ moral legislation, particularly the prohibition in the lex Iulia against senators marrying those who practised the ars ludicra and their children, and the expulsion of pantomime dancers from Rome, on the one hand, and his support for music and drama at Nicopolis, on the other. This reflects a tension between the negativity of elite Roman attitudes towards the theatre, which Augustus appealed to in such restrictions, and the Greek concept of the theatre as a site of honour, tradition, and ritual, associated not with spectacle but festivals. Likewise, the omission of the Actia, and all provincial festivals, from the Res Gestae shows Augustus’ sensitivity to the potential negative reception of such activities by elite circles in Rome. The fact that Augustus did not establish a Greek-style festival of the highest status in Rome, and that no such festival seems to have been 78 Joseph. AJ 19, 84–98. 79 For different views on Jewish responses to drama, see Segal 1995, 14; Weiss 2014, 200–208; Graf 2015, 81–84. 80 Aug. RG 20.

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proposed during his lifetime, may suggest some hesitation to equate Rome with the sites of the ancient panhellenic games, a reluctance which had apparently dissipated by the time of Domitian. While there was no singular mode of engagement between the Roman emperors, or even the Julio-Claudians, and the Greek theatre, part of Augustus’ legacy was to set an expectation that the Greek theatre was a concern of the emperor, one prominent example of the way in which, as Spawforth has argued, Greek culture became an “affair of state” under Augustus.81 It is also important to recognise that imperial support for the Greek festivals was distributed unevenly, as suggested by the contrasting cases of the Ptoia at Acraephium, left to die out before being restored by Epaminondas, and the Kaisareia at Samaria-Sebaste, supported with donations from Augustus and Livia as an act of political good-will towards Herod. The restoration of the Ptoia associated the Acraephians with Rome, with the appending of imperial cult celebrations to the local festival. The impetus for this action, however, came from Epaminondas and the Acraephians, a dynamic which played out in many other cities throughout the Greek East. Whatever imperial or royal benefactions were established to support theatre festivals under Augustus, it was ultimately local elite benefactors and organisers who were responsible for their management and accountable to their communities, and ensured the survival of these festivals and their traditional programming.

81 Spawforth 2011, 56.

J. Richard Green

8 Theatres and Autocracy in the Roman Period: An Example in Microcosm This paper begins with some observations on Antonine phase of the theatre of Paphos in Cyprus which has been the subject of investigation by a team from the University of Sydney since 1995 (Figs. 8.1–8.2).1 It is not a full report but concentrates on aspects that seem relevant to our overall theme of the context and use of theatrical performances under autocracies. This example is then compared with two other examples, the theatre at Patara in Lycia and then the one at Sessa Aurunca in Campania. Their relevance is that they too were reconstructed at this same period, that is under the same regime, but with different levels of financial indulgence. Although instructive, their different locations geographically are not fundamental to our theme; but it is relevant that all three have been excavated at much the same time and so the level and quantity of information available are much the same. What is more critical is what features are common to the three rather than the result of elaboration. I leave it to others to decide, on the basis of these particular cases, how much applies to theatres in the Roman Empire more generally, and how much is relevant to the periods before and after. Policies of central government and regional administrations, popularity and focus of architectural interest, and not least regional economies evolved through time. Generalisations do not always help.

Fig. 8.1: The theatre of Paphos, view from the SW (2018). Photo: Rowan Conroy.

The partially preserved dedicatory inscription from the Antonine phase of the theatre at Paphos survives in the two major fragments shown in Fig. 8.3a–b.2 It reads as follows: Fragment a . . . .]απετωλίωι · ϰαι Αὐτοϰϱάτοϱι Καίσαϱι Τ(ίτωι) · Αἰλ[ίωι . . .]ας Σεβ(αστή) Κλ(αυδία) · Φλ(αουία) · Πάφος ἡ ἱεϱὰ μητϱόπολις τῶν ϰατὰ Κύπ[ϱον πόλεων. . .

1 Excavations are always a team effort and I have been indebted to many people over many years. For this paper I have incurred a particular debt to Craig Barker, Tamara Bremert, Matteo Cadario, Sergio Cascella, Rowan Conroy, Eric Csapo, Michael Osborne, Geoff Stennett, Sue Willetts, Diana Wood Conroy. 2 The primary publication Nicolaou 2003 with earlier references; SEG 52, 1496; SEG 53, 1758; Green et al. 2011, 20–21, with Fig. 12 a–b; Cayla 2018, 244–246, no. 120, and 518, Figs. 137–138. M. J. Osborne has prepared the Final Report. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-009

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Fig. 8.2: The theatre of Paphos, actual state plan (2018). Drawing: Guy Hazell and Geoff Stennett.

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Fig. 8.3: The two parts of the large inscription, (a) found at the entry from the western parodos, 2002; (b) found probably at the eastern parodos, 1916. Paphos, Archaeological Museum. Photos: J. R. Green.

Fragment b ϰαι τῶι · υἱῶι αὐτοῦ · Μ(άϱϰωι) · Αὐϱ[. . . . . .ἀγά]λματα ϰαι τὰς ἀνόδους ϰα[. . .

Here Sebaste Klaudia Flavia Paphos, Sacred Mother City of the Cities of Cyprus, expresses its devotion or perhaps gratitude to figures it found important including Capitolian Jupiter, the emperor Antoninus Pius and his son Marcus Aurelius.3 We do not know who was included before Capitolian Zeus but it is difficult not to believe that the theatre-sanctuary was dedicated to Aphrodite like the theatre at Aphrodisias. She was, after all, the Paphian, a temple to her probably stood just above the theatre, and the branch of the guild of actors and other performers was based in her sanctuary at Palaipaphos.4 The date should fall between 139 AD when Antoninus bestowed the title Caesar on the oldest of his adoptive sons, Marcus Aurelius, and his death in March of 161 AD. The archaeological evidence, such as the style of the architectural detailing, is in accord with such a dating (i.e., there is no hint of a bogus claim) and would indeed suggest the early to middle side of this period. The lack of mention of Lucius Verus, though he may have been shown as a young man among the sculptures, could also have possible implications for the date. It is difficult to judge just how much space one should imagine between the two preserved fragments, and in reconstructing any text, one needs to bear in mind that the lettering is more careful and more generously spaced in the upper than the lower line. And the same would of course apply to the missing parts at each end. For the central space, Cayla is probably right to suggest for the upper line at the very least Αἰλ[ίωι Ἁδϱιανῶι Ἀντωνείνωι Σεβαστῶι Εὐσεβεῖ Π(ατρι)

3 The theatre was first constructed at the time of the foundation of New Paphos about 300 BC. There was a major makeover in the middle of the second century BC, and then another under Augustus, and then this complete reconstruction in the second century AD. There may have been other minor refurbishments along the way, but they have not left significant evidence. 4 Młynarczyk 2015, but cf. Cayla 2016. One thinks too of the guild of performers devoted to Aphrodite recorded in inscriptions found near the theatre at Syracuse, problematic as it is in a number of respects: see more recently Fountoulakis 2000; Aneziri 2001–2002; Dimartino 2010; and now Le Guen 2016, and this volume. And then the colossal statue of the goddess as she emerged from the sea (reputedly at Paphos) excavated in the Theatre of Dionysos at Athens by Rhousopoulos in 1862: Leventi 2009. The Ptolemies controlled Cyprus through much of the Hellenistic period: Ptolemaic queens too were equated with Aphrodite: Fulinska 2012 with further references.

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Π(ατρίδος). The gaps allow a lot of leeway. The two principal fragments measure c. 1.54 m and 2.82 m in length. As Cayla has also observed, the total length must originally have been in excess of eight metres.5 The inscription preserves no verb and so we cannot do more than guess at the grounds on which the people of Paphos were thought to have created the inscription, whoever may have actually devised the text. In the absence of other indications, it would seem likely that the emperor financed the re-building, whether directly or indirectly. This would hardly be surprising given that Cyprus was governed directly from the Palatine through a governor appointed by the Emperor, and that at this point Paphos remained the capital of the island; but it is not out of the question that the city had in some fashion found the money for itself and that the inscription was therefore dedicatory. There are many other issues that spring to mind too. If the emperor has paid for it, how was it that the Governor (presumably) of this relatively minor senatorial province was able to persuade the emperor to undertake this expense? The answer may of course have rested in personal relations, as one inevitably thinks of Trajan pursued by Pliny.6 At the same time it would be interesting that there were evidently insufficient local funds, public or private, to undertake such a reconstruction, even though Cyprus as a whole seems to have been an active trading centre at the period to judge by coin circulation, the distribution of amphorae and other pottery, or indeed the continuing trade in mined copper (although it is possible that this had become an imperial enterprise) and shipbuilding.7 There was a particularly strong trade with Cilicia to the north, a connection that had seemed relevant much earlier to Pompey when the two areas were put together administratively.8 The income from trade cannot have lain in identifiable hands within this part of Cyprus – even though Paphos was still the capital of the island. Indeed one cannot imagine that, copper apart, it provided huge income for the imperial purse. And then one also needs to factor in the recurrent droughts experienced in Cyprus: in addition to their effect on agriculture, one also needs to reckon on their impact on the ability of the population to be productive in periods when the possibilities of food and water storage were limited. The droughts must also have prompted emigration with its longer-term economic consequences. On the other hand the Antonine Plague had not yet occurred. There has been some emphasis in recent years on the place of publicly seen inscriptions in Roman society, and not least in Asia Minor where they seem to have been especially popular. Given its size and the prominence of its positioning, the Paphos inscription was truly monumental and, in the terms of current fashion, materialised in almost physical aggression the debt to the imperial family.9 In this sense it was more compelling than, say, the well-known inscriptions on the outside of the theatre at Patara and perhaps, if it was, as we believe, attached to the main architrave of the stage-building, even more prominent than the contemporary inscription at Aphrodisias that was attached to the front edge of the stage.10 How to interpret this in terms of the city of Paphos is another question: provincial naivety or ahead of the trend. It is also worth remembering that Cyprus had remained primarily Greek in its language and culture: there has been only one Latin inscription found at the theatre site or its immediate vicinity, and at that a statue base,11 and there are few from anywhere else around the city despite the increasing archaeological activity in recent years.12 This conforms with the patterns traced by Eck for sites in Asia Minor.13 If the new theatre had been a direct gift from the Emperor, one might have expected at least some Latin, but this is hardly a conclusive argument for the nature of the funding. As Eck observed, Latin tended to be used in restricted contexts that directly involved government administrators. But the Paphos inscription is in contrast with the case of the theatre at nearby Kourion where there are remains of an inscription on fragments of entablature from what is generally taken to be a Neronian restoration of the stage-building: the

5 Cayla 2018, 244–246, no. 120, Figs. 137–138. 6 See for example Syme 1969; Nicols 1980; Woolf 2006; Woolf 2015, with further references. 7 For a good diachronic perspective, see Iacovou 2014; also Michaelides 1996; Leidwanger 2014. On copper: Kassianidou 2004; Kassianidou 2011; Kassianidou 2013, 49–82. Amphorae have had much discussion, but see in particular Kaldeli 2009 who also includes evidence from the theatre site. 8 Autret 2012. 9 See for example Thomas 2014; Petrovic et al. 2018. 10 Reynolds 1991, 19, with 26, Appendix B. 11 Cayla 2018, no. 137. 12 By contrast with Corinth for example. Cayla’s recent collection of inscriptions from the Paphos district has only a half-dozen fragments in Latin from the area of the city, four of them from the official, governor’s quarter. There are of course others from the Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Palaipaphos, some from high-ranking officials. 13 Eck 2009. He gives the figure for Perge of 475 Greek inscriptions from the Roman period through to the end of the third century versus 39 Latin or bilingual ones. See also Gaetzke 2013. Contrast the picture in parts of Achaia such as Corinth: McCleery 2016.

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more prominent lettering, on the frieze, is in Latin, with Greek below it in smaller letters on the narrower upper step of the architrave.14 The material there is a local limestone that, according to Mitford, had been repeatedly coated with stucco (although this is not mentioned by Stillwell). One cannot know what prompted such an outburst in Kourion; enthusiasm for Nero or a perceived need to humour him are both possible.15 From the Paphos theatre itself some 26 fragments of what appear to be record inscriptions relating to performances survive in fist-sized pieces, usually, and frustratingly, preserving no more than three letters though some were used on both sides.16 The evidence of the theatre at Paphos is limited by the consequences of what must have been severe damage in the earthquake of 365 AD. In the following years there was no attempt to repair the theatre. Instead, usable architectural elements such as intact columns and capitals were recycled for the construction of the Christian Chrysopolitissa basilica some 300 metres away down the road. By this period such items were valuable, as is illustrated graphically in a papyrus listing of columns to be found in what seem to have been abandoned buildings in Arsinoe or Oxyrhynchus.17 It is more than likely that the list was compiled with an eye to their re-use. Other pieces of our marble, seemingly the majority, including inscriptions and statues, were broken up for the lime-kiln. This was a period when concrete and cement were key materials. Even capitals were smashed, although it would seem from what remains that it was the corner volutes that were easier to remove. The large inscription with which we began survived because the two substantial parts of it were lying facedown as a pair of threshold blocks at the entrances into the orchestra from the eastern and western parodoi, and were by then doubtless covered by dirt. The date at which the inscription had been recycled in this way can be fixed by a terminus post quem for the piece on the western side: in the soft sandy levelling fill below the inscription, so soft that in fact it retained an impression of the letters of the inscription, was a bronze coin of Caracalla, datable to 213–214 AD, from the Rome mint, that carries on the reverse the figure of Securitas seated to right on a throne and holding a sceptre before an altar, with the legend (SE)[CURITATI] (P)ER[PETVAE]) with SC in the exergue.18 It was fairly worn and badly corroded. The occasion was the sealing off of the orchestra to enable the presentation of water-spectacles such as enjoyed growing popularity in the third century.19 A marble block was re-employed for what seems to have been a similar purpose at much the same date in the theatre at Gortyn.20 In reconstructing the recycling process, it is interesting that what, from the audience’s point of view was the left side of the inscription, was placed at the entry from the right parodos, and that from the right at the other. The inscription’s recording of the work on the Antonine reconstruction of the theatre is among the more explicit to be preserved. The longer-known fragment (fragment a, Fig. 8.3b) carries a small part of the second line in the section that enumerated the elements of the building that had been rebuilt, the ‘anodoi’, probably the seating if an epsilon on another smaller fragment found in 2006 (Fig. 8.4) suggests ἑδώλια,21 and one might guess much else besides.

Fig. 8.4: Fragment from the inscription, inv. 3987. Paphos, Archaeological Museum. Photo: Bob Miller.

14 Episkopi, inv. 183a–c. Stillwell 1961, 74, nos. 15–17; Mitford 1971, 204–207, no. 107. 15 Cf. Lo Monaco 2008. 16 The second side was doubtless an economical re-use: there is no usable marble native to Cyprus and it was therefore a valuable, relatively scarce commodity even before the demands of the lime-kiln. 17 Papaconstantinou 2012. 18 Inv. 4032, trench 1P, deposit 1178. The type follows an Antonine, a Hadrianic and indeed Neronian predecessor (RIC IV, Caracalla 536A). 19 Moretti 1992; Berlan-Bajard 2006. 20 Bonetto and Francisci 2014, 943, Fig. 2. 21 The epsilon is incomplete and could be read as a xi, in which case one would think of ξύλα or ξύλινα with reference to roofing over the stage or doors in the scaenae frons, or the like; cf. the inscription from Sparta, Woodward 1923–1925, no. 20a; SEG 11, 464; Moretti 1993, 152 with further references.

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Such enumeration of the parts built or restored has good parallels. One thinks, for example, of the case of the theatre at Patara where a large inscription records that Quintus Velius Titianus and his daughter built the eleventh row of seats in the summa cavea, provided the velum, the marble decoration and the decoration of the front of the logeion, and rebuilt the stage-building. They dedicated it all to Antoninus Pius in 146/7 AD. See further below. It is worth remarking in passing on this tendency to enumerate the parts of a structure: it is alien to our own ways of thinking.22 We conceive such buildings as a whole: the Sydney Opera House, the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Albert Hall. In the Roman world the naming of the component parts may have been influenced by the practice since the Classical period of inscribing on stelai or on the walls of buildings a wide range of inventories for all to see, together with, in this world, the social necessities of recognising euergetism when it came to buildings just as with the provision of spectacles or subsidised food. It is nonetheless interesting to find it applied when the reconstruction was of the whole, as was the case in Paphos. It must have strengthened the sense of appreciation. Still with the listing of elements of the reconstructed theatre, the line on the ‘older’ fragment (Fig. 8.3b) reads . . .] λματα καὶ τὰς ἀνόδους κα[. . .23 First, simply to point out that there are traces of a serif from the upper part of the letter following the final alpha. I see no need for it to be a tau, for κατεσκεύασεν or the like, as some others have suggested rather eagerly.24 It could perfectly well be from a somewhat closely spaced iota (as also Nicolaou), thus suggesting another καί in a listing of structural features, as is indeed suggested by the small fragment just mentioned. More importantly there can be little doubt that the first word here was ἀγάλματα, the statues. I would also suggest that the word came early in the list of elements: this would make sense too in terms of the overall layout of the inscription. They were regarded as a highly important element.25 Some small surviving fragments of sculptures are evidence that the stage-building had incorporated portrait-statues of members of the imperial family, including Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. They must have been a little over life-size. Such statues were not always the refined, detailed pieces that we might prefer to examine in a museum: they were placed some way from the viewer (and no doubt some forty per cent of spectators could well have done with distance glasses) and in many cases such as Paphos, in the shade for much of the day.26 Their inclusion was a not-uncommon practice in theatres built or rebuilt from the Julio-Claudian period onward, and they have been well discussed in publications. At the same time it is worth emphasising that the practice was not confined to theatres: it was shared in other public buildings that enjoyed good numbers of visitors, such as baths. Indeed some of the statues in these other buildings were on a colossal scale, as for example at Ephesus, Sagalassos, Perge, the Sile shipwreck and even Thasos.27 One supposes that a key point in theatres was that the audience could not avoid looking at them. A further point is that the sculpted images (agalmata) were explicitly welcomed in the inscription, as we have just seen. While scholars have traditionally seen their function as primarily one of self-advertisement, or at least in some way parallel to their function on the obverse of coins, for example, where they are associated with messages on the reverse (such as the coin of Caracalla mentioned above, promising everlasting Securitas). The emperor and thereby the system of Rome’s government was literally the other side of the same coin as these advantages.28 The portrait statues served a similar purpose at the very least. Furthermore they brought the viewer into a personal relationship with the central government; the emperor and his oikos (and the notion of a beneficent family was surely important here, on a par with bringing Marcus Aurelius to prominence) were in front of the spectator’s eyes. Recent scholarship has done much to emphasise the way in which their portrait statues were seen as in some way ‘real’, as standing in for the figures themselves.29

22 On the mind-set, it is perhaps worth comparing Perry 2016 [1937] although his interests were different. 23 On the terminology for the parts of theatres, see Moretti and Mauduit 2015. 24 On the use of the term, see recently Uzunoğlu 2018. 25 We have no evidence for relief friezes such as occur relatively frequently in the theatres of Asia Minor. 26 On the fact that many theatres had the cavea facing south and the stage therefore in shade for much of the day, especially outside high summer, see for example Ashby 1999, 97–117. This was even more true of Roman theatres that had their stage-buildings of two or often three storeys. 27 It is worth comparing (and contrasting) the growing popularity of colossal mythological statues and groups, their placement, and what they tell us about contemporary ways of seeing: see the instructive article by Hoff 2004. 28 See Puglisi 2012. She notes as similar advantages Abundantia; Aequitas; Aeternitas; Annona; Clementia; Concordia; Fecunditas; Felicitas; Fides; Fortuna; Indulgentia; Iucunditas; Iustitia; Laetitia; Liberalitas; Libertas; Moneta; Ops; Patientia; Pax; Pietas; Providentia; Pudicitia; Salus; Victoria; Virtus. Cf. Noreña 2001 and 2011. 29 Fundamental is Bremmer 2013, but see earlier Hopkins 1978, esp. 223, and the important chapter on images, their place and function, in

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It is tempting to read some significance into the fact that we have found no fragments from the heads of the statues, even though we do have remnants of other parts such as clothing, legs and feet. Their destruction, together with that of the theatre as a monument and its inscriptions as history, could well have been an ultimate example of abolition of memory in the enthusiastically Christian context that seems to have been the case here in the later years of the fourth century, the head by this date being the focus of perceived identity.30 Nevertheless it seems likely that the statues had been damaged by the terrible earthquake of 365 AD: certainly a good number of the columns among which they stood were shattered. For many it was doubtless God’s will that they complete the process.31 We do not have anything of the cuirass that Antoninus must have been shown as wearing, but, if his other sculpted portraits are anything to go by, it is a fair assumption that it carried a pair of confronted griffins. They occur already on the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta but more commonly with Hadrian and quite regularly with Antoninus (after whose time they seem to disappear).32 Used in this way, they are symbolic of or contributing to the strength of the emperor. There is an excellent discussion by Cadario.33 In particular one might compare the confronted griffins on the cuirass thought to be worn by Antoninus Pius from the Gerontikon at Nysa referred to above.34 Griffins were something of a favourite motif at the period. One thinks too of the cuirass of the colossal statue of Mars Ultor that was found in the area of the Forum of Nerva in Rome which must have represented an ideal of this period,35 not to mention the frieze around the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina in Rome with its series of confronted griffins about candelabra, built at much the same time as our theatre.36 As Sturgeon has pointed out, however, they are also to be found in a number of theatres, including that at Corinth where she argues a confronted pair with raised paws was placed on the podium of the central aedicula.37 In the Paphos theatre, almost certainly from the stage building, there are the remains of two panels with griffin reliefs (Fig. 8.5a–b), facing in opposite directions and therefore surely confronted, and surely from near the emperor.38 They were beasts of vengeance and symbolised military power.39 Apart from Mars’ crest-support on the relief from the Temple of Mars Ultor in Rome, one may note the gilded griffin, also from a helmet, from a colossal bronze statue from Xanten.40 There is a splendid if more elaborate example found at the site of the so-called ‘tempio di Giove Toro’ at Canosa in South Italy that must date to much the same time as ours.41 The motif goes back in quasi-imperial use as far as Julius Caesar when it is found on Campana plaques linked to C. Asinius Pollio and the discovery of some examples in the Area Apollinis on the Palatine in Rome.42 Depictions of griffins are not infrequent in theatres in addition to those at Corinth. One thinks particularly of those in the theatre at Castel Gandolfo which is probably to be dated in the last decade of the first century AD.43 In seeking to interpret their meaning, one should remember from much the same Price 1984a, 170–206. More recently there is good discussion by Stewart 2003 and 2006; Stähli 2007; Johnston 2008; Perry 2015; Trimble 2017. Without any attempt at being exhaustive, note also among the more sensible Gregory 1994; Monterroso 2011. I have not yet seen Hölscher 2018. 30 Cf. Varner 2005, and for example Stewart 1999; Pollini 2008; Stewart 2003, ch. 8. Contrast the selective defacing in the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias, so well explored by Smith 2012. One notes the partial erasure of the name of Antoninus from the inscription mentioned in n. 8 above, but Reynolds was probably right to attribute it to over-enthusiasm when removing the name of Aphrodite. 31 E.g. Waldherr 2016. We shall be discussing the earthquake and its tsunami more fully in the final report of the excavations. See Aristides, Or. 49, 38 ff. for his view of the impact of a severe earthquake along the western coast of Asia Minor in the early 150s and the belief in divine responsibility. 32 For Antoninus, see for example Wegner 1939. 33 Cadario 2006; also Cadario 2012, 110–111. I suspect that the battles of griffins and Arimasps (sc. Barbarians), popular in the earlier generation, were a by-product of the griffin tradition, emphasising the forces of civilisation over barbarism, before a return to griffins in general under Antoninus. 34 Kadıoğlu 2011, 131, Fig. 18. (See also the Hadrian, ibid., 147, Fig. 21.) Zoroğlu 2014, 146, Fig. 20. 35 In the Atrium of the Capitoline Museums, inv. Scu 58, Helbig 1966, no. 1198. The restorations do not affect the griffins. 36 Pensabene 1996, or more briefly, Gorski and Packer 2015, 66–81. The temple was constructed between 141 and 150 AD. 37 Sturgeon 2004b, 11, 74, no. 5, pl. 11–13. 38 Fragment with griffin to right, inv. 9101, sporadic find; fragment with griffin to left, inv. 9144, trench 08B [1S clearance]. Unpublished. 39 See again Cadario 2006, and for example Simon 1962. She usefully quotes Hesiod, Op. 103–104 on their silence as predators. 40 Franken 1994. They also appear in smaller bronze copies of the Mars Ultor statue, and so were clearly thought significant. I am reminded of the helmet Achilles receives from his mother Thetis on the Amasis Painter’s neck-amphora in Boston, 01.8027, ABV 152.27, BAPD 310454, beautifully illustrated recently in Whitley 2018, 194, Fig. 6. It has a fearsome snake supporting the crest, another silent killer. 41 Cassano 1992, 752, no. 13. 42 See conveniently Ventura 2008, with earlier refs. 43 See especially Hesberg 1978–1980, 318, Fig. 14 for the confronted griffins, with discussion at 316. Note also Hesberg 1981; Liverani 1989.

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period the considerable number of sarcophagi with heraldically placed pairs of griffins, presumably there to provide the family with a declaration of protection for the deceased. Note for example the sarcophagus in Florence with its counterbalanced griffins, datable to the early Antonine period.44 So too a member of the audience in Paphos must have seen the emperor and what he stood for as a source of protection, whatever his (or indeed her) other particular inclinations.45 A more vivid case of the protection offered by an emperor is that of the colossal statue of Hadrian from the theatre at Hierapytna, standing with his foot on a crawling barbarian, or the others with the barbarian kneeling at his side from Gortyn, Kissamos and Lyttos. The one in Thessaloniki is not from a theatre but from some other structure that celebrated the imperial family. They were set up in the earlier part of his reign and apparently followed earlier pieces such as the Vespasian in Olympia.

Fig. 8.5: Plaque fragments with griffins, (a) inv. 9101 and (b) inv. 9144. Paphos, Archaeological Museum. Photos: Bob Miller.

There is not enough evidence to say whether or not the assemblage included a statue of Aphrodite. And then, inasmuch as part of the dedicatory inscription was specifically to Capitolian Zeus, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, Fujii has supposed that the arrangement of statues would have included Zeus in the centre, as at the centre of each storey in the Nymphaeum constructed for Herodes Atticus at Olympia.46 This is possible, although we do not see that it is a necessary deduction: one could take the mention of Capitolian Zeus as being a metaphor for the imperial capital, and Paphos was not Olympia and the god’s sanctuary, nor indeed were the aims in Paphos quite the same as those of Herodes Atticus. As Simon Price has pointed out in exploring terms for divinities, the most common attested assimilation was between the emperor and Zeus, especially in the time of Hadrian, but it did not necessarily imply the divinity of the emperor even if it prompted the reader to associate the praise given to him with that given to the gods.47 Without entering into the issue of so-called imperial cult of a more formal kind, it is worth recalling here the importance of the statues for the audience as a reminder of the source of power and of peace in their part of the world as

44 Ghisellini 2018, 99–100, no. 85, together with her useful observations. 45 Cf. as a relatively early example, Zanker 1994, esp. 288–289 (La multiplicité des spectateurs). 46 Fujii 2013, 73–74. 47 Price 1984b, esp. 86 and 90.

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well as elsewhere.48 We also take on board Burrell’s important point that the type of columned, multi-storeyed façade in which the figures stood did not in itself symbolise imperial cult.49 Mary Sturgeon pointed out in a single sentence that “the architecture seems designed to support the sculpture”.50 This is surely the case. One could in fact take the argument further, noting that there is a similar approach in design for a range of functionally different buildings, principally, as implied above, nymphaea and baths as well as other features such as ornamental gates and even libraries such as the façade of the Library of Celsus in Ephesus. That is, we might suggest that it is not theatre architecture we are dealing with but sculptures and the architectural backdrop that was designed to hold them that was the primary concept. Like other Cypriots, the inhabitants of New Paphos never knew democracy, from the foundation of the city around 300 BC until modern times. For them autocracy of one kind and another was a norm. One might well believe, therefore, that flattery towards those in power might have been an ingrained habit. Indeed, as Petrides has pointed out in his valuable article on attitudes towards Cyprus in Greek antiquity, Athenian comic writers of the fourth century BC made some play with the notion that the kings of Cyprus were surrounded by mobs of flatterers.51 Be this as it may, the inscription also emphasised a certain pride in the city: Paphos asserted herself as Augusta (Sebaste), Claudia, Flavia, and mother-city of the cities of Cyprus.52 This last attribute is now shown to be at least Antonine (and possibly Hadrianic), not, as was earlier thought, Severan. The title of mother-city (Metropolis) was one eagerly sought and maintained by cities in various regions of Asia Minor, and Paphos was doubtless attempting to claim similar status. Indeed the competition between cities in Asia Minor was such that Ephesus felt compelled to claim in 160 AD that she was “the first and the greatest metropolis of Asia”.53 She was of course in competition with Pergamum and Smyrna, as Aelius Aristides (Or. 23) makes clear. On the other hand Ephesus’ claim pales by comparison with Miletus’ boast to be “the original foundation in Ionia and metropolis of many great cities in the Pontos, in Egypt and in many places throughout the known world”.54 As Christopher Jones has pointed out in an important discussion, the key criteria were not only current superiority but the length and history of existence. Thus, metropolis, with its implications, was a critical word.55 The greater the status, the more impressive the thanks or dedication to the imperial centre. Even though Paphos’ title of “mother-city of the cities of Cyprus” was relatively simple and in fact rather formulaic, the context has to be seen as yet another aspect of the sense of rivalry with the cities of the nearby mainland, Paphos and indeed Cyprus placing herself in that sphere.56 So too we may see the roughly contemporary introduction of colonnaded streets in Paphos, including the one running by the theatre, recently discovered and soon to be published.57 Paphos was attempting to match the major cities to her north, although one bears in mind too the thrilled description of Alexandria by Achilles Tatius (5, 1), brought to attention by Bejor,58 as well as Libanius 11 (In Praise of Antioch). In local terms, to an audience that had known its theatre in a not particularly attractive local limestone that was by the time of the Antonine reconstruction something over 100 years old,59 the new version must have been sensational, and the more so for being essentially an enclosed space, like contemporary theatres elsewhere in the Roman world, 48 On issues of imperial cult in Cyprus, see in the first instance Fujii 2013. Kantiréa 2008, at 104–105 and again on 111, wrongly reconstructs and badly attributes the long-known part of the inscription, largely following Mitford 1961, 105, n. 49, even though it had been re-published together with the new, larger part in Nicolaou 2003, and in Green et al. 2004, 13 ff., as well as in Green and Stennett 2002, showing that it belonged to the theatre, not a temple, and that it is Antonine not Severan. 49 Burrell 2006. I am less convinced by Lamare 2011a, just as I remain sceptical that similar architecture depicted in Roman wall-painting necessarily means theatre. See, inter alios, Marko 2012. On statues in nymphaea and the parallelism with theatres, Aristodemou 2011. 50 Sturgeon 2004b, 22. 51 Petrides forthcoming. 52 On these various titles, see Fujii 2013, 98–102. 53 Syll.3 867 = I.Ephesos 163; Merkelbach and Nollé 1980, no. 2040. Cf. Ando 2000, 62. 54 Pekáry 1965, 122, no. 5: ἡ πρώτη τῆς Ἰωνίας ᾠκισμένη καὶ μητρόπολις πολλῶν καὶ μεγάλων πόλεων ἔν τε τῷ Πόντῷ καὶ τῇ Αἰγύπτῷ καὶ πολλαχοῦ τῆς οἰκουμένης Μιλησίων πόλις. Noticed by Puech 2004, 363. 55 Aristid. 23; Jones 2004. 56 See in general Heller 2006. Puech 2004 provides a thorough and revealing discussion of the history and usage of the expression ‘metropolis’, although her comments on Paphos at 363–364 now need updating. 57 Green and Barker forthcoming. 58 Bejor 1999, init. 59 As noted above, the stage-building of the theatre at Kourion may well have been restored under Nero but there is no preserved evidence of parallel activity at Paphos.

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without external distractions. The seating had been redone and finished with a hard, white plaster. The orchestra was tiled with slabs of imported polychrome marble. The front of the stage was equipped with sprinklers whose water must have made that marble shine. And then the stage-building was in two storeys with columns of cipollino below and spirally-fluted bigio antico above, the column capitals and bases of imported Proconnesian marble, its wall faced with thin slabs of Proconnesian, and then, framed by the columns, the portrait-statues of the imperial family. What seems to have been the main entrance, the western parodos, had its vaulted corridor plastered and painted with floral motifs of some quality.60 All this was what an emperor offered his subjects. We can see, even if most of its audience did not, that the theatre was in a sense a ‘package’ both in its design and in its materials, as well in the interaction of the two. All the marble used in its construction and decoration was necessarily imported, and the choice of marbles was standard, the same as was employed for many other contemporary theatres. The basic marble was Proconnesian, used for the facing tiles over the stage-building, the door frames, the column-bases and capitals, and the architraves. The column-bases and capitals were perhaps pre-made, as was commonly the case, although they could have been finished locally.61 The architraves seem to have been finished on the spot: we have at least one example that was used as a practice piece. One might suppose that in practice horizontal measurements were less easy to predict than vertical since they were more dependent on the detail of local conditions as determined by the ends of the cavea and parodoi (assuming that the stage-building was not the initial part of the construction process, which generally seems unlikely), and in any case an inch or two here and there might well need to be made good. Elements such as the facing veneer and door surrounds must also have finished locally if only because they would have to fit. They would have been cut off larger blocks and there is good evidence of saw-cuts: there was flowing water from an aqueduct available close to the site and so at least one powered saw is to be contemplated, although manual saws were possible, and perhaps more likely at this date. An image of such a mechanical saw survives on a now much-published relief on a sarcophagus lid from Hierapolis in Phrygia that can be dated to the second half of the third century. Seigne has written a number of articles on the remains of a sophisticated sixth-century machine discovered at Jerash.62 Mangartz has published evidence for a row of such machines datable to the late sixth or early seventh century at Ephesus.63 There is a good overview by Kessener who assesses the relevance of similar machines from the Hellenistic period onwards and discusses the possible date of their introduction.64 One could reasonably argue that the invention of powered saws was prompted by the high levels of marble usage in pre-defined schemes such as we see in finer buildings of the Antonine and Severan periods.65 Proconnesian was widely used, from the Propontis and the Black Sea to Asia Minor to Palestine to both sides of the Adriatic (including Trajan’s Arch at Ancona66), to some of the more accessible sites in Spain but including Seville and Itálica, and as far as Tripolitania. Its quarrying, preparation and distribution were highly organised.67 The imperial house was surely in charge, even if much of the actual work and transport was out-sourced.68 The other marbles included cipollino from southern Euboia for the columns of the main (lower) storey of the stage building, and the popular bigio antico for the spirally-fluted columns of the upper storey (Fig. 8.6).69 The latter were a specialist production and they were used in a limited range of situations, such as the upper storeys of scaenae frontes and

60 A small example illustrated in Green et al. 2011, 23, Fig. 16 (colour). 61 For the capitals, see especially Asgari 1988 and 1990. For a later period, Pralong 2000. 62 More recently Seigne 2007 and Seigne 2009. 63 Mangartz 2007. 64 Kessener 2010 and 2012. Note also Ritti et al. 2007 and Atienza Fuente 2015. They give references to some of the earlier articles, but note the simpler version of a marble-saw (a band saw) suggested by Simms 1985. 65 For a good discussion of what was produced by sawing, accompanied by useful illustrations of mouldings very like those at the Paphos theatre, see Kozelj and Wurch-Kozelj 2012. 66 Álvarez et al. 2003. 67 A selection: Asgari 1978; Asgari 2002; Kokkorou-Alevra et al. 2005; Barsanti 1989; Fischer 2009; Pensabene 2002a; Barsanti and Paribeni 2016; Mayer i Olivé 1995; Márquez 2003; Pensabene 2001. 68 On the imperial management of marble supplies at this period, see, inter alios, Russell 2013; Pensabene 2014; Pensabene 2015. A brief overview in Pensabene and Gasparini 2015a. More generally of course, one should consult Ben Russell’s invaluable Gazetteer of Stone Quarries in the Roman World (2013): http://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/files/22121289/Stone_Quarries_Database_1.0.pdf 69 Lambraki 1980; Sutherland and Sutherland 2002; Chiridoglou 2010; Bruno and Vitti 2012, with earlier references; Sutherland 2013; Vitti 2014. Further examples of the columns illustrated in Green et al. 2011, 23, Fig. 13.

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equivalents such as the Gerontikon at Nysa on the Maeander,70 even if they enjoyed a wide distribution. As Benson was the first to show in 1956, they have been found at a range of sites in Cyprus such as Kourion (the theatre), a site near Kourion, Soli (the theatre), and Salamis.71 He also noted examples at Termessos and Sabratha. Benson added to his observations in a further article some three years later72 and since then of course many more examples have appeared.73 It is worth noting, for example, that they are included in the theatre at Taormina74 and in that at Itálica in Spain, a building that exhibits similarities to the Paphos theatre in other respects too.75 The identification of the source or sources of bigio antico has been problematic, but the quarries near Iznik (Nicaea) now seem likely to have been the most important.76

Fig. 8.6: Fragment of spirally-fluted column in bigio antico with capital in Proconnesian. Photo: Craig Barker.

There were two main series of column capitals, for the upper and the lower storey of the scaenae frons. Those of the lower storey were of a broadly consistent style although the details varied: even adjacent sides could be different, as one can see on one of the better examples that happens to be preserved at the Chrysopolitissa basilica (Fig. 8.7a–b).77 There are two rows of acanthus with carefully carved ribs on the leaves, with quite deep, clear cuttings; the half70 Kadıoğlu 2011 and 2014. 71 Benson 1956. Further examples from Salamis are illustrated in Kaplan 2012. Note also Wright 2010a, esp. 197. 72 Benson 1959. 73 And since the more comprehensive treatment by Fano Santi 1993. It is a pity that H. Snell’s Oxford MPhil has not seen further publication: Spirally-fluted Columns in Roman Architecture: Origins, context and ‘architectural fantasy’. This is not the place to pursue their use on sarcophagi. 74 E.g. Pensabene 2000, 235, nos. 76–80. 75 Rodríguez Gutiérrez 2000. 76 Bruno et al. 2012, and Yavuz et al. 2012, with earlier refs. 77 Also illustrated in Green and Stennett 2002, 134, Fig. 12.6, and in Green et al. 2011, 30, Fig. 18 (colour).

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Fig. 8.7: (a, b) Capital in the Chrysopolitissa Basilica, recycled from the stage-building of the theatre. Photos: J. R. Green.

leaves spring up to support the corner volutes leaving a deep triangular hollow between. The spirals of the volutes are simple, without any elaboration. The upper part of the kalathos between is left fairly plain, usually with a sharp lip at the top, but there can be one stem or two leading to the flower above and the flower is usually undeveloped, by contrast with what one often sees at other centres. There do not seem to have been spirals there in this series. The abacus has merely a simple moulding, although on this example its positioning varies on each side. One has the impression of workmen collaborating, their overseer having varied success. Two other similar capitals were preserved at the basilica (Fig. 8.8a–b), their current position marked by grey squares in Fig. 8.9.78 Their position implies that when excavated they were grouped together near the western end of the basilica. On the other hand others from the same series appear, for example, at Kourion.79 An example excavated in the theatre at Parion on the Hellespont is in very much the same style although the flower is developed but the acanthus supporting the corner volutes undeveloped (Fig. 8.10a).80 There is a very close parallel from Caesarea (Fig. 8.10b), so close that they must either have been finished at a central site or carved by the same workman who adhered strictly to his pattern.81 There is a similar but not identical piece from the stadium in Philippopolis.82 An example from the Temple of the Unknown Divinity at Sabratha in Libya is also similar although apparently larger.83 The capitals of the upper storey had a base diameter of 0.33 m which fits the upper diameter of the spirally-fluted columns (see Fig. 8.6 for a fragmentary example). If they do belong together, and this cannot be taken as absolutely certain, these have a different style, most obviously in the intertwining helices on the upper part of the kalathos, but also in the treatment of the single row of acanthus where 78 Sketch plan by Jacqueline Gothe after the on-site plans illustrated also in Wikimedia Commons. 79 E.g. Kiessel 2013, 260, Fig. 15. 80 Başaran and Ergürer 2016, 96, Fig. 33 = 2018, 70–71, Fig. 33. The published parallels quoted there are only broadly similar. 81 Fischer 1990, no. 220. 82 Dimitrov 2018, 239, Fig. 5b. He notes the links to Asia Minor. 83 E.g. Wilson Jones 1991, 121, Fig. 19 (after Tomasello 1983); Toma 2015, 815, Figs. 5–6.

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Fig. 8.8: (a, b) Capitals in the Chrysopolitissa Basilica, recycled from the stage-building of the theatre. Photo: Derek Kreckler.

many of the details have been cut with a running drill. It may well be that columns and capitals came as a set. The general type was very common in present-day Israel, for example, although Moshe Fischer’s collection has none that are quite the same:84 ours, because of their function and position, are relatively small, with the helices springing from the single row of acanthus.85 Virtually all of ours that survive are damaged, perhaps from falling from a greater height. In the Antonine phase, as noted above, the orchestra was paved with thin slabs of a number of different colours, including a fine-grained compact limestone, where it runs under the later containment wall, and nearer the stage, a red-black breccia which also appears in a white variety. There were also slabs of a white blue-flecked marble. The stones were laid in slabs with a width of approximately 0.60  m. The lengths are difficult to determine, but they may have varied, with a maximum length perhaps reaching 1.2 m. Other stones included africano, pavonazzetto, verde antico, giallo antico and so-called scritto greco. It seems unlikely that the man or men in charge of the reconstruction would have ordered these tiles or slabs from the individual quarries as separate orders. They were surely acquired from a hub or yard that sold collections of such pieces as job lots.86 These coloured stones must also have been comparatively expensive. They were attractive to an audience, most of whom were looking down, and they were made the more attractive by the water coming down on them from the sprinklers along the edge of the stage and making their colours stronger.87 There was something very special about such a pavement and one thinks of later reactions to the splendid floor of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, or of contemporary Jews’ avoidance of such floors – doubtless no coincidence.88

84 See Fischer 1990, nos. 76, 80–97, 112–121, 170–175. 85 We do, however, have some of full size, perhaps from a different structure such as the Nymphaeum. 86 Such lots are found as far away as central Spain, e.g. García-Entero and Vidal Álvarez 2012. 87 Compare in general Kadıoğlu 1999 with its survey of such pavements. 88 For Hagia Sophia, see especially Barry 2007 with further references and comparanda; on the avoidance of marble floors, Fischer and Grossmark 1996, 346.

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Fig. 8.9: Sketch plan with the location of these capitals in the Chrysopolitissa Basilica. Drawing: Jacqueline Gothe.

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Fig. 8.10: (a) Capital from the theatre at Parion, after Başaran & Ergürer 2016; (b) Capital from Caesarea, after Fischer 1990, pl. 40, no. 220.

We have no definitive evidence as to how a construction such as a theatre was organised. The mechanics of the marble trade is a subject that has attracted increasing discussion, not least from scholars such as Pensabene, Russell and now Toma, and there has been important discussion of quarrying by Hirt.89 There is not the space here to pursue the question fully. It is, however, unimaginable that a local official in a city like Paphos could carry enough influence with such a range of quarries to ensure that the various materials were delivered at a single point in time. We have just seen the geographical spread of the source quarries. One could imagine the arguments and the difficulties involved in organising their use: arguments about the effects of weather on production or delivery, the problems of the labour force, the costs, the other (more important) commitments and priorities, the unreliability of shipping, etc. There is no suggestion either, that materials were assembled at a single hub where orders might be placed and deliveries forwarded. Nor of course would a local official have enough experience in assessing quantities. That job must have belonged to an architect and his associates with good connections. The design of these theatres makes it clear that these complex issues must in most cases have rested with a powerful central authority, no matter who was footing the bill. On a related issue, and as many, including Peter Stewart,90 have pointed out, there is in general an almost incredible consistency within the portrait-types. Someone, presumably in Rome, created prototypes that were then copied throughout the Empire. There were of course some eccentric provincial versions, as Zanker has shown, and, as one might expect, they become rather more common in the later Empire, not least in North Africa, but they nevertheless remain the exception.91 There can be no doubt whatsoever that this identity of appearance was deliberate

89 Russell 2013, Toma 2018, each with further references. Hirt 2010 and especially his Chapter 8. Note also recently Long 2017, although she is more concerned with private quarries. Also under n. 58 above. 90 Stewart 2006, 244. 91 Zanker 1983. More recently, e.g., Riccardi 2000. It is interesting to compare the similarities and differences with the phenomenon of composite capitals in Algeria as described by Herrmann 2017.

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and effectively maintained. Amongst other things, it meant that emperors and some members of their immediate families were recognisable across the known world. The phenomenon also raises important questions of how it was achieved. Pfanner has developed good arguments for suspecting that portrait-statues of members of the imperial family were prepared in regional centres, close to quarries of suitable stone, in a manner similar to that of Corinthian capitals.92 Among other things, such manufacturing arrangements would also have guaranteed adherence to portrait-types and the messages they were intended to convey, especially in cases such as Paphos, without much tradition of marble-carving or creation of imperial portraiture. Indeed there was doubtless a consciousness of the potential dangers of entrusting the features of the emperor to an inexperienced provincial – as Zanker’s investigation in fact made clear. Shipment of such statues, whether or not fully finished, would provide additional reasons for manufacturing projecting limbs separately, as they in fact were in the Paphos theatre. At the same time, joining pieces demand careful finishing and would imply that the statues were transported in a finished or near-finished state. In international terms, the Paphos theatre, when newly refurbished, was good without being particularly special. It will be interesting to explore its counterparts elsewhere, but in the meanwhile it bears comparison with a number of other examples. A case in point is again the theatre at Patara in Lycia, one to two days’ sail away.93 It is near-contemporary and shares many of the same elements, but it is set within a much more important city and communication centre as capital of Lycia. It is much better preserved than the Paphos theatre and in fact a little smaller: the diameter is 84 m compared with 98 m at Paphos, and it is calculated to have had a capacity of 5,500–6,850 spectators compared with 8,000–8,500. The plan is of so-called Greek type with a cavea greater than a semicircle. It nonetheless has a central stairway and, remarkably, a small temple at the top of the cavea, but whether this last copies earlier Roman examples or follows a local custom, as at Pessinus in Phrygia or Stratonikeia in Caria, is another issue. The theatre seems to have been constructed under Tiberius but then reconstructed in 146–147 AD. The inscription claiming credit for the reconstruction was placed on the outer face of the stage-building in the form of an engraved tabula ansata. Αὐτοκράτορι Καίσαρι θεοῦ Ἁδριανοῦ υἱῶι, θεοῦ Τραιανοῦ Παρθικοῦ υἱωνῶι, θεοῦ Νέρουα ἐγγόνωι, Τίτωι Αἰλίωι Ἁδριανῶι Ἀντωνείνωι Σεβαστῶι Εὐσεβεῖ, ἀρχιερεῖ μεγίστωι, δημαρχικής ἐξουσίας τὸ ι´, ὑπάτωι τὸ δ´, πατρὶ πατρίδος, καὶ θεοῖς Σεβαστοῖς καὶ τοῖς πατρώοις θεοῖς καὶ τῆι γλυκυτάτηι Πατρίδι, τῆι Παταρέων πόλει, τῆι μητροπόλει τοῦ Λυκίων ἔθνους, Οὐειλία Κο(ίντου) Οὐειλίου Τιτιανοῦ θυγάτηρ Πρόκλα Παταρὶς ἀνέθηκεν καὶ καθιέρωσεν τό τε προσκήνιον, ὃ κατεσκεύασεν ἐκ θεμελίων ὁ πατὴρ αὐτῆς Κο(ίντος) Οὐείλιος Τιτιανός, καὶ τὸν ἐν αὐτῶι κόσμον καὶ τὰ περὶ αὐτὸ καὶ τὴν τῶν ἀνδριάντων καὶ ἀγαλμάτων ἀνάστασιν καὶ τὴν τοῦ λογείου κατασκευὴν καὶ πλάκωσιν, ἃ ἐποίησεν αὐτή· τὸ δὲ ἑνδέκατον τοῦ δευτέρου διαζώματος βάρον καὶ τὰ βῆλα τοῦ θεάτρου κατασκευασθέντα ὑπό τε τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτῆς καὶ ὑπ᾽αὐτῆς προανετέθη καὶ παρεδόθη κατὰ τὰ ὑπὸ τῆς κρατίστης βουλῆς ἐψηφισμένα To the Emperor Caesar Titus Aelius Hadrianus Antoninus Pius, son of the divine Hadrian, nephew of the divine Trajan Parthicus, descendant of the divine Nerva, Pontifex Maximus, invested with tribunician power for the tenth time, consul for the fourth time, father of the fatherland (pater patriae); to the divine Augusti and to the gods of our country and our most sweet fatherland, the city of Patara, mother-city of the Lycian people Velia Procla of Patara

92 Pfanner 1987. Compare Fejfer 2008, esp. 407–425 (with further references), although she is ultimately unclear about how she thinks the system of imperial portrait manufacture in the eastern provinces may have worked in practice; Fittschen 2010, esp. 234–235. 93 Although not designed as a definitive publication, see Piesker and Ganzert 2012. Note also Alanyalı 2005; Sear 2006, 371–372; Aristodemou 2013. For its earlier condition, Sams 1975.

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daughter of Quintus Velius Titianus dedicated and consecrated the stage-building (proskenion) which her father Quintus Velius Titianus constructed from its foundations, and the ornament within it and about it, and the erection of the sculpted statues and images, and the construction of the stage (logeion) and its cladding in marble, which she herself carried out; the eleventh level of the second seating area (diazoma) and the awnings (vela) of the theatre installed by her father and by herself were offered and supplied in accordance with the decisions of the supreme council.94

This inscription is a well-known one. It nevertheless remains interesting on many counts, among them the list of titles accorded to Antoninus Pius which may suggest necessary additions for the reconstruction of the Paphos inscription. It is worth noting too that Patara claimed (line 6) to be metropolis of the Lycians. Then there is the bold statement that Velia Proc(u)la, the daughter of Quintus Velius Titianus95 dedicated the stage-building which her father had (re-) built from the ground up together with its decoration and the elements around it, the statues (both andriantes and agalmata), the construction of the stage and its facings which she herself did. How much of this the relative pronoun ἃ refers to is hardly certain, but it could well be everything except the stage-building. The inscription then goes on to list other parts of the theatre for which she and her father were attributed joint responsibility, namely the rows of the upper seating and the awnings (vela). The use of the Latin word vela is good evidence that they were a feature introduced from the west, and shade was probably even more necessary in the enclosed style of Roman theatre where there must have been less air circulation.96 It is nonetheless difficult to know how high they may have been on a list of priorities: they were probably fairly expensive in themselves as well as needing regular maintenance, not to mention crews to position them for each performance festival. As is well known, there are graffiti from the later years of Pompeii that include with the notices announcing spectacles the words ‘vela erunt’, which would imply that at that period they were a special treat.97 With the passage of time, they were doubtless considered less of a luxury and more of a necessity, as the regularity of fittings for them on the larger theatres of the later second century in Asia Minor would suggest. They must also have been an attractive proposition to potential benefactors seeking to offer some comfort to broad sections of the audience. There is no evidence preserved in the Paphos theatre to indicate whether they existed or not. At least one base of a mast support survives in Patara.98 The use of both terms, andriantes and agalmata, is worth noting: agalmata presumably referring to representations of members of the imperial family and any divinities, andriantes any honorary statues of local men and women, Procula and her father perhaps included.99 It is also worth bearing in mind that at much the same period, according to inscriptions found at the theatre, one Tiberius Claudius Flavianus Eudemus, another prominent citizen of Patara, left 250,000 denarii to ensure work on parts of the theatre.100 They included a statue of the man himself. The theatre at Patara has now been shown to have had a temple or shrine at the top of the cavea, an unusual feature in Asia Minor, by contrast with the western provinces and North Africa.101 It is a singular example, very different in conception from the supposed theatre-temple complex at Pessinus and, for that matter, from the arrangement at Stratonikeia.102 It was a small rectangular edifice set directly at the top of the cavea that not surprisingly reminded Waelkens of Republican counterparts in Italy. That may be so. It is not a necessary conclusion, but this case should perhaps indicate a particular connection with Rome, real or hoped-for. It would seem that Tiberius Claudius Eudemus was responsible

94 TAM II, 408; IGR III, 66; RE 23, 1, 1289, s.v. Proskenion; Gallina 1974, 210–211, no. 11; Reynolds 1991, 15–16; Sturgeon 2004a, 421; Sear 2006, 10; Engelmann 2007, 136; Engelmann 2012, 188. 95 There is a good analytical discussion of this Lycian family in Jameson 1966, 130 ff. Her article is seemingly not noticed by Thomas 2007, 82, where he describes the inscription and those involved less critically. 96 On loan-words, see recently Dickey 2012. 97 The principal treatment remains Graefe 1979, but there are useful notes in Sear 2006, 10. For terminology, Moretti 1993 is important. 98 Piesker 2009, 44, Fig. 3. 99 Price 1984a, 176–179; Koonce 1988; Lanérès 2012; Keesling 2017. 100 Engelmann 2004; Petzl 2005; Engelmann 2012 for him, his wife and family as seen through a number of inscriptions. On the role of euergetism, Eck 1997, but one needs to be conscious of Zuiderhoek’s reservations on the broader economic importance of such benefactions: Zuiderhoek 2005. 101 Piesker 2009 (with a more reliable, up-to-date plan of the theatre); Piesker and Ganzert 2012. 102 Pessinus: Lambrechts et al. 1972; Waelkens 1986; Devreker et al. 1995. Stratonikeia: Mert 2002. On the role of such shrines, Gros 2009 remains important conceptually.

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for it if the temple referred to in the inscription on his statue-base is in fact the one.103 It is mentioned in the context of work on the theatre. The date is said to be Hadrianic. A curious coincidence with Paphos may not seem immediately relevant. It concerns the considerable series of seats placed loosely in the upper walkway at Patara.104 They are each cut up from rows of straight limestone seats, benches with backs, that one supposes must once have flanked a rectilinear orchestra, like the one surviving at Trachones in Attica or the more elaborate version identified by Maaß surviving in the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens.105 There are lengths of such seats surviving at the theatre in the Letoon at Xanthos.106 Similar cut-up seats survive in the theatre in Paphos and some of them were also recycled in the upper walkway as well as in fragments elsewhere.107 It is this placement that might suggest that this idea of how to re-use them must have been shared between the two cities, not that it is all that surprising given their relative proximity and likely trade-routes. On the other hand there seems to have been at least one similar seat in the same sort of position in the South Theatre at Jerash.108 Unlike the one in Paphos, the theatre at Patara preserved the typically Asia Minor Greek plan, the cavea covering more than a semicircle. It must, in part at least, have been a statement of identity – but then what does the other tell us about Paphos? Was the fully Roman type there no more than an imposition? Or did it reflect a degree of ‘romanisation’ deliberately sought by the people or by the Governor of Paphos? The scaenae frons in Paphos is not well enough preserved to allow any worthwhile comparison beyond the fact that it was straight, without major recesses, and so too was the one in Patara.109 This is also of course the period in which the mime Eucharistos held the stage in Patara – as we know from his surviving tombstone with its epigram and his portrait.110 Another contemporary theatre is that at Sessa Aurunca (Colonia Julia Felix Classica Suessa) in Campania, northwest of Caserta and about halfway between Minturno and Teano.111 The original construction seems to have been Augustan, arguably undertaken in 2 BC; there were some Julio-Claudian modifications, but then a major reconstruction in the Antonine period seemingly in consequence of a serious earthquake late in the time of Hadrian. To judge by inscriptional evidence, the work was sponsored by Matidia Minor, great-niece of Trajan, sister-in-law of Hadrian, and maternal aunt of Antoninus Pius; she was close to the imperial family and in her later years especially to Marcus Aurelius.112 She died in about 162 AD at the age of 80 or thereabouts. She owned estates in the area and must have felt that the theatre of her local town deserved special treatment.113 Indeed it became one of the principal public buildings of the town. It is calculated to have held 6,000–7,000 people and was therefore somewhat smaller than the theatre at Paphos, like the one at Patara. To judge by the style of the architectural ornament, it must have been completed a little later than the Paphos theatre and in fact the style is already moving towards Severan even if of a high quality.114 The scaenae frons was at least 26 m high and in three storeys. The columns were of Skyros breccia (Breccia di Settebassi), giallo antico (marmor numidicum, from Simitthus in Tunisia), pavonazzetto, portasanta (marmor chium) and cipollino, with bases of Luna marble

103 Engelmann 2012, 181–183. For an illustration of the statue-base, see for example Alanyali 2009, 93, Fig. 26. 104 E.g. Isik 2007, 68, Fig. 5; Alanyali 2009, 86, Fig. 18; Piesker and Ganzert 2012, 64–65, Figs. 73–76, where Ganzert notes that they must have been plastered – as they in fact were in Paphos. Their presence in Patara suggests that there must have been a Hellenistic phase there too even though most scholars suppose that it was initially constructed under Tiberius. 105 Maass 1972. 106 Badie et al. 2004, esp. 151 and Fig. 6. 107 For their form, see Green and Stennett 2002, 171, Fig. 8.5. 108 Sear 1996a, 225 Fig. 8. He refers to seats at Philadelphia/Amman and Umm Qais. 109 See the plan in Alanyali 2009, 90, Fig. 24, or Piesker 2009, or Piesker’s brief study of it in Piesker and Ganzert 2012, 257–264. She also illustrated a range of scaenae frontes at 6–14. 110 Yılmaz and Şahin 1993; Voutiras 1995; Christian 2015, 199–201. 111 The principal treatment is now Cascella 2016, especially Chapter 8, but there is much to be learned from the author’s earlier articles. For a handy brief report, see especially Cascella 2013. 112 On the inscription, found in the SE parodos of the theatre, see Cascella 2002, 85 ff.; Cascella 2006, 101 ff.; Chausson 2008, 233 ff.; Bruun 2010, 219–222; Cascella 2013; Cascella 2016, 189–193. There is a relevant dedication by the people of the town, CIL X, 4645. On Matidia, PIR2 M 368 (Petersen); Raepsaet-Charlier 1987, 533. There are also good biographical notes in Wood 2015. For other of her building activities, which included roadworks and water-supply, see Cascella 2016, Chapter 7. She also seems to have owned a brickworks in Ostia: Steinby et al. 1978, 600–601. 113 There are no references to it in surviving literary sources. 114 I suspect the work was not fully completed until some time after Matidia’s death.

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Fig. 8.11: (a–c) Capitals from Sessa Aurunca. Photos courtesy of Sergio Cascella.

and trabeation in Proconnesian.115 The cladding and some columns were of greco scritto, some cladding in serpentine (marmor lacedaemonium inasmuch as it came from near Sparta). The capitals of the first level are of the Composite order, those of the second and third Corinthian. The Corinthian capitals are of the same family as those in Paphos but far more elaborately finished, including a lot of work from the running drill in the acanthus and fully-finished flowers on the abacus (Fig. 8.11a–b).116 Those of the third level of the stage building are more elaborate still and rely on the effect of light and shade achieved through the drill (Fig. 8.11c).117 The cornices have mouldings of leaves, dentils and 115 It is not entirely certain which materials may go back to the Augustan version: some columns that had apparently been broken in the earthquake show evidence of being rejoined with clamps, Cascella 2016, 206–207. 116 Pensabene 2005, 98, Figs. 27–28; Cascella 2015, Fig. 20; Cascella 2016, 217–218, Figs. 240–241, and then those recycled in the Duomo, 244–245, Figs. 271–276. 117 Pensabene 2005, 99, Fig. 29.

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egg-and-dart. And then there are intricate architrave friezes with masks and leafy scrolls with animals.118 The orchestra was paved in opus sectile in a system of red squares and green circles set in squares bordered with white and yellow respectively.119 The red and green were varieties of porphyry from the Egyptian desert, among the most expensive stones available. There is evidence that the stage-front was fitted with sparsiones which again would have intensified the colours of the paving as well as being an attraction in their own right. All this emphasises how importantly variety of colour came to be regarded in Roman architecture, not merely in the painted sculpture – as Sturgeon explored in the context of the Hadrianic theatre in Corinth.120 This was the period in which the use of such marbles began to reach its peak, a marked elaboration from the use of predominantly white marbles in the first century. By way of background, of course, one might look back to the painted versions of the so-called First- and more particularly Second-Style painting in Pompeii and related sites,121 but the context, the scale, the reality and the presentation were now very different. The scaenae frons had statues of members of the imperial family and of divinities, together with a now well-known figure of an Aura with her drapery in bigio morato and her limbs and head in white marble, seemingly as a portrait of Matidia. It must have been at least 2.6 m high and was most probably placed in the central aedicula of the second storey.122 As Patrizio Pensabene and more recently Susan Wood have observed, it is certainly to be related to an Asia Minor workshop and is paralleled, for example, by the well-known Hadrianic figure of a ‘dancer’ from the South Baths at Perge as well as a number of others, as Wood has shown.123 Ojeda has connected some cuirassed statues at Sessa with a piece from Seleucia Pieria.124 It may or may not be coincidental that Matidia was represented among the statues of the imperial family on the stage-building of the theatre at Patara even though she was never declared an Augusta. The material of and for the scaenae frons at Sessa came from a wide area and particularly Asia Minor. From an organisational perspective it is important to take on board Pensabene’s point that all the columns derived from quarries under imperial ownership, one might suppose accompanied originally by a lead seal to certify them.125 As to the date, he and others have tended to see this activity as taking place in the second quarter of the second century, but it must surely have been somewhat later when one compares the Paphos theatre which is dated by both style and inscription, and he himself sees direct links in some of its Bauornamentik to Severan work in the nearby theatres of Benevento and Teano, even if they do not exhibit the same quality. The theatre at Sessa was not alone in exhibiting links with the eastern half of the Empire. Pensabene has demonstrated such links for a number of public buildings in South Italy and Sicily in the second and third centuries AD. Among the theatres he considered are those at Taormina, Catania, Vibo Valentia, and that in the so-called Gymnasium in Syracuse.126 It is further worth noting that the similarities in design between the theatres of Taormina and Jerash noted by Sear can now be seen in a better and broader context.127 What is distinctive at Sessa is the choice of marbles and the lavishness of the finish. An interesting counterpart to Paphos is the fact that there was a prominent inscription placed on the architrave of the first level, about a metre high, in two lines in letters about a Roman foot high.128 It is poorly preserved and extremely fragmentary, but there is clear evidence of imperial titles in something of the same way that we see in Paphos. Seemingly unaffected by Matidia’s reconstruction was the group of portrait-statues in the shrine at the top of the theatre at the centre of the summa cavea that was fronted by columns of africano (marmor luculleum) from Teos.129 Four

118 Pensabene 2005, 100, Fig. 31; Cascella 2015, Fig. 30; Cascella 2016, 236–237, Figs. 266–270. Now to be found as the architrave to a doorway in the Duomo. The mask-types tied the theatre to the honoured tradition of Tragedy and Comedy – which is not necessarily what typically happened in the theatre: such was not their function. 119 Cascella 2016, 202–204. The basic scheme was of course not unparalleled; it is the execution and detail that is remarkable. 120 Sturgeon 2004b, 20–22. 121 See recently for example Mulliez-Tramond 2010, and van de Liefvoort 2012, with further references. Eristov 1979. 122 Wood 2015, 237. At 245 she made the attractive suggestion of a supposed link between ‘aura’ and ‘Aurunca’. 123 Pensabene 2005, 97; Wood 2015, 246 ff. 124 Ojeda 2013; Ojeda 2014. 125 Spagnoli 2018. 126 Pensabene 1996–1997 and 2000. 127 Sear 1996a and 1996–1997; on Taormina Sear 1996b. 128 Cascella 2002, 62 Fig. 26; Bruun 2010, 223–225. 129 Cascella 2016, 163–166. It was seemingly initiated under Caligula.

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large statues of seated figures, c. 3.80 m high, apparently in a Greek marble, were placed on a podium, members of the Julio-Claudian family. It suggests that there may have been some particular connection with the imperial family already. Although there were potential parallels in Italy – I think for example of Urbisaglia (Macerata) which on present evidence was just as expensively treated130 – there was nothing remotely like this in Paphos. In conclusion, I described the Paphos theatre above as a ‘package’. Part of the point in comparing it with contemporary versions in Patara and Sessa Aurunca is to show what other examples could include. They must have been better funded. The Paphian version did not include figured reliefs,131 the architectural decoration (Bauornamentik) was well done but quite simple by comparison, the Corinthian capitals too were simple versions of a common model, the orchestra had tiles of fine, attractive marbles but by comparison laid out in simple fashion; it did of course have sparsiones along the front of the stage. The relief plaques with griffins, and doubtless the griffins on Antoninus’ cuirass, were symbols of the overwhelming power and of the security offered by the Empire and more particularly the Emperor. One could argue, too, that the enclosed space of a Roman-style theatre emphasised such messages. The portrait-statues of the imperial family and the prominent, clearly lettered inscription were more direct. They, as the inscription itself made clear, were evidently regarded as critical features in what was in relative terms an economical version of a theatre. They formed explicit communication with the audience: that was what was important and helped create an identity as a known part of the Empire, with all the advantages it had to offer. The sub-title of this article deliberately recalls a section of Greg Woolf’s article ‘Inventing Empire in Ancient Rome: Empire as Cosmic Dominion’; and the following section was named ‘Believing in Empire’.132 In the Greek world there was a long tradition of tyrants and kings attaching their names to a range of public buildings. One thinks for example of Pisistratus, Alexander, Attalus and not least the Ptolemies. Roman leaders picked up on this pattern and from Pompey onwards they saw theatre buildings as useful media.133 Under the Empire, as already in the Hellenistic world, no town worthy of its name was without a theatre. This arguably became even more important in the Greek-speaking parts of the Empire where the traditions of their pasts were a key element in the continuity and/or reinvention of their identities.134 In Asia Minor in the second century, the competition between cities led to the creation of ever grander, more elaborately decorated theatres, in many cases on the basis of local funding. It was as if Attalid Pergamum had set a pattern. It was also a reflection of the growing sense of the attraction of beautiful cities, a concept found especially in the Greek East. At the same time the styles of these theatres involved elements developed in Roman Italy, as part of the cities’ active participation in the world-empire. The central government for its part clearly encouraged these developments both at a policy level and at a practical level in creating a sophisticated and amazingly efficient system of marble supply. The Romans had inherited a perception of marble as defining the status of buildings, and Augustus was said to have claimed that he transformed Rome in those terms.135 His successors steadily transformed the Empire in those same terms, and the peak of the process occurred under Hadrian, the Antonines and the Severans. For them too theatres were places of perceived importance: popular gathering places for large audiences, termini of ritual processions, places to create happiness, points at which the icons of emperors interacted with the people. It is the more saddening that we have such poor information on what generally happened in them.

130 Antonelli and Lazzarini 2013. 131 For a recent view on the importance and relevance of figured reliefs at this period, see Di Napoli 2015 and 2018. 132 In Alcock et al. 2001, 311–322. 133 For example Gros 2002; more recently Pont 2012, 111–125; or on North Africa Montali 2018. 134 Cf. Woolf 1995. I am conscious of the same author’s discussion on Romanization 2.0 and its alternatives, 2014, 45–50. 135 Suet. Aug. 28, 3; Cass. Dio 56, 30, 3–4. See more generally Pensabene 2002b.

Hans Rupprecht Goette

9 The Portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander in Roman Contexts: Evidence of the Reception of the Theatre Classics in Late Republican and Imperial Rome This paper about portraits of some Greek poets in Roman contexts is archaeological in its focus. It considers whether the many copies of portraits of Greek poets that we know from contexts of the Late Roman Republic and Roman Imperial times are the result of a theatrical interest by those who commissioned and/or collected them. This issue will be discussed by concentrating on a few examples: the Roman copies of the portraits of the fifth-century tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides – their originals were erected by Lycurgus in the east parodos of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens1 around 330 BC (Fig. 9.1) – and of the comic poet Menander2 – this original was placed ca 290 BC next to those of the three tragedians. In view of the varied media (sculpture in the round, reliefs, and paintings) of the many copies of Menander’s likeness, this essay will also explore whether this case differs from that of the group of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides.

Fig. 9.1: Athens, Theatre of Dionysos, east parodos: location of the Lycurgan statues of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, to the left of the statue of Menander just inside the propylon. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

Concerning the Lycurgan statue group, the action of erecting the bronze figures 100 years after the playwrights’ lives was an expression of veneration given to the works of those poets, especially when regarded in combination with the contemporary establishment of the authoritative editions of the plays’ texts.3 One is reminded of the epigram of Astydamas,4 1 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 121–140; Vorster 2004, 415–418; Dillon 2006, 29, 102, n. 30. 2 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 224–236; Fittschen 1991; Palagia 2005; Bassett 2008; Goette 2011. 3 Zimmermann and Rengakos 2014, 841–846, esp. 841 f. with bibliography in n. 414. The re-staging of those dramas from 386 BC on can be regarded as the first step in canonising those plays. 4 TrGF I, no. 60 (Astydamas II): T 2a (Phot. 502, 21; Apostol. 15, 36). Goette 1999, 21–22. Astydamas was not allowed to place the inscription. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-010

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who regarded their dramas as exemplary and wanted to elevate himself by having the following inscribed on the base of his statue: I wish I would have been born and lived at the same time as those who won the prize for the best language. Competing with them I would have been judged correctly. But now they who are far from being envied have the advantage of time.

Trying to summarise archaeological opinion about the Lycurgan portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides is an astonishingly hard enterprise: not only is there no agreement on the likenesses, but even the poses of the statues, whether they were seated or standing, were disputed until recently, when Chr. Papastamati-von Moock5 published old photographs of the statue bases: the measurements of the blocks clearly indicate that these were standing, not seated, figures. Before we can discuss the interpretation of these portraits in a Roman context, we must first clarify how we can or cannot identify the Lycurgan statues and portraits of the tragedians.

The identification of portrait types of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides through their Roman copies and findspots When scholars look for portraits of these dramatists preserved in Roman imperial copies, their reasoning is often tenuous: normally, one would be looking for images with inscribed names, but no such portrait for Aeschylus has survived. In the absence of that, an Aeschylus type (Fig. 9.2) preserved in nine replicas6 has been identified based on the combination of this portrait type with that of another writer in double herms: one double herm has the suspected Aeschylus with Sophocles,7 another has it combined with Homer. A second argument is the resemblance of the image of Aeschylus to that of Sophocles, based on the idea that those likenesses, which were invented together long after the poets died, would look similar. Clearly, these are not solid arguments, although they are generally accepted by scholars.8 One other proposal, usually rejected as improbable, is the identification of a portrait of a bald man as Aeschylus9 because of a late antique story about the death of the poet being caused by an eagle dropping a turtle on a rock. The rock turned out to be Aeschylus’ bald head. This type is preserved in only one copy and is otherwise depicted on gems together with an eagle and/or a turtle. Likewise, the search for a body type for Aeschylus has been inconclusive. A candidate for this nomination is the statue of a man wearing a himation and holding a mask, now in the Vatican,10 who probably represents a poet of the fourth century BC because the body type accords with fourth-century statue types. Efforts to identify the image of Sophocles are more successful: Ursinus published the drawing of a clipeus portrait11 identified as Sophocles by the inscribed name, and inscriptions also appear on a badly damaged herm12 and a small bust,13 both in the Vatican, all three representing the same portrait type. In addition, two double herms14 show this portrait combined with that of Euripides, thus supporting the identification based on the (unprovable, see below) assumption that the herm portraits combined with those of Euripides should be of another tragedian. We know two portrait variants of the likeness of Sophocles: the Farnese head type (Fig. 9.3)15 appears in 32 copies, while the Lateran

5 Papastamati-von Moock 2008. Weber 2013, 141–145 still envisions the statues of the Lycurgan tragedians as seated figures. However she does not consider the form of their base: its short depth only offers enough space for standing figures. 6 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 122–123, no. 1–9, fig. 577–603; recently: Lang 2012, 72, n. 734 (list of replicas); 52, n. 469, and 166, cat. no. G U96, pl. 18, 140 (a conjectural copy on a gem). 7 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 122, no. 1, fig. 577–579; 586; 127, no. 15, fig. 635–637; 644; Picozzi 2010, 177–181, no. 31. 8 Voutiras 1994, 73–77, no. 414; Krumeich 2002, 542–546. About the methodological problems see Lang 2012, 52. 9 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 123, fig. 604–605; gems: fig. 606, 608–609; Lang 2012, 51, n. 456; Dillon 2006, 86, 167, no. B85, fig. 106–107; Weber 2013, 144, fig. 15. Arnott 2003, 34–42 (n.v.). 10 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 124, fig. 607. The attached portrait head of Euripides is probably an incorrect restoration. 11 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 125 with two illustrations. 12 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 125, no. 1, fig. 611–612 (Farnese type). 13 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 128, no. 1, fig. 678–679 (Lateran type). 14 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 128, no. 27, fig. 670 and 672; no. 28, fig. 667–668. For the combination with Aeschylus see above n. 6. 15 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 125–128, no. 1–32, fig. 611–674; Voutiras 1980, 122–147; Vorster 1993, 154–159, no. 67, pl. 297–308 frontispiece; Krumeich 2002, 542–543 (early fourth century BC); Dillon 2006, 32–36, 137–139, no. A2.

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Fig. 9.2: (a–c) Aeschylus (?), Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 1841, purchased in Rome. Photos: Hans R. Goette.

head type (Figs. 9.4–5)16 is preserved in eleven replicas, one of them on a body wrapped tightly in a himation, appearing as a self-confident Greek citizen;17 this combination of portrait type and statue is regarded as copying the original set up by Lycurgus. However, almost all portraits of Sophocles wear a narrow ribbon in the hair; because the fine fillet signifies Sophocles as a priest, its presence in combination with the self-assured pose may cast some doubt upon the

16 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 128–130, no. 1–11, fig. 675–680; Voutiras 1994, 177, no. 450; Krumeich 2002, 542–543, no. 408 with fig. 17 Vorster 1993, 154–159, no. 67, fig. 297–308; Vorster 2004, 415 with text-fig. 96; Lang 2012, 133 with cat.no. S Soph6, pl. 37, 244.

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Fig. 9.3: (a–c) Sophocles Farnese, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 6314. Photos: Hans R. Goette.

identification of this portrait head and statue type with the one commissioned by Lycurgus.18 The tragedian received the title of priest maybe a century after he purportedly housed Asclepius on the god’s journey from Epidaurus to the south slope of the Athenian Acropolis (420/419 BC). Thereafter, Sophocles was worshipped as the hero Dexion (‘receiver’ of Asclepius)19 because of his (claimed) significant role in the founding of the Asklepieion in Athens. Thus, the portrait 18 Voutiras 1994, 177, interprets the strophion as an indication for Sophocles’ initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries, and these were closely connected to the introduction of Asclepius into Athens, see below with n. 19–20. See Dillon 2006, 124–125, for a recent comment on portraits with fillets. 19 Voutiras 1980, 145; Aleshire 1989, 9–11 with the discussion of the literary and epigraphical sources, as well as earlier bibliography. More recently Connolly 1998 and Clay 2004, 77–80, 151–152.

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Fig. 9.4: (a–c) Sophocles Lateran, Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Profano ex-Lateranense, inv. 9973. Photos: Hans R. Goette.

depicts Sophocles as a poet and as a priest. This interpretation is supported by the description of an Athenian (real or imaginary) painting by Philostratus the Younger (Imag. 13 = Soph. TrGF T 174): in this Sophocles/Dexion was clearly recognisable in the company of Melpomene and Asclepius.20 Later, at the latest in the Roman imperial period and perhaps even earlier, the hero Dexion was venerated in Athens, either in the Amyneion or the Asklepieion. So we may connect the known portrait type of Sophocles with the story of his role in the translatio of Asclepius.

20 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 125, locates this painting in the Stoa Poikile and attributes it to Polygnotus; Connolly 1998, 2 with n. 10; Clay 2004, 79.

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Fig. 9.5: Statue of Sophocles Lateran, Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Profano ex-Lateranense, inv. 9973. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

The third tragedian Euripides also is known from two portrait types, the Farnese type after a herm inscribed with Euripides’ name from the Farnese collection, (we know more than 30 copies of this type, Fig. 9.6).21 The other is the Rieti type (Fig. 9.7),22 named after the place where it was exhibited in a palazzo in the 19th century. Today the Rieti portrait, one of seven replicas of this type, is in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen.23 It was identified as Euripides because of its resemblance to the Farnese type with the few long strands of hair on the forehead, and especially because of the vertically inscribed lines of a Greek text (with spelling mistakes) on the figure’s chest; this text was interpreted 21 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 133–138, no. 1–30 and a-k, fig. 717–767; Krumeich 2002, 544–545 with fig. 1; recently: Lang 2012, 79, n. 750 (list of replicas). Another (Hellenistic) portrait type, the so-called Pseudo-Seneca (Aristophanes, according to some researchers: Gauer 1996, 61–62; Weber 2013, 140, fig. 8; others identify it as Hesiod: Dillon 2006, 124, n. 204 with bibliography), was identified with Euripides by Voutiras 1990, 165, and Fuchs 2005, 117–118. 22 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 139–140, fig. 768–778; Isler 1999, 9–21; Krumeich 2002, 544–545, no. 409; Dillon 2006, 141–142, no. A5. 23 Usually it is regarded as one of three portraits of an ancient group (again by Fittschen 1991, 257, n. 136, although he concedes that the copies were produced at different times), but this cannot be secured (Neudecker 1988, 64–65, n. 646) and is questionable stylistically; the ‘group’ is probably based on the interest of the 19th c. collector. See recently Dillon 2006, 90, 119, 160–161, no. B48, fig. 135 (“found together with [. . .]”); Schmidt 2007, 103–105 with fig. 81 agreed with Fittschen in dating the third portrait, the so-called Cicero, to the early Hellenistic period and in interpreting it as the portrait of a (seated) poet of the early third century BC.

9 The Portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander in Roman Contexts 

Fig. 9.6: Euripides Farnese, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. 6135. Photo: DAI Rome D-DAI-ROM-60.618.

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Fig. 9.7: Euripides (?), Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, inv. 2023, purchased in Rieti. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

as a citation from the lost Euripidean play Alexander, known from the late antique anthology of Stobaeus (4, 19, 4 = Eur. TrGF F 48).24 The text says that “there is no greater burden, no more unprofitable possession in a house, than a presumptuous slave”. Obviously such a quotation of a very general sententia is not suitable to characterise a portrait of Euripides, nor to secure the identification. Yet, in spite of this, precisely this portrait type was recently proposed25 as the image used by Lycurgus for the group of three tragedians in the Theatre of Dionysus. To make this argument convincing we would have to explain where and when the other (Farnese) portrait type of Euripides was created and why it was so successful despite not being derived from the Lycurgan dedication. The fact that there is no literary reference to any original other than the Lycurgan, and the fact that the Farnese type is securely identified as Euripides by inscription and was copied four times as often, offers little support for the possibility that the Rieti type really is Euripides. With regard to the images of the tragedians in the original group of three on a common base, scholars assume that Roman patrons commissioned portrait groups of those high-classical Athenian playwrights as well. Accordingly, the same reasoning is applied to double herm portraits, which presumably also combined two of the three Lycurgan portrait types (the so-called ‘law of double herms’26). But we know from extant examples that images of tragedians could

24 Comparetti 1897. See Richter 1965, vol. 1, 139–140 (with the translation cited here); Johansen 1992, 44–45, no. 13; Stähli 1992, 164, n. 86. The content sounds like a sententia as those from Menander’s comedies. Concerning the Roman fondness of such sententiae of Euripides and Menander because of their “praktisch-moralischer Nützlichkeit”, see Voutiras 1990, 165, n. 11, and 24; esp. for Menander: Csapo 1999; Nervegna 2013, 201–243. For the reconstruction of the text one has to assume that in column 1 and 2 five letters and in the other five columns three letters were inscribed below the preserved part of the herm which means that it was inscribed quite long after the production of the copy. 25 Vorster 1993; Isler 1999, 9–21; Krumeich 2002, 545. 26 Gauer 1996 tried to strengthen the so-called “Gesetz der Doppelhermen”, but his arguments about an unidentified portrait type (either Plato, Cratinus, or Eupolis) belonging to a double-herm in combination with Menander are inconclusive (for example in his interpretation of Hor. Sat. 1, 1: Gauer 1996, 61, vs. 63), and are nearly circular since he conjectures that the image of Menander, the main representative of New Comedy, requires the portrait of a comedian of Old Comedy as a pendant. A new find in a recent excavation of a Roman villa outside and east

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be combined with the Hellenistic portrait of the epic poet Homer27 or even that of a politician, such as Solon.28 In those cases when the identifications of the poets depicted are secure, we can see that the likenesses of Sophocles and Euripides were combined four times,29 thus pointing to a special interest in these two late fifth-century tragedians. Modern scholars also reconstruct (and consequently may invent) sculptural groupings in the post-antique period on the basis of shared findspots.30 For example, based on a text of 1594, scholars identify 18 portraits as a group found in Rome, supposedly “behind the Baths of Diocletian” and now housed in the Farnese collection in Naples.31 However, the exact findspot and the ancient setting of the portraits are uncertain. Moreover, some of the pieces are now lost, and the preserved works vary a lot, for example with regard to their style and the form of the busts and herms, which are, in some cases, products of modern reworking.32 The portraits are of Aeschylus, Euripides, Socrates, Zeno, Chrysippus, Carneades, Lysias, Posidonius, and some other unnamed likenesses of so-called intellectuals and strategoi. If this really constituted an ancient portrait group, the combination is noteworthy: there is obviously no special interest in Greek theatre but rather a vague interest in Greek culture. For a long time the identification of the image of Aeschylus (Fig. 9.2) was supported by the argument of context: a bronze portrait of the tragedian was found together with those of Homer and Sophocles in a shipwreck33 recovered off Livorno: Being found with other writers, especially with Sophocles, the portrait type had been identified with Aeschylus. One has to point out that a shipwreck is not an intended ancient setting and therefore is not indicative of a deliberate ancient grouping. But even more important is the fact that a bronze analysis has demonstrated34 that all of these portraits were produced in post-Renaissance times. All this (purported) evidence needs to be considered (and quite often to be questioned) if one seeks the ancient setting of the many existing portraits of the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in Roman contexts.

Display of portraits of Greek tragedians in Roman contexts and its intention A survey of the findspots of the portraits of interest here gives an astonishing result: in contrast to the situation at the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens – where we know the bases of the original statues in their original location and where two bases of Thespis and Aeschylus of the Roman imperial period35 were excavated – not a single portrait of a Greek tragedian of the Athenian city wall answered Gauer’s question of the identification of the portrait type depicting Eupolis, an inscribed herm found with another herm of Chrysippus: The portrait does not depict Eupolis as a young man, as Gauer 1996, 63, expected. To the same context might belong the portrait of Demosthenes, Nat. Arch. Mus. 327: Dillon 2006, 206, n. 156; Zacharidou 2008, 162, fig. 13–14 (with bibliography). 27 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 50, no. 4, fig. 61–63; 122, no. 2, fig. 580–582. Such a combination is not necessarily meaningless, as can be deduced by an epigram on a double herm of Homer and Menander which states that the grammarian Aristophanes judged them as first and second in writing: Richter 1965, vol. 2, 226, no. 4; Lorenz 1965, 29, no. 23; Dillon 2006, 54. But this example clearly demonstrates that without detailed information the modern researcher is left with assumptions about what and if any ideas might have influenced the commission and the combination in double herms, especially not for portrait galleries ‘growing’ over a longer period of time and put together by different owners of a place (villa, garden, park, public building, etc.) with probably different interests, preferences, and taste: Dillon 2000; Dillon 2006, 54. 28 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 85, no. 3 (with Euripides; a possible reason for this combination is that both were born on Salamis). 29 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 128, no. 27, fig. 670, 672; 128, no. 28, fig. 667–668; 129, no. 6, 11; 136, no. 24, fig. 749–750; no. 25, fig. 755–756; no. 28–29. 30 See several such reconstructions by Lorenz 1965. Cf. above n. 21. The portrait of Aeschylus in Copenhagen (Fig. 2) was sold by the art dealer E. P. Warren said to be one of a group, the others being Aeschines (Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek inv. 2023, a herm [not a head for insertion into a statue] and purchased 8 years earlier from P. Arndt) and Euripides (Rome, Museo Barracco inv. 154, a head for insertion and of a different style, said to have been exhibited earlier in the garden of the Palazzo Rospigliosi in Zagarolo), see Johansen 1992, 38. See above n. 23 on the so-called group of three portraits in a palazzo in Rieti. 31 Lorenz 1965, 6–10, no. III, 1–14, pl. 1–3. 32 Gasparri 2009, 9–33, no. 1–14, fig. on 124–151. 33 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 122, no. 5, fig. 583–585 (Aeschylus); 129, no. 9, fig. 686–688 (Sophocles). A third bust of this set depicts Homer: Richter 1965, vol. 1, 50, no. 8, fig. 76–78, a fourth an unidentified man. About the so-called ancient group: Lorenz 1965, 18–19, no. XIII, pl. 11; Picozzi 1995, fig. 1–2, 6, 8, 11, 16, 21 (Sophocles); fig. 40–43 (Aeschylus); fig. 24–26, 28–29 (Homer); fig. 32–34, 36–37 (unidentified man); Stähli 1992, 160. 34 Picozzi 1995; Krumeich 2002, 546. 35 Aeschylus: Athens, Epigr. Mus. inv. no. 4942: IG II2 4264–4265; Richter 1965, vol. 1, 121–122, fig. 610; Tozzi 2011, 465, fig. 15; Weber 2013, 142,

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has been found in a theatre in the western Mediterranean.36 Tragedians also do not appear in Roman baths, although we know of portraits of Greeks in palaestrae connected to baths.37 The absence of playwrights’ portraits in Roman theatres may be surprising, but much more so is the fact that such portraits do occur in Roman funerary settings.38 Scholars commonly claim that the portraits of Greek poets decorated Roman public libraries or libraries in villas of the Roman upper class.39 Since we do not know a single example of a portrait of Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides from a library – and admittedly, it is difficult to identify a given room in a building as a library – we must depend on literary sources. The first public library in Rome was that built by Asinius Pollio (Plin. HN 7, 115). Later Pliny (HN 35, 10) tells us that Marcus Terentius Varro collected (together with many books) portraits of 700 famous ancient authors, probably for a villa’s library, i.e. a private setting.40 And Atticus published on the subject of writers’ portraits.41 Unfortunately, in these cases we are not informed if the tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides were among these images. We learn more about the library of Asinius Pollio from Isidore of Seville (Orig. 6, 5), who tells us that it was divided into two parts – one Greek, one Latin – and that each was decorated with portraits of Greek and Latin authors, probably painted images, respectively. Other literary sources also describe paintings in libraries42 (for example that of Herennius Severus: Plin. Ep. 4, 28). I wonder if portraits of poets such as Euripides, Menander, and an unidentified author on small Roman reliefs – reliefs43 which obviously are not based on large statue types – reflect such paintings that may have

fig. 12. Thespis: Athens, Theatre of Dionysus inv. no. NK 282: Richter 1965, vol. 1, 73–74 with illustrations and fig. 226–227; Schwingenstein 1977, 64–69; Tozzi 2011, 464, fig. 13–14; Weber 2013, 142, fig. 11. 36 Fuchs 1987. Archival material indicates that statue bases for four mythological heroes (Orestes, Pylades, Telegonus, and Telemachus), together with one for the poet Diphilus, were found in the theatre of Tusculum: CIL XIV 2647–2651; Schwingenstein 1977, 63, n. 3; not listed by Fuchs 1987, 48–49. A bronze statue of Epicharmus may have been placed in the Greek theatre (note: not a Roman setting) of Syracuse: Theoc. Epigr. 18 = Anth. Pal. 9, 600; Rizzo 1923, 10 n. 2. See the summary about the portraits of literati, their settings in Roman contexts, and their meaning as “ambizioni culturali” by Di Cesare 2011. 37 Manderscheid 1981. See Sid. Apoll. Epist. 9, 9, 14. In the garden of the villa of the Volusii a statue of Heracles and the portraits of Euripides and Menander were supposed to imbue that place with the aura of a Greek gymnasium: Mielsch 1987, 97–98; Neudecker 1988, 67–68; 157, no. 15, 1–3. 38 Hölscher 1982, 214, n. 17–18 pointing to a Greek tradition: [Plut.] X orat. 837d. A good example is the portrait of Sophocles in a clipeus, see above n. 9. Some mausolea (like that of Celsus in Ephesus) even served as libraries; see Makowiecka 1978, 62; Strocka 1981, 322–329; PalmaVenetucci 1992, 34, 43, 121–122; Hoepfner 2002, 123–126; Strocka 2003; Lang 2012, 130 with n. 1385 and 1389 with cat.no. S Men7, S Soph5, and V Men1, pl. 44. Contra: Fejfer 2017, 51, n. 2. 39 Wendel 1954, 264–265 (= 1974, 194–195); Mielsch 1987, 115; Micheli 1998, 18; Sinn 2000, 406, and many others, mostly based on Plin. HN 35, 9 and not on archaeological findspots. Regarded as a substitute for the lost library in Alexandria, the Hellenistic library in the sanctuary of Athena in Pergamum (Mielsch 1995; Hoepfner 1996; Strocka 2000; Radt 2003) is usually claimed to be the model for private libraries in Roman villas because inscribed bases were excavated near (not inside!) the room identified as the library (this interpretation of the room has been questioned with good arguments by Mielsch 1995 and Strocka 2000). Statues of Homer, Alcaeus (and Sappho), Herodotus, and Timotheus decorated the place (or the sanctuary): Wendel 1954, 265 (erroneously adding Demosthenes); Gauer 1996, 64, n. 37; Lang 2012, 28, n. 142 and 37, n. 282 with bibliography. Portraits of famous ‘intellectuals’ were found in the area of a fountain next to the via tecta connecting the city of Pergamum with the Asklepieion: Euripides, a philosopher (Socrates?), Antisthenes, and Xenophon next to one of Hadrian, and some mythological and divine statues: for a summary of the evidence along with further bibliography, see Petsalis-Diomidis 2010, 172–179, fig. 32–36. 40 For the library of Varro: Suet. Iul. 44; Isid. Etym. 6, 5, 1. For Asinius Pollio: Ov. Tr. 3, 1, 71–72; Suet. Aug. 29, 5; Isid. Etym. 6, 5, 2. Fehrle 1986, 14–28; Morgan 2000, 66. Dillon 2000, 40, n. 105, correctly points to “the Romans’ desire to know the Greeks of the past through their portraits”, as evidenced by Pliny, HN 35, 10–11. 41 Nep. Att. 18, 6. 42 Related, but not exactly the same phenomenon, are wall paintings with the depiction of poets next to, or even in, actual private libraries in houses in Pompeii, for example 1.10.4 (Casa del Menandro with room 21 and the adjacent area showing images of Menander and an unidentified poet) and 6.17.41 (with a library and two painted images of men in Greek mantles, one of them may be the poet of dithyrambs, Philoxenus, see Strocka 1981, 300–302, pl. 13; Fittschen 1991, 277, pl. 78, 1; Strocka 1993, 344–348, pl. 74–75; Zanker 1995, 346, n. 12; Esposito 2008, 52–61, fig. 1–10). 43 Euripides in Istanbul: Richter 1965, vol. 1, 137, no. b, fig. 767; Zanker 1995, 58, fig. 32. Menander in Princeton and the Vatican Museums: Richter 1965, vol. 2, 229, no. 11–12, fig. 1525–1527; Ridgway 1994, 100–106, no. 32; Fittschen 1991, 276–177; Zanker 1995, 134, fig. 74; Sinn 2006, 136–145, pl. 34–35, 1–2. Unidentified poet in Berlin: Richter 1965, vol. 2, 229, fig. 1524; http://arachne.uni-koeln.de/item/objekt/80441 . Sinn 2000, 405–408, summarises (with bibliography) the earlier research on the interpretation of those reliefs and imagines them as decoration of “kultivierte Wohnräume”, or, based on Micheli 1998, 18, of libraries. Since she traces the invention of the general image type of the seated poet with a Muse depicted on these reliefs back to late Hellenistic art in Alexandria, one may combine such images with the famous library in that town. More recently Lang 2012, 91–92, n. 915.

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served as shelf-marks in ancient libraries to indicate the scrolls of the respective poet which were stored in any given location.44 Other written sources inform us about collections of portraits of ancient authors amassed by wealthy individuals, including the emperor Tiberius (Suet. Tib. 70, 2), who added images of those writers he favoured to the older, existing portraits of eminent writers. Again, we do not learn anything about portraits of the great three tragedians of the fifth century, but when we hear names of ancient authors, they are, with the exception of Homer, mostly Greek philosophers, philosophy teachers, their students, and Latin45 writers. In addition to the paintings mentioned by literary sources, other texts (for example Plin. HN 35, 9) discuss metal, i.e., gold, silver, bronze, and even plaster portraits.46 This last, cheap material – we may think of plaster casts of original bronze or marble portraits – is associated with negative judgments: the owners of such houses decorated with plaster portraits are regarded as uneducated people (Juv. 2, 4–5). Pliny’s Letter 3, 7 describes Silius Italicus as a restless man collecting books, statues, and portraits in his houses in Campania and repeatedly moving to a new place and decorating the new home all over again with such objects. This gives the impression that the collection was less about the texts – least of all Greek dramas by Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides – than about acquisition, display, and his veneration of famous writers, especially Virgil. Finally we might consider an individual Hellenophile, an educated man: Cicero, whom we regard as admiring Greek culture47, exhibited great interest in decorating his villas with Greek sculpture, yet no portraits of Greek writers.48 Rather, his letters and writings reveal his concern with portraits of family members (imagines maiorum including that of his brother: Cic. Q Fr. 3, 1, 14), which could be supplemented by a portrait of Demosthenes (Cic. Orat. 110), and Greek portraits of philosophers, such as Plato for a garden setting (Cic. Brut. 24) or Aristotle for the villa of Atticus (Cic. Att. 4, 10, 1). For example, Cicero refers to one of his villas as ‘my philosopher’, which he decorated with palliati, i.e. Greeks clad in himatia. Because of the name of the villa and the garments worn by the statues, we interpret the palliati as Greek philosophers and conclude that Cicero was indeed interested in Greek philosophers. In his Epistulae ad familiares 7, 23 we see clearly that his so-called program is to decorate his villas (ornare is the term [see as well Cic. Fam. 7, 23], ornamenta γυμνασιώδη are requested in Cic. Att. 1, 6 and 1, 9). In sum, he exhibits no special literary or theatrical interest when he orders statues or portraits. Rather, the much more general idea of Greek education, of paideia, seems to govern his choices, and this is best symbolised by his insistence on a statue of Athena as an absolute necessity. The interest in paideia, in the frame of cultural traditions and ambitions for self-representation within his social environment, his peer group, influences the search for, and acquisition of, sculpture and paintings. As R. Neudecker49 demonstrates in his book on the furnishing of Roman villas, the focus of the Roman upper-class is on the theme of paideia in the setting of otium when decorating their places, which explains why Greeks from very different professions, such as statesmen and kings, philosophers of various schools, poets as well as Roman VIPs were combined to form sets of imagines illustrium – even set up in alphabetical order – and placed together with famous or anonymous beautiful ideal statues generally expressive of Greek culture. The places within the villas where these works of art were exhibited were named Parthenon, Academy, Lykeion, Amaltheion, Canopus and so on, thus creating the aura of famous Greek topoi, settings of Greek culture and paideia. With regard to the portraits of Greek tragedians, one can

44 Neudecker 1988, 73, thinks of small images of writers painted or made of precious material, which served as labels on the shelves. Hoepfner 1996 produced a nice reconstruction drawing of a huge ancient bookcase with a Doric architecture, “with the works of Plato in the royal library of Pergamon”; on top of the bookcase Hoepfner placed the herm of Plato. The same context is regarded (without real evidence) as probable for miniature portrait busts, in several instances inscribed with the name of the depicted ‘man of letters’ on the bust or its base: Stähli 1992, 152–153; Lang 2012, 124–128 with related bibliography; Weber 2013, 145–148 (‘Autorenbüsten’); Spinola 2014, 164–165; Fejfer 2017. Such miniature busts of Chrysippus and Sophocles were excavated in the templum Pacis in Rome and have been interpreted as the decoration of a library: Spinola 2014, 165, figs. 5–6. 45 Plin. Ep. 3, 7 and 4, 28, 1. More examples mentioned in literary sources: Neudecker 1988, 71–72. 46 Neudecker 1988, 117–118, n. 1219–1227. 47 La Penna 1975b, 134–135. 48 Overview: Neudecker 1988, 8–18. See Stähli 1992, 152–153; Lang 2012, 133, n. 1439 (pointing to Sen. Ep. 64, 9–10 with the notion of a family setting). 49 Neudecker 1988, 121–129; see Zanker 1995, 196–199. A short summary: Stähli 1992, 150–153; Dillon 2000. For the background concerning the interest in such portraits of men of letters in later Roman periods, see Danguillier 2001, 178–183; Bassett 2008.

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conclude that they have nothing to do with Greek theatre, but everything to do with the general, amorphous idea of Greek education and the Roman past. This can be shown in regard to the combination of portrait groups, as well as in other media of ancient art.50

A case study: Theatre and Greek portraits in Domitian’s villas in Castel Gandolfo and Terracina When searching for a case that – as an exception to the general picture described – could be interpreted as an example of direct reference to the Athenian theatre and the Lycurgan statue group of the tragedians in the context of a Roman setting of portraits of Greeks, one comes across the villas of the emperor Domitian. Many estates of wealthy, upper-class Romans included a small theatre or odeion as part of the architectural ensemble,51 and the same is true for Domitian’s villa in Castel Gandolfo52 (today the summer papal residence near Albano). Cassius Dio’s account53 and depictions of Domitian54 suggest that the emperor felt a close affinity to Athena, and his villa at Albano apparently was situated in imitation of the Athenian Acropolis: the villa was located high up on top of a steep slope at the edge of Lake Albano, and a theatre stood a bit further down the slope55. No portrait of a Greek has been found in that villa in Castel Gandolfo;56 of course, that may be the result of antique destruction and robbery or post-antique use as the summer place of the popes, and we should note that excavations of the ancient estate are still limited.57 However, a second villa of Domitian, this one near Terracina,58 offers a connection to the Lycurgan statue group of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides: it was here that the famous statue of Sophocles (Fig. 9.5) in the Lateran museum was found.59 If we combine the two sources of information – the theatre on Domitian’s estate at Albano and the statue of Sophocles in his villa at Terracina – we may conclude that this emperor had a more concrete idea about Greek theatre in Athens and wished to evoke that ambiance.60

50 For example, portraits of famous Greeks appear as central medallions in silver and clay bowls (terra sigillata), and therefore may have played an intellectual role at symposia: Winnefeld 1908. The depictions of Greek poets and philosophers (with their names inscribed) as skeletons accompanied by Epicurean maxims on two silver cups from Boscoreale may have been intended to remind the symposiast of the fragility of his life and therefore invite him to enjoy drinking: Richter 1965, vol. 1, 67, 132, 138, fig. 1700, 1703; Dunbabin 1986; Baratte 1986; Zanker 1995, 200, fig. 109; https://www.louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/boscoreale-treasure-0 ; Lang 2012, 84, n. 822; 92, n. 917; 115–117 and 123 interpreting them as symposium-ware at meetings, maybe those of associations of actors and other performers, such as technitai. 51 Mielsch 1987, 115–116. Some examples: (a) Pausilypon with theatre and odeum: Mielsch 1987, 68, 116, fig. 79; Varriale 2015, esp. 240–242, fig. 9, 11; 246–247, fig. 12, 19 (b); Pianosa: Mielsch 1987, 116, n. 182, fig. 39; Foertsch 1993, 153, no. III, and 17, pl. 55, 3 (c) Silin: Foertsch 1993, 156, no. V 7, pl. 62, 5–6 (d); Tivoli, Villa Hadriana: Mielsch 1987, 75–85, 116; Foertsch 1993, pl. 66, 5 (e); Castel Gandolfo: see next note. 52 Mielsch 1987, 72, 116, fig. 44, 80; Hesberg 2005, esp. 417–419, fig. 1, 24; Hesberg 2006, esp. 233–242. 53 Cass. Dio 67, 1, 2 naming – in the context of the villa – the Athenian Acropolis, Athena, the Panathenaea. 54 On some coins Domitian’s bust is decorated with an aegis instead of a paludamentum, and on a precious silver mirror the relief of the emperor’s portrait shows the palladion: Alföldi 1976 with illustrations of the silver relief and coins; Thimme 1986, 220–221; Maass 1995, 139, fig. 128. 55 Luschi 2015, 13 n. 115 cites an unpublished idea by P. Liverani about the Albanum as “il modello dell’Acropoli ateniense”. Thanks to Chr. Häuber and C. Valeri for informing me about Luschi’s article. 56 Neudecker 1988, 139–144, no. 9. 57 Hesberg 2005, 418: “already in antiquity the villa was systematically cleared”. 58 Neudecker 1988, 215–216. About the findspot in connection with the statue of Sophocles in the Museo Lateranense: Gasparri 2005–2006, 142–144 with n. 19–20, fig. 1–3. 59 Vorster 1993, 154–159, no. 67, pl. 297–308 frontispiz (see above n. 13). 60 A similar case in recalling an Athenian setting of Classical figures might be the villa of Bruttius Praesens at Monte Calvo where a chryselephantine statue of Athena and a statue of Anacreon – both ‘citations’ of two well-known original statues on top of the Athenian Acropolis – were found. Other decoration consisted of statues of Asclepius, several Dionysiac figures, and Muses, evocative of figures in sanctuaries on the south slope of the Acropolis: Neudecker 1988, 180–184, no. 35; Brusini 2001; Fejfer 2017, 58–59.

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The portraits of Menander and their meaning in Roman and late-antique settings The portrait of Menander, erected on a high pedestal61 next to the Lycurgan group of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides in the east parodos of the Theatre of Dionysus around 290 BC (Fig. 9.8), is now securely identified after some dispute in earlier research.62 The portrait type, combined with a body clad in a chiton and a himation and seated on a klismos, is known from about 75 ancient copies,63 the largest number of replicas of any Greek likeness, which span about 500 years of sculptural production in the Roman Imperial period. The main characteristics of the iconography of Menander remained the same over this long period, but some features – the face, eyes, and overall expression – changed a lot (Fig. 9.9a–b).64 Even the playwright’s Greek attire (chiton and himation, Fig. 9.8) – in late antiquity – could be replaced by clothing typical of a Roman citizen, the tunica and toga (Fig. 9.10).65 From this, it is obvious that a change of meaning is part of the image, especially in the east of the Roman Empire where the Roman garment was always less frequently depicted than the Greek. This significantly different meaning is also clear when interpreting the late antique style, which probably conveys the character of divine inspiration and wisdom of the man of letters (‘intellectual’).66 This new ‘content’ of the image of Menander offers a rather vague idea of exemplary Greek education (paideia) and of a teacher of moral and philosophical insights, as well as rhetorical training, and not such an emphasis on the famous playwright of comedies. The new meaning thus corresponds to changes in the reception of his texts: several scholars67 have demonstrated how Menander’s comedies were used with diminished interest in real theatre already in the late Hellenistic period. Instead, Menander’s comedies grew increasingly important for their utility in the rhetorical training of young literati and in the public (political) and private (philosophical) discourse of educated men,68 uses that only grew in importance in the second century AD under the influence of the Second Sophistic.69 Therefore, the huge number of replicas of Menander’s portrait type does not (necessarily) reflect real theatrical interest; they are not to be associated with fantasies of the owners reading and staging whole plays of the poet or col-

61 The base of the statue of Menander found in the theatre in Eretria, probably also dating to the early third century BC, cannot be reconstructed since it was only one part of the whole pedestal. Because it is quite roughly cut on the backside we do not know if it had long enough proportions to carry a seated statue or was rectangular for a standing figure, which seems more probable: IG XII 9, 280; Richter 1965, vol. 1, 255–256, no. 2; Fittschen 1991, 276; Nervegna 2013, 37–38, fig. 4. 62 Richter 1965, vol. 1, 224–236; Fittschen 1991; Palagia 2005; Dillon 2006, 219, n. 185; Bassett 2008; Goette 2011. A summary about the reasoning in this discussion: Schmidt 2007. 63 See the list of replicas by Fittschen 1991, 245–253 with additions by Goette 2011, 59–61, n. 18; Lang 2012, 79, n. 749; Kaltsas and Despinis 2007. Fittschen’s replica no. 9: now in Zürich, Archaeological Museum of the University (https://www.archaeologie.uzh.ch/de/sammlung/ Originalsammlung.html); Fittschen’s replica no. 34: Royal Athena Galleries New York 30 (2019) no. 11. Of the statue type belonging to this portrait, seven replicas are known: Fittschen 1991, 258–263. The image of Menander (name inscription next to the head) on a mosaic from Antioch (Antakya) in Princeton (Fittschen 1991, 278, n. 132; recently Gutzwiller and Çelik 2012, 574, fig. 2 with bibliography in n. 9) is useless for determining the portrait type as is the one in Mytilene (contra Fittschen 1991, 255, 257, n. 37–38, pl. 52, 4). Wall paintings of the poet are either not preserved (Ceramicus) or are not related with the Athenian statue type (Pompeii): Fittschen 1991, 277–278, pl. 78, 1–2. There are no depictions of Menander on ancient gems: Lang 2012, 78–79. 64 See esp. Bassett 2008. 65 The bust in Ephesus (Fittschen 1991, 252, replica no. 69; Basset 2008, 205, fig. 4) shows the toga in its late antique manner: Goette 1989, 147, under no. E16, pl. 58, 2, who interprets the portrait as that of a Roman man (i.e. as a ‘private portrait’) imitating the features of Menander. 66 Zanker 1995, 288–305; Danguillier 2001, esp. 182–183; Bassett 2008, 209 and 213 with further bibliography. 67 Csapo 1999, esp. 157–158, 161; Nervegna 2013, esp. 120–200 and 201–251; Danguillier 2001, 218–221 and Bassett 2008 with summaries and further bibliography on this (archaeological) research. 68 Interestingly, during the second and beginning of the third century AD there was a widespread fashion for men to represent themselves similar to Classical Greek philosophers, rhetors/politicians, and poets: Zanker 1995, 191–251; Danguillier 2001, 6–33; Dillon 2006, 23; Schröder 2012, 503–505 and Schröder 2020. In some cases, this phenomenon had led researchers to identify replicas of Greek portrait types as private likenesses of Roman Imperial times and vice-versa. 69 The bibliography is vast. One example of the influence of the Second Sophistic on the arts is of Herodes Atticus and his circle: their lives, villas with their decoration, and public donations. See Galli 2002 with further bibliography. A more recent general overview of “griechische Bildung und römische Lebenswelt”: Lang 2012, 27–38; and especially concentrating on the iconography of men of letters on gems and Roman sarcophagi, Lang 2016.

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Fig. 9.8: Menander, reconstruction of the statue on the original base in its original location in the east parodos of the Theatre of Dionysus in Athens. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

lecting his texts and shelving them next to his portraits in libraries.70 Rather, the images are an indication of cultural pretensions and social-political ambitions of the owners and patrons, in addition to being ornaments for their houses, villas, and gardens, as well as the public places that they financed. In the context of other portraits of Greek literati, famous politicians, kings, and generals together with mythological figures of the Greek pantheon, the sculptural decoration, including the portraits of Greek men of letters, was meant to produce the aura of education, to remind viewers (owners and their visitors) of the sententiae they admired, and to display respect to the general traditions of paideia. Therefore in the time of the Roman autocracy the portraits of the classical playwrights of Athens discussed in this paper, together with their sculptural context as ornamenta of the places they were commissioned to decorate, had much more to say about their owners’ pretensions to an enduring elite culture than about any real knowledge of the plays or sympathy with the ideas the classical texts expressed.71 70 Sinn 2000, 406, as just one example for the direct connection of numbers of replicas with the setting in ancient libraries: “Menander war nach der Zahl von über 70 erhaltenen Portraitkopien der beliebteste griechische Dichter überhaupt, sein Bildnis dürfte fast jede Bibliothek geschmückt haben”. 71 I would like to thank the organisers and editors of this volume for the kind invitation to the interesting conference in Sydney, and in addition J. Stoop (Sydney) for his ideas during the preparation of the talk. For discussions about ideas expressed here and for challenging ideas, I am grateful to A. M. Nagy (Budapest), J. R. Green (Adelaide), and to E. Csapo (Sydney/Warwick) and J. M. Barringer (Edinburgh), who also corrected and polished my English.

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Fig. 9.9: Menander, (a) Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. 71.AA.120, and (b) Selçuk (Ephesus), Museum, inv. 755. Photos: Hans R. Goette.

Fig. 9.10: Menander, toga bust, Selçuk (Ephesus), Museum, inv. 755. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

Ewen Bowie

10 Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire This paper attempts to assess the impact on the place of theatrical culture in the imperial Greek world of the fact that this world was governed by Roman emperors. It explores the extent to which, if at all, either these emperors and their entourage, or the educated elites of the empire’s Greek cities might have perceived the views expressed by certain characters in some fifth-century Attic tragedies as vehicles for criticism of the Roman regime. That this might be so might be assumed because many examples of fifth-century Attic tragedy, nurtured in a stridently democratic Athens, have been interpreted by modern readers as anti-autocratic, and have often been chosen for production in western European theatres on the basis of such readings. As I hope will emerge, there is very little to suggest that tragedy was seen in this way in the Roman Empire. I start with some very broad-brush remarks, restating some well-known points. First, the Greek culture with which republican Romans fell in love was one in which tragedy and comedy were integral. In the Hellenistic period fifth-century tragedies and fourth-century comedies were re-performed in theatres across the Greek world,1 and their study played a major role in education by grammatici and rhetores.2 New plays, especially tragedies, were written in large numbers: Philicus of Corcyra, for example, one of the seven members of the Alexandrian Pleiad, composed no fewer than 42 tragedies.3 Unsurprisingly, when Latin writers adopted Greek literary genres, tragedy and comedy were composed from as early as Livius Andronicus. The place of theatrical performances in Greek cities’ cultural life, principally in agonistic festivals, μουσικοὶ ἀγῶνες, was maintained without interruption as Rome’s government became autocratic with Octavian’s victory at Actium, and can still be traced in late antiquity.4 As recent work has shown, what entertained audiences across the eastern Mediterranean, and in Greek ἀγῶνες in Rome, Puteoli and Naples, were not simply sung performances of extracts, but were, or certainly included, productions of whole plays. Some think old tragedies were performed without the choral sections, Old Comedy with at least some choral pieces.5 Alongside such productions, well-documented in the epigraphy of ἀγῶνες, there was also, indeed, the singing of extracts, more often in specially commissioned public or private performances than in or closely associated with ἀγῶνες;6 and within ἀγῶνες the most prestigious and popular vocal art-form of the imperial period, citharoedia, involved performance of material drawn from or closely related to tragedy,7 as did the equally popular genre of pantomime.8 Citharoedia and pantomime have marginalised ‘straight’ theatre in the modern imaginaire of imperial Greek culture, but neither tragedy nor comedy was marginal in ἀγῶνες. Nor did they become less central in education. As has been shown by Morgan and Cribiore, the educational structures that developed in the early Hellenistic period seem largely to have been uniform across the Greek-speaking world and to have been maintained without important change down to the late empire – I stress ‘seem’, since there is a natural tendency to fill gaps in evidence by analogy, and Cribiore herself concedes evidence of diverse sorts for variation, e.g. in what a grammaticus might be expected to teach.9 In this educational system Attic tragedians, especially Euripides, played an important part; indeed many of our tragic papyri are, or might be, school texts. Like most educational systems, that of the Graeco-Roman world tended to 1 For tragedy in the Hellenistic period see most recently Le Guen 2018a. 2 Too 2001; Webb 2018, 311–312. For the importance of grammatici see Bowie 2022. 3 Suda φ 358, cf. TrGF 104. 4 Kelly 1979; Leyerle 2001. 5 See especially Nervegna 2007; Slater 2010a, 254; less confidently Kelly 1979. For production of complete tragedies, not merely excerpts, in the Hellenistic period see Le Guen 2007a, 104–106. Based on Wilson 2000, 290, Le Guen 2018a, 169 and 173, also argues that there was comedy without a chorus on Hellenistic Cos, whereas choruses are attested for productions of new tragedies at Samos and Eresos, and concludes “there was no general rule” (176); cf. Webb 2018, 301–302. Csapo and Wilson 2020b, 632, however, argue convincingly from the same Coan epigraphic evidence that on Cos comedy too had choruses. 6 For these see Cockle 1975; Hall 1999. 7 Power 2010; Webb 2018, 302. 8 Robert 1930; Lada Richards 2007; Garelli 2007 with the review article by Slater 2010; Webb 2008. 9 Cribiore 1996 and 2001b; Morgan 1999. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-011

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reinforce existing preferences – adults knew some tragedies better than others as a result of their education by grammatici and rhetores; this knowledge of classical dramatic poets who, along with Homer and some melic poets, had become canonical, could be drawn upon in contexts like public speaking in the boulē or dēmos or private exchanges in symposia to reinforce a speaker’s claim to paideia and augment cultural capital;10 and parents expected children to be trained to read and to be able to quote the same range of texts.11 Praising Antipater of Hierapolis as a writer of the emperor’s official Greek letters (ab epistulis graecis), Philostratus compares him to a tragic actor who plays his role well, a comparison meaningful to him, and one he expected to be meaningful to his readers.12 Predictably, then, representatives of high culture like sophists composed tragedies.13 In the Flavian period Philostratus notes Nicetes of Smyrna’s distinction in composing tragedy and the enthusiasm for their composition of his pupil Scopelianus of Clazomenae.14 In the mid-second century Chrestus of Byzantium’s distinguished pupils included an Isagoras whom Philostratus calls Ἰσαγόρας ὁ τῆς τραγῳδίας ποιητής (“Isagoras the tragic poet”).15 A little later Lucian’s varied production included a mock tragedy, Gout (Ποδάγρα), whose 334 lines are chiefly iambic trimeters but include melic metres, especially anapaests.16 Finally, among the voluminous works of a Philostratus who is probably the father of the sophists’ biographer (and hence a rough contemporary of Lucian, though wrongly associated with Nero by the Suda), there were 43 tragedies and 14 comedies (Suda φ 422): Φιλόστρατος  ὁ πρῶτος, Λήμνιος, υἱὸς Βήρου, πατὴρ δὲ τοῦ δευτέρου Φιλοστράτου, σοφιστὴς καὶ αὐτός, σοφιστεύσας ἐν Ἀθήναις, γεγονὼς ἐπὶ Νέρωνος. ἔγραψε [. . .] Νέρωνα, Θεατήν, τραγῳδίας μγʹ, κωμῳδίας ιδʹ, καὶ ἕτερα πλεῖστα καὶ λόγου ἄξια. Philostratus the first, from Lemnos, son of Verus, father of the second Philostratus, himself a sophist, who had his sophistic career in Athens, born under Nero. He wrote [. . .] a Nero, Spectator, 43 tragedies, 14 comedies, and very many other meritorious works.

There is no evidence known to me that either performances of tragedy and comedy in Greek ἀγῶνες or their composition by Greek poets, presumably in some cases for performance, might be seen as potential vehicles for anti-imperial sentiments. Emperors encouraged the establishment of both μουσικοὶ and γυμνικοὶ ἀγῶνες,17 and must have been aware that the former often, though not always, included competitions for tragedy old and new and for comedy old and new.18 Emperors were also attentive to the requests of the local and the ecumenical synodoi (‘guilds’) of Dionysiac artists to which theatrical performers belonged, regularly renewing their substantial privileges;19 embassies from the synodoi were treated like embassies from Greek cities and provinces.20 The most striking intervention in the synodoi’s activities is Hadrian’s decision, apparently on the basis of information presented in speeches and petitions at Naples during the celebration of the Σεβαστά in August or September 134 AD, radically to revise the calendar of major ἀγῶνες, allowing performers to move in a more rational sequence from one ἀγών to another, and prescribing starting and finishing dates for ἀγῶνες that allowed adequate time to travel to the next major venue – as documented by his letters discovered at Alexandria Troas and published in 2006.21 Hadrian’s personal interest was already clear from the several letters he wrote to the Athenian synodos of Dionysiac artists,22 and in 134 AD he may also have relocated the ecumenical guild’s headquarters to Rome.23 If so, this is to be seen as a pragmatic recognition of the synodos’ major role in the cultural life of the empire as a whole, not as an attempt to control it. 10 Not always to good effect: Philostratus criticises Hadrianus of Tyre’s oratory for excessive use of tragedy, V S 2, 10, 590. 11 See Webb 2018, esp. 305–312. 12 Philostr. V S 2, 24, 607. 13 As Peter Wilson has reminded me, the high-profile Alexandrian Apion is now known to have been a successful composer of tragedies around 40 AD from a papyrus copy of an honorific inscription published by Benaissa 2014. 14 Philostr. V S 1, 21, 518. 15 Philostr. V S 2, 11, 591. 16 On the Ποδάγρα see Karavas 2005, 235–327. Some manuscripts of Lucian also preserve a poem entitled Gout or Swift-of-foot, Ὠκύπους, usually ascribed not to Lucian but to Libanius’ correspondent Acacius in the 360s AD: see Macleod 1967. 17 Cf. Mitchell 1990. 18 For the categories καινὴ τραγῳδία (‘new tragedy’) and καινὴ κωμῳδία (‘new comedy’) see for example Roesch 2007–2009, no. 178 = IG VII 1773, l. 22–24 (150–160 AD) and below 168. 19 Oliver 1989, nos. 96A–C; for a brief overview of guilds see Le Guen 2018a, 163–167; more fully Le Guen 2001; Aneziri 2003. 20 Millar 1977, 456–463. 21 Petzl and Schwertheim 2006; Jones 2007; Strasser 2010; Le Guen 2010c. 22 Oliver 1989, nos. 98–104. 23 Boatwright 2000, 103–104; Pleket 1973, 225–227.

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There were indeed exceptions to this apparently happy coexistence of imperial rule and theatrical culture. One was to be found in Alexandria, a city in many ways different from the typical Greek city of the Eastern Mediterranean. There the Greek population sometimes used their numbers gathered in the theatre to express dissatisfaction with the regime. To judge from the castigatory remarks of Dio of Prusa their chief interests were in horse-racing and musical performers,24 and there is no hint that either tragic plots or particular lines of tragedies or comedies being performed were exploited to convey dissatisfaction. Another exception was the aspiring artist Nero. He was not the first emperor to engage with Greek tragedy – Augustus began writing an Ajax, which he destroyed when he decided it was not going well.25 But Nero famously decided to act and sing in old tragedies. According to Suetonius his repertoire included Euripides’ Heracles and Orestes, Canace giving birth (i.e. the Aeolus) and ‘blinded Oedipus’ (presumably Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus),26 and, in his last appearance, Oedipus ‘in exile’ (presumably the Coloneus).27 Cassius Dio adds the roles of Thyestes and Alcmaeon,28 Juvenal those of Antigone and Melanippe.29 Interestingly, Nero’s choice of Sophocles’ Antigone and two Oedipus plays chimes with Plutarch’s preferences in Sophoclean quotation.30 That of Antigone gets some support from Philostratus’ Apollonius. Presenting a probably fictional busker who, he claims, sang songs from plays in which Nero performed, Philostratus specifies the Oresteia and Antigone (Philostr. V A 4, 39, 2):31 ἀναβαλόμενος οὖν, ὅπως εἰώθει, καὶ βραχὺν διεξελθὼν ὕμνον τοῦ Νέρωνος ἐπῆγε μέλη τὰ μὲν ἐξ Ὀρεστείας, τὰ δὲ ἐξ Ἀντιγόνης, τὰ δ᾿ ὁποθενοῦν τῶν τραγῳδουμένων αὐτῷ. So he struck up in his usual way, and after completing a short hymn in praise of Nero started on solos, some from the Oresteia, some from the Antigone, and similarly from other plays in which the emperor had performed.32

It is interesting that Nero acted in, or sang sections of, an Antigone – almost certainly the Sophoclean play,33 which in modern times has so often been used to explore conflict between principled subjects and unprincipled or obstinate autocracy. Indeed Philostratus has just had his Apollonius suggest quoting Antigone 450 (spoken by Antigone) against Nero’s ban on philosophers: οὐ γάρ τί μοι Ζεὺς ἦν ὁ κηρύξας τάδε (“for it was not Zeus whom I know to have issued this pronouncement”).34 If the tradition that Nero performed in an Antigone is reliable, it seems that he did not perceive the conflict between Antigone and Creon as a sensitive issue in relation to his own imperial role, nor did he expect audiences to do so. But these could be Juvenalian and Philostratean fictions,35 each writer exploiting the irony of Nero acting in the anti-autocratic Antigone. Significantly, one of our few other instances of tragedy enlisted to support opposition to an autocrat is also from the Apollonius, where Philostratus claims that in confronting Domitian Apollonius applied to himself Teiresias’ line when confronting Oedipus at Soph. OT 410 (Philostr. V A 7, 4, 2): ὁ δ’, ὥσπερ τῷ Σοφοκλεῖ πεποίηται πρὸς τὸν Οἰδίπουν ὁ Τειρεσίας ὑπὲρ ἑαυτοῦ λέγων ‘οὐ γάρ τι σοὶ ζῶ δοῦλος, ἀλλὰ Λοξίᾳ’, οὕτω τὴν σοφίαν δέσποιναν πεποιημένος ἐλεύθερος ἦν τῆς Δομετιανοῦ φορᾶς τὰ Τειρεσίου τε καὶ Σοφοκλέους ἑαυτῷ ἐπιθεσπίσας. But just as Sophocles represents Teiresias defending himself before Oedipus with the words, ‘I live not in your service, but Apollo’s’, so also Apollonius, who had put himself in the service of wisdom, was safe from Domitian’s fury, relating the words of Teiresias and Sophocles to himself.36

24 Dio Chrys. Or. 32, esp. 41–43. 25 Suet. Aug. 85. 26 Suet. Ner. 21, 3; cf. Cass. Dio 63, 9, 4 and 10, 2. For Nero’s theatrical activities see Schmidt 1990; Kennell 1988. 27 Suet. Ner. 46, 3. 28 Cass. Dio 63, 9, 4; cf. 63, 22, 6 (Vindex’s speech). 29 Juv. 8, 229. 30 See Appendix 2: Plutarch also has several quotations of Euripides’ Aeolus. 31 Philostratus’ MSS have Ὀρεστείας, but the much greater popularity of Euripides’ Orestes suggests this may be a corruption of Ὀρέστου. 32 Transl. C. P. Jones (adapted). 33 Though Plutarch knows Euripides’ Antigone too, see Appendix 2. 34 Philostr. V A 4, 38, 5. 35 See Bowie 1978 for V A’s fictionality. 36 Transl. C. P. Jones (adapted).

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Apollonius’ anti-autocratic quotation of tragedy may be fictional, but Nero’s retiming of the Olympia and Isthmia to suit his Greek tour and his addition to the Olympia’s hitherto entirely athletic programme of a μουσικὸς ἀγών so that he could compete in it, perhaps with a similar addition to the Isthmia’s programme, manifestly caused offence in Greece and embarrassment in Rome.37 Again one of our witnesses is Philostratus, this time in his Nero. As Nervegna has shown,38 the detail there that Nero had his hypocritai fatally beat-up an Epirote competitor who refused to withdraw shows that (at least in the Isthmia) he was remembered as entering as a tragoedus, an actor who would play a protagonist’s role and be supported by a small troupe including a deuteragonist and tritagonist. Philostratus depicts the Greek audience rooting for the Epirote competitor, the nearest we get to theatrical unrest directed against an emperor in mainland Greece (Philostr. = [Lucian], Nero 8–9):39 ἄκουε δὴ λόγου ἀτόπου μέν, ἐν ὀφθαλμοῖς δὲ Ἑλλήνων πεπραγμένου· Ἰσθμοῖ γὰρ νόμου κειμένου μήτε κωμῳδίαν ἀγωνίζεσθαι μήτε τραγῳδίαν ἐδόκει Νέρωνι τραγῳδοὺς νικᾶν, καὶ παρῆλθον ἐς τὴν ἀγωνίαν ταύτην πλείους μέν, ὁ δ’ Ἠπειρώτης ἄριστα φωνῆς ἔχων, εὐδοκιμῶν δ’ ἐπ’ αὐτῇ καὶ θαυμαζόμενος λαμπροτέρᾳ τοῦ εἰωθότος ἐπλάττετο καὶ τοῦ στεφάνου ἐρᾶν καὶ μηδ’ ἀνήσειν πρότερον ἢ δέκα τάλαντα δοῦναί οἱ Νέρωνα ὑπὲρ τῆς νίκης, ὁ δ’ ἠγρίαινέ τε καὶ μανικῶς εἶχε, καὶ γὰρ δὴ καὶ ἠκροᾶτο ὑπὸ τῇ σκηνῇ ἐπ’ αὐτῷ δὴ τἀγῶνι, βοώντων τε τῶν Ἑλλήνων ἐπὶ τῷ Ἠπειρώτῃ πέμπει τὸν γραμματέα κελεύων ὑφεῖναι ἑαυτῷ τοῦτον, τοῦ δὲ ὑπεραίροντος τὸ φθέγμα καὶ δημοτικῶς ἐρίζοντος ἐσπέμπει Νέρων ἐπ’ ὀκριβάντων τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ ὑποκριτὰς οἷον προσήκοντάς τι τῷ πράγματι, καὶ γὰρ δὴ καὶ δέλτους ἐλεφαντίνας καὶ διθύρους προβεβλημένοι αὐτάς, ὥσπερ ἐγχειρίδια καὶ τὸν Ἠπειρώτην ἀναστήσαντες πρὸς τὸν ἀγχοῦ κίονα κατέαξαν αὐτοῦ τὴν φάρυγγα παίοντες ὀρθαῖς ταῖς δέλτοις. Listen then to a tale that may be extraordinary but yet took place before the eyes of Greeks. Although custom prescribes that there should be no comic or tragic contests at the Isthmus, Nero resolved to win a tragic victory. This contest was entered by several including the man from Epirus, who, having an excellent voice which had won him fame and admiration, was unusually ostentatious in pretending that he had set his heart on the crown of victory and wouldn’t give it up before Nero gave him ten talents as the price of victory. Nero was mad with rage; for he had been listening under the stage during the actual contest. When the Greeks shouted in applause of the Epirote, Nero sent his secretary to bid him yield to him. But he raised his voice and went on competing as if they were all free and equal, till Nero sent his own actors on to the platform as though they belonged to the act. For they held writing tablets of ivory, and double ones indeed, poised before them like daggers and, forcing the Epirote against the pillar near-by, they smashed his throat in with the edge of their tablets.40

As with the Apollonius, so too with the Nero we may be dealing with a blend of tradition and fiction. Ultimately we do not know what Nero thought – nor indeed what most emperors thought – about the potential of theatrical performances in general to sensitise their subjects to weaknesses or injustices in an autocratic political system. We do, however, have the reflections on tragedy and comedy of one emperor – Marcus Aurelius (M. Aur. Med. 11, 6): πρῶτον αἱ τραγῳδίαι παρήχθησαν ὑπομνηστικαὶ τῶν συμβαινόντων καὶ ὅτι ταῦτα οὕτως πέφυκε γίνεσθαι καὶ ὅτι, οἷς ἐπὶ τῆς σκηνῆς ψυχαγωγεῖσθε, τούτοις μὴ ἄχθεσθε ἐπὶ τῆς μείζονος σκηνῆς· ὁρᾶτε γὰρ ὅτι οὕτως δεῖ ταῦτα περαίνεσθαι καὶ ὅτι φέρουσιν αὐτὰ καὶ οἱ κεκραγότες· ‘ἰὼ Κιθαιρών’. καὶ λέγεται δέ τινα ὑπὸ τῶν τὰ δράματα ποιούντων χρησίμως· οἷόν ἐστιν ἐκεῖνο μάλιστα· ‘εἰ δ’ ἠμελήθην ἐκ θεῶν καὶ παῖδ’ ἐμώ, / ἔχει λόγον καὶ τοῦτο’· καὶ πάλιν· ‘τοῖς πράγμασιν γὰρ οὐχὶ θυμοῦσθαι ’ καί· ‘βίον θερίζειν ὥστε κάρπιμον στάχυν·’ καὶ ὅσα τοιαῦτα. μετὰ δὲ τὴν τραγῳδίαν ἡ ἀρχαία κωμῳδία παρήχθη, παιδαγωγικὴν παρρησίαν ἔχουσα καὶ τῆς ἀτυφίας οὐκ ἀχρήστως δι’ αὐτῆς τῆς εὐθυρρημοσύνης ὑπομιμνῄσκουσα· πρὸς οἷόν τι καὶ Διογένης ταυτὶ παρελάμβανεν. μετὰ ταῦτα τίς ἡ μέση κωμῳδία καὶ λοιπὸν ἡ νέα πρὸς τί ποτε παρείληπται, ἣ κατ’ ὀλίγον ἐπὶ τὴν ἐκ μιμήσεως φιλοτεχνίαν ὑπερρύη, ἐπίστησον. ὅτι μὲν γὰρ λέγεται καὶ ὑπὸ τούτων τινὰ χρήσιμα οὐκ ἀγνοεῖται, ἀλλὰ ἡ ὅλη ἐπιβολὴ τῆς τοιαύτης ποιήσεως καὶ δραματουργίας πρὸς τίνα ποτὲ σκοπὸν ἀπέβλεψεν; Originally tragedies were brought on to remind us of real events, and that such things naturally occur, and that on life’s greater stage you must not be vexed at things which on the stage you find so attractive. For you see that these things must be gone through, and they too have to endure them who cry “Ah, Cithaeron!”.41 Yes, and the dramatists contain some useful sayings, for example this especially: “Though both my sons and me the gods have spurned, for this too there is reason”;42 and again: “ to be wroth with things”;43 and this: “Our lives are reaped like the ripe ears of corn”;44 and how many more like them. And after tragedy, Old Comedy 37 See e.g. Cass. Dio 63, 24, 5; cf. Kennell 1988. 38 Nervegna 2007, 36. 39 For the probable Philostratean authorship of the Nero transmitted in the manuscripts of Lucian, see Whitmarsh 1999. 40 Transl. M. D. Macleod. 41 Soph. OT 1391; cf. Arr. Epict. diss. 1, 24, 16. 42 Eur. Antiope TrGF F 208; cf. M. Aur. Med. 7, 41. 43 Eur. Beller. TrGF F 287; cf. M. Aur. Med. 7, 38. 44 Eur. Hyps. TrGF F 757, l. 925; cf. M. Aur. Med. 7, 40.

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was put on the stage, exercising an educative freedom of speech, and by its very directness of utterance giving us no useless reminder to avoid arrogance. In somewhat similar vein Diogenes also took up this role. After this, consider for what purpose the Middle Comedy was introduced, and subsequently the New, which little by little degenerated into virtuoso mimicry. For that some useful things are said even by the writers of these is recognised by all. But what end in view had this whole enterprise of such poetical and dramatic composition?45

Marcus offers two roles for tragedy: to allow readers or spectators to imagine themselves in terrible situations of a sort they might one day experience in their own lives; and to offer gnōmai encouraging readers or spectators to endure misfortune – Stoically, of course. The gnōmai he cites also appear with others at 7, 38–43, an issue in the history of gnōmologiae that cannot be pursued here. Significantly neither at 11, 6 nor at 7, 38–43 does any gnomē cited bear on issues arising from autocracy. For Old Comedy Marcus offers the role of countering ‘arrogance’, a role to which he sees the genre’s freedom of speech, παρρησία, as essential. He is silent on what might be the appropriate reaction of those who were the targets of such παρρησία and of comic deflation of ‘arrogance’, or indeed on whom these most probably might be in his own time. As I shall argue below, the targets of Old Comedy of this period were more probably members of local civic elites than more remote figures like the emperor and his entourage in Rome, an elite of a very different sort, and Marcus is likely to have understood this. His praise of Old Comedy and dismissal of New Comedy as namby-pamby is not surprising in a Stoic, nor is his perception of the debunking programme of Diogenes the Cynic as a direct descendant of Old Comedy. This role Marcus assigns to Old Comedy matches some of the exploitations of tragedy by an earlier second-century Stoic, Epictetus. At 1, 28, 31–33, towards the end of a complex argument, Epictetus asserts that acting in response to one’s sense perceptions is irrational, and he exemplifies this from Sophocles’ Oedipus (surely the Tyrannus, quoted by Plutarch, at least, much more than the Coloneus) and from three Euripidean plays, simply citing their titles (Arr. Epict. diss. 1, 28, 31–33):46 κρείσσων γάρ εἰμι τοῦ Ἀγαμέμνονος ἢ τοῦ Ἀχιλλέως, ἵν᾿ ἐκεῖνοι μὲν διὰ τὸ ἀκολουθῆσαι τοῖς φαινομένοις τοιαῦτα κακὰ ποιήσωσι καὶ πάθωσιν, ἐμοὶ δὲ ἀρκῇ τὸ φαινόμενον; καὶ ποία τραγῳδία ἄλλην ἀρχὴν ἔχει; Ἀτρεὺς Εὐριπίδου τί ἐστιν; τὸ φαινόμενον. Οἰδίπους Σοφοκλέους τί ἐστιν; τὸ φαινόμενον. Φοῖνιξ; τὸ φαινόμενον. Ἱππόλυτος; τὸ φαινόμενον. τούτου οὖν μηδεμίαν ἐπιμέλειαν ποιεῖσθαι τίνος ὑμῖν δοκεῖ; τίνες δὲ λέγονται οἱ παντὶ τῷ φαινομένῳ ἀκολουθοῦντες; – μαινόμενοι. – ἡμεῖς οὖν ἄλλο τι ποιοῦμεν; What, am I any better than Agamemnon or Achilles – are they to do and suffer such evils because they followed the impressions of their senses, while I am to be satisfied with the impression of my senses? And what tragedy has any other source than this? What is Euripides’ Atreus? His sense-impression. Sophocles’ Oedipus? His sense-impression. Phoenix? His sense-impression. Hippolytus? His sense-impression. What kind of a man, then, do you think he is who pays no attention to this matter? What are those men called who follow every impression of their senses? – Madmen. – Are we, then, acting differently?47

In another interesting but difficult passage Epictetus addresses human beings’ irrational attachment to objects or places: adapting Phoenissae 368, he shows how that play’s focus on Polynices’ exile could be good to think with for members of the Greek civic elites who, under certain emperors, faced a real possibility of exile from their polis (Arr. Epict. diss. 2, 16, 30–31): ἄλλος ἐλθὼν ὅτι οὐκέτι τὸ τῆς Δίρκης ὕδωρ πίνειν μέλλει. τὸ γὰρ Μάρκιον χεῖρόν ἐστι τοῦ τῆς Δίρκης; ‘ἀλλ᾿ ἐκεῖνό μοι σύνηθες ἦν’. καὶ τοῦτο πάλιν ἔσται σοι σύνηθες. εἶτ᾿ ἂν μὲν τοιούτῳ προσπάθῃς, καὶ τοῦτο πάλιν κλαῖε καὶ ζήτει στίχον ὅμοιον τῷ Εὐριπίδου ποιῆσαι ‘θερμάς τε τὰς Νέρωνος Μάρκιόν θ᾿ ὕδωρ’. ἴδε πῶς τραγῳδία γίνεται, ὅταν εἰς μωροὺς ἀνθρώπους πράγματα τὰ τυγχάνοντ᾿ ἐμπέσῃ. ‘πότε οὖν Ἀθήνας πάλιν ὄψομαι καὶ τὴν ἀκρόπολιν;’ τάλας, οὐκ ἀρκεῖ σοι ἃ βλέπεις καθ᾿ ἡμέραν; Someone else comes and grieves because he is no longer going to drink the water of Dirce. What? Is the water of the Marcian aqueduct inferior to that of Dirce? ‘No, but I was accustomed to that water’. And you will get accustomed to this in turn. And then, if you become addicted to something of this kind, weep for this too in turn, and try to write a line after the pattern of that of Euripides: ‘To Nero’s baths and Marcian founts once more’. Behold how tragedy arises, when everyday events befall fools! ‘When, then, shall I see Athens once more and the Acropolis?’ Poor man, are you not satisfied with what you are seeing every day?48

45 M. Aur. Med. 11, 6 (transl. C. R. Haines, adapted). 46 At 1, 28, 7 he had already quoted Eur. Med. 1078–1079, without attribution. Med. 1078 is quoted by Plutarch, De vit. pudore 533d. 47 Transl. W. A. Oldfather. 48 Transl. W. A. Oldfather.

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Interestingly, Epictetus alludes to the Phoenissae again later (Arr. Epict. diss. 4, 5, 15): τούτων γὰρ οὐδὲν ἴδιον τῷ ἀνθρώπῳ ἐστίν, ἀλλὰ πάντα ἀλλότρια, δοῦλα, ὑπεύθυνα ἄλλοτε ἄλλοις διδόμενα ὑπὸ τῶν κυρίων. For none of these is a man’s own possession, but they all belong to another, as slaves, given by the powers that be as responsible now to some, now to others.

This refashions Iocasta’s words at Eur. Phoen. 555–558:49 οὔτοι τὰ χρήματ’ ἴδια κέκτηνται βροτοί, τὰ τῶν θεῶν δ’ ἔχοντες ἐπιμελούμεθα· ὅταν δὲ χρῄζωσ’ αὔτ’ ἀφαιροῦνται πάλιν· ὁ δ’ ὄλβος οὐ βέβαιος ἀλλ’ ἐφήμερος.

555

Mortals do not possess riches as their own property: we merely hold what is the gods’ and look after it. When they want them, they take them away again. Prosperity is not secure but ephemeral.

I return below to the interest of imperial Greeks in the Phoenissae. But first some further brief remarks about Old Comedy. As said above, Old Comedy was still being staged, apparently with a chorus.50 There is even one inscription which seems to indicate that in the first century BC a female poet from Cos (whose name is unfortunately unknown) composed and entered in competition an ‘Old Comedy’, κω[μῳδία] ἀρχαία (IG XII 4, 845 = SEG 54, 787): ὁ̣ [δ]ᾶμος ἐτείμασε [τὴν δεῖνα] / Ἀπολλωνίου Ἀλεξαν[δρίδα] / καὶ Κώιαν, ποιήτριαν κω[μῳδίας] / ἀρχαίας, νεικάσασαν τὰ [– – – Σε]/ βαστὰ Ὀλύμπια καὶ τὸν ἐν [Περγά]/μωι κοινὸν Ἀσίας καὶ ἄλλους ἱ[ε]/ροὺς ἀγῶνας, ἀρετᾶς ἕνεκα κ[αὶ]/ εὐνοίας τᾶς εἰς αὑτάν·/ ἁ εἰκὼν Δελ̣φ̣ί̣δος τᾶς Πραξαγόρα Κώιας ἐλεγειογρά̣[/φου] The people has honoured [so and so], daughter of Apollonius, citizen of Alexandria and of Cos, poet of ancient [. . .], having been victorious at the Sebasta Olympia [of / in. . .?], and at the common contest of Asia at Pergamum, and at other sacred contests, on account of her excellence and its goodwill towards her. The image is that of Delphis, daughter of Praxagoras, of Cos, writer of elegies.51

Elsewhere there are prizes for composition of a new tragedy and a new comedy. Thus at Thespiae, as well as the text noted above,52 a list of victors later than 84 BC registers victors for composing (ποιητής) and for acting in new tragedy and new comedy.53 In these inscriptions the term ποιητὴς καιν[ῆς κωμῳδίας] does not formally exclude the comedy’s genre being ‘Old Comedy’: but given the widespread popularity of New Comedy, Menandrian-style, until the middle of the second century AD,54 the ‘new’ comedies composed for competition at Thespiae, attested here as early as the first century BC and as late as around 150–160 AD,55 were probably generically ‘New Comedy’. Note that a Thespian victor list dated after 212 AD still registers prizes for performing tragedy and comedy but not for composing one.56 Whatever the genre of the ‘new’ comedies composed for competition at Thespiae, it seems likely that in Smyrna Aelius Aristides’ tirade against Old Comedy in Oration 29 (On the Prohibition of Comedy, περὶ τοῦ μὴ κωμῳδεῖν) was provoked either by a newly composed ‘Old Comedy’ that was, or was perceived to be, savage in its pillorying of local bigwigs, or perhaps by the updating of a canonical work of Aristophanes, Eupolis or Cratinus by a procedure Dio of Prusa seems to know as ‘refashioning’ (διασκευή) (Dio Chrys. Or. 32, 94):

49 Also quoted by the authors of [Plut.] De lib. ed. 16a; Cons. ad Apoll. 104a. 50 Nervegna 2007. 51 Bosnakis 2004; Ma 2007b, 94–95. 52 Note 18. 53 Roesch 2007–2009, no. 173 = IG VII 1761. For a list of festivals at which we know new tragedies were entered for competition see Le Guen 2018a, 171–172. 54 See Gentili 1979; Fantham 1984; Csapo 1999; Hunter 2000. 55 Roesch 2007–2009, no. 178 = IG VII 1773, l. 22–24 (150–160 AD): Ἀπολλωνιος Ἀπολλωνίου Ἀσπένδιος ποιητὴς καινῆ/ς κωμῳδίας· Ἀντιφῶν Ἀθηναῖος ὑποκριτὴς/ καινῆς κωμῳδίας· Ἀντιφῶν Ἀθηναῖος ποιήσε/ως καινῆς τραγῳδίας (“Apollonius son of Apollonius of Aspendus, poet of new comedy; Antiphon of Athens, actor in new comedy; Antiphon of Athens, for composition of a new tragedy”). 56 Roesch 2007–2009, no. 180 = IG VII 1776, l. 24–26 τραγῳδὸς Μ(ᾶρκος) Αὐφίδιος Ἀρτεμίδωρος Κορίνθιος, κωμῳδὸς Μ(ᾶρκος) Εὐτυχιανὸς Ἀθηναῖος (“tragic performer M. Aufidius Artemidorus of Corinth, comic performer M. Eutychianus of Athens”).

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ὥσπερ ἐν ταῖς κωμῳδίαις καὶ διασκευαῖς Καρίωνα μὲν εἰσάγοντες μεθύοντα καὶ Δᾶον οὐ σφόδρα κινοῦσι γέλωτα, τὸν δὲ Ἡρακλέα τοιοῦτον ὁρῶσι γελοῖον δοκεῖ, παραφερόμενον, καὶ καθάπερ εἰώθασιν ἐν κροκωτῷ [. . .] Just as in comedies and refashionings they do not arouse much laughter bringing onstage a drunken Carion or Davos, whereas the sight of a Heracles seems ridiculous, weaving from side to side and, usually, in a saffron dress [. . .]57

One may see from Aristides’ predicament why Marcus evinced no discomfort about the παρρησία of Old Comedy; nor is it surprising that no other emperor is known to have done so. Indeed Augustus and Hadrian reputedly liked Old Comedy.58 The obvious targets of Old Comedy staged in civic festivals will not have been the elites constituted by the emperor, his entourage and his administrators, but the local Greek elite, just as an obvious target of Ammianus’ scoptic epigrams was Antonius Polemo, also of Smyrna.59 Since the arrogance of prominent and powerful members of local elites often gave emperors trouble – for example that of Polemo himself,60 of Herodes Atticus, and quite probably of his grandfather61 – an emperor might indeed welcome the restraining influence of locally produced Old Comedy. If emperors and their ministers had no worries about anti-autocratic resonances in tragedy or comedy, does that mean there were none? Here I refer to the data assembled in the tables printed as an Appendix to this chapter and ask two questions. First, can papyri, inscriptions or other literary texts offer us some guide as to which tragedies were favoured by those who entered old tragedies in competitions, by educators like grammatici and rhetores, or by readers among the pepaideumenoi? Second, can we see any link between such performances and the empire’s autocratic structure? On the first question our evidence is depressingly unhelpful. Despite numerous epigraphic and a few literary texts that attest production of tragedies and comedies in competitive festivals, not one imperial inscription known to me gives the title of a tragedy, new or old, entered in competition. It is just possible that one papyrus text has out-manoeuvred the obliterative malignity of chance: this is PKöln VI 245, of the third century AD, on which are written 36 iambic trimeters. This text, perhaps written in Upper Egypt, has been argued by its editor to be an author’s copy, intended for performance.62 Its theme is apparently Odysseus’ entry to Troy in disguise to steal the Palladion: if it is indeed a newly composed piece, it is our only Greek evidence in this period for the subject of a ‘new tragedy’. Our only epigraphic evidence for titles of plays performed, honouring a tragic actor at Tegea, relates not to the imperial but to the Hellenistic period, and is judged not to antedate the second century BC.63 It documents the actor’s two victories with Euripides’ Heracles and two with his Archelaus, and also victories with Chaeremon’s Achilles and Archestratus’ Antaeus. Such an isolated document would be very hard to use even if it were imperial. But the victory it registers first is nevertheless significant: at the Great Dionysia in Athens with Euripides’ Orestes. The only other unambiguous evidence for the identity of a tragedy entered in a competition is also for Euripides’ Orestes. Polemo, presiding over the Hadriana Olympia at Smyrna, expelled an actor for gesturing downwards when uttering ὦ Ζεῦ and upwards when uttering καὶ γᾶ, i.e. Orestes line 1496 (Philostr. V S 1, 25, 541–542): ἀγωνιστοῦ δὲ τραγῳδίας ἐν τοῖς κατὰ τὴν Σμύρναν Ὀλυμπίοις τὸ ‘ὦ Ζεῦ’ ἐς τὴν γῆν δείξαντος, τὸ δὲ ‘καὶ γᾶ’ ἐς τὸν οὐρανὸν ἀνασχόντος, προκαθήμενος τῶν Ὀλυμπίων ὁ Πολέμων ἐξέωσεν αὐτὸν τῶν ἄθλων εἰπὼν ‘οὗτος τῇ χειρὶ ἐσολοίκισεν’. Again, when a tragic actor at the Olympic games in Smyrna pointed to the ground as he uttered the words, “Ο Zeus!” then raised his hands to heaven at the words, “and Earth!” Polemo, who was presiding at the Olympic games, expelled him from the contest, saying: “This man has committed a solecism with his hand”.

57 Cf. Veyne 1989. 58 Suet. Aug. 89, 2: delectabatur etiam comoedia veteri et saepe eam exhibuit spectaculis publicis (“he also enjoyed Old Comedy, and often put it on at public festivals”); SHA Hadr. 19, 6: fabulas omnis generis more antiquo in theatro dedit (“he presented plays of every sort in the ancient manner in the theatre”); ibid. 26, 4: in convivio tragoedias, comoedias, Attellanas, sambucas, lectores, poetas pro re semper exhibuit (“in symposia he put on tragedies, comedies, Atellan farces, harp-recitals, reciters of prose, poets, in every case to suit the occasion”). 59 On these epigrams see Nisbet 2001. 60 E.g. his eviction from his house in Smyrna of the future emperor Pius proconsul of the province Asia, Philostr. V S 1, 25, 534. 61 For Herodes Atticus’ conflicts with other members of the Athenian elite that prompted Marcus Aurelius’ intervention see Philostr. V S 2, 1, 560–562; Oliver 1970; for his quarrel with the brothers Quintilii see Philostr. V S 2, 1, 559. For confiscation of his grandfather Hipparchus’ estate see Philostr. V S 2, 1, 549. 62 Parca 1991; cf. Nervegna 2007, 30. 63 Syll.3 1080 = IG V 2, 118. See Le Guen 2007d, accepting the date of 190–170 BC proposed by Strasser 2006 but rebutting many of his other conclusions.

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A recently re-edited papyrus of the second century AD adds the titles of six plays from which the choraules Epagathus either performed songs or offered them for performance.64 Of these six the Hypsipyle, Medea, and Antiope are probably the Euripidean plays, the Ransom of Hector that of Aeschylus (rather than of Dionysius I of Syracuse). Henry plausibly suggests that the Ἀνδρογυν( ) is more likely to be a scribal error for Andromache or Andromeda than the Ἀνδρόγυνος of Menander or the Ἀνδρόγυνοι of Eupolis.65 The sixth title, Deidameia, does not match one hitherto known. The six titles are of interest in their confirmation of Euripides’ popularity, but they are only the titles of plays from which songs were chosen for performance and cannot contribute much to our understanding of the relative popularity of complete plays. These scraps may acquire some significance if we set them alongside the more voluminous evidence of papyrus fragments and quotations or allusions by imperial writers. Appendix 1 sets out the presence of the three tragedians in papyrus fragments, with a summary enumeration of Plutarch’s quotations. Appendix 2 presents a breakdown of references to the three tragedians’ complete plays in Dio of Prusa, Plutarch, Aelius Aristides and Philostratus, and to Euripidean fragments attributable to particular plays:66 in both tables the number in bold in column 1 is that of the papyri so far published. The most obvious point is that for most plays, whether transmitted in medieval manuscripts or not, neither papyrus fragments nor citations are numerous enough to do anything with at all. That there are, for example, 4 papyri of the Heracles and 12 of the Medea, and 9 and 11 quotations of these plays in Plutarch, does not allow confident argument concerning their respective popularity. But something may legitimately be made of the greater prominence of the Orestes and Phoenissae: 20 papyri and 17 Plutarchan citations of the Orestes, 27 papyri and 28 Plutarchan citations of or references to the Phoenissae. It has been long observed that the Orestes and Phoenissae are favourites both in our papyrus texts and with ancient readers. What has not, I think, been pointed out is their different profiles in our papyri. 8 of our papyri of the Orestes are Hellenistic, 9 were written in the high empire and 3 are late. The Orestes’ musical virtuosity and melodramatic plot seem already to have made the play attractive in the Hellenistic period – unlike our resources for the imperial period, there are no texts like those of Dio, Plutarch, Aristides or Philostratus offering quotation or allusion to supplement our papyrus evidence. The papyrus distribution of the Phoenissae, on the other hand, is very different: only 3 papyri are Hellenistic – the vast majority, 17, were written in the first three centuries AD. That papyri alone cannot be taken as an index of popularity is shown by many illustrations of scenes from the Phoenissae on diverse ceramic vessels from the fourth to the second centuries BC.67 But Plutarch’s quotations confirm the evidence of the papyri that the play was especially popular in the imperial period.68 Various explanations have been offered for this popularity. One scholar, Elizabeth Rawson, noted the concentration of quotations (illustrated by my Appendix 2) between lines 344–558, the debate between Iocasta and her son Eteocles in which she tries (and fails) to convince him that his ambition to rule should not impel him to destroy his polis. For Rawson the issues that engaged readers were a citizen’s duty to his patris and the deprivations of exile from it.69 Others too have seen the focus on the demerits of exile in lines 388–405 as an important reason for the play’s catching Plutarch’s and Favorinus’ attention in their essays On Exile (as it was for Epictetus’ exploitation).70 I suggest rather that what explains so much reading and quotation in the imperial period is the situation where each of two claimants to power with comparable qualifications is determined to establish himself as sole ruler despite immense collateral destruction. Of course this issue had drawn attention long before the imperial period. Aristotle cites the Phoenissae in his Nicomachean Ethics as an example of στάσις (‘civil war’) precipitated when each of two people wants to be sole ruler: ὅταν δ’ ἑκάτερος ἑαυτὸν βούληται, ὥσπερ οἱ ἐν ταῖς Φοινίσσαις, στασιάζουσιν (“and when each of two men wants himself [sc.

64 Henry 2014: the papyrus was first edited in 1975 by Cockle, whose text appears in TrGF V, 2, 1103–1104 as DID B 15a. 65 Henry 2014, 142. 66 References to fragments of Aeschylus and Sophocles seemed too few to be useful. 67 Papadopoulou 2008, 108–109. 68 For the textual tradition of the Phoenissae and its quotation in the imperial period, especially by Plutarch and Lucian, see Haslam 1976; Braund 1997, 113. 69 Rawson 1970. 70 Above 167. On Polynices’ lamentation of exile in Plutarch and Favorinus (especially Favorinus, De exil. 7, 2–3) see Scharffenberger 2015, 302–303. For Favorinus’ De exilio see now Amato and Marganne 2015.

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to rule], as in the Phoenissae, they start a civil war”).71 In the dying months of the Roman republic Cicero wrote that Phoenissae 524–525 were favourite lines of Julius Caesar (Cic. Off. 3, 82): ipse autem socer in ore semper Graecos versus de Phoenissis habebat, quos dicam ut potero; incondite fortasse sed tamen, ut res possit intellegi: nam si violandum est ius, regnandi gratia, violandum est; aliis rebus pietatem colas. capitalis [Eteocles vel potius Euripides], qui id unum quod omnium sceleratissimum fuerit, exceperit. But the father-in-law himself [sc. Caesar] used to have continually upon his lips the Greek lines from the Phoenissae, which I will reproduce as well as I can – awkwardly, perhaps, but still so that the meaning can be understood: “For if justice is to be trampled upon, it should be trampled upon for the sake of ruling; in other matters you should cultivate pious behaviour”. He [Eteocles or rather Euripides] deserved death for having made an exception of the one thing that was the blackest crime of all.

Again in 34 AD a Roman from an old republican family reworked a line of Phoenissae (393)72 in a tragedy he himself composed, an Atreus, and was forced by Tiberius, who saw himself as the target, to commit suicide (Cass. Dio 58, 24, 3–4): Μάμερκος δὲ δὴ Αἰμίλιος Σκαῦρος [.  .  .] ἑάλω [.  .  .] διὰ τραγῳδίαν καὶ παθήματι δεινοτέρῳ  οὗ συνέγραψε περιέπεσεν. Ἀτρεὺς μὲν τὸ ποίημα ἦν, παρῄνει δὲ τῶν ἀρχομένων τινὶ ὑπ᾿ αὐτοῦ, κατὰ τὸν Εὐριπίδην, ἵνα τὴν τοῦ κρατοῦντος ἀβουλίαν φέρῃ. μαθὼν οὖν τοῦτο ὁ Τιβέριος ἐφ᾿ ἑαυτῷ τε τὸ ἔπος εἰρῆσθαι ἔφη, Ἀτρεὺς εἶναι διὰ τὴν μιαιφονίαν προσποιησάμενος, καὶ ὑπειπὼν ὅτι ‘καὶ ἐγὼ οὖν Αἴαντ᾿ αὐτὸν ποιήσω’, ἀνάγκην οἱ προσήγαγεν αὐτοεντεὶ ἀπολέσθαι. Mam. Aemilius Scaurus [. . .] was convicted because of a tragedy he had composed, and fell a victim to a worse fate than that which he had described. Atreus was the name of his drama, and in the manner of Euripides it advised one of the subjects of that monarch to endure the folly of the reigning prince. Tiberius, upon hearing of it, declared that this had been written with reference to him, claiming that he himself was ‘Atreus’ because of his bloodthirstiness; and remarking, ‘I will make him Ajax’, he compelled him to commit suicide.73

The exploitation of the Phoenissae by Caesar, Cicero and Scaurus shows that the Roman senatorial class saw its debates as relevant to autocracy, but cannot tell us whether that was also perceived in the Greek world. A generation later, however, the civil wars of 70 AD, like those of the late republic, reminded Romans and Greeks alike of the potential consequences of political πλεονεξία (‘greed’), and in his essay on πλεονεξία (Oration 17) Dio of Prusa quoted no fewer than 10 lines of the Phoenissae (531–540), changing the text so as actually to introduce the term πλεονεξία.74 As Braund saw “the adaptation of Euripides’ text that appears in Dio constitutes the clearest possible demonstration that in the Greek east in Plutarch’s day Jocasta’s speech, if not the Phoenician Women tout court, could be read as a treatment of the evils of pleonexia”.75 Dio’s readiness to apply the lessons of Attic tragedy to the current situation of the Roman empire also comes out in his Oration 66, περὶ δόξης (‘On Fame’), where he alludes to Nero’s contribution to the demise of Julio-Claudian rule – a contribution epitomised for Dio, as it was later for Philostratus, by Nero’s insistence on displaying his talent for singing – and to another Roman οἶκος (‘house’) now in danger (Dio Chrys. Or. 66, 6): ὅτι μὲν γὰρ διὰ χρυσοῦν πρόβατον ἀνάστατον συνέβη γενέσθαι τηλικαύτην οἰκίαν τὴν Πέλοπος οἱ τραγῳδοί φασιν. καὶ κατεκόπη μὲν τὰ τοῦ Θυέστου τέκνα, τῇ Πελοπίᾳ δὲ ὁ πατὴρ ἐμίχθη καὶ τὸν Αἴγισθον ἔσπειρεν. οὗτος δ᾿ ἀπέκτεινε μὲν μετὰ τῆς Κλυταιμνήστρας τὸν Ἀγαμέμνονα τὸν ποιμένα τῶν Ἀχαιῶν, κἀκείνην Ὀρέστης ὁ υἱός, καὶ τοῦτο ποιήσας εὐθὺς ἐμαίνετο. τούτοις δὲ οὐκ ἄξιον ἀπιστεῖν, ἃ γέγραπται μὲν οὐχ ὑπὸ τῶν τυχόντων ἀνδρῶν, Εὐριπίδου καὶ Σοφοκλέους, λέγεται δὲ ἐν μέσοις τοῖς θεάτροις· ἔτι δὲ ἰδεῖν ἔστιν ἑτέραν οἰκίαν συντριβεῖσαν πλουσιωτέραν ἐκείνης διὰ γλῶτταν καὶ νὴ Δία ἑτέραν κινδυνεύουσαν. Why, because of a golden lamb it came about that a house as mighty as that of Pelops was over-turned, as we learn from the tragic poets: the children of Thyestes cut in pieces, Pelopia’s father slept with her and sired Aegisthus; and Aegisthus with Clytemnestra’s aid slew Agamemnon, ‘the shepherd of the Achaeans’; and then Clytemnestra’s son Orestes slew her, and, having done so, he immediately went mad. One should not disbelieve these things, for they have been recorded by no ordinary men – Euripides and Sophocles – and also are recited in the middle of theatres. Furthermore, one may see another house, more affluent than that of Pelops, which has been ruined because of a tongue, and, indeed, another house which is in jeopardy. 71 Arist. Eth. Nic. 1166a32–33. 72  τὰς τῶν κρατούντων ἀμαθίας φέρειν χρεών (“One must endure the follies of those in power”), also quoted by Plut. De exil. 605f. 73 Transl. E. Cary. 74 Dio Chrys. Or. 17, 6–7. For suggestions that the play’s focus on πλεονεξία is related by Dio and Plutarch to the dangers of pleonectic competition between members of Greek city elites see Braund 1997, Scharffenberger 2015, 303–304. For πλεονεξία in classical Athens see Balot 2001. 75 Braund 1997, 115. Cf. Gotteland 2001, 105, 109.

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For some this dark allusion dates Oration 66 late in Domitian’s reign. More probably, I think, the written-up version transmitted belongs after 96 AD, although Dio may have represented it as delivered or composed earlier. Given these allusions in Oration 66, it seems very probable that Dio also expected readers or listeners to apply his citation of the Phoenissae in Oration 17, on πλεονεξία, to their contemporary Roman world.76

Conclusions No emperor seems to have had concerns about the capacity of tragedy or comedy to provoke anti-imperial sentiment in the Greek world, even if an aristocratic senator in Rome had allegedly kindled the rage of the suspicious Tiberius by reworking a line of the Phoenissae. It was even possible for one emperor, Nero, blithely to act in a play so easily seen as anti-autocratic as Sophocles’ Antigone. But the high visibility of Euripides’ Phoenissae may be explained by its focus on two contemporary issues – the destructive civil wars precipitated by leaders’ lust for power, and the penalty of exile that an emperor might occasionally impose on troublesome members of city elites. Most members of such elites, however, are more likely to have been concerned at the prospect of attacks by Old Comedy produced in city and provincial festivals.

Appendix 1 Papyri of Euripides, and of the seven plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles transmitted by our medieval manuscripts, with the number of Plutarch’s quotations for comparison. The numbers in this table are based on the Mertens-Pack 3 online Database, last consulted at http://cipl93.philo.ulg.ac.be/Cedopal/MP3/dbsearch_en.aspx on 14 May 2019. Where alternative dates for a papyrus are offered there I have made an arbitrary decision. For the Phoenissae a larger total is registered by Mastronarde 1992, 54–55, but that includes gnomologies. Euripides

Papyri third-second century BC

Papyri first century BC-first century AD

Papyri second-third century AD

Alcestis

1

1

1

Andromache Bacchae

1

Papyri sixth-eighth century AD

Helen

3

2

3

2

6

12

3

2

3

11

9

1

1

1

1 + hypothesis

1

11

1 + hypothesis prologue

5

2

1

2

Hercules Furens

2

Hippolytus

2 + ostracon

Ion Iphigenia Aulidensis

2

Iphigenia Taurica

1 + prologue

Medea

2

2 2

hypothesis

8

4

6

4 + ostracon + hypothesis

1

2

1

1

5

3

1

1

3 2

Total number of papyri

5 1

Electra

Plutarch

5

Cyclops Hecuba

Papyri fourth-fifth century AD

3

4

1

5

4 + prologue

8

12

76 As Plutarch too expected his readers to apply his exploitation of the Phoenissae in his Pyrrhus to their contemporary world, see Braund 1997, esp. 126–127.

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(Continued) Euripides

Papyri third-second century BC

Papyri first century BC-first century AD

Papyri second-third century AD

Papyri fourth-fifth century AD

Papyri sixth-eighth century AD

Orestes

6

5

6

2

1

17

20

Phoenissae

3

6

11 + hypothesis

3

4

20

27 + hypothesis

1

1

Rhesus 1

Total number of papyri

2

Supplices Troades

Plutarch

1+ commentary

2

0

5

2+ commentary

Aegeus/Theseus?

1

1

Alcmaeon

1 + ?1

1+?1

Alcamenes

prologue

Alexander

prologue 2

Andromeda

2 1

1

Antiope

1

1

2

Archelaus

prologue

1

1 + prologue

Auge Cresphontes

1 2

1

Cretenses

5

2

Erechtheus 1

1

Hypsipyle

2 + prologue

?1

Melanippe Desmot.?

?1 1

Oedipus

5

1

3

3 + prologue

7

?1

2

?1

1

1

1

1

Oenomaus

1

Palamedes

hypothesis

Polyidus

hypothesis

Phaethon

1

1

Sciron Theseus Total of Euripides papyri / Plutarch quotations

4

1

2

1

hypothesis prologue 26 + 6 from prologues + 1 ostracon

24 + 1 hypothesis

hypothesis hypothesis

1

Phrixus I or II Telephus

4 2

1

Ino? Meleager

1

1

hypothesis

3

3

3 + prologue

?1

1

?1

58 + 3 uncertain + 4 hypotheseis

22 + 1 uncertain +1 commentary

13 + 1 hypothesis

134

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(Continued) Sophocles

Papyri third-second century BC

Papyri first century BC-first century AD

Ajax Antigone

1

Electra

Papyri second-third century AD

Papyri fourth-fifth century AD

Papyri sixth-eighth century AD

2

1

1

1 1

Oedipus Coloneus

1

Oedipus Tyrannus

1+ hypothesis

Philoctetes

1 + hypothesis 1 2 + hypothesis

Trachiniae

2

Total of Sophocles papyri / Plutarch quotations Aeschylus

1

1

Papyri third-second century BC

Plutarch

Total number of papyri

2

4

12

2

3

2

5

2

16

3+2 hypotheses

1

2 + hypothesis + 1 undated

1

2

3

41

2

8 + 1 hypothesis

4+2 hypotheseis

4

Papyri first century BC-first century AD

Papyri second-third century AD

Papyri fourth-fifth century AD

Papyri sixth-eighth century AD

Plutarch

Total number of papyri

Agamemnon

1

4

1

Prometheus Vinctus

1

3

1

Septem

3

6

3

Supplices

1

9

1

Total of Aeschylus papyri / Plutarch quotations

6

22

Total of 3 tragedians’ papyri / Plutarch quotations

26 + 6 from prologues + 1 ostracon

26 + 1 hypothesis 72 + 3 uncertain + 26 + 1 14 + 1 5 hypotheseis uncertain + 1 hypothesis com-mentary + 1 hypothesis

197

Appendix 2 Quotation of the three tragic poets by Dio of Prusa, Plutarch, Aelius Aristides, and Philostratus. The numeral in the first column refers to the number of papyrus fragments so far published. An asterisk ✶ indicates that the poet is named; an asterisk in parenthesis (✶) indicates that the play is named but not the poet. Quotations of fragments are registered only for Euripides, and for him only of fragments securely attributed to a particular play. My list of Plutarch’s quotations is based on Helmbold and O’Neill 1959, with some corrections: I also use the commoner mode of reference to the Lives, and in the Moralia I identify individual works (which sometimes has a bearing on Plutarch’s choice of quotation).

10 Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire  

Euripides

DIO OF PRUSA

PLUTARCH

AELIUS ARISTIDES

Alcestis 3

780–785: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 107b 1159: Quomodo adulat. 58a; cf. De amor. prol. 497d

Andromache 12

448 : De Hdt. mal. 863e ; Comm. not. 1073c; Non posse 1102c 597–598: Lyc. sync. 3, 6 693: Alex. 51, 8 930: Prae. coniug. 143e; Cons. ad uxor. 610b

Bacchae 9

General reference: Crass. 33, 5–6 4–5: Demetr. 45, 5 8: Sol. 1, 5 66–67: De tranq. an. 467d; Amat. 758b; An seni 794b: VII 75.8 203: Amat. 7656b 267: Alex. 695d 298–299: De def. or. 432e✶; Quaest. conv. 716b✶ 317: Cons. ad uxor. 609b; Ti. Gracch. 10, 6 386: De garr. 503c✶ 498: De tranq. anim. 476b 733: Quaest. conv. 614a 918–919: De comm. not. 1083e–f 1169: Animine an c. 501c (✶),

Electra 1

404–405: Or. 7, 97; 7, 102✶

Hecuba 11

607: Or. 32, 86

Helen 2

Hippolytus 4

Ion 1

PHILOSTRATUS

✶

Cyclops 1

Hercules Furens 4

 175

947–949*: Or. 32, 94 673–675*: Or. 32, 100

616–617: Or. 74, 20

629: Or. 3, 665

On 10–11 Nicetes calques his ‘Bacchic’ phrases, V S 1, 19, 511. Perhaps Imag. 1, 14, 18

Imag. 2, 18

332–333: De def. or. 435b✶

167–169: Lys. 15, 4 428–429: Quomodo adul. 33c 1282 [or Hel. 36 ff.]: De Sto. rep. 1049b ✶✶

422: Non posse 1104d 36 [or El. 1282]: De Sto. rep. 1049b 1688 [or Alc. 1159]: Quomodo adulat. 58a; cf. De amor. prol. 497d

1–3: Or. 36, 13✶

Her. 25, 12 Helen was not at Troy

112: Comm. not. 1063d 174–175: Cat. Min. 52, 8 268–269: An seni 793c 673–675: De mul. vir. 243a 1245–1246: De Sto. rep. 1048f (✶); Comm. not. 1052e 1250: Quomodo adulat. 72c; Ant. 62, 1 1261–1262: [De lib. ed.] 1b 1346: De Sto. rep. 1052e✶

178: Or. 30, 7

General reference: Imag. 2, 23 Ἡρακλῆς μαινόμενος

7–8: Amat. 766c 11: cf. Thes. 3, 4 75–76: Non posse 1094a 102: Philos. cum princ.778a 193–195: Amat. 764e✶ 218–219: Quomodo adulat. 52b✶; De soll. an. 959b–c✶ 253–257: De amic. mult. 95e✶ 385–386: De virt. mor. 448f 424–425: [De lib. ed.] 1c; Quomodo adul. 28c 449–450: Amat. 756d 478: Amat. 759b 986–989: [De lib. ed.] 6b 158–159, 180: De soll. an. 975b 732: Quomodo adulat. 49f✶, 69a

1406: quoted by Pausanias on leaving Athenian chair, V S 2.13.594 76–77: Or. 30, 16 352: Or. 2, 55✶; 3, 633✶

73: Her. 5, 3

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DIO OF PRUSA

PLUTARCH

AELIUS ARISTIDES

Iphigenia Aulidensis 3

16–17: De tranq. anim. 471c 29–31: Quomodo adul. 33e 29–33: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 103b 407: Quomodo adulat. 64c 449–450: Nic. 5, 7 524 & 1362: Quaest. Graec. 301d 1218–1219: Quomodo adul. 17c

Iphigenia Taurica 4

1: [X orat.] 837e✶ 253: De exil. 602a 289–290: Adv. Col. 1123b 569: De prof. virt. 75e 787: [Reg. imp. ap.] 182e 949ff.: Quaest. conv. 613b, 643a

407: Or. 33, 2

Medea 12

190ff.: Conj. prae. 143c✶; Quaest. conv. 710e✶ 214: Tim. 32, 3 288: Alex. 10, 6 (✶) 290–291: De tu. san. 124b (✶); De vit. pudore 530b–c (✶) 332: Brut. 51, 1 410: De fac. 936d 598: Quomodo adul. 25a✶ 679: cf. Thes. 3, 5 1078: De vit. pudore 533d

1078–1180: Or. 34, 50

Orestes 20

Phoenissae 27

1–3: Or. 4, 82 253–254: Or. 74, 6 349–351✶: Or. 2, 42 criticising ἁβροσύνη of Menelaus

531–540✶ (Iocasta attacking πλεονεξία): Or. 17, 9

1078: followed by Her. 47, 1

72, 99: De coh.ira 454d (✶) 129: Alc. 23, 6 211–212 : De superst. 165e 213: De curios. 522d; Quaest. conv. 612d✶, VII 128✶ 232: De tranq. anim. 466c 251: De cap. ex inim. 88c 255–259: Plac. philos. 900f–901a (✶) 258: De tranq. anim. 465c; Animine an corp. 501c; An seni 788f; Adv. Col. 1126a 271: Quaest. conv.737a 396: De tranq. anim. 476e 420: De sera 548d✶ 667: Quomodo adulat.. 68e✶ 735: De cap. ex inim. 65a; De frat. amor. 490e 976–981: Non posse 1090b 65: De frat. amor. 483e 68: Pyrrh. 9.6 344–345: De exil. 606f 347–348: De exil. 606f 365: De cup. div. 526f 388–389: De exil. 599e 388–393: De exil. 605f✶ 396: Demetr. 14, 3✶ 396–397: De exil. 606d✶ 402–405: De exil. 606e 430–432: De exil. 606f 469, 472: Quomodo adulat. 62c✶ 504–506: De frat. amor. 481a 516–517: Pyrrh. 14, 2

PHILOSTRATUS

1–3: paraphrased by Antiphon, V S 1, 15, 498–499 1496: spoken with inappropriate gestures by actor at Smyrna Olympia, V S 1, 25, 542 Orestes’ success against Menelaus Her. 29, 4

3: Or. 47, 22✶ 110–111: Or. 26, 84

297: quoted by Alexander of Seleuceia V S 2, 5, 573 Imag. 1, 4, 27

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PLUTARCH

AELIUS ARISTIDES

PHILOSTRATUS

524–525: Quomodo adul. 18d; De tu. san. 125d; Crass. sync. 4, 3 532 ff.: Sull. 4, 4✶ 536–538: De frat. amor. 481a 549–550: Quomodo adul. 25b✶ 556–558: [De lib. ed.] 16a✶ 558: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 104a✶ 958: De Pyth. or. 407d✶ 1006: Quomodo adul. 23b 1688: Quomodo adulat. 72c; An seni 784a Rhesus 2 Supplices 0

General reference: Thes. 29, 5✶ 734–736: De Sto. rep. 1056b✶ 861–862: Pel. 3, 5✶ 974b–976: De E 394b✶ 1109–1113: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 110c✶

Troades 2

General reference: Pel. 29, 9✶ 636: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 109f 764: De superst. 166a; Ages. 15, 3 887–888: Quaest. Plat. 1007c ; De Is. et Os. 381b 886: De anim. proc. 1026b✶

Aegeus/Theseus? 1 Aeolus 0

Her. 27, 2 has version of Eur. Supp. not of Aes. Eleusin.

1: Or. 44, 1 2–3: Or. 44, 9

19, 20: Quomodo adul. 33c, 34d 21, 3–4: Quomodo adul. 25c✶; De Is. et Os. 369b✶; De tranq. anim. 474a✶ 23: Quaest. Rom. 285b✶; An seni 786a✶; Non posse 1094f✶ 24b: De fort. 98d; De soll. an. 959c✶

Alcmaeon 1 + ? 1 Alcamenes prologue Alexander 2 Andromeda 1

133: Quaest. conv. 630e✶ 145, 2: Quomodo adul. 22e✶

114: Or. 28, 117

Imag. 1, 29

Antiope 2

200: [Vit. Hom.] 156, 2 200, 3–4: An seni 790a 206, 2: Quaest. Plat. 1010d

Or. 2, 394✶ (general) Or. 27, 31 ?

Imag. 1, 10

Archelaus 1 + prologue

228, 1: De amor. prol. 497a; [X orat.] 837e 254: Quo modo adul. 20d; De Sto. rep. 1049e, 1049f

Antigone 0

157: Or. 64, 6

161: fr. 136 Sandbach✶ 183: Quaest. conv. 634e 184: De aud. 43b; De garr. 514a; Quaest. conv. 622a

Auge 1 Autolycus 0

282, 22: De gen. 581f✶; Prae. ger. reip. 803b

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DIO OF PRUSA

Bellerophon 0

452: Or. 23, 2

449, 4–6: Quomodo adul. 36e–f 450: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 110b✶ 454: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 110d 456: De esu carn. 998e 458: De cap. ex inim. 90a 467, 4–5: Non posse 1097d

Danae 0

322, 1: Amat. 757a, 760d✶

Erechtheus 1

Hippolytus Kalyptomenos 0

General reference: Quomodo adul. 27f–28a (✶) 428: Maxime cum princ. 778b 439, 1–2: Prae. ger. reip. 802a✶

Ino 1

398: Ant. 36.1 399: De sera 556a (✶) 411, 2–4: De garr. 507b 412: Quomodo adulat. 63a; De soll. anim. 964c 413, 2: De garr. 506c✶; De exil. 606a✶ 415, 3–5: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 104b✶ 420, 2–3: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 104a✶

Melanippe desmotis? 1 Melanippe sophe 0

Meleager 1 Oedipus 1 Oeneus 0 Oenomaus 1

?Imag. 1, 15/16

349ff : [Parall. min.] 310d 360, 7–10: De exil. 604d–e✶ 362, 18–20: Quomodo adulat. 63a (✶) 362, 29–31: De Alex. fort . 337f 369: Nic. 9, 7

754: De amic. mult. 93c; Quaest. conv. 661e 757, 921–927a: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 110f 758: [Apophth. Lac.] 223b

Licymnius 0

449.3–4: Or. 3, 267✶

332: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 106a (✶)

Hypsipyle 3 + prologue

Ixion 0

PHILOSTRATUS

839ff : De prof. virt. 77c; Amat. 750a–b 839, 12–14: Plac. phil. 908d 840, 2: De virt. mor. 446a 841: Quomodo adul. 33e; De virt. mor. 446a

Cretenses 2 Dictys 0

AELIUS ARISTIDES

285, 8: Comm. not. 1069b 286b, 7: Quomodo adul. 20f; De Sto. reip. 1049e✶ 287: De tranq. anim. 467a (cf. M. Aur. Med. 7, 8; 11, 6); [Vit. Hom.] 153 300: De tranq. anim. 475c 309: De vit. pud. 529e✶; Prae. ger. rei. 807e✶

Chrysippus 0

Cresphontes 4

PLUTARCH

424 ref.: Quomodo adul. 19e✶

473, 1: Cim. 4, 5✶; Marc. 21, 6✶ 502: Amat. 752f 505: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 116f✶

480: Amat. 756b✶ 481, 1: Amat. 756c✶ 484: Quaest. conv. 661b, 718a; [De mus.] 1136a

484: Or. 2, 132 indirect ref.✶

515ff.: [Parall. min.] 312a✶ 561: Her. 4, 1✶

?Imag. 1, 17, 30

10 Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire  

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(Continued) Euripides

PLUTARCH

AELIUS ARISTIDES

PHILOSTRATUS

Palamedes / Polyidus hypothesis

578, 1: Aqua an ignis 957a–b

Or. 3, 664 Polyidus ref.

Her. 33, 42 may echo (Scodel) 34, 7 quotes fr. 588

Phaethon 1

775, 2: An vitiositas 498a✶ 783a: De tranq. anim. 465a 785: Consol. ad uxor. 608e 786: Quaest. conv. 665c✶

Philoctetes 0

DIO OF PRUSA

788: Or. 52, 12

Imag. 1, 11

787: De laud. ips. 544c 788: Ad princ. inerud. 779d 789: De laud. ips. 544c 790: De curios. 521a 796: Adv. Col. 1108b

Phrixus I or II 1

819, 1: [X orat.] 837e 819, 3: De exil. 607b

Protesilaus 0

654: [De lib. ed.] 10a

Or. 3, 365 ref. according to Σ

Scyrioi 0 Stheneboea 0

Telephus 3 + prologue Theseus ? 1 Thyestes 0

Version alluded to Her. 2, 10 Her. 45, 8 counters

661, 1: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 103a 663: De Pyth. or. 405e✶; Quaest. conv. 622c; Amat. 762b✶ 665: Quomodo adulat. 71a✶ 715, 1: Lys. 20, 5 723, 1: De tranq. anim. 472d; De exil. 602b 724: Quomodo adul. 46f✶; De cap. ex inim. 89c

388, 1–2: [De lib.ed.] 11e✶ 397: De Pyth. or. 405b

663 [love makes sophist]: Or. 26, 3; Or. 41, 11 710: Or. 2, 59

381: Or. 36, 18✶

Aeschylus Aga. Ch. Eum. 1

Persae 0

Aga. 36 alluded to V S 1, 21, 515; Eum. alluded to re vote of Athena V S 2, 3, 568; V A 4, 39, 2 citharode sings μέλη from Oresteia and Antigone 69: Or. 1, 203

Prometheus Vinctus 1

341–343: Them. 14, 1✶

351–352: De fac. 923c 380–381: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 102b 575–576: De coh. ira 456a

378: Or. 2, 412

Septem 3

Unspecific ref.: 715e✶ 395–396 and 435: Thes. 1, 4 592–594: Quomodo adul. 32d✶; Reg. et imp. apophth. 186b✶; Arist. 3, 5✶ 593–594: De cap. ex inim. 88b

1: Or. 50, 89 43: Or. 4, 6✶

✶

Prometheus in Caucasus V A 2, 3. Alexander Peloplaton quotes 32: V S 2.5.571

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(Continued) Euripides

DIO OF PRUSA

PLUTARCH

Aeschylus

DIO OF PRUSA

PLUTARCH

Supplices 1

AELIUS ARISTIDES

PHILOSTRATUS

AELIUS ARISTIDES

PHILOSTRATUS

214: De def. or. 417e ; De exil. 607c 226: Quaest. Rom. 286c✶; Rom. 9, 6✶ 681–682: Amat. 758f 770: Quaest. conv. 619e✶; Non posse 1090a✶ 937: De curios. 517e; De fac. 937f ✶

✶

Sophocles Ajax 4

189–190: cf. Quaest. Graec. 301d (Phil. 417) 914: Quaest. conv. 741a✶

Antigone 2

163: Fab. 27, 1 175–177: cf. Cic. 52, 2 232✶: De aud. 48a 291: De superst. 170e 317–319: De garr. 509c–d 368: cf. De vit. aer. alien. 830b 456–457: Quaest. conv. 731c; Comm. not. 1074e 523: Quomodo adulat. 53c✶ 563–564: De coh. ira 460d✶; Phoc. 1, 5✶ 742: De frat. amor. 483b✶ 783–784: Quaest. conv. 760d

450: V A 4, 38, 5 Apollonius suggests quoting against Nero’s ban on philosophers. V A 4, 39, 2 a busking citharode sings μέλη from Oresteia and Antigone

Electra 2

2: Quaest. conv. 737b 6: cf. De soll. an. 966a 724–725✶: De curios. 521c

25: old Damianus like Soph. horse, V S 2, 23, 606

Oedipus Coloneus 2

Oedipus Tyrannus 3

? ref.: Or. 64, 6

Philoctetes 1

Or. 59 compares three poets’ Phil. plays

Trachiniae 3

Or .60 (Nessus/ Deianeira)

301: Or. 3, 672✶ 1313: Or. 3, 395 1353: Or. 23, 71

1–2: Demetr. 46, 10✶ 510: Quaest. conv. 630e✶ 668–673: An seni 785a✶ 683–684: Quaest. conv. 647b✶ 1224ff.: cf. [Cons. ad Apoll.] 115c 1382: cf. Ad princ. in. 781b

267: Or. 3, 376✶ 309: Or. 4, 1

18: Hadrianus like εὐστομοῦσα ἀηδών V S 2, 10, 589 607–609: praised by Apollonius in big speech, V A 8, 7, 49

2–3: Quomodo adul. 22e✶ 4–5: De amic. mult. 95c; De superst. 169d; De virt. mor. 445d; Quaest. conv. 623c–d✶; cf. Ant. 24, 3 50: cf. Alex. 682d 110–111: De fortuna 98a✶ 379: [Cons. ad Apoll.] 117a 385: Quaest. conv. 632d✶ 961: VII 152, 15 1080: De fort. Rom. 318d✶ 1169–1170: De curios. 522c(✶); Non posse 1093b 1276–1277: De amor. prol. 497d (✶)1342ff: cf. De superst. 168c

Or. 3, 466 general reference 263: Or. 25, 16 614: Or. 2, 408✶

410: quoted by Apollonius comparing himself to Teireisas confronting Oedipus, V A 7, 4, 2✶ 1269–1270: reworked by Philostr. for punishment of Cilician’s incest, V A 1, 10, 2

417: cf. Quaest. Graec. 301d (cf. Ajax 189)

Cf. Quaest. Rom. 278f; Comm. not. 1062a 442: De laud. ips. 541b; Sol. 1, 6 497: Amat. 759e✶ 1058: cf. Prae. ger. reip. 813e

174: Or. 40, 14✶ 263, 267: Or. 28, 130 1217: Or. 28, 37

Part III: Representations of Autocrats and Oligarchs in Drama

Lucia Athanassaki

11 Charms of Autocracy, Charms of Democracy: Euripides’ Athenian Leaders in the Light of Civic Iconography Greek tragedy is full of autocrats, but it is only on the Euripidean stage that we hear dramatic characters advertising the merits of democracy and autocracy. The debate between Theseus and the Theban herald in Suppliant Women, which will be my starting point, is an extreme, but not an isolated, example of the staging of a point of view that advocates for autocracy in the theatre of the democratic city. It is not accidental, of course, that the proponent of autocracy is the Theban herald and the defender of democracy is Theseus. The picture, however, is not as clear-cut as it prima facie looks. As we shall see, Euripides’ Theseus has autocratic propensities even when he advertises democracy. It is also remarkable that his sons, Acamas and Demophon, are depicted as enlightened monarchs, a representation that problematises Theseus’ association with democracy. It goes without saying that the mythical world of a distant past that poets chose to dramatise was at odds with staging a fully democratic society. Could a king be a democratic ruler? He could only if he laid down his autocratic prerogative and sought his election by the demos, in which case he would no longer be king. Poets were of course aware of the inherent difficulties of portraying kings as democratic rulers. The question that I shall explore therefore is not why Euripides did not portray Theseus as a fully-fledged democrat, but why he attempted to portray him as a proponent of democratic values while drawing attention to his limitations as a democratic leader. In a well-known passage of the Republic (568c) Plato asserts that tragic poets “drag” states into tyranny and democracy and singles out Euripides as a eulogist of tyrants and tyranny. He is able to argue his case by quoting out of context a couple of phrases, which he also misreads deliberately, thus offering a totally misleading picture of Euripides’ representations of tyrants and tyrannies.1 Plato’s disapproval of theatrokratia explains his hostility towards drama, but does not explain why he makes Euripides his target as an encomiast of tyranny, especially in the light of Euripides’ encomia of democracy in his Athenian plays. Plato had of course access to a vast corpus, now lost. We must do with what has survived and the best place to start is Euripides’ representations of Athenian kings, keeping Plato’s assessment in mind. In what follows I shall focus on Euripides’ representations of Theseus and the Theseids, which I shall compare with his depictions of earlier kings, Erechtheus and Ion, paying special attention to their autocratic or democratic outlook.2 Contrary to Plato’s assessment, I shall argue that Euripides does not eulogise tyrants, but calls attention to the autocratic propensities of Athenian leaders not out of admiration for tyranny, but out of concern for democracy, i.e. in order to warn his audiences about the fragility of democracy and the need to be alert to the politicians’ overreaching ambitions that threaten it. I shall also argue that, in problematizing Theseus’ close association with Athenian democracy, predominant in fifth-century art and literature, Euripides develops an interesting dialogue with another major civic discourse, monumental sculptural iconography, which at the time highlighted Theseus’ close connection with democracy. 1 Pl. Resp. 568a–b: ἥ τε τραγῳδία ὅλως σοφὸν δοκεῖ εἶναι καὶ ὁ Εὐριπίδης διαφέρων ἐν αὐτῇ. τί δή; ὅτι καὶ τοῦτο πυκνῆς διανοίας ἐχόμενον ἐφθέγξατο, ὡς (b.) ἄρα ‘σοφοὶ τύραννοί’ εἰσι ‘τῶν σοφῶν συνουσίᾳ.’ [fr. 13 Nauck] καὶ ἔλεγε δῆλον ὅτι τούτους εἶναι τοὺς σοφοὺς οἷς σύνεστιν. καὶ ὡς ἰσόθεόν γ’, ἔφη, τὴν τυραννίδα ἐγκωμιάζει [Eur. Tro. 1169], καὶ ἕτερα πολλά, καὶ οὗτος καὶ οἱ ἄλλοι ποιηταί. (‘tragedy in general [is] esteemed wise, and Euripides beyond other tragedians.’ ‘Why, pray?’ ‘Because among other utterances of pregnant thought he said, [568b] “Tyrants are wise by converse with the wise”. He meant evidently that these associates of the tyrant are the wise.’ ‘Yes, he and the other poets,’ he said, ‘call the tyrant’s power “likest God’s” and praise it in many other ways’ transl. P. Shorey). Fragment 13 Nauck has also been attributed to Sophocles; for Plato’s intentional misreading of this fragment, see Adam 1902, 260 ad loc. 2 Fifth-century literary representations of Theseus have been examined systematically by Walker 1995 and Mills 1997. Neither study challenges Theseus’ professed adherence to democratic ideals. For visual representations, see, e.g., Barringer 2008; Brommer 1982; Neils 1987. Note: Many thanks to Alastair Blanshard, Eric Csapo, Hans Rupprecht Goette, Simon Goldhill, Jelle Stoop, and Peter Wilson for their stimulating questions and comments at Sydney. This version has profited from further research conducted at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Washington DC in the course of a residential fellowship in the spring of 2018–2019: I am grateful to Gregory Nagy, the CHS team as well as all scholars in residence for an intellectually stimulating environment. I also thank warmly Ewen Bowie, Eric Csapo, B. Le Guen, H. Alan Shapiro, and Peter Wilson for their input in this version. Warm thanks too to Andrew Stewart for making available to me his article on the temple of Ares/Athena Pallenis before publication: Stewart 2022. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-012

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 Lucia Athanassaki

We may begin with Theseus’ portrait in Suppliant Women, produced soon after the events at Delion in 424 BC, perhaps already in 423 BC.3 When the Theban herald asks, “who is the tyrant of this city” (399), Theseus responds that he has come to a free city whose king is the demos (Eur. Supp. 403–408): πρῶτον μὲν ἤρξω τοῦ λόγου ψευδῶς, ξένε, ζητῶν τύραννον ἐνθάδ᾿· οὐ γὰρ ἄρχεται ἑνὸς πρὸς ἀνδρὸς ἀλλ᾿ ἐλευθέρα πόλις. δῆμος δ᾿ ἀνάσσει διαδοχαῖσιν ἐν μέρει ἐνιαυσίαισιν, οὐχὶ τῷ πλούτῳ διδοὺς τὸ πλεῖστον, ἀλλὰ χὠ πένης ἔχων ἴσον.4

405

To begin with, stranger, you started your speech on a false note by looking for a tyrant5 here. The city is not ruled by a single man but is free. The people rule, and offices are held by yearly turns: they do not assign the highest honours to the rich, but the poor also have an equal share.

Theseus’ response does not impress the Theban herald, who refers to the demos pejoratively as ochlos lacking in the education and good judgement needed to run the city and therefore vulnerable to bad men who flatter and mislead the people (410–413 and 417–418). Theseus’ response to the herald’s low esteem of the demos’ ability to run the city is an encomium of democracy and a scathing account of tyranny (Eur. Supp. 429–455): οὐδὲν τυράννου δυσμενέστερον πόλει, ὅτου τὸ μὲν πρώτιστον οὐκ εἰσὶν νόμοι κοινοί, κρατεῖ δ᾿ εἷς τὸν νόμον κεκτημένος αὐτὸς παρ᾿ αὑτῷ· καὶ τόδ᾿ οὐκέτ᾿ ἔστ᾿ ἴσον. γεγραμμένων δὲ τῶν νόμων ὅ τ᾿ ἀσθενὴς ὁ πλούσιός τε τὴν δίκην ἴσην ἔχει, [ἔστιν δ᾿ ἐνισπεῖν τοῖσιν ἀσθενεστέροις τὸν εὐτυχοῦντα ταὔθ᾿, ὅταν κλύῃ κακῶς,] νικᾷ δ᾿ ὁ μείων τὸν μέγαν δίκαι᾿ ἔχων. τοὐλεύθερον δ᾿ ἐκεῖνο· τίς θέλει πόλει χρηστόν τι βούλευμ᾿ ἐς μέσον φέρειν ἔχων; καὶ ταῦθ᾿ ὁ χρῄζων λαμπρός ἐσθ᾿, ὁ δ᾿ οὐ θέλων σιγᾷ. τί τούτων ἔστ᾿ ἰσαίτερον πόλει; καὶ μὴν ὅπου γε δῆμος αὐθέντης χθονός, ὑποῦσιν ἀστοῖς ἥδεται νεανίαις· ἀνὴρ δὲ βασιλεὺς ἐχθρὸν ἡγεῖται τόδε, καὶ τοὺς ἀρίστους οὕς ἂν ἡγῆται φρονεῖν κτείνει, δεδοικὼς τῆς τυραννίδος πέρι. πῶς οὖν ἔτ᾿ ἂν γένοιτ᾿ ἂν ἰσχυρὰ πόλις ὅταν τις ὡς λειμῶνος ἠρινοῦ στάχυν τόλμας ἀφαιρῇ κἀπολωτίζῃ νέων; κτᾶσθαι δὲ πλοῦτον καὶ βίον τί δεῖ τέκνοις ὡς τῷ τυράννῳ πλείον᾿ ἐκμοχθῇ βίον; ἢ παρθενεύειν παῖδας ἐν δόμοις καλῶς, τερπνὰς τυράννοις ἡδονάς, ὅταν θέλῃ, δάκρυα δ᾿ ἑτοιμάζουσι; μὴ ζῴην ἔτι εἰ τἀμὰ τέκνα πρὸς βίαν νυμφεύσεται.

430

435

440

445

450

455

There is nothing more hostile to a city than a tyrant. In the first place, there are no common laws in such a city, and one man, keeping the law in his own hands, holds sway. This is unjust. When the laws are written, both the powerless and the rich have equal access to justice, [and it is possible for the weaker man to address the same words to the fortunate man whenever he is badly spoken of,] and the little man, if he has right on his side, defeats the big man. Freedom consists in this: who has a good proposal and wants to set it before the city? He who wants enjoys fame, while he who does not remains silent. What is more equal for a city than this? Wherever

3 Collard 1975, 8–13. 4 The Euripidean quotations and their English translations are taken from the Loeb series: Kovacs 1995, 1998, and 1999 with several adaptations and departures, which are noted ad loc. I have italicized political terms relevant to my argument. 5 Transl. Kovacs (adapted).

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the people rule the land, they take pleasure in the young citizens that are its strength. But a king thinks this hateful, and he kills the best citizens all he regards as proud, fearing for his power. How then could a city be strong in the future when someone culls and cuts away its youth as one does the towering stalk in a springtime meadow? And why should one acquire wealth and a livelihood for one’s children merely to produce greater livelihood for the tyrant? And why gently raise girls in the house only to be a sweet pleasure for the ruler when he wants them and a source of tears for those who raised them? Ι would rather die than see my children being sexually forced.6

Theseus’ speech is full of democratic slogans: freedom (τοὐλεύθερον, 438), equality before the law (δίκην ἴσην, 433), rule of the demos (δῆμος αὐθέντης χθονός, 442). Yet a closer look at Theseus’ portrayal shows that the small print undermines his professed adherence to his democratic manifesto. To begin with Theseus’ treatment of the Theban herald, the Athenian king’s behaviour shows a deficit of democratic ethos, interestingly while he gives the herald lessons of democracy. The herald may not cut a sympathetic character and his judgment may be flawed, but he speaks with parrhesia on the Athenian stage. Moreover he belongs to the lower classes, the rights of which Theseus eloquently defends (434–441). We would therefore expect the Athenian king to restrict himself to the refutation of his arguments. Yet the Athenian king does not simply disagree with the herald but treats him condescendingly (456–462), an attitude which is at odds with his professed respect for the freedom of speech of the weaker citizens (434–439). His treatment of the Theban herald is not the only discrepancy between rhetoric and action. Theseus was initially reluctant to help Adrastus and the lamenting mothers recover the bodies of the Seven and to risk Athenian lives in a war with Thebes. Before the arrival of the Theban herald, however, Aethra succeeds in making Theseus change his mind by pointing out the Thebans’ violation of Panhellenic laws. Theseus’ response to Aethra merits special attention (Eur. Supp. 339–358): πολλὰ γὰρ δράσας καλὰ ἔθος τόδ᾿ εἰς Ἕλληνας ἐξεδειξάμην, ἀεὶ κολαστὴς τῶν κακῶν καθεστάναι. οὔκουν ἀπαυδᾶν δυνατόν ἐστί μοι πόνους. τί γάρ μ᾿ ἐροῦσιν οἵ γε δυσμενεῖς βροτῶν, ὅθ᾿ ἡ τεκοῦσα χὐπερορρωδοῦσ᾿ ἐμοῦ πρώτη κελεύεις τόνδ᾿ ὑποστῆναι πόνον; δράσω τάδ᾿· εἶμι καὶ νεκροὺς ἐκλύσομαι λόγοισι πείθων· εἰ δὲ μή, βίᾳ δορὸς ἤδη τότ᾿ ἔσται κοὐχὶ σὺν φθόνῳ θεῶν. δόξαι δὲ χρῄζω καὶ πόλει πάσῃ τόδε, δόξει δ᾿ ἐμοῦ θέλοντος· ἀλλὰ τοῦ λόγου προσδοὺς ἔχοιμ᾿ ἂν δῆμον εὐμενέστερον. καὶ γὰρ κατέστησ᾿ αὐτὸν ἐς μοναρχίαν ἐλευθερώσας τήνδ᾿ ἰσόψηφον πόλιν. λαβὼν δ᾿ Ἄδραστον δεῖγμα τῶν ἐμῶν λόγων ἐς πλῆθος ἀστῶν εἶμι· καὶ πείσας τάδε, λεκτοὺς ἀθροίσας δεῦρ᾿ Ἀθηναίων κόρους ἥξω· παρ᾿ ὅπλοις θ᾿ ἥμενος πέμψω λόγους Κρέοντι νεκρῶν σώματ᾿ ἐξαιτούμενος.

340

345

350

355

By many glorious deeds I have demonstrated to the Greeks that my custom is always to be a punisher of the wicked. So I cannot refuse hard tasks. What will my enemies say about me when you, who bore me and would naturally be worried about me, are the first to urge me to undertake this toil? Here is what I shall do: I shall go and win release of the bodies, persuading the Thebans with my words. If that fails, then it shall be done by force, and the gods will not begrudge it. I want the city too to ratify this decision, and ratify it they will since that is what I wish. But if I add my reasons I will have more of the people’s good will. And in fact I have made the people sovereign by freeing this city and giving them equal votes. I shall take Adrastus along as the proof of what I am saying and appear before the citizen assembly. When I have won them over on this point, I shall gather a picked band of Athenian youth and return here. Sitting in encampment I shall send a message to Creon, asking for the bodies of the dead.

6 Transl. Kovacs (455 adapted). I do not accept the deletion 442–455 by Kovacs and for this reason I do not print his brackets of these lines.

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 Lucia Athanassaki

It is clear from this passage that Aethra found no difficulty in convincing Theseus to look beyond Athenian interests, help Adrastus, and thus win the status of a Panhellenic leader.7 It is worth noting that Theseus makes his decision before he puts it before the people: the action he decides to take is first to try to persuade the Thebans. If he fails, he will resort to military means (345–347). It is only after he has made up his mind that he mentions the necessity of persuading his own people. The diction makes clear that we do not have a figure of speech, a hysteron-proteron. Theseus asserts that the people will grant his wish (δόξει δ’ ἐμοῦ θέλοντος, 350). But they will be more favourable to his plan, he continues, if he explains the reasons for his decision. Then he adds that he has freed the city, he has given them equal votes and made the demos a monarch. Did Euripides expect his audience to take Theseus’ statement at face value? Obviously not, because Theseus does not consider for a second putting the matter to vote.8 In his initial speech he expresses the certainty that the people will grant his wish. In the next scene he announces that the city gladly consented to his plan when they sensed his wish (Eur. Supp. 393–394): καὶ μὴν ἑκοῦσά γ᾿ ἀσμένη τ᾿ ἐδέξατο πόλις πόνον τόνδ᾿, ὡς θέλοντά μ᾿ ᾔσθετο. The city gladly and willingly took up this task when they heard that I wished them to do so.

Many scholars have thought that Euripides echoes the influence that Pericles exercised on the Athenian people according to Thucydides (2, 65) – I shall come back to this view later in my discussion.9 To linger with the portrayal of the mythical Athenian leader a little longer, Theseus’ emphasis on the city’s willing acceptance of his wish shows that despite his lip service to democracy, his modus operandi is autocratic: there is nothing in the text that indicates discussion and debate in the assembly. Theoretically, of course, the people could vote down his plan, but Theseus asserts proudly that the moment they sensed his wish, they conformed to it. The messenger’s praise of Theseus’ generalship after his victory is also remarkable (Eur. Supp. 726–730): τοιόνδε τοι στρατηγὸν αἱρεῖσθαι χρεών, ὃς ἔν τε τοῖς δεινοῖσίν ἐστιν ἄλκιμος μισεῖ θ᾿ ὑβριστὴν λαόν, ὃς πράσσων καλῶς ἐς ἄκρα βῆναι κλιμάκων ἐνήλατα ζητῶν ἀπώλεσ᾿ ὄλβον ᾧ χρῆσθαι παρῆν.

730

This is the kind of general one should choose, a man who is brave in the hour of danger and who hates an insolent people, a people who in their prosperity tried to climb to the highest rung of the ladder, and lost the blessedness they might have enjoyed.

The verb αἱρεῖσθαι denotes election and, in this sense, is compatible with Theseus’ earlier exposition of the democratic institutions that he established in Athens. But Euripides’ audience knew that Theseus was a hereditary ruler and therefore an ex officio general. Therefore, the implication cannot be that Theseus was a candidate reelected every year. But even if this is the implication, it would be a pro forma election, as was the acceptance of his plan to claim the Argive dead. In all likelihood, however, this is yet another Euripidean irony, for election presupposes choice and in this play 7 For the imperial significance of Athens as a haven for suppliants, see Tzanetou 2012, 73–104 with references to earlier literature. 8 Differently Walker 1995, 154 (and passim) who thinks that Theseus pays “a compliment to the generosity of the ordinary Athenian”. Walker 1995 further argues that the “phrase ‘they will decide in your favor since I wish it’ (δόξει δ’ ἐμοῦ θέλοντος, 350) is not at all undemocratic. In fact, it is modeled on the words that begin law as made by the people in fifth-century Athens: ‘the people decided during the archonship of X’ (ἔδοξε τῷ δήμῳ ἐπὶ τοῦ δεῖνα ἄρχοντος)”. Morwood 2007, 170 ad 349–350 follows Walker 1995. It must be noted, however, that there is a huge difference between the citizens (demos) making decisions after deliberation and the king making a decision. In other words the verb is the same, but if we substitute, e.g., τῷ βασιλεῖ for τῷ δήμῳ the meaning becomes radically different and the echo becomes a parody, which may have been intentional. It is also worth noting that in The Children of Heracles (111–113) jurisdiction over suppliants lies with the king, not the assembly! On this point, see Tzanetou 2012, 80–81. 9 For the identification of Pericles with Theseus, see Mills 1997, 103–104 with bibliographical references. Mills 1997 reminds us that Thucydides’ assessment postdates the Suppliant Women; cf. Collard 1975, 198–199 who accepts the identification, but broadens the picture by suggesting that Euripides portrays Theseus as a typical προστάτης τῆς πόλεως. See also Carter 2007, 117–130, with emphasis on the constitutional debate in the Suppliant Women; Carter observes that Theseus has given up the power of monarchy but retained its influence (2007, 119). Hdt. 3, 80–82 (the ‘constitutional debate’) is an important intertext.

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Theseus has no rivals. The inherent implausibility of Theseus’s (yearly?) election as general suggests that the verb αἱρεῖσθαι is yet another sign of the discrepancy between words and deeds. Theseus’ tyrannical streak is evident in the Messenger’s description of Theseus’ modus operandi in the battlefield (Eur. Supp. 713–718): θάρσος δ᾿ ἐνῶρσε παντὶ Κραναϊδῶν στρατῷ. αὐτός θ᾿ ὅπλισμα τοὐπιδαύριον λαβὼν δεινῆς κορύνης διαφέρων ἐσφενδόνα ὁμοῦ τραχήλους κἀπικειμένας κάρᾳ κυνέας θερίζων κἀποκαυλίζων ξύλῳ. μόλις δέ πως ἔτρεψαν ἐς φυγὴν πόδα.

715

And he roused courage throughout the army of the descendants of Kranaos. And he took his weapon from Epidaurus, the terrible club, and whirled it in all directions like a sling, snapping necks with the wood of it like stalks and at the same time cropping the helmets set upon their heads like ears of summer wheat. With difficulty, but somehow or other, they turned and fled. (Transl. Athanassaki).

Daniel Mendelsohn has shown that this description echoes the tyrant’s modus operandi, as formulated by Theseus himself in his condemnation of tyranny in lines 446–449:10 Yet it is this very description that makes it difficult to read the passage as a straightforward celebration of Theseus’ heroic talents, now in the service of a new, ‘Panhellenic’ vision (671). For not only does Theseus’ use of his famous club suggest a regression here to the heroic mode that pre-dates his mother’s intervention, but, even more pointedly, the striking metaphors used to describe his slaying of the enemy cannot help but recall Theseus’ own description of the tyrant as one who ‘culls as one does from a summer meadow the city’s bold youth’ (448f.). To be sure, Theseus’ martial violence serves a just cause; but the visual details presented in the battle narrative suggest uncomfortable similarities between Theseus, here portrayed as a grim reaper of young men, and Kreon, his enemy and hence his ostensible ‘opposite’.11

To sum up: in Suppliant Women Euripides portrays Theseus as a leader who condemns tyranny and praises democracy. He has given political power to the people, which they do not exercise, but accept gladly the monarch’s wish the moment they sense it. This leads to the conclusion that Theseus gave them power in order to win their favour and good will, as he himself implies after all in lines 349–351 and 393–394 that we have already discussed.12 To put it differently, in Suppliant Women, Theseus preserves his monarchical privilege under the mantle of democracy. Yet in comparison to the other two monarchs, Adrastus and Creon, who are responsible for the death of their citizens – the former because he lacks good judgment, the latter because he is indifferent to religious laws –, there is no doubt that Theseus is a far better leader, despite his autocratic propensity. We may now turn to Hippolytus, produced a few years earlier (428 BC) and offering a negative portrait of Theseus, which constitutes an intriguing exception to the uniformly positive depictions of the Athenian king. Due to space limitations I shall discuss briefly the most striking feature of Theseus’ characterization in this play, namely his total lack of good judgment, epitomised by Artemis’ ex machina as follows (Eur. Hipp. 1286–1295): Θησεῦ, τί τάλας τοῖσδε συνήδῃ, παῖδ᾿ οὐχ ὁσίως σὸν ἀποκτείνας ψευδέσι μύθοις ἀλόχου πεισθεὶς ἀφανῆ; φανερὰν δ᾿ ἔσχεθες ἄτην. πῶς οὐχ ὑπὸ γῆς τάρταρα κρύπτεις δέμας αἰσχυνθείς, ἢ πτηνὸν ἄνω μεταβὰς βίοτον πήματος ἔξω πόδα τοῦδ᾿ ἀνέχεις;

1290

10 Hdt. 5. 92 (ζ-η) is an important intertext: Thrasybulus, the tyrant of Miletus responding to Periander’s question how to maintain his power took Periander’s messenger through a corn-field, proceeded to cut off the tallest ears, and dismissed the messenger without a verbal message. Upon hearing it Periander put to death the most outstanding citizens. 11 Mendelsohn 2002, 183–184. 12 Cf. Mills 1997, 97–104, discusses the contradictions inherent in the simultaneous representation of Theseus as an autocrat and a democrat and suggests that a fifth-century audience would not think that Theseus tried to manipulate the people deliberately. Euripides’ audience was of course heterogeneous, but Thucydides’ distinction λόγῳ μὲν δημοκρατία – ἔργῳ δὲ (2, 65, 10) shows that the discrepancy between words and deeds in the political arena was very much on people’s minds.

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 Lucia Athanassaki

ὡς ἔν γ᾿ ἀγαθοῖς ἀνδράσιν οὔ σοι κτητὸν βιότου μέρος ἐστίν.

1295

Why, unhappy man, do you take joy in these things? You have killed your son in godless fashion, persuaded of things unseen by the false words of your wife. But all too clearly seen is the ruin you have won for yourself! You should hide yourself beneath the earth’s depths in shame or change your life for that of a bird above and take yourself out of this pain! In life lived among good men you have no share.

When Theseus realises the magnitude of his mistake, he attributes it to divine intervention (“[. . .] the gods had robbed me of my wits”, 1414). Divine intervention is certainly dominant in this play. Aphrodite punishes Hippolytus through the erotic passion she inspires in Phaedra, and she in turn misleads Theseus, who curses his son and causes his death. Yet his claim that he was robbed of his wits by the gods is not corroborated by Artemis.13 This is the only openly negative treatment of Theseus that survives from the classical period. Unless our surviving evidence is misleading, it is an intriguing exception to Theseus’ good press in Athens both when he is depicted as a monarch or as a democrat. In Hippolytus Theseus is exiled in Troezen for the murder of his cousins, the Pallantids, where he will be responsible for another death, the death of his son. From beginning to end, Theseus is portrayed as a tyrant who condemns his son without listening to him or the Chorus, who try to dissuade him from his mistaken judgement.14 It is also remarkable that he feels pain only when Artemis reveals to him the magnitude of his mistake; affection for his son that might make him hesitate is initially absent. Sophie Mills has suggested that Euripides chooses the Troezenian setting in order to make Theseus’ portrait palatable; his audience could comfort themselves with the thought that such behaviour was unthinkable in Athens.15 If that was Euripides’ motive, it could have the opposite effect. If Theseus could have so much power and work so much damage in exile, he would be even more dangerous at home. Theseus had become the emblematic Athenian statesman. Whatever Euripides’ motives for the chronological displacement of the murder of the Pallantids may have been, there can be little doubt that he encouraged his audience to contemplate the disastrous consequences of a combination of absolute power with lack of good judgment and emotional intelligence. In Heracles, produced about ten years after Hippolytus and five years after Suppliant Women (ca 417 BC), Theseus regains his good judgment and appealing profile.16 He appears in Thebes at the head of an army in response to the rumour that reached Athens, namely that Lycus had seized power and waged war against Amphitryon (1163–1171).17 Upon arrival he witnesses the magnitude of disaster that has befallen Heracles, offers consolation and finally succeeds in persuading Heracles to follow him to Athens where Theseus and the Athenians will bestow great honours on Heracles during his lifetime and after his death (Eur. HF 1322–1337): Θήβας μὲν οὖν ἔκλειπε τοῦ νόμου χάριν, ἕπου δ᾿ ἅμ᾿ ἡμῖν πρὸς πόλισμα Παλλάδος. ἐκεῖ χέρας σὰς ἁγνίσας μιάσματος δόμους τε δώσω χρημάτων τ᾿ ἐμῶν μέρος.

1325

13 As we have seen, the goddess initially uses stern language in her condemnation of Theseus’ behaviour. Later, when Theseus shows his devastation, Artemis recognizes his ignorance and Phaedra’s deception as mitigating factors (1334–1337), but does not say that Aphrodite or any other god robbed Theseus of his wits. See also Mills 1997, 220–221. 14 Theseus’ reluctance to give Hippolytus a hearing before he curses him is all the more significant in light of his granting a hearing in the earlier Hippolytus; see Barrett 1964, 15. For the reaction of Euripides’ audience to Theseus’ hasty judgment, see Hesk 2000, 288: “to a citizen audience who were actual or potential dicasts and litigants, Theseus (the king of Athens) is to some extent a reflection of themselves in the guise they were called upon to adopt in the juridical context of the people’s courts. Before a knowing audience of citizen jurors, Theseus misinterprets the case evidence before him and dismisses the ‘clever oratory’ of Hippolytus the defendant. And in the midst of this forensic process, Theseus bemoans the ever-present potential duplicity of outward appearances and speech acts. The audience find themselves gazing on a man coming to a verdict which they know to be wrong”. 15 Mills 1997, 194. 16 See Rozokoki 2013 who proposes a date between 419 and 416 BC on the basis of metrical criteria and historical events. 17 Dunn 1997, 102–107, argued against all those who thought Theseus has political authority in this play and suggested that his status is that of an ambassador. The fact that Theseus is represented at the head of an army, evidently in order to engage in war, if need be, militates against mere ambassadorial status.

11 Charms of Autocracy, Charms of Democracy: Euripides’ Athenian Leaders in the Light of Civic Iconography  

ἃ δ᾿ ἐκ πολιτῶν δῶρ᾿ ἔχω σώσας κόρους δὶς ἑπτά, ταῦρον Κνώσιον κατακτανών, σοὶ ταῦτα δώσω. πανταχοῦ δέ μοι χθονὸς τεμένη δέδασται· ταῦτ᾿ ἐπωνομασμένα σέθεν τὸ λοιπὸν ἐκ βροτῶν κεκλήσεται ζῶντος· θανόντα δ᾿, εὖτ᾿ ἂν εἰς Ἅιδου μόλῃς, θυσίαισι λαΐνοισί τ᾿ ἐξογκώμασιν τίμιον ἀνάξει πᾶσ᾿ Ἀθηναίων πόλις. καλὸς γὰρ ἀστοῖς στέφανος Ἑλλήνων ὕπο ἄνδρ᾿ ἐσθλὸν ὠφελοῦντας εὐκλείας τυχεῖν. κἀγὼ χάριν σοι τῆς ἐμῆς σωτηρίας τήνδ᾿ ἀντιδώσω· νῦν γὰρ εἶ χρεῖος φίλων.

 189

1330

1335

For the law’s sake, then, leave Thebes and come with me to the citadel of Pallas Athena. There I shall cleanse your hands from this taint and give you a home and a portion of my wealth. I shall give you the gifts I received from my fellow citizens for killing the bull of Knossos and saving the lives of the fourteen children. All about the country allotments of land have been given to me. Mortals will henceforth call these yours for as long as you live. And when you die and go to the Underworld, the whole city of Athens will honour you with sacrifices and with massive temples of stone. For it will be a glorious achievement for the citizens in the eyes of Greece to win fair renown by doing good service to a noble hero. And this will also be my repayment to you for saving my life: for at present you stand in need of friends.

Heracles’ death and burial in Athens is at variance with the tradition of Heracles’ apotheosis and is probably Euripides’ innovation.18 Theseus’ generosity has been seen by most scholars as yet another Athenian attempt to put Theseus on a par with Heracles, but others have detected negative undertones.19 From our point of view it is worth noting that in this play Euripides portrays Theseus as an autocrat. Unlike the situation in Suppliant Women Theseus does not pay lip service to democracy. As soon as rumours about Lycus’ attempt to seize power reach Athens, he speeds to Thebes at the head of an army. There is no talk of assemblies and debates authorising the expedition.20 Theseus’ autocratic attitude is also evident in his promises to Heracles. Not only will he give him the lands that were his reward for killing the Minotaur, he will also secure cultic and monumental honours for the friend who saved his life. Euripides could count on his audience’s knowledge that after the end of the Persian Wars religious power and authority had passed from the archons to the Boule and the demos.21 Those in Euripides’ audience who still remembered Theseus’ enthusiastic advertisement of democracy in Suppliant Women some years earlier would have certainly taken notice of Theseus’ autocratic manner in Heracles. In comparison with Theseus’ portrayal in Hippolytus, however, there is no doubt that Heracles offers a far more flattering portrait of the emblematic Athenian king.22 Euripides may not depict Theseus as a democrat in Heracles, but he is clearly a good leader: he is quick on his feet without jumping to rash conclusions and actions. He gathers an army swiftly, but on arrival he first investigates the situation. When he finds out what has happened, he shows loyalty to an old friend. As in Suppliant Women he takes for granted that the Athenians will act as he predicts.23 Lycus, the blood-thirsty usurper who is prepared to kill Heracles’ family in order to stay in power, is a foil for Theseus’ benevolent monarchic rule. I shall come back to Theseus’ portrayal, after I take a brief look at Euripides’ depiction of Theseus’ sons, Acamas and Demophon, whose portraits in different plays show that, as in the case of their father, there is no consistency in their characterization. As with Theseus in Suppliant Women, in The Children of Heracles Theseus’ son Demophon faces similar problems: offering asylum to the children of Heracles means war with Argos. Like Theseus, Demophon observes religious etiquette and consults the oracles about future action. All oracles converge in the necessity of sacrificing a noble girl to Perse18 Woodford 1971 suggests that Euripides was perhaps the first who offered an explanation of the many cults of Heracles in Attica despite the fact that Theseus had meanwhile become the Athenian hero par excellence. For Euripides’ innovations in Heracles, see also Mills 1997, 133–136. 19 For negative undertones in Theseus’ portrayal, see Griffiths 2006, 100–102 with references. Cf. Papadopoulou 2005, 157–165, who suggests that Euripides presents “Theseus as a more advanced or enlightened hero” (2005, 163). 20 According to Bond 1981, 131–132 ad 266, 362 ad 1163, 396–397 ad 1334f, Theseus’ immediate action is reminiscent of the Athenian boast for their speedy interventions to help allies in need as recorded by Thucydides. 21 See Parker 1996, 124–126. For the need of the support of the religious personnel for the introduction of a new cult, see Garland 1992, 19–20. 22 See, however, Griffiths 2006, 100–102, who argues that Euripides encourages his audience to think of Theseus’ negative traits in Heracles. 23 Euripides’ audience knew that Theseus was right, because Heracles enjoyed great honours in Attica. For Heracles’ cults in Attica at Euripides’ time, see Woodford 1971.

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phone. Like Theseus in Suppliant Women, Demophon safeguards Athenian interests and tells Iolaus that he is reluctant to sacrifice an Athenian girl. But his response to Iolaus is of interest to us, because he points out that he is not an eastern-style monarch (Eur. Heracl. 410–424): ἐγὼ δ᾿ ἔχω μέν, ὡς ὁρᾷς, προθυμίαν τοσήνδ᾿ ἐς ὑμᾶς· παῖδα δ᾿ οὔτ᾿ ἐμὴν κτενῶ οὔτ᾿ ἄλλον ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν ἀναγκάσω ἄκονθ᾿· ἑκὼν δὲ τίς κακῶς οὕτω φρονεῖ, ὅστις τὰ φίλτατ᾿ ἐκ χερῶν δώσει τέκνα; καὶ νῦν πυκνὰς ἂν συστάσεις ἂν εἰσίδοις, τῶν μὲν λεγόντων ὡς δίκαιος ἦ ξένοις ἱκέταις ἀρήγειν, τῶν δὲ μωρίαν ἐμοῦ κατηγορούντων· εἰ δὲ δὴ δράσω τόδε, οἰκεῖος ἤδη πόλεμος ἐξαρτύεται. ταῦτ᾿ οὖν ὅρα σὺ καὶ συνεξεύρισχ᾿ ὅπως αὐτοί τε σωθήσεσθε καὶ πέδον τόδε, κἀγὼ πολίταις μὴ διαβληθήσομαι. οὐ γὰρ τυραννίδ᾿ ὥστε βαρβάρων ἔχω· ἀλλ᾿, ἢν δίκαια δρῶ, δίκαια πείσομαι.

410

415

420

As you see, I am very eager to help you, but I shall not kill my own daughter nor shall I force one of my citizens to do so against his will: and who would be so foolish as to give away of his own will the children he loves beyond all else? Now you will see crowded assemblies being held, with some maintaining that I was right to protect strangers who are suppliants, while others accuse me of folly. In fact if I do as I am bidden, civil war will break out. Therefore, consider these facts and join with me in discovering how you yourselves may be saved and this land as well, and how I may not be discredited in the eyes of the citizens. I do not have a monarchy like that of the barbarians: only if I do what is right will I be treated rightly.24

Unlike Theseus in Suppliant Women, Demophon does not cast himself as a democratic leader. He is a monarch who believes in fair treatment of his subjects. The distinction he makes is not between democracy and tyranny, but between Hellenic and barbarian-style autocracy.25 Moreover, like his father, before making a decision he takes into account people’s reactions. In The Children of Heracles Euripides paints a favourable portrait of Demophon. In addition to the refuge he offers to suppliants, he is full of sympathy and admiration for Macaria who volunteers to sacrifice herself (567–573). In Hecuba Euripides depicts Acamas and Demophon as blood-thirsty generals/sophists, each giving a different speech but reaching the same conclusion, that the Achaeans should sacrifice Polyxena (Eur. Hec. 107–135):26 ἐν γὰρ Ἀχαιῶν πλήρει ξυνόδῳ λέγεται δόξαι σὴν παῖδ᾿ Ἀχιλεῖ σφάγιον θέσθαι. τύμβου δ᾿ ἐπιβὰς οἶσθ᾿ ὅτε χρυσέοις ἐφάνη σὺν ὅπλοις, τὰς ποντοπόρους δ᾿ ἔσχε σχεδίας λαίφη προτόνοις ἐπερειδομένας, τάδε θωύσσων· Ποῖ δή, Δαναοί,τὸν ἐμὸν τύμβον στέλλεσθ᾿ ἀγέραστον ἀφέντες; πολλῆς δ᾿ ἔριδος συνέπαισε κλύδων, δόξα δ᾿ ἐχώρει δίχ᾿ ἀν᾿ Ἑλλήνων στρατὸν αἰχμητήν, τοῖς μὲν διδόναι τύμβῳ σφάγιον, τοῖς δ᾿ οὐχὶ δοκοῦν. ἦν δὲ τὸ μὲν σὸν σπεύδων ἀγαθὸν τῆς μαντιπόλου Βάκχης ἀνέχων λέκτρ᾿ Ἀγαμέμνων· τὼ Θησείδα δ’, ὄζω Ἀθηνῶν, δισσῶν μύθων ῥήτορες ἦσαν, γνώμῃ δὲ μιᾷ συνεχωρείτην,

110

115

120

125

24 Transl. Kovacs (424 adapted). 25 See Allan 2001, 31–32 and 167 ad 423–424. 26 For the fifth-century conception of the debate, see Collard 1991, 137–138 ad 116f, 122 with references; Gregory 1999, 58 ad 107.

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τὸν Ἀχίλλειον τύμβον στεφανοῦν αἵματι χλωρῷ, τὰ δὲ Κασσάνδρας λέκτρ᾿ οὐκ ἐφάτην τῆς Ἀχιλείας πρόσθεν θήσειν ποτὲ λόγχης. σπουδαὶ δὲ λόγων κατατεινομένων ἦσαν ἴσαι πως, πρὶν ὁ ποικιλόφρων κόπις ἡδυλόγος δημοχαριστὴς Λαερτιάδης πείθει στρατιὰν μὴ τὸν ἄριστον Δαναῶν πάντων δούλων σφαγίων οὕνεκ᾿ ἀπωθεῖν,

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It is reported that in the full assembly of the Achaeans they have decided to sacrifice your daughter to Achilles. He appeared in his golden armour, you remember, standing upon his tomb, and checked the seagoing ships, their sails bellied out to their forestays, shouting, “Where are you going, Danaans, leaving my tomb without its prize of honour?” Great waves of strife clashed together, and opinion was divided in the host of Greek spearmen, some thinking it best to give the tomb a victim, others dissenting. Furthering your interests was Agamemnon in loyalty to his mistress Cassandra, the inspired maenad. But the sons of Theseus, two scions of Athens, although they made separate speeches, yet were of a single mind, that the Greeks should crown Achilles’ tomb with fresh blood, and that they would never set the love of Cassandra above Achilles’ spear. The warmth of debate on either side was about equal until that wily knave, that honey-tongued demagogue Odysseus, urged the army not to reject the most valiant of all the Danaans merely to avoid shedding a slave’s blood.

The report, cited by the Chorus, makes clear that the Achaean assembly was divided and that Acamas and Demophon were among those who felt neither pity nor sympathy for the young victim. The balance is tipped by the speech of Odysseus, the glib demagogue. Hecuba is dated to the second half of the Archidamean war, when the Athenians had escalated their harsh measures against the defeated populations.27 Euripides’ decision to remind his audience of the Theseids’ lack of sympathy and pity for a young and helpless war-victim may well reflect the inhumane rhetoric and decisions that were winning the day in the contemporary political scene. The lack of pity the Theseids show in Hecuba differentiates this play from the Athenian suppliant plays, Suppliant Women (ca 423 BC) and The Children of Heracles (ca 430 BC), in which the Athenian leaders refuse to sacrifice Athenian lives out of concern for their own citizens, but show sympathy and admiration for the young victims whose sacrifice has been ordained and voluntarily accepted. In suppliant plays that take place in Athens, the involvement of Athenian leaders is of course inevitable. The involvement of Acamas and Demophon in Polyxena’s sacrifice was long known in Athens. It was the theme of a cup by the Brygos painter who was active in Athens in the early fifth century.28 The characterization of the Theseids, however, was up to Euripides, whose departures from the tradition are well-documented. For instance, he could have chosen to depict them as caring human beings who empathised with Hecuba and Polyxena, as he does in The Children of Heracles.29 But he did not. The contrasting portraits of the Theseids in The Children of Heracles and Hecuba are therefore significant. The emotional reactions of Erechtheus and Praxithea to a similar dilemma in Erechtheus (c. 422 BC) offer a measure of comparison. Theseus’ predecessor in the throne enquired of Apollo how to save Athens from the attack of Eumolpus and was told to sacrifice one of his daughters. The play is fragmentary, but his wife’s response, cited with admiration by the fourth-century Athenian orator and politician Lycurgus, indicates that Erechtheus must have hesitated (Eur. TrGF F 360, 1–4): τὰς χάριτας ὅστις εὐγενῶς χαρίζεται, ἥδιον ἐν βροτοῖσιν· οἳ δὲ δρῶσι μέν, χρόνῳ δὲ δρῶσι, δυσγενέστερον . ἐγὼ δὲ δώσω παῖδα τὴν ἐμὴν κτανεῖν. people find it more pleasing when someone gives favours generously – but to act yet take one’s time is considered ill-bred. I for my part shall offer my daughter to be killed.30

27 See Gregory 1999, xiv–xv. 28 See Collard 1991, 137 ad 122. 29 Since Theseus’ sons do not play a significant role in Hecuba, Euripides could very well omit or modify their involvement in the decisionprocess. 30 The Greek quotation and the English translation are taken from Collard’s and Cropp’s Loeb edition.

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Praxithea proceeds to enumerate her reasons in a speech of chilling logic and no emotion (TrGF F 360). But why did Erechtheus hesitate? Did he wish to take another oracular consultation? Did he wish to put the matter to an assembly? The fragmentary state of the play does not allow certainty. Praxithea, on the other hand, who does not hesitate, does not know as yet that her other two daughters will commit suicide in order to follow their sister to Hades. Praxithea’s readiness to sacrifice her daughter is reminiscent of the Theseids’ advocacy of the sacrifice of Polyxena, but whereas Praxithea experiences personal loss in order to save her country, the sons of Theseus were part of the victorious army and had easier choices. At the very least they could have shown pity. Evidently Euripides chose to highlight their insensitivity. If the Theseids’ insensitivity in Hecuba is odious, their demagoguery combined with lack of empathy for young and innocent war-victims is dangerous for the polis. Theseus’ portrait in Hippolytus offers a good illustration of the close connection between lack of empathy and violence and the disastrous effect of the mix on the personal and sociopolitical level. Hippolytus’ plea and the Chorus’ objections offer Theseus time and opportunity to change his mind and heart. He does neither, but when he realises what he has done, he grieves not only for the son he is about to lose, but also for the fine man Athens will lose too (1460).31 Hecuba offers a different, but equally frightening picture. The Achaean leaders who lack empathy prevail marginally in the debate of a voting Panhellenic assembly. As in the case of Hippolytus, the fact that the thoughtless, heartless and violent acts did not take place in Athens could offer Euripides’ audience little solace and peace of mind. In political terms, the range of constitutional and ethical profiles that Theseus and the Theseids adopt in different plays shows that Euripides uses the opposition between autocracy and democracy as a springboard from which he can carry his audience into complex issues. My last comparandum comes from Ion (ca 412 BC), which offers a playful portrayal of an innocent youth, initially unsuspecting of his destiny to become the rightful heir to the throne of Erechtheus. Ion’s kingship is earlier than Theseus’ rule. It is remarkable therefore that in a heavily anachronistic speech Ion imagines Athens as the democracy for which Euripides’ Theseus takes credit. Recent editors have generously deleted big chunks of Ion’s speech and in particular those passages that show his fear of democracy and of tyranny (Eur. Ion 595–606, 621–632).32 In terms of content, the disputed passages echo Theseus’ and Demophon’s judgements and concerns, which have already been discussed. But since space considerations do not allow discussion of the weight of the various arguments advanced in favour of athetisation, I restrict myself to a brief account of Euripides’ characterization of Ion as future leader of Athens. Euripides shows that Ion, despite his young age and lack of experience, knows how to make friends among the people.33 When the time comes for his departure to Athens, Ion organises a big banquet to which he invites all those who wish to come through a public announcement made by a herald (1166–1168). The banquet takes place in a huge pavilion that Ion constructs and decorates lavishly with precious utensils and materials he finds in Apollo’s sanctuary. It is in the course of this banquet that Creusa’s plot will be discovered and that Ion will find people ready to witness the attempt against his life (1215–1228). It is not clear if the Delphians who condemn Creusa had taken part in the banquet, but it is significant that Ion presents himself to the authorities in the company of the banqueters who can act as witnesses. I have argued elsewhere that Ion’s treatment of people, his sumptuous pavilion, and his public banquet recreate and evoke onstage the long tradition of cosmopolitanism and magnificence that began with Cleisthenes’ restoration of the temple of Apollo in Delphi and flourished in the following century thanks to the impressive architectural and cultural initiatives of Cimon and Pericles – and mutatis mutandis of Nicias and Alcibiades.34 One of these projects is of particular relevance to the present argument. Ion’s impressive pavilion evokes the Periclean Odeon, built probably between 447 and 443 BC, when the treasury of the Delian league had already moved to Athens and the Athenians were its ταμίαι.35 The Odeon, adjacent to the Theatre of Dionysus, was the visible analogue of the Delphic tent that Euripides’ audience was asked to imagine and of its alleged model, the tent of Xerxes. Ion’s tent has often been compared with another Persian-style pavilion, the notorious tent that Alcibiades set up at Olympia after his magnificent triple victory 31 Line 1459 is problematic; see Barrett 1964, ad loc. 32 Kovacs 1999, 396–399, 595–606, 621–632, followed by Martin 2018, 291–294. For a defense of these lines, see Lee 1997, 225–226. 33 For Ion’s maturity, see also Lee 1997, 225. 34 Athanassaki 2012. 35 For the transference of the treasury from Delos to Athens, see inter alios Samons 2000, 92–106. For the date of the construction of the Odeon, which Vitruvius (9, 1, 17) attributes to Themistocles, see Miller 1997, 221–224.

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in 416 BC. If Ion was produced after 416, as is highly probable, Ion’s pavilion would evoke two contrasting styles of leadership, megaloprepeia, Pericles-style, in the service of the citizen body and allied states on the one hand, and megaloprepeia, Alcibiades-style, in the service of an individual’s needs and ambitions on the other. Ion’s pavilion and the Odeon had a public function. Like Ion’s pavilion that was set up to host all Delphians, the Odeon hosted public events, such as the Panathenaic  mousikoi agones and the Dionysiac  proagones that were presumably open to the Athenians and their allies.36 In contrast Alcibiades’ tent was set up to host his magnificent epinician banquet. Our extremely hostile source to Alcibiades, [Andocides], accuses the Athenian statesman of abuse of his authority over the allies and bribery in order to stage a magnificent show and organise a feast at the allies’ expense, which antagonised the city since his Persian tent is twice as big as the Athenian civic tent. The speaker does not offer details about the banquet, but the diction (προσέταξε, sc. Alcibiades) suggests that the contributions of the allies were not voluntary. At any rate, Alcibiades’ use of the tent for his own comfort and display is similar to the private use Xerxes and Mardonius had for the tent they abandoned after their defeat at Plataea and any comparison would bring out the autocratic tendencies that Alcibiades shared with the Persian monarch. If on the other hand Xerxes’ tent was the model for the Periclean Odeon, as Plutarch reports, the public function of the Athenian building would be a constant reminder of Pericles’ dedication to the needs of the demos. To go back to the Euripidean stage, Ion’s ethos and architectural initiatives would be reminiscent of Periclean rather than Alcibiadean ethos. Yet it seems that Athenian statesmen, despite their different motives, profiles, and lifestyles, run the constant risk of rousing the suspicions of the Athenian demos and of being candidates for ostracism, a Cleisthenic measure to eradicate the danger of tyranny and protect democracy. Plutarch preserves a very precious fragment, which shows that Cratinus made fun of Pericles’ pride on account of his Odeon and associated it with the ostracism that Pericles had avoided (Cratin. PCG F 73): ὁ σχινοκέφαλος Ζεὺς ὅδε προσέρχεται Περικλέης, τᾠδεῖον ἐπὶ τοῦ κρανίου ἔχων, ἐπειδὴ τοὔστρακον παροίχεται. Here comes Pericles, the onion-headed Zeus, with the Odeon on his head, now that the ostracon has gone away. (Transl. Storey)

Cratinus’ testimony shows that a statesman could easily be accused of autocratic tendencies even when his grand initiatives had an indisputable public orientation and function. Statesmen had therefore to be cautious not only with regard to their acts, but their rhetoric as well. Therefore young Ion’s disapproval of tyranny and fears about the dangers awaiting him in Athens may be anachronistic in terms of the dramatic time and setting, but they were matters of the moment like many others that Euripides addresses in his tragedies. Did fifth-century leaders disapprove of tyranny as Theseus, Demophon, and probably Ion did on the Athenian stage? There is no doubt that they all had to denounce tyranny and play by the rules of democracy. Did they try to manipulate the demos as Theseus did? Although Thucydides names only Pericles, there can be little doubt that at times they all found the temptation too strong to resist. It is not accidental that Cimon was ostracised, Pericles took every step to avoid ostracism remembering the ostracism of his father, Nicias and Alcibiades were candidates but avoided it thanks to deft tactics.37 In this sense it would be reductive to equate Euripides’ Theseus in Suppliant Women only with Thucydides’ Pericles – for a number of reasons, but mainly because Euripides’ Athenian kings capture characteristics and behavioural patterns of fifth-century leaders but they do not photograph any of them. The evidence I have discussed shows that on the Euripidean stage Athenian leaders denounce tyranny, but despite their occasional lip-service to democracy, with the exception of Theseus in Hippolytus they are depicted as benevolent autocrats or, in the case of Theseus in Suppliant Women, as pro forma democrats. Why does Euripides highlight the autocratic traits of Theseus and his sons? Plato would attribute their portrayal to Euripides’ tendency to eulogise

36 Pickard-Cambridge 1968, 66–60; Shapiro 1992, 57–58. Miller 1997, 234, argues that the Odeon was not built primarily as a concert hall but, given its name, must have hosted musical the proagones and the mousikoi agones soon after its construction. For the close association of the Theatre of Dionysus and the Odeon in the context of Dionysiac performances and rehearsals, see Kotsidu 1991, 146–147, who argues against the view that the Odeon hosted the musical contests of the Panathenaea (141–176). 37 For ostracism in the fifth century, see Forsdyke 2005. For Alcibiades’ deft tactics, see Rhodes 2011.

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tyrants. But this is neither the only nor the most convincing conclusion one can reach, if we take into account the bad press of tyrants on the Euripidean stage. The ongoing debate on tragedy’s relation to democracy has brought out the complexity of the issue and, very productively in my view, has shed light on the importance of contextual parameters, namely civic ceremonies, the dynamics between on and offstage cults and rituals, structure and finances, and the composition of the audience: Simon Goldhill has emphasised the role of the ceremonies that frame the festival; Richard Seaford has focused on the importance of religious rituals; Peter Wilson has shed light on the importance of the financial aspects and in particular the special form that choregia took in Athens and the theorikon, the glue of democracy according to the orator Demades; David Carter has emphasised the importance of the international composition of the audience in the City Dionysia.38 To this rich nexus of contextual parameters in shaping audience experience and reception I wish to add one more, civic iconography, and in particular the sculptural decoration of the Hephaesteion, the inception of which is now dated to the 480s.39 Its construction lasted several decades: the first phase was probably completed under Cimon, but the temple itself was only completed sometime in the 410s.40 The Hephaesteion, the temple of Hephaestus and Athena Hephaesteia, is known to this day by the misnomer Theseion on account of the predominance of Theseus’ feats on its metopes and west frieze. Scholars have noted the thematic similarities between the visual narratives of the Hephaesteion and Euripides’ representation of Theseus in Suppliant Women and Heracles.41 Taking these similarities as my starting point, I shall focus on the differences between the visual and the dramatic representations in order to explore their dialectic. From the sixth century onward Theseus’ deeds became an increasingly popular iconographical subject. To quote Robert Connor, “the common utensils of the dining room and kitchen bore images of his great deeds”.42 In the early fifth century, either before or after the battle of Marathon, the Athenians decorated their treasury in Delphi with the deeds of Heracles and of Theseus, thus elevating the Athenian hero to the status of Heracles in the Panhellenic sanctuary of Apollo.43 Eight of the nine metopes of the south side of the treasury feature Theseus’ deeds, whereas one, probably the central one, depicts Theseus’ arrival in Athens from Troezen and his reception by Athena (Fig. 11.1).44 I have argued elsewhere that the sequence of metopes offered Bacchylides the inspiration for one of his dithyrambs for the Athenians (Ode 18), but unlike the sculptural representations he chose to foreground the limited human perspective on Theseus’ reception in Athens, probably under the influence of tragedy. The dithyrambic chorus of Athenian youths sang and danced their fear at the imminent arrival of a prodigiously strong man. Through the shift of perspective from Athena’s omniscience to human ignorance, Bacchylides brought out the uncertainties and the anxieties involved in the reception and accommodation of an outstanding individual in the democratic polis, concerns that preoccupied the Athenians after the Cleisthenic reforms and led to the ostracism of a number of prominent politicians.45

38 Goldhill 1987; Goldhill 2000a; Seaford 1994, 191–405; Carter 2007; Wilson 2009. Tragedy’s relation to democracy has been challenged by Peter Rhodes who concludes with the concession “My title ‘Nothing to do with democracy’, is an exaggeration; but I see Athenian drama as reflecting the polis in general rather than the democratic polis in particular” (Rhodes 2003, 119). For tragedy as the embodiment of active opposition to civic discourse through lament see Loraux 1999. For an overview of recent political and sociohistorical approaches, see Le Guen 2007a with references; Carter 2007, 22–58; for the complexity of the issue, see Mastronarde 2010, 15–28, Griffith 2011b and the Introduction to this volume. 39 See Stewart 2018, 681 with the references in n. 2. 40 Stewart 2018. 41 For Suppliant Women, see Morwood 2007, 10–14; for Heracles, see Bond 1981, xxx. 42 Connor 1970, 142. For the growing interest in Theseus in Athens in the sixth and fifth centuries, see Shapiro 1989. 43 The archaic style of the metopes of the south side has led a number of scholars to date the monument no later than the first decade of the fifth century, but Pausanias tells us that the Athenians built their Treasury in Delphi after the battle of Marathon from the spoils they took from the Persian army (10, 11, 5). The post-490 date has long been defended by the French excavators and recent finds seem to corroborate it: see Amandry 1998 and Neer 2004. For new arguments in favour of the earlier date, see now Hoff 2009 and 2010. 44 For the influence of the Treasury on the Hephaisteion, see, e.g., Boardman 1985, 146–148, 170; Barringer 2008, 116–122 and Hoff 2010 offer comparative discussions of the metopes of the two monuments. 45 Athanassaki 2016.

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Fig. 11.1: Metope showing Athena greeting Theseus from the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi. Photo courtesy Hans R. Goette.

About half a century later Euripides, who was probably familiar with Bacchylides’ dithyrambs for the Athenians, was exposed to more Theseus.46 In The Children of Heracles he mentions the hill of Athena Pallenis (Παλληνίδος [. . .] σεμνὸν [. . .] πάγον / δίας Ἀθάνας, Eur. Heracl. 849–850), where an impressive temple was under construction at the time of the production of the play.47 Athena and probably Theseus featured on the eastern pediment of that temple, while his successful battle against the Pallantids has been suggested for the metopes of the same side.48 Euripides had also plenty of time and opportunity to look at Theseus’ deeds on the metopes of the Hephaesteion, dated between 460 and 450 BC. Eight of Theseus’ labours adorned the metopes of northeastern and southeastern side and framed Heracles’ nine labours on the eastern side (Fig. 11.2). These metopes were similar in style to the metopes of the Athenian

46 See Athanassaki 2018, 99–104. 47 See also Eur. Heracl. 1030–1031 where Eurystheus reports an Apolline oracle, according to which they will bury him in front of the sanctuary of Athena Pallenis (πάροιθε παρθένος Παλληνίδος). The sanctuary of Athena Pallenis was the place where Pisistratus’ force defeated the Athenians who marched against him: see Hdt. 1, 62. For Euripides’ choice of Pallene as Eurystheus’ burial place, see Allan 2001, 199 ad 849–850, 200 ad 859–860, and 216–217 ad 1030–1036. The temple under construction at the time of the performance of the Euripidean play is dated to the years 433–425 and is also known as the temple of Ares, which was moved from Pallene to the Agora at 10 BC; see now Stewart et al. 2019 and Stewart 2022. 48 See Stewart et al. 2019, 694 and Stewart 2022.

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treasury in Delphi.49 Sometime in the late 430s the Ionic friezes of the temple were completed offering Euripides and his audience the opportunity to see Theseus in action once again. The west frieze depicted Theseus’ and Perithous’ fight with the Centaurs, whereas the subject of the east frieze, identified by some scholars as the fight of Theseus with the Pallantids, has been a matter of scholarly dispute.50 The politically charged representation of Theseus on the west frieze is particularly relevant to our discussion (Fig. 11.3). Archaeologists have drawn attention to the similarities of Theseus’ portrayal with the tyrannicide Harmodius in the famous complex sculpted by Critias and Nesiotes and placed in the Orchestra in the Agora in 477/6 BC (Fig. 11.4).51 Moreover, as Judith Barringer points out, from the west frieze of the temple Theseus/Harmodius overlooked the bronze complex of the tyrannicides located in the part of the Agora where there was a great concentration of buildings related to the institutions of democracy, namely the Tholos, the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios, and the Royal Stoa.52 The visual message was clear: tyranny is gone, long live democracy. In this context Theseus embodied the ideals of democracy.

Fig. 11.2: Hephaesteion, Athens. Photo courtesy of Hans R. Goette.

49 See Boardman 1985, 146–148 and 170. 50 For the various interpretations of the battle on the east frieze, see Stewart 2018, 686 and now McInerney 2021. 51 See Barringer 2008, 131 with the references in n. 39 ibid. The parallelism between Theseus and Harmodius goes back to Sauer 1899, 151. See Morgan 1962, Appendix V. Morgan, who interprets the east frieze as Theseus’ battle with the Pallantids, suggests that in the east frieze Theseus embodies Aristogeiton (1962, 226). 52 Barringer 2008, 131–132.

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Fig. 11.3: West Frieze, Hephaesteion, Athens. Photo courtesy of Hans R. Goette.

Fig. 11.4: Marble statues of the tyrannicides, Naples. National Archaeological Museum, inv. 6009. Photo courtesy of Hans R. Goette.

I suggest that Euripides’ portraits of Theseus and his sons engage in dialogue with the west frieze of the Hephaesteion and question Theseus’ association with the death of tyranny.

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Comparison shows that all Euripidean portraits of Theseus and his sons are at variance with public Athenian monumental discourse of the same period. In The Children of Heracles, produced shortly after the completion of the Hephaesteion friezes, Demophon is a good monarch who advocates fair treatment of his citizens, but he is neither a tyrannicide nor a democrat. As we have seen, Euripides will undermine this positive profile in Hecuba a few years later, in the late 420s, where he depicts Acamas and Demophon as cynical sophists, insensitive to the loss of human life. To go back to the early 420s, shortly after the performance of the Children of Heracles Euripides will have a go at Theseus himself in Hippolytus. We have seen that the Athenian hero, exiled for the murder of his cousins, causes another death in exile, the death of his son. He is indifferent to reasoning, deaf to other people’s views. How different is this Theseus from a typical tyrant? Euripides invites his audience to contemplate the issue. Theseus’ depiction as a severe critic of tyranny and a champion of democracy a few years later in Suppliant Women is yet another critical response to the anachronistic portrait of Theseus as a tyrannicide on the Hephaesteion frieze. We have seen that whereas Hippolytus showcases Theseus’ cruelty, Suppliant Women makes implicit references to Theseus’ cruel and manipulative streak, attitudes that can destabilise democracy. The message of Suppliant Women is that denunciation of tyranny is important but not sufficient; similarly, giving the demos sovereignty is an empty word if people are not encouraged to exercise their rights. When Euripides comes back to Theseus in Heracles in the early 410s, he does not revisit the issue of democracy. Theseus is a monarch and acts as a monarch. The prediction of the posthumous honours that the Athenians will bestow on Heracles includes a reference to monumental sculptures, which in all likelihood allude to the commemoration of Heracles’ labours of the Hephaesteion metopes (Eur. HF 1331–1333). Euripides’ keen interest in and dialogue with the visual arts is evident in a number of plays and above all in Ion where the chorus’ manner of viewing, interpreting, and even reversing the east and west pediments of the Delphic temple offers precious clues that help us assess the extent and the nature of the poet’s own dialogue with monumental iconography.53 Moreover, despite its Delphic setting, Ion also evokes Athenian monumental buildings and sculptures, as a number of studies have demonstrated.54 Ι have argued elsewhere that in Trojan Women Euripides engages in dialogue with Cimonian poetry and art, namely one of Bacchylides’ representations of Theseus the thalassocrat in one of his dithyrambs for the Athenians (Ode 17) and the corresponding wall-painting in the Theseion, the heroon that Cimon erected in order to house the bones of Theseus. Unlike Bacchylides, Micon and Polygnotus, however, the message of Trojan Women is not optimistic: Euripides points up the unpredictability of Poseidon and Athena and warns the Athenians and their allies, but also their enemies, against excessive confidence in their sea-dominion.55 A similar sobering message emerges from Euripides’ dialogue with the Hephaesteion. The portraits of Theseus and his sons in five plays span a period of about 13 years and range from negative to positive, offering a crucial contrast to the monumental representations. To a greater or lesser degree all three dramatic portrayals of Theseus bring to the surface his autocratic propensities. The dramatic portraits of his sons highlight a remarkable detail that has hitherto not gotten the attention it deserves. The power of the demos, pro forma during Theseus’ rule, certainly does not survive in the generation of his sons. Euripides’ many different portraits of Theseus at a time when civic monumental sculpture represents him as the emblematic champion of democracy add important nuances and sobering touches to the starry-eyed optimism of visual representations. These sobering touches do not mean that Euripides flirts with, let alone eulogises, tyranny. The scathing accounts of tyrannical excess in all these plays point in the opposite direction. Euripides calls attention to the fragility of democracy and the need to be alert to the discrepancies between words and deeds. Even though the democratic polis may not always have welcomed dissent, its theatre was still an appropriate forum for airing constitutional concerns and for challenging popular myths.

53 Scholars who have argued that the reversal of pediments served plot considerations include Müller 1975, 29–32; Rosivach 1977; Zeitlin 1994; Lee 1997, 177–185 with a useful summary of the various solutions that have been proposed; Zacharia 2003, 14–20. On iconography in Ion more generally, see Mastronarde 1975; Athanassaki 2010 and 2012; Stieber 2011, 275–336. 54 See, e.g., Goossens 1962, 481 with n. 9; Immerwahr 1972; Athanassaki 2010, 22–23. 55 Athanassaki 2018.

Simon Perris

12 Oligarchs in Greek Tragedy Are there oligarchs in Greek tragedy? And if so, what are they doing in a book about theatre and autocracy? The main burden of this essay is to answer the first of these questions in some depth. As for the second, the status of oligarchs in tragedy bears directly on the relationship(s) between theatre and regime-types, including autocracy. More specifically, mapping out the presence of sole rule in tragedy necessarily entails mapping out ‘non-sole rule’, so to speak, which by definition includes rule of the many and rule of the few. At the very least, therefore, a survey of oligarchs and oligarchy in tragedy ought to militate against false positives and false negatives – and mitigate selection bias – vis-à-vis autocracy in tragedy. David Carter states the communis opinio in his indispensable The Politics of Greek Tragedy: “One form of constitution that never appears in tragedy is oligarchy.”1 Yet even negative hypotheses are worth testing, proving, and following through. In any case, to begin hysteron proton: despite assertions to the contrary, there are in fact oligarchs in tragedy, as well as a non-trivial thread of what one might call oligarchic discourse. In what follows, I will survey and evaluate a range of passages (from extant tragedy and the fragments) which explore oligarchic or oligarchy-adjacent ideas; I will even offer one example of an oligarchic regime in extant tragedy: Euripides’ Ion. Oligarchy was prevalent throughout the archaic and classical periods and the most popular regime type in Greek poleis from the first half of the fifth century right through the first half of the fourth – not to mention the major threat to democracy in the days of Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.2 Based on preliminary findings of the Sydney theatre history project, however, one can make a surprising generalization about regime-types and drama: democracies are in favour of tragedy; so are autocracies, from early on, and uniquely so in later eras; oligarchies strongly disprefer theatron culture, especially tragedy.3 The wider relationship between regime-type and theatron culture per se is of course a major theme of this book. My question is less ambitious but still important: how, and how frequently, do the remains of Greek tragedy depict or refer to oligarchs, oligarchies, or the idea of the rule of the (elite, worthy) few? First: which few?4 For a numerical – etymological – understanding of oligarkhia as ‘rule of the few’, we can look at least as far back as Pindar (Pyth. 2.86–88) for poetry and Herodotus (3.82) for prose, and forward to Aristotle (Pol. 1279a26–8).5 Alwine’s common-sensical definition, for example, emphasizes a small, independent executive and a clear distinction between rulers and ruled: “‘oligarchy’ in its ordinary English sense . . . [is] a power structure in which a relatively small ruling class holds effective power.”6 Even Aristotle’s basic definition, however, stresses the importance of institutions, political sovereignty, and the polis as well as the relative size of the ruling class.7 In any case, Aristotle later rejects this general definition of oligarchy – minority rule – in favour of a more nuanced description: oligarchy is consti1 Carter 2007, 88. 2 Teegarden 2014, 221–236, esp. 223. Fourth-century views on the relative prevalence of regime types: Arist. Pol. 1296a22–3, 1305a15, 1313a3–4; Dem. For the Rhodians’ Freedom 15.19 (“undoubtedly exaggerating”, acc. to Hansen 2004, 84, n. 56.). Mitchell 2013 on sole rule; Simonton 2017 on oligarchy; Teegarden 2014 on anti-tyranny measures. 3 Csapo and Wilson 2015, esp. 347–349 (Corinth, Megara), 357–359 (Thebes), 382–383; Simonton 2017, 198–206 (khoreia in oligarchies). Cf. Pl. Resp. 568c. 4 On historical oligarchies and oligarchic ideologies and institutions, see above all Simonton 2017 (a thoroughly deserving winner of the Runciman Prize). See further Whibley 1896; Brock 1989; Roberts 1994; Ostwald 2000; Rhodes 2000; Shear 2011; Tabachnick and Koivukoski 2012; Caire 2016; Alwine 2018. 5 See Caire 2016, 28–33. Intrinsic vagueness of Athenian concept of oligarchy: Brock 1989. 6 Alwine 2018, 237 (italics added). 7 Aristotelian institutionalism: Caire 2016; Simonton 2017. Alwine 2018 offers a simplified definition of oligarchy (and a critique of institutionalism); see in particular 239–240 on the notion that Greek oligarchy typically entails property qualifications (timēmata). Cf. also, e.g., Xen. Mem. 4.6.12; Rhet. ad Alex. 1424a39–b16. Note: First and foremost, I thank Theodore Nash (now a PhD student at Michigan) for indispensable research assistance and the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington for funding Theo’s work. Thanks to James Kierstead and Matt Simonton for encouragement and suggestions (and to Matt for a tranche of relevant references). Thanks to audiences in Sydney and Wellington (especially Jeff Tatum) who heard an early version. Finally, thanks to Eric Csapo, Billy Kennedy, Elodie Paillard, Jelle Stoop, and Peter Wilson for their superb organisation of the Theatre and Autocracy conference. Note: Greek is quoted from the relevant OCT edition, except tragic fragments, which are quoted from TrGF; all translations are my own. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-013

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tutional minority rule by a wealth elite (Pol. 1290a30–b20; cf. Pl. Resp. 550c). The author of the Athenaion Politeia (2.2) calls the constitution of early Athens “completely oligarchic” (ὀλιγαρχική). This is a reasonable claim – even for those of us who remain sceptical of Michels’s ‘Iron Law’ of oligarchy.8 The Eupatrid magistrates and Areopagites who governed preSolonian Athens were a wealthy, noble, minority ruling class: ‘ur-oligarchs’, so to speak, governing an ‘elite-led regime’.9 To understand the place of oligarchy in tragedy, then, we can and should look for reflections of informally ‘oligarch-ish’ concepts and practices. At the same time, we must remember that formal oligarchy – oligarkhia proper – was developed as a response to and safeguard against democracy, and that it was coeval with drama.10 According to Simonton’s more precise, historicised definition, a Greek oligarkhia properly defined is a polity which legally and institutionally restricts political power to a minority ruling elite, typically a wealth elite, prejudicially selected from a wider citizen body: “oligarchia was a politeia in which access to the authoritative magistracies (archai) was restricted to those in possession of a certain (usually quite exclusionary) property requirement (timēma), who constituted the sovereign ruling element (kurion politeuma).”11

Regime types Thinking of the setting of a given tragedy as – as though it were – an actual political community requires a leap of the imagination which is not strictly speaking necessary. It is not unreasonable, however; nor is it all that different from other cognitive moves which are typically required to interpret Greek tragedy. In any case, many of not most scholars now agree that there is some kind of discursive relationship between Greek drama and Greek political life.12 Individual Greek tragedies are, variously, more or less ‘political’, more or less firmly set in a polis, more or less precise in their depiction of a city, society, state, regime, or whatever.13 In what follows, therefore, I take it as read that it is a legitimate (though not mandatory) abstraction to treat the fictive worlds of tragedy – of some tragedies – as though they were political communities; and to articulate differences between those political communities in terms of historically or otherwise attested regime-types, including oligarchy. It will be instructive first to survey the general spread of regime-types in tragedy. For the purposes of this essay, I adopt the canonical four-part division of kingship, tyranny, oligarchy, and democracy.14 I take kingship to be constitutional-cum-legal monarchy – atypically, dyarchy – by virtue of descent from a ruling family. I take tyranny to be extra-constitutional sole rule by an usurper who does not rule by virtue of descent in a ruling family. Democracy obtains (à la Josiah Ober) when the body of adult citizens has the capacity to achieve its political ends.15 Or, from an Aristotelian perspective: when all adult male citizens share the right to participate (metekhein) both in polis religion and in the offices of state – essentially the assembly, council, juries, and all or most of the authoritative (kurios) magistracies.16 The most prevalent form of government in tragedy is what Aristotle calls ‘mythical kingship’: legitimate sole rule by a character from a mythical ruling family.17 By my count, this type of kingship is depicted in some twelve extant tragedies.18 Even this generic setting, however, is flexible. In Hippolytus, for example, although Pittheus is alive, Theseus and 8 Alwine 2018, 238; contra Wallace 2014. Michels 1911; Ober 1989, 333–336 (Athens, Chaeronea, and the ‘Iron Law’); Simonton 2017, 1–5; see now Kierstead 2020. 9 Rhodes 2000, 119 (“ur-oligarchs”); Simonton 2017, 8, n. 22 (“elite-led regimes”), 9–20. 10 Caire 2016; Simonton 2017. 11 Simonton 2017, 40. 12 It would be otiose to include a doxography here: Carter 2007 and 2011 are fundamental; for a brief literature review, see more recently Paillard 2017, 15–21. 13 See e.g. Perris 2017 with bibliography. 14 Hansen 2004 concisely surveys the four regime-types. Among the voluminous literature on kingship, tyranny, and sole rule in ancient Greece, see e.g. Lewis 2009; Mitchell 2013; Teegarden 2014. Regime-types in tragedy: Easterling 1984; Podlecki 1986; Seaford 2003; Easterling 2005; Carter 2007, 64–89; Carter 2010; West 2013a; Perris 2017; Saïd 2017. 15 Ober 2008. 16 Arist. Pol. 1275b22–4; pace Blok 2017, I distinguish political citizenship and socio-religious citizenship; see e.g. Paillard 2017, 32; Perris 2017, 326–330. 17 Pol. 1285b3–5; cf. Thuc. 1.13.1. Following Mitchell 2013, I prefer to speak of familial sole rule (rather than hereditary). 18 Mythical familial sole rule: Aesch. Sept. Ag. (Agamemnon). Eur. Alc. Med. Hipp. Andr. Phoen. Bacch. Soph. Ant. Trach. (?). OC (x2). ps.-Eur. Rhes.

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Phaedra are king and queen of Athens and Troizen.19 In Antigone, Creon has tyrannical qualities, yet he is still a sole ruler whose status is determined by his kinship (ankhisteia) with the dead Labdacids (Ant. 173–174).20 Aeschylus’ Persian god-kings and Euripides’ barbarian kings fit well enough into Aristotle’s second species of kingship, namely foreign kingship: absolute legal sole rule over willing subjects (Arist. Pol. 1285a15–19).21 The Trojan plays of Euripides and Sophocles on the whole treat Agamemnon as both heroic basileus of Argos in his own right and commander-in-chief of the Achaean confederacy of other heroic basileis at Troy.22 This is legible as a mixture of Aristotle’s first and third species of kingship: lifetime generalship and ‘elected tyranny’ (held by the so-called aisumnētēs). There are few unambiguous tyrannies in extant tragedy.23 Aegisthus is the textbook example; equally clear, in his own way, is Zeus in Prometheus Bound. As for democracy: Aeschylus’ Persians is the first and only known tragedy to refer to democratic Athens and to allude to the Athenian democracy.24 Beyond Persians, a few ‘political’ tragedies mix proto-democratic flavouring, in varying proportions, into heroic kingship, resulting in different shades of proto-democratic monarchy.25

Oligarchy in tragedy: three test cases The orthodox view of regime-type frequency fairly well holds true: mostly sole rule; some proto-democracy; no oligarchy. Every polity depicted in Greek tragedy is governed by someone. This descriptive observation, however, tends to be taken as normative, such that ‘heroic kingship’ (as it is often called) becomes the genre’s natural setting.26 This is not the case in, however, in three test cases to which we will now turn: Sophocles’ Trachiniae, Aeschylus’ Eumenides, and Euripides’ Ion. Trachis itself is a minor, peripheral polis, and politics are at most a peripheral concern in Trachiniae.27 In fact, Sophocles’ Trachis is not really a polis. The titular chorus is made up of young women from Trachis. There is a local populace of Malians (Μηλιεὺς ἅπας λεώς, 194) or Trachinians (Τραχινίων, 423), also called, more specifically, countrymen or citizens (ἀστῶν, 423). There is an agora (374, 424). But there is no local government. Compare the similarly vague political situation in Euripides’ Phthia (Andromache) or Pherae (Alcestis). Overall, Trachiniae is a borderline case in which the idea (and socio-political, economic, and material reality) of the polis is both vaguely present and, at the same time, out of the way.28 One thinks of what has elsewhere been called the “pre-polis polis”.29 So Josh Beer: “The tragedy presents a world in which the fundamental institutions of Greek society have yet to be founded on a sure basis.”30 Not only Zeus and Hades, but also Heracles and Deianeira are ‘lord’ and ‘lady’ (ἄναξ, ἄνασσα).31 Upon his return, Heracles is treated by the chorus as de facto lord of Trachis (ἄνακτος, 1045), but Deianeira, too, is specifically addressed as ‘Queen’ or ‘Mistress’ (δέσποινα, 430) by the messenger. And with Heracles absent, Deianeira would appear to be the 19 Cf. Barrett 1964, 33–34. 20 Cf. Griffith 1999 ad 7–8, 173–174. 21 Foreign kingship: Aesch. Pers. Eur. IT. Hel. Given the emphasis in Persians on the Persian kings’ divinity, it is perhaps worth distinguishing a subcategory of foreign, divine kingship, aligned with Aristotle’s fifth type of kingship, absolute kingship (pambasileia). 22 Military confederacy under commander-in-chief: Eur. Hec. Tro. IA. Soph. Aj. Phil. See Taplin 1990 for Agamemnon’s role in the Iliad. 23 Tyranny: Aesch. Ag. (Aegisthus). Cho. Eur. El. HF. Soph. El. OT. ps.-Aesch. PV. Apropos of Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus: if pressed, I would say he is a ‘kingly’, chosen, non-hereditary sole ruler not unlike Aristotle’s aisumnētēs. The words turannis/turannos have a wide semantic range in tragedy: O’Neil 1986; Anderson 2005. 24 See in particular Pers. 241–242 with West 2013a, 195: “The inference is that the only proper form of constitution for free men is democracy.” It is a pleasure to cite here Rosenbloom 2006, an excellent study of Persai (written by a former teacher and colleague) which is very much attuned to the play’s ideological contours. See also Lockwood 2017. 25 Proto-democratic monarchy: Aesch. Supp. Eur. Heracl. Supp. Or. 26 E.g. Carter 2007, 89. Contrast e.g. Griffin 1998, 51–52, where oligarchy’s (purported) absence from the stage runs counter to its status as the only real threat to fifth-century democracy in Athens. 27 Beer 2004, 83 with bibliography at n. 5. Cf. Il. 2.682. Compare Perris 2017, esp. 320 on “polis-politics”. 28 See Easterling 1987, 15–16 on Tr.; Paillard 2017, 154, on the vague “public dimension” introduced by the chorus of young women. 29 Forrest 2000. 30 Beer 2004, 83. 31 Zeus: 274–275, 1087; βασιλεύς at 127. Hades: 1085. Heracles: 155–156, 1045. Deianeira: 136, 291.

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ranking (only?) elite in Trachis. Yet they are both refugees (ἀνάστατοι, ‘uprooted’, 39). Like Jason and Medea in Euripides’ Corinth, they are stateless elites relying on elite xenia; their pre-eminence in Trachis is de facto, not de iure.32 Crucially, there is no sole ruler. In mythical tradition, Ceyx is king of Trachis; he takes in Heracles and Deianeira and also, in some sources, hosts Heracles at his wedding.33 In Trachiniae, by contrast, Ceyx is never mentioned. Heracles and Deianeira are “staying with a guest-friend” (ξένῳ παρ᾽ ἀνδρὶ ναίομεν, 40) in a house represented by the skēnē.34 It is a reasonable inference – but not a necessary one – that Ceyx is basileus of Sophocles’ Trachis and that Heracles and Deianeira are staying at his house. He has, in a sense, been written out of Trachis. One effect of this is to create a power vacuum for Deianeira – and Lichas? – to step into; and to heighten the tension over whether or not the anax Heracles will return. Compare, for example, the way in which Andromache focuses attention on Neoptolemus’ long-delayed (and ultimately cancelled) return. If anything, then, the polis in Trachiniae is not so much a kingship as it is – by default, not design, and temporarily rather than permanently – an ‘elite-led regime’. Regarding Eumenides, there is still no consensus about what kind of polis is or is not on display.35 One thing is clear, however: Athens has no king. As Dodds put it, “The curious circumstance that in the Eumenides alone among Greek tragedies, Athens lacks a king has hardly received the attention it deserves . . . The only sovereign is Athena, “queen of the land” (288). . . she it is who in the trial scene takes the place of the archon basileus”.36 Nor is there any sense of a power vacuum. So Alan Sommerstein: “heroic Athens, like fifth-century Athens, is made to consist only of Athena and a citizen-body, who are no man’s subjects (cf. Pers. 242)”.37 Athena announces the foundation of the Areopagite council in verses freighted with political significance.38 From the whole citizen body – the astoi – Athena will choose the ‘best’ men to judge the case (Eum. 487–488): κρίνασα δ᾽ ἀστῶν τῶν ἐμῶν τὰ βέλτατα ἥξω, διαιρεῖν τοῦτο πρᾶγμ᾽ ἐτητύμως I will choose the best men from my citizens, then return, so they can decide the matter properly . . .39

That is: she will select her judges (dikastai) on merit, a criterion central to oligarchic theory.40 It is the ‘best men’, the beltistoi, who will populate the Areopagite council. Now the beltistoi were vital to both democratic discourse and oligarchic discourse.41 As the ‘Old Oligarch’ asserts, for example, “Everywhere the nobility (τὸ βέλτιστον) are opposed to democracy, for among the nobility (τοῖς βελτίστοις). . .” (Ath. Pol. 1.5). For the ‘Old Oligarch’ – probably writing in the fifth century – the best men (beltistoi, beltious, aristoi, etc.) are both opponents and diametric opposites of the members of the dēmos: wealthy, elite, well-bred, upstanding oligarchs.42 Is it too much to see in Athena’s selection of the beltistoi 32 Elite concerns in tragedy: Seaford 1994; Griffith 1995, 2011; Perris 2017. Jebb 1892 ad 39: ἀνάστατοι “alludes to compulsion used by Eurystheus: the word would not suit a voluntary migration.” 33 Cf. Jebb 1892 ad 40 (citing inter alia the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles 353–355). 34 ‘Guest-house’ is perhaps misleading: they stay in a house, hosted by a xenos. See Perris 2017, 324 on Med. Cf. Eur. HF. 35 E.g. Dover 1957; Dodds 2007 [1960]; Podlecki 1966; Macleod 1982; Sommerstein 1989; Bowie 1993; Rosenbloom 1995; Griffith 1995; Morin 2005; Revermann 2008; Mitchell-Boyask 2009, 104–105 with n. 12; Sommerstein 2010, 281–289; West 2013a; Harris 2019. For bibliography, see Sommerstein 2010, 327. 36 Dodds 2007 [1960], 247; echoed by West 2013a, 201. 37 Sommerstein 1989 ad 288; West 2013a, 201 (“no sense of a vacancy”). 38 pace Sommerstein 1989 ad 487, who rejects any political significance for Eum. 487–8. On the Areopagus in Eumenides, see now Harris 2019 (emphasizing the rule of law over democracy as the most important aspect of Aeschylus’ Areopagus). 39 Sommerstein 1989 ad 488: διαιρεῖν is an inifinitive of purpose (with κρίνασα), the subject being ἀστῶν . . . τὰ βέλτατα. See Eum. 472 for διαιρεῖν as ‘judge, decide’ (a case). Despite the neuter plural τὰ βέλτατα (on which see Sommerstein 1989 ad loc.), the astoi are male, as is clarified by the participle περῶντας (489); τὰ βέλτατα is effectively a poeticism metri gratia for τοὺς βελτίστους. 40 pace Macleod 1982, 127: “So if the Areopagus is “the best of the citizens” . . . that is to emphasize not that they are superior, but that they perfectly represent the city”. Megabyzus’ defence of oligarchy in the Constitutional Debate (Hdt. 3.81.3) makes much the same claim in similar language. For a later epigraphic example from Lycia, cf. SEG 51.1832, l. 25–30, in which the politeia is entrusted to a group selected from the aristoi and not to the plēthos (thanks to Matt Simonton for this reference). See also Bultrighini 1999, 68, on meritocratic selection in Critias’ oligarchic ideology; Ober 1989, 156–191, on ways in which notions of merit and ability could be co-opted for democratic and elite purposes. 41 Caire 2016, 146–151, addresses the oligarchic force of βέλτιστοι/ἄριστοι. See also Donlan 1978, Ober 1989, 156–292 on designations of ability, class and status. Cf. e.g. Isocr. 7.22 (βελτίστους καἰ . . . ἱκανωτάτους) with Ober 1998, 278–280; contra Mitchell 2006, 184–185. 42 See further Marr and Rhodes 2008, 24–26, 171–172 and ad 1.5 on evaluative class designations (including βέλτιστος/βελτίων) in the Old Oligarch. Fifth-century date: e.g. Marr and Rhodes 2008, 3–6. Fourth-century date: Hornblower 2000.

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an allusion to Athenian property qualifications, and in particular to the qualifications and vetting of potential Areopagites?43 According to one recent – and extreme – view, Aeschylus uniquely takes the Areopagus to be a democratic institution and in fact depicts a young democracy in Eumenides.44 On occasion, Eumenides does indeed equate the Areopagite council with the dēmos: Ἀττικὸς λεώς (‘People of Athens’, 681) calls to mind the people’s assembly sitting qua judiciary (as in Euripides’ Orestes), an institution often associated with the so-called ‘Heliaia’.45 This suggests not so much oligarchy as democracy; remember pseudo-Aristotle’s claim that one of the most democratic things Solon did was introduce representative people’s courts (Ath. Pol. 9.1). It is worth noting, however, that the early Archaic Areopagus was fundamentally different from the classical Areopagus. By the time of the first production of the Oresteia, new Areopagites – former archons – effectively owed their status to sortition. But it was not so long ago that archonships were elected (i.e. actively selected), and the Areopagite council generally made up of experienced, qualified elites rather than randomly allotted citizens. In Eumenides (which is of course set in mythical pre-history), Athena personally selects the new Areopagites. One thinks again of the ‘completely oligarchic’ pre-Solonian constitution (Ath. Pol. 2.2).46 Finally, there are two telling passages in which first the Erinues then Athena (quoting the Erinues) promote ‘the middle’ (Eum. 526–531, 696–697).47 Many read these passages as referring to a political ‘middle’ way: an idealized moderate government between anarchy and despotism (or between radical democracy and outright oligarchy).48 Athena’s celebration of (τό) μέσον (‘the middle element’) certainly recalls the use of mesos or hoi mesoi in inscriptional and other sources to indicate the ‘middle men’ in a moderate democracy, a central element of Aristotle’s model of good government.49 And yet. Whether one calls it patria politeia, aristokratia, politeia, or even dēmokratia, the idealized moderate constitution of Greek political thought is arguably oligarchy by another name.50 In that sense, I am inclined to hear the faintest of hints, in these two passages, that Areopagite Athens can be thought of as an elite-led regime or ur-oligarchy. Compare Martin West: “We cannot say, then, that Athens is clearly portrayed in the Eumenides as a democracy. Nor is it a monarchy. If anything it is a theocracy: Athena is the one who organizes the city’s affairs and lays down procedures for the citizens to follow.”51 I would suggest – with tongue not entirely lodged in cheek – that the Athens of Eumenides is a meritocratic, proto-oligarchic theocracy. One final tragedy actively represents rule of the few: Euripides’ Ion. Historical Delphi was, at least from the fourth century, apparently a democratic polis, with a public assembly, council, and magistrates.52 Euripides’ Delphi is not proto-democratic. Nor is it monarchical. Like Aeschylus’ Athens, in fact, the Delphi of Ion is theocratic; it is also oligarchic. Unlike the Delphi of Eumenides, Euripides’ Delphi is marked as a polis: a wider territory governed by a political community from a nucleated urban settlement.53 There are locals (ἐγχώριοι, 1167) who form a socio-political community (πᾶσα. . . πόλις, 1225). There is no human monarch; Apollo is the only ἄναξ here (728, 1531, 1566). As in the Delphi of Andromache, and indeed as in the historical polis of the Delphians, there are local magistrates (ἀρχαὶ ἁπιχώριοι χθονός, 1111) – as Owen puts it, “our “local authorities of the district”, if this were prose”.54 These, then, are the officials who 43 Harris 2019, 408, with n. 53; pace Sommerstein 1989 ad loc. Cf. Macleod 1982, 127: “A ‘conservative’ too might have spoken of the council in this way, to stress that its membership was drawn from the two highest property-classes in the state; but if Aeschylus echoes such language, it is to give it a larger, and no longer partisan, sense.” 44 Saïd 2017, 45 (democratic Areopagus), 47 (“In the Eumenides Athens is consistently portrayed as a democracy.”). Cf. Macleod 1982, 127–129: Aeschylus’ Areopagus reflects the post-Ephialtean homicide court. Harris 2019, esp. 409–410: the Areopagus met “all the criteria” (viz., for being a democratic instution). 45 Areopagites identified with Athenian people: Macleod 1982, 127 (citing Eum. 566, 638, 775, 997, 1010). Heliaia: e.g. Sealey 1987, 60–70. 46 Areopagus: Wallace 1989; Wallace 2014; Teegarden 2014, 99–105. 47 Sommerstein 1989 ad 696–699: Athena “repeats almost precisely the ideas of 517–528”. 48 So e.g. Sommerstein 1989 ad loc. Compare Paillard 2017 on the “middling group” in Sophocles, vis-à-vis the development of democracy. Cf. e.g. Thuc. 8.97; Ath. Pol. 33.2. 49 Ober 1998, 356–360; Caire 2016, 341–344; Simonton 2017, 41–54 on the so-called ‘hoplite republic’. Cf. Arist. Pol. 4.11, esp. 1295b3–5. 50 Caire 2016, 321–350. Isocrates 7 (the Areopagiticus), for example, rejects oligarkhia as such and proposes a more moderate form of the current regime, still under the name dēmokratia; in practice, however, his preferred regime is an elite-led meritocratic oligarchy. Cf. Ober 1998, 278–280, 337–338. 51 West 2013a, 201. 52 Hansen and Nielsen 2004, 143; Simonton 2017, 145, n. 138. 53 Cf. e.g. Ion 665, 1107. Contrast e.g. Medea; cf. Perris 2017. 54 Owen 1939 ad loc., citing Eur. Andr. 1097: ἀρχαὶ δ᾽ ἐπληροῦντ᾽ ἐς τὰ βουλευτήρια (“The [civic] authorities were streaming into the council chamber”). Lee 1997 ad loc. prefers “local rulers”, suggesting that the arkhai are one and the same as the koiranoi/anaktes. 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look for Creusa so as to have her executed. Though we know little of their tenure or selection, we can say that (a) they take an active role in public affairs, and (b) they appear to be local elites. They are later referred to as ‘Pythian lords’ (κοιράνοισι Πυθικοῖς, 1219) and ‘lords of Delphi’ (Δελφῶν . . . ἄνακτες, 1222).55 Then there are those who serve the oracle: the Pythia; the proxenoi (‘sponsors’, 335, 551, 1039);56 and the priests (prophētai as they are typically called in literary sources), who assist the Pythia inside the temple (369, 414–416). Crucially, Ion describes these men, the prophētai, as Δελφῶν ἀριστῆς, οὓς ἐκλήρωσεν πάλος (“nobles of Delphi, who have been given a turn by lot”, 416).57 It is conventionally assumed that Euripides’ aristēs reflect the real selection process and tenure for hiereis (i.e. prophētai) at Delphi, though we cannot be sure.58 Whether or not Delphic hiereis were chosen in this way, Attic poliscult priests and priestesses most certainly were. Note in particular the emphasis in Ion on sortition from an elite subgroup: this is precisely how priests and priestesses of Attic polis cults – at least, those established before 451 BC – were selected from the genē (or sub-branches thereof) attached to those cults. The main function of Attic genē was in fact to provide priest/esses for polis cults; whatever variations there likely were between the socio-economic profile of different genē and individual gennētai, gennētai were not, as a rule, members of a socio-economic elite.59 Nevertheless, though genē were not necessarily aristocratic in the wider socio-economic sense, they were aristocratic in the narrower sense, effectively constituting a descent-based elite of people of good breeding (eugeneia).60 As Aleshire and Lambert assert, genē “were ‘aristocratic’ in the sense that genos membership and priesthood more broadly were closely associated with eugeneia, “good birth” in the narrow sense of strictly controlled descent, in male line and female, which could be traced back to heroic and mythical time.”61 What is more, we know that Attic genē used allotment (klērōsis) to appoint priests and priestesses to polis cults; pre-selection (prokrisis) was not necessary precisely because gennētai were, as Blok and Lambert trenchantly put it, “super-citizens whose suitability to hold a priesthood was beyond doubt”.62 Contrast Euripides’ Hypsipyle, which presents a prima facie equivalent situation. Lycurgus’ house (represented by the skēnē) is a wealthy pastoral residence (F 752h, 24–26); there is no polis and certainly no magistrates. Though not a basileus, Lycurgus’ role in the plot is de facto that of a ruler: he is the priest (lit. ‘keyholder’, klēidoukhos) of Nemean Zeus. But Lycurgus has been selected (hairetheis), not randomly chosen by lot (F 752h, 26–28); he would appear to be an ordinary citizen.63 (In Ion, the Pythia similarly refers to having been selected from all the women of Delphi, using an

however, ἀρχαί (as often in Greek) is clearly a synonym for ἄρχοντες. Andr. 699–702, though likely spurious, illustrates the related sense of ‘office’. At Andr. 1097, there is even a council chamber. 55 Compare Ion 13: γῆς ἄνακτες Ἀτθίδος (‘lords of Attica’). Owen 1939 ad loc. claims that ἄνακτες “seems to mean here little more than inhabitants”, whereas Lee 1997 translates ‘lords’ in each instance. But ἄναξ does not mean ‘inhabitant’; it means ‘ruler’, ‘lord’, ‘person in charge’. One may metaphorize the Athenians as ‘lords of Attica’, thereby elevating all Athenians to a kind of (metaphorical) lordliness – and it is a striking enough phrase – without affecting the underlying meaning of the word ἄναξ. Ion himself stresses the very distinction between ruler (τύραννος) and regular citizen (δημότης) in his refusal of monarchy (625–626). Even metaphorical usages of ἄναξ (e.g. Eur. Hel. 1611, IA 1260) still rely on the basic idea of control (not just possession). Owen 1939 ad 13 suggests that the ‘lords of Delphi’ are either the whole Delphian dēmos or, more likely, a “hastily summoned council”. 56 Delphic proxenoi did not represent the interests of specific poleis (as was standard practice elsewhere), but rather looked after those visiting the oracle. Compare Andromache 1103, where we hear of diviners (manteis) and official sponsors (proxenoi), both characteristic of a visit to Delphi. 57 Owen 1939 ad loc. insists that the lot in question determined only the spokesmen’s turn order. Lee 1997 ad loc. is surely right, however, that one can interpret the lot here also in terms of overall selection (i.e. sortition proper) from among the wider body of Delphic aristēs. Note: the MS (L) reads aristeis (ἀριστεῖς). Dindorf’s universally accepted correction aristēs (ἀριστῆς) restores the older Attic form of the nominative plural of nouns in -eus, used by e.g. Thucydides and Plato. 58 Delcourt 1955, 46. To some extent, Ion reflects what we know of the hiereis, but some aspects better match what we know of the so-called Hosioi, on which see Plut. Mor. 292d (cf. 365a, 437a, 438b). It is clear from Plutarch and from inscriptional evidence that the hiereus/prophētēs and hosios were different offices; see e.g. Parke 1940, 87. Owen 1939 and Lee 1997 confuse matters somewhat. Fontenrose 1978, 219, argues that Ion conflates the office of hosios with that of hiereus. On temple administration more generally, see Delcourt 1955, 44–85; Roux 1976, 53–70; Fontenrose 1978, 196–228; Maurizio 1995, 83–84. 59 Lambert 1999; Blok and Lambert 2009. 60 Hence the significance of the fact that priesthoods for polis cults founded after Pericles’ citizenship law of 451 were open to all Athenians rather than restricted to eligible members of genē: Lambert 2010. 61 Aleshire and Lambert 2011, 554. See further Lambert 2015 on the way in which genē were ‘aristocratic’ (and, at the same time, egalitarian). 62 Blok and Lambert 2009, 101. 63 The aorist passive participle and finite forms of haireō, as here, typically refer to selection, not sortition (e.g. Ath. Pol., Arist. Pol.). For klēidoukhos for ‘priest’, see also IT 131. Contrast also e.g. IT 34 for a less concretely defined priesthood.

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even stronger derivative of αἱρεῖν.64) All of which casts in sharp relief the lot-appointed elite temple officials – plural – in Ion. Note in particular the explicit reference to sortition from a pre-ordained group (Ion 416).65 Plato and Aristotle insist that sortition is fundamentally democratic, but we should not necessarily take them at their word; one should at least consider the possibility that, as Paul Demont argues, sortition became a feature of democracy in Athens without being an intrinsically democratic phenomenon.66 In practice, sortition with prokrisis could be a moderate democratic institution (as in the early-mid fifth century BC in Athens) or a fully oligarchic institution; all depends on which group is pre-selected, and how.67 In any case, though we cannot say with certainty when sortition of the nine archons from a pre-elected group was stopped, we can say that it was a feature of Solonian and post-Ephialtean Athens but not of radical (i.e. fourth-century) democracy.68 In Ion, we have a reasonably clear case of sortition from a pre-determined oligarchic minority (perhaps co-extensive with the ‘lords’ and ‘magistrates’ of Delphi mentioned earlier). Not only are Euripides’ aristēs ‘super-citizens’ in the sense of being suitable to hold a priesthood at Delphi; they are also, I submit, an aristocracy in the stronger sense of the word (that is: socio-economic elites as well as birth elites). The word ἀριστεύς (aristeus) is a marked Homeric derivative of aristos (and, for that matter, a marked poetic equivalent of beltistos).69 Aristeus is well attested in inscriptional sources as a male personal name. But we also know from Dio Chrysostom (Or. 48.10) that public benefactors could be called aristeis. Indeed, the same word – rarely used in inscriptional sources except as a proper name – seems also to have been used (albeit quite a bit later), in two inscriptions connected with the oracle of Apollo at Didyma, to refer to some kind of public office or honorific title, presumably though not necessarily a civic one in nearby Miletos.70 So: Euripides’ aristēs are sensibly interpretable, in a Delphic context, as elite benefactors of a polis associated with a nearby oracle.71 And as an elevated, poetic equivalent for the more prosaic (but equally pregnant) terms aristoi or beltistoi, the word aristēs activates a range of connotations: elite socio-economic status, pure and longstanding citizen ancestry (such as that of gennētai in Athens), elite benefaction, and even martial prowess. In short, Ion’s brief description of the Delphic priests is heavily freighted with aristocratic valence. To sum up, then, on Ion: Apollo is the divine overlord (conspicuous, in fact, by his absence from both prologue and final scene). There is no human monarch. Delphi is governed by local elite magistrates (plural). The Pythia is assisted in administering the oracle both by citizen sponsors and elite priests (plural) chosen by lot from the ‘aristēs of Delphi’. Is it too much to see here a theocratic complex (oracle administration plus polis government) administered according to oligarchic – ‘ur-oligarchic’, ‘elite-led’ – principles? Perhaps. Perhaps not. Eumenides and Ion feature neither a human monarch nor a sovereign dēmos; in each play, this power vacuum is filled by only the best people (beltistoi, aristēs). And the principle of putting only the best people in offices of the state is thoroughly (if not uniquely) oligarchic.

Choruses Tragic choruses deserve some comment here. In some plays the chorus is made up of local elites who advise a ruler; these groups may be active or passive, vocal or taciturn, effective or ineffectual. Elodie Paillard (in The Stage and the City) has recently argued that Sophocles’ tragedies became more and more ‘democratic’ over time as choruses took on a more active, vocal, and effective role (vis-à-vis their elite superiors) in governing the community; and that this was 64 ἐξαιρετός: regularly used for active and prejudicial selection of, say, booty, as opposed to sortition. See LSJ s.v. 65 That is, reading ἀριστῆς (with no definite article) indefinitely: “(some of the) Delphian nobles”. 66 See e.g. Demont 2001, 2014; pace, e.g., Taylor 2007. 67 Alwine 2018, 253–254. Alwine’s overall point is well taken: institutions are not typically democratic or oligarchic per se; what matters most in terms of regime-type is how, and in what combinations, they are administered. 68 Hansen 1986. 69 In Homer the word mostly occurs in the plural ἀριστῆες (‘chiefs’, ‘heroes’, ‘the bravest’). In tragedy, the word typically denotes mythical heroes. An obvious (though to me insufficient) explanation of Euripides’ use of the word in Ion is that it is a metri gratia equivalent of ἄριστοι which avoids hiatus (the following word beginning with a vowel); contrast e.g. Eur. Phoen. 1245. Surprisingly, neither Owen 1939 nor Lee 1997 (nor Wilamowitz nor Biel, for that matter) comment on Euripides’ choice of lexis here. 70 IDid. 163; cf. IDid. 233. 71 The dedicator of IDid. 163 (also the honorand of IDid. 233) describes himself as both προφήτης (163.3) and ἀριστεύς (163.13); the words are neither synonymous nor mutually exclusive. Pre-494 BC, the oracle at Didyma was controlled by a priestly genos, the Branchidae; after the refoundation of the oracle by Miletus, the prophētēs was chosen by lot from a city-wide pre-selection. See e.g. Morgan 1989, 27.

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related to increasingly active participation in the institutions of Athenian democracy on the part of the ‘middling group’ (hoi mesoi).72 Such choruses, qua exclusive groups of elites, are also potentially interpretable as an ‘oligarchish’ element within the dramatic setting. For example, the chorus-members of Antigone belong to an aristocratic wealth elite (πολυκτήμονες, 843; κοιρανίδαι, 940; ἄνακτες, 988), with at least a suggestion that they have special authority in Thebes.73 This is not a matter of equal-status elites making decisions amongst themselves, however; nor yet is it properly analogous to the Homeric boulē where the commander-in-chief as primus inter pares calls a council of fellow basilēes.74 Creon is a sole ruler (see above, 201) who governs Thebes alone. He summons a council of high-status elders (159–160) not to seek advice but to have them endorse a policy already in effect.75 Of course, from a pessimistic Aristotelian perspective, elites subject to a ruler are always potential oligarchs (and, by extension, potential tyrants). But this is to stray from the evidence and from the matter at hand – namely, more or less concrete oligarchic or ‘oligarchish’ elements in tragedy. Under a ruler or rulers, a chorus of elites in a tragedy is at most a kind of oligarchy-in-waiting, however authoritative and active its members might be.76 The downfall of the reckless ruler who ignores his elite compatriots’ good advice – as does Creon in Antigone – might be seen to embody the pitfalls of monarchy and the benefits of oligarchy. But that equation has another solution: in classical democratic theory, collective wisdom is amplified under a democracy. In any case, as Paillard rightly maintains, tragic choruses are characterised in contradistinction to elite rulers; Antigone is no exception.77 In this respect, choruses participate far more in tragedy’s ex post facto critique of sole rule and of heroic values than in critique of democracy, let alone veiled praise of oligarchy.78 (Keeping in mind that oligarchy was, historically and ontologically, diametrically anti-democratic; and that oligarchic theory was anti-democratic theory.) This is certainly borne out by the three possible exceptions discussed above: in Trachiniae, the chorus-members are (local) free women; in Eumenides, the Erinues; in Ion, (non-local, Greek) free women. Alongside Paillard’s ‘democratic’ reading of Sophocles’ late choruses, therefore, this suggests a resistance to oligarchic choruses, at least in extant tragedy.79

‘Oligarch-ish’ ideology in tragedy Beyond these three plays, oligarchic ideas do crop up in a non-trivial – and surprisingly varied – corpus of passages from extant tragedy and the fragments.80 True, oligarkhia (ὀλιγαρχία) – first attested in Herodotus (3.81.1) and common enough in later prose texts – is nowhere attested. (In point of fact, hardly any constitutional vocabulary at all appears in the remains of tragedy.81) Then again, no Greek oligarchy publicly (i.e. in inscriptions) called itself an oligarkhia: this word was impolite in mixed company; euphemisms like politeia (‘constitution’), eunomia (‘good order’), or aristokratia 72 Paillard 2017. 73 Jebb 1888 ad 843: “πολυκτήμονες, an epith. which also implies εὐγενεῖς”. Griffith 1999 ad loc.: “The Elders represent the ruling elite of Thebes.” 74 Though, as Griffith 1999, 159–160 notes, the Homeric boulē is an important literary antecedent. 75 Griffith 1999, 159–160. 76 In none of my three counter-examples (Eum., Trach, and Ion) is the chorus peopled by local elites. 77 Paillard 2017, 154; Griffith 1999, 55: “a clear social distinction is maintained between those (named) characters of the elite and the . . . minor characters (including the Chorus)”. This cannot fully be squared with Griffith’s comment ad 843 (see above). 78 Easterling 1997c (“heroic vagueness”); Allan 2008, 4–8 (“heroic distance”). 79 This in turn could be brought to bear on the question of whether the amateur citizen khoroi of tragic performances should themselves be seen as democratic, oligarchic, or whatever; on the wider relationship between oligarchy and khorēgia in Athens, see Wilson 2000, esp. 226–235. 80 A number of my examples were first gleaned from notes in Simonton 2017. I note en passant that the fragments here adduced are all from Euripides and all preserved by Stobaeus; cf. Piccione 1994. Kovacs 1982 proposes deleting Hipp. 1012–1015; Supp. 442–455, 414–416; Phoen. 549–567; and Peliades F605 because, among other grounds, these passages express anachronistic anti-tyrannical views. Kovacs likewise reviews deletions formerly proposed along similar lines: Supp. 238–345 (though with the caveat that these lines could come from a lost play by Euripides); HF 588–592 (following Wilamowitz and Page); Ion 595–606, 621–632; Or. 907–913. 81 Not attested: πολιτεία, ἀριστοκρατία, ἰσονομία, δημοκρατία. Occasional: βασιλεία (‘kingdom’, ‘royal power’); μοναρχία (‘sole rule’). Frequent: τυραννίς (‘kingship’, ‘tyranny’, ‘rule’). Soph. Aj. 712: εὐνομία used in a non-political sense. Aesch. Supp. 604, 699: allusion to

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were preferable.82 Among friends, of course, things were different: Critias’ gravestone included a depiction of personified Oligarkhia setting fire to Dēmokratia (88 A 13 DK). But this was a private speech act.83 If not oligarchy, whither the oligarchs? Ancient sources do not speak of an oligarkhos; rather, one uses the adjective oligarkhikos (‘oligarchically inclined’), or a describing phrase e.g. “those ruling in an oligarchy”.84 Thucydides often describes the opponents of the dēmos as hoi dunatoi (‘the powerful’).85 Etymologically related to these are the dunastai. One can use the word dunastai to refer unequivocally to oligarchs (Pl. Resp. 473d).86 One can likewise speak of a dunasteia or narrow junta.87 In Plato’s Statesman, for example, it is readily agreed that one of the three canonical regime-types is the “dunasteia ruled by hoi oligoi” (Plt. 291a). But the only recorded instance of dunasteia in tragedy – and the first attested instance – clearly means “position of influence” under sole rule (Soph. OT 593). And dunastēs, rare in tragedy, is typically used metaphorically or to refer to sole rulers. Consider fragment 94 of Euripides’ Alcmene: τω̑ ν γὰρ δυναστω̑ ν πλει̑στος ἐν πόλει λόγος (“What the powerful say carries the most weight in a city”, or “It’s mostly the powerful that people like to talk about around the city”).88 In general, this fragment reflects Euripidean tragedy’s interest in the public life of elites. It also specifically reflects the idea that the political phenomenon of logos – however one understands it – is fundamentally associated with the great and the good. On balance, however, we do not have enough context to say that this reflects specifically oligarchic phenomena. Then there are οἱ ὀλίγοι (hoi oligoi, ‘the few’), so denoted by Thucydides and pseudo-Xenophon (inter alios). This phrase (with the definite article) typically denotes the governing body of an oligarchy or the body of oligarchic sympathizers under a democratic regime. The antonym οἱ πολλοί (hoi polloi, ‘the many’) is an often pejorative term (also used in tragedy) for the rest of the citizenry.89 At IT 678, Pylades insists that kakoi predominate among hoi polloi, the implication being that hoi oligoi are more likely to be agathoi. More to the point, ὀλίγοι is – arguably – used four times in tragedy with such a political sense (see below).

Euripides, Hippolytus 986–989 Before embarking on an apologia, Hippolytus first captates the benevolence of his primary audience (i.e. Theseus): ἐγὼ δ᾽ ἄκομψος εἰς ὄχλον δοῦναι λόγον, ἐς ἥλικας δὲ κὠλίγους σοφώτερος: ἔχει δὲ μοῖραν καὶ τόδ᾽: οἱ γὰρ ἐν σοφοῖς φαῦλοι παρ᾽ ὄχλῳ μουσικώτεροι λέγειν. ὅμως δ᾽ ἀνάγκη, ξυμφορᾶς ἀφιγμένης, γλῶσσάν μ᾽ ἀφεῖναι. hippolytus I am not a glib public speaker in front of a mob; I’m better at talking to a small group of people my age. This, too, is quite fitting: folk who are nobodies in a group of educated people are more fluent at speaking to a mob. Nevertheless, since the crisis has come, I have to speak up.

δημοκρατία; Centanni 2014. Eur. Cyc. 119: allusion to δημοκρατία (Matt Simonton, personal communication). Eur. Phoen. 538: allusion to ἰσονομία (see below). 82 Hansen 2004, 83; Caire 2016, 60–70; Simonton 2017, 59–60. E.g. Isocr. 7; SEG 28.46 (decree of Theozotides valourizing those who died for supporting the dēmokratia during the oligarkhia). 83 Simonton 2017, 59, n. 259. 84 Caire 2016, 44–45 (on ὀλιγαρχικός); Simonton 2017, 3, n. 8; e.g. Aeschines 3.168–175. Usages in drama: Men. Sik. 156; cf. Theophrastus, Characters 26, titled Ὀλιγαρχικός (so Diggle, emending ὀλιγαρχίας, i.e. ‘[portrait] of oligarchy’). 85 Caire 2016, 152–153; Simonton 2017, 36, n. 150 (wealthy, influential men; not necessarily oligarchs). Cf. Donlan 1978. 86 See Ober 1998, 233–234 for this passage. 87 δυναστεία for ‘narrow junta’: Simonton 2017, 9. E.g. Thuc. 3.62.3, Xen. Hell. 5.4.46, Arist. Pol. 4.1292b7–10, Andoc. 2.27 (the Four Hundred), Ath. Pol. 36.1 (the Thirty). See, however, Caire 2016, 55–57: dunasteia was a neutral term with a wide semantic range which was co-opted by oligarchs to distinguish bad oligarchy from aristokratia. 88 As translated by Collard and Cropp 2008, 109, and Griffith 2011, 175, respectively. 89 E.g. Eur. El. 380–382 (at l. 385 we should count Electra’s husband among the εὐγενεῖς); IT 678; Or. 772 (see below). Eur. Erechtheus F1.16–17: many people (polloi) are united in the one polis.

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Hippolytus is an elite speaker addressing an elite audience. His use of the ‘unaccustomed as I am to public speaking’ trope – typically used to distance oneself from the charge of being too glib or out of touch with regular folk – is a hamfisted way to approach Theseus.90 For one thing, there is a crowd standing round him, and he ignores them.91 In effect, he misapplies the trope so as to imply contempt for regular folk.92 Instead of stressing that his lack of public speaking ability or inexperience sets him apart from the educational elite (and thus puts him on a level with regular folk), Hippolytus presents a supposed lack of ability as a feature of elite status; he only knows how to talk to a select group of educated men his own age, not to a diverse crowd.93 In the presence of an actual crowd, moreover, Hippolytus uses vocabulary freighted with anti-democratic sentiment – ὄχλος, ὀλίγοι, ἄκομψος, σοφός, φαῦλος – to contrast the masses with an imagined community of like-minded, educated young elites. In doing so, Hippolytus taps into the political meaning of (hoi) oligoi.94 Hippolytus also makes clear where his (elite) sympathies lie, with no thought for mass-elite interaction. In associating the few (oligoi) with the educated (sophoi), he dismisses the mob (okhlos) as uneducated. He allows that non-elites might come off as fairly polished (mousikōteroi), but only in the ears of a mob. He thereby also calls to mind the connection, in oligarchic ideology and practice, between elite gatherings – symposia, syssitia, and so on – elite education, and government by the ‘best men’.95 Even ἥλικας (‘people my own age’) hints at later fifth-century radical oligarchy vis-à-vis more conservative, moderate oligarchy; think Critias versus Theramenes.

Euripides, Erechtheus F356 and Euripides, Archelaus F244 In each of these fragments – from Stobaeus’ selection of passages “in praise of bravery” (ἔπαινος τόλμης, 4.10) – a speaker makes the case that a small contingent of crack troops can defeat a much larger army:96 ὀλίγους ἐπαινῶ μᾶλλον ἢ πολλοὺς κακούς I would rather have a few [decent] men than many worthless ones. ὀλίγοι γὰρ ἐσθλοὶ κρείσσονες πολλῶν κακῶν A few decent men are stronger than many worthless ones.

The immediate point, in context, is not that few are always better than many, but that esthloi are so much better than kakoi that a small group of the one will defeat a large host of the other. Given the use of ὀλίγος and πολύς, however, the notion that a few good men can prevail – especially when uttered during the Peloponnesian War – is not easily separable from the notion that ‘the decent’ (οἱ ἐσθλοί) are a minority co-extensive with ‘the few’ (οἱ ὀλίγοι). As so often, tragedy here echoes Theognis’ nexus of oppositions ἀγαθός–ἐσθλός / κακός–δειλός,97 and the ἀγαθός–ἐσθλός equivalence in Solon. More generally, the ‘many bad, few good’ trope can be traced to Heraclitus (22 B 104 DK).

90 These comments owe much to Barrett 1964 ad loc. 91 Cf. l. 884 and Barrett 1964, 435. 92 Ober 1989: 174–177 discusses the accepted dramatic fiction that an elite speaker is unskilled and inexperienced. Crucially, this is an elite strategy for addressing a mass audience. von Reden and Goldhill 1999, 271: part of the culture of the elite gathering (koinōnia, sunousia) is that one does not have to try so hard to impress as in e.g. the law-courts. 93 For a more successful self-positioning, in an oligarchic context, compare the anecdote about Critias recorded by Proclus, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 70 (Diehl): ἐκαλεῖτο ἰδιώτης μὲν ἐν φιλοσόφοις, φιλόσοφος δὲ ἐν ἰδιώταις, ὡς ἡ ἱστορία φησίν (‘The tradition is that philosophers considered him [Critias] a layperson, while laypeople considered him a philosopher.’) 94 It should be observed that this specific meaning of οἱ ὀλίγοι is not (to my knowledge) attested earlier than in Thucydides (e.g. 6.38.4); Barrett does not comment at all on the phrase. See however Caire 2016, 21, 88 on okhlokratia (‘ochlocracy’). 95 See e.g. Iannucci 2002. Pindar, at Pythian 2.86–88, effectively uses οἱ σοφοί to denote οἱ ὀλίγοι. Simonton 2017, 59, n. 261, includes Hipp. 983–1035 in a list of passages illustrating the elite colouring often given to sōphrosunē; see also Iannucci 2002, 111–137. 96 Collard et al. 2009 ad F356: a supplement such as Hense’s is needed to avoid implying “I prefer a few bad men to a crowd [of bad men].” Erechtheus F356 would appear to reply to and contradict F355: ναῦς ἡ μεγίστη κρεῖσσον ἢ σμικρὸν σκάφος. Archelaus F244 appears to follow on from F243, presumably spoken by the same person: ὀλίγον ἄλκιμον δόρυ / κρεῖσσον στρατηγῷ μυρίου στρατεύματος. 97 This is true even if the field of view is restricted to the probably original verses in l. 19–254 (West).

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Euripides, Auge F275 The fragments of tragedy include one use of ὀλίγοι (albeit without the article), in an explicitly political sense, in a very late play of Euripides: κακῶς δ’ ὄλοιντο πάντες, οἳ μοναρχίᾳ χαίρουσιν ὀλίγων τ’ ἐν πόλει τυραννίδι· τοὐλεύθερον γὰρ ὄνομα παντὸς ἄξιον, κἂν σμίκρ’ ἔχῃ τις, μεγάλ’ ἔχειν νομιζέτω 1–2 μοναρχίᾳ . . . τυραννίδι Hense: τυραννίδι . . . μοναρχίᾳ Stobaeus 4 νομιζέτω Philo: νομίζεται Stob. A terrible death to anyone who is happy with monarchy, or the tyranny of a few, in their polis! You see, being called ‘free’ is the most important thing: (if he is free) even a man who has little should be thought of as having much.

These four lines offer an outstanding concatenation of constitutional vocabulary: sole rule (monarkhia), freedom (to eleutheron), and – most egregious of all – oligarchy, memorably metaphorized as the ‘tyranny of the few’ (the turannis of the oligoi).98 More than that, however, these lines champion democracy and democratic freedoms at the expense of sole rule and oligarchy. Democracy is then equated with freedom (τὸ ἐλεύθερον).99 In metaphorizing oligarchy as the ‘tyranny of the few’, the speaker rehearses what became a near-universal rhetorical position: tyranny and oligarchy are both bad forms of government; oligarchy is conceptually subordinate to tyranny; democracy is the good form of government. Democratic freedom is invaluable precisely because (γάρ) it mitigates wealth inequality, a necessary condition for oligarchy qua plutocratic minority rule.100

Euripides, Pleisthenes F626 The following piece of protreptic, from Pleisthenes, contains even clearer theorizing about kinds of government: δήμῳ δὲ μήτε πᾶν ἀναρτήσῃς κράτος, μήτ’ αὖ κακώσῃς, πλοῦτον ἔντιμον τιθείς. μηδ’ ἄνδρα δήμῳ πιστὸν ἐκβάλῃς ποτέ μηδ’ αὖξε καιροῦ μείζον’, οὐ γὰρ ἀσφαλές, μή σοι τύραννος λαμπρὸς ἐξ ἀυτοῦ φανῇ. κώλυε δ’ ἄνδρα παρὰ δίκην τιμώμενον· πόλει γὰρ εὐτυχοῦντες οἱ κακοὶ νόσος Neither provide complete power (kratos) to the people (dēmos) nor, on the other hand, mistreat them and put too much stock in property. Don’t ever exile a man whom the people (dēmos) trust, but don’t allow him to become too powerful either – that’s risky – in case he turns into an influential tyrant (turannos) against you. And restrain any man who is unjustly respected: when bad men prosper, the polis is sick.

According to this speaker, dēmokratia (here literally ‘giving total kratos to the dēmos’) is quite out of the question. But so is plutocracy – suppressing the dēmos and allowing wealth to determine status (timē).101 Keeping in mind the prominence

98 Simonton 2017, 60, n. 264, cites F275 as an example of the conflation of oligarchs with tyrants. I tend to see association (not conflation) of the two kinds of ‘bad’ non-democratic regime here. 99 The γάρ in line three clearly connects the repudiation of monarchy and oligarchy with the celebration of freedom. On the connection between freedom and democracy in democratic and anti-democratic ideology, see e.g. Ober 1998, 6, 244–246. 100 Oligarchy as plutocratic minority rule: Simonton 2017, 35–40; Caire 2016, 71–72. 101 In the warning against exploitation of the dēmos in l. 2, one hears (μήτ’ αὖ κακώσῃς) an echo of the crime of kakōsis: mistreatment of those considered to be under one’s protection or supervision. I owe this observation to Ewen Bowie.

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of timēmata (‘property qualifications’) in historical oligarchies, note the juxtaposition of ploutos (‘wealth’) and entimos (‘respected’) in line 2. This is a picture of classical oligarkhia by another name.102 Next, do not exile ‘someone the dēmos trusts’ – a prostatēs tou dēmou – in case he turns tyrant. As Plato’s Socrates makes clear, the ‘people’s champion’ was a very real threat to oligarchies, and there were few options for dealing with one: ‘when they [holders of property] can neither expel him [the prostatēs] nor get him killed by slandering him to the polis, they plot to kill him secretly through a violent murder’ (Resp. 8.566b).103 Finally, do not allow bad actors (hoi kakoi) to prosper and unjustly attain prestige, because this is damaging to the entire polis. That is: restrain upstarts, thereby avoiding radical democracy or decadent oligarchy (i.e. an oligarchy governed by a differently sliced ‘few’). One might think of these kakoi as demagogues or – in Theognidean terms – as nouveaux riches in an elite-governed polis. Either way, it is a tenet of oligarchic theory that kakoi must not attain undue timē or influence collective decision-making.104 Stated generally, this is a topos (e.g. Aesch. F398, Eur. F644). In a context such as this, however, proper terms (dēmos, turannos, kratos) render it a specifically oligarchic principle. Overall, what we have here is a warning to avoid democracy and oligarchy, and to forestall stasis and tyranny by avoiding intra-elite conflict. As such, this passage chimes well with the collective action problem facing historical oligarchies.105 The speaker offers a protreptic checklist of how to secure a moderate government which is neither oligarchy, nor democracy, nor tyranny. (Kingship, or patria politeia perhaps?) Thus there is loud resonance with the constitutional debate in Herodotus (e.g. the criticism of both democracy and oligarchy, and the notion that both ultimately lead to stasis and tyranny). The setting is likely a heroic monarchy, and the speaker is probably a ruler advising his son.106 How much more significant, then, that kingship is not specifically mentioned; and that democracy, oligarchy, and tyranny are lumped together as bad forms of government. A passage from Heracles illustrates this protreptic. At lines 588–592 – deleted by some but retained in Diggle’s OCT – Amphitryon warns Heracles that the new monarch Lycus has the support of partisans (summakhoi). These partisans come from a particular group: formerly rich men who have squandered their wealth and are now penniless, ‘snatching at others’ property’, and who have formed a revolutionary faction (stasis).107 Compare Plato’s account (Resp. 8.555d) of the risk posed to oligarchies by penniless men of good family, mired in debt and desirous of a coup (νεωτερισμοῦ ἐρῶντες). In Heracles, Amphitryon outlines a clear-cut case of this phenomenon, whereby “ruined oligarchs” (as Bond calls them) form a faction and support Lycus as part of a dunasteia-cum-turannis.108 As in the Pleisthenes fragment, we again see concrete analysis of the causes of elite factionalism.

Euripides, Erechtheus F362 Erechtheus gives similar advice – to Cecrops? – on how to be a good ruler. As Collard et al. note, “the advice is broadly aristocratic in tone, apt at some points for a future monarch, and consistent with the ethos of Periclean Athens.”109 It is also good advice for oligarchs wishing to avoid intra-elite factionalism and stasis – especially as it includes the otherwise anodyne dictum of respecting both rich and poor.110

102 Simonton 2017, 36, n. 150, cites F626 as an example of oligarchy qua plutocracy. 103 Cited by Simonton 2017, 114–115, with Eur. F626 also adduced at n. 29. Cf. Eur. Or. 772 (see below). 104 Cf. Isoc. Antid. 318–319, with Ober 1998, 264–265. 105 Simonton 2017, passim and esp. 65–68. 106 Collard and Cropp 2008, 80. Note that he uses singular forms of imperative and prohibition. 107 For an early instance of the political sense of stasis as ‘civil war’ (in this instance imagined to ensue after conflict over dynastic succession), see Eur. Cresphontes F453, a kletic hymn to Peace (Eirēnē). 108 Bond 1981 ad loc. Kovacs 1982, 32–33 (referring to them as “ruined aristocrats”) suggests that an interpolator may have been reading Arist. Pol. 1305b39–40. 109 Collard et al. 2009, 181. 110 Note the use of μήποτ᾽ αὔξαν᾽ (“never allow to grow in power”), echoed in the Pleisthenes fragment (μηδ’ αὖξε); the emphasis on kakoi (= ponēroi); and above all the idea that when kakoi gain wealth and prestige they harm the polis.

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Euripides, Autolycus (A or B) F282 In this satyric fragment (containing a famous denunciation of athletes), the speaker effectively rejects the traditional valuation of the kaloi kagathoi and the traditional valuation of physical prowess and bravery (i.e. andreia) as a cardinal virtue. We are to reward not athletes but rather good leaders who benefit individual city-states and the wider Greek world: men who display the political virtues of wisdom, moderation, and justice;111 who stave off disaster by speaking well in public; and who save the polis both from external wars (makhai) and civil unrest (staseis). The general picture is that of utopian meritocracy in which elite leaders – plural – are rewarded specifically for their political aretē and the quality of their service to the polis. If one squints hard enough, one can see a reflection of radical oligarchic theory as pursued in the fifth century by the ‘Old Oligarch’ and Critias (see below).

Euripides, Aiolos F21 One of the most egregiously oligarchic fragments is excerpted by Stobaeus from Aiolos, an early play of Euripides. Above, note the loaded use of sunkrasis (‘mixture’) and the technical term politeuesthai (‘govern a polis’): δοκεῖτ’ ἂν οἰκεῖν †γᾶν† εἰ πένης ἅπας λαὸς πολιτεύοιτο πλουσίων ἄτερ; οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο χωρὶς ἐσθλὰ καὶ κακά, ἀλλ’ ἔστι τις σύγκρασις, ὥστ’ ἔχειν καλῶς. ἃ μὴ γὰρ ἔστι τῷ πένητι πλούσιος δίδωσ’· ἃ δ’ οἱ πλουτοῦντες οὐ κεκτήμεθα, τοῖσιν πένησι χρώμενοι †τιμώμεθα† 1 †γᾶν† εἰ Stobaeus: γῆν εν ᾗ Cropp

7 τιμώμεθα SM: πειθώμεθα A: θηρώμεθα Bergler

Do you think that you could live in a country where the whole population of poor people governed (politeuoito) without the rich? Good and bad would not be separate if so. There is, however, a kind of mixture (sunkrasis) that does works well: whatever a poor man may lack, a rich man provides. And as for the things we rich men do not possess, we are given honour (timē) through our dealings with the poor.112

Here we find explicit reference to polis-government; indirect reference to different regime types, and to rich and poor as citizen classes; and sunkrasis (‘mixing’) in the quasi-technical sense to mean the blending of wealth classes – in effect, rich and poor – in a polity. Compare Thucydides’ assessment (written perhaps twenty years after Euripides’ Aiolos) of the government of the Five Thousand: “It was above all during the early period [of this constitution] that, in my lifetime at least, the Athenians would appear to have governed well: the mixture (xunkrasis) of high-class folk and regular folk was measured (metria). It was this that first raised up the city-state after such disasters” (8.97.2–3). The Five Thousand make up a measured mixture (metria sunkrasis) of the many (hoi polloi) and the few (hoi oligoi), of poorer democrats and wealthy oligarchs. More generally, the idea of proper mixing is fundamental to later political theory, being part and parcel of the overall ideal of the moderate constitution and of course the specific notion of the ‘mixed’ constitution.113 Moderate government (by the many or the few) requires careful attention to the mixing and interaction of rich and poor; too much of one or the other leads to stasis. Even the gesture towards noblesse oblige has its equivalent in oligarchic practice: localised patronage of poorer citizens by wealthy elites, famously pioneered by Cimon, became an important oligarchic strategy.114 All in all, I read here a warning against radical democracy and a corresponding approval of plutocratic oligarchy sustained by a measured mixture of rich and poor. 111 For a similar valuation of the political virtues at the expense of andreia, see e.g. Protagoras’ ‘Great Speech’ in Plato’s Protagoras. Note also the plural ἄνδρας . . . σοφούς κἀγαθούς (23) and the relative phrase χὤστις ἡγεῖται πόλει (24), which in this context has something of the effect of a plural. 112 Alternatively, reading θηρώμεθα (Bergler): “we pursue it through our dealings with the poor”. Simonton 2017, 47, n. 197, cites F21 as an example of sunkrasis being used in a political context (along with Thuc. 8.97.2). 113 Caire 2016, 344–347. 114 Simonton 2017, 168–185 on oligarchic clientelism.

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Euripides, Suppliants 238–245, 399–408 Two passages from Suppliants bring these matters to a head. The first passage, Supp. 238–245, confronts head-on the idea of the middle class: There are three classes (μερίδες) of citizens (πολιτῶν): the rich are no help, and they always want more. The have-nots, who lack a livelihood, are awful (δεινοί) and give in to envy excessively; they sharply goad those with property, deceived by the words of their good-fornothing champions (πονηρῶν προστατῶν). Of these three classes (μοιρῶν), the one in the middle (ἐν μέσωι) is what keeps poleis safe by preserving whatever constitutional arrangement (κόσμος) the polis decides on.

The middle class, the class which is ‘in the middle’, explicitly balances rich and poor, thereby preserving constitutional order (kosmos) and warding off stasis.115 This is precisely the so-called moderate constitution, where a substantial propertied class is necessary for maintaining order. Crucially, however, the idealized moderate constitution conceals the fact that a quiet ‘middle’ class is also central to moderate oligarchy (see above on Eum. 526–561). In the second passage (Supp. 399–408), Theseus denigrates absolute sole rule and plutocracy (i.e. oligarchy) in favour of proto-democratic constitutional monarchy. After the anti-democratic Theban herald asks who the turannos of Athens is, Theseus jumps to the defensive. There is no sole ruler, he insists: the dēmos itself rules, and there are apparently annual magistracies allotted by sortition, as in contemporary Athens. Next, however, comes a reference to the rich – here metonymically called ‘wealth’ (ploutos) – and to the all-important balance of rich and poor in the polis: theseus First of all, friend, you started out all wrong when you asked who was leader (τύραννος) here: this city-state is not ruled by a single man; it is free. The people (δῆμος) rule, annually, taking their share turn about. They do not grant the rich a greater share of influence; the poor have an equal share.

This is telling: Theseus starts out by saying, in effect, “we are a free democracy, not a tyranny”. He then adds, “nor are we a plutocracy”. Even in a pointed attack on tyranny, oligarchy still looms.

Euripides, Phaethon F774, F775a Finally, and most egregiously of all: in Phaethon, Merope compares elite power-sharing to the practice of using multiple anchors to secure a ship, concluding that “a single champion (prostatēs) harms the polis, whereas having another [champion] is a good thing” (F774.4–6). That is: sole rule is bad; political power should be shared among prominent elites; oligarchy is good.116 The ship of state is a well-worn topos. Plutarch (Sol. 19.2) even uses it to describe bicameral democracy, claiming that Solon established the Boule of 400 in addition to the Areopagite boulē so that the two councils would be like ‘two anchors’ (δυσὶ βουλαῖς ὥσπερ ἀγκύραις) for the state.117 Likewise, in fragment 775a of Phaethon, Merope asserts that it is “foolish” to “share authority (exousia) with either ignorant children or even [ignorant] citizens (politai).” That is: political power should not be shared with all citizens, for that way lies anarchy also. We infer: democracy is bad, but political power might be shared with some citizens. Between them, therefore, these two fragments of Phaethon repurpose the traditional aversion to both anarchy and tyranny and so come the closest of any of the remains of tragedy to explicit praise of oligarchy using political terminology (prostatēs, politai). One could even argue that Merope promotes dynastic rule shared between royal siblings.

115 The use of kosmos to mean ‘constitution, government’ is attested from Herodotus and Thucydides on, not to mention the related meaning ‘arranger’ in the Dreros Law. See also Eur. Bellerophontes F285.3–5 for the notion that there are three estates (μοῖραι) in life, namely wealth, good birth, and poverty. Collard et al. 2009 ad loc. cite Eur. Supp. 238–245, Ion 595–606, and Aiolos F21 (on which see above). 116 For an early Homeric parallel, see Il. 2.203–206: Odysseus criticises polukoiraniē (here ‘anarchy’, not ‘oligarchy’) in favour of having only ‘one koiranos, one basileus’; that is, one leader per contingent; cf. Il. 2.188–197. 117 Thanks to Matt Simonton for this reference.

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Euripides, Phoenissae We find no such direct engagement with oligarchy in tragedy after 411. We do, however, find intra-elite competition and failures in power-sharing leading to a breakdown of elite egalitarianism and philia, and, ultimately, to stasis. In this way, oligarchy maintains a presence, albeit under the radar. Euripides’ Phoenissae (probably 411–409) dramatizes a dispute over dynastic succession. Specifically: a dispute over annual rotation of public office (in this case, kingship) which echoes recent experiences of oligarchy and masselite interactions more generally.118 The text is replete with words for sharing and turn-taking (e.g. l. 74–75, 80) and mediation (467–468). There is a telling insistence – which prefigures the amnesty some years later – that philoi must ‘forget past wrongs’ and focus on the matter at hand (461–464). There is also emphasis on internal conflict (ἔριν, 81) and on exile, a characteristically elite problem (72, 76, 396, 406–407, 627). And then there is the plutocracy which undermines elite xenia: despite Polynices’ noble lineage (εὐγένεια, 404; γένος, 405), his friends deserted him once he was penniless (401–405). Constitutional matters come to a head in the agōn. Eteocles, for his part, is almost a caricature of ‘pure’ oligarchic ideology (à la Critias), given the widespread conflation of oligarchy and tyranny. In Eteocles’ mind, Turannis is the ‘greatest goddess’ (506) and a prize worth doing any evil to possess (524–525). He considers it the height of cowardice (anandria) to give up a greater share for a lesser one (509–510), the implication being that it is the height of manliness (andreia) to fight for a greater share – to fight for control of the polis. Fragment 250 from Euripides’ Archelaus, a play which we know was performed in an autocratic context, makes much the same point on the face of it: “turannis, which is considered second to the gods: it lacks immortality but has the rest”. Textual and contextual details, however, point to a positive presentation of sole rule in Archelaus, which we might reasonably associate with that play’s performance context. Judging from the evidence we do have – keeping in mind that an absence of evidence is not evidence of absence – Archelaus entailed fulsome praise of sole rule (as a quasi-divine phenomenon, not an actual divine personification) without the negative moral colouring attached to tyranny. Surviving fragments reveal an emphasis on good leadership, innate aretē, kleos (F240), and gentle self-restraint in the face of violence (F258). Eteocles, then, is a bad actor not simply because he praises sole rule, but because his desire for sole rule exceeds the limits of sōphrusunē; and because he undermines a pre-existing system of elite power-sharing. His praise of turannis is not unlike that of a stereotypically ambitious oligarch. In response, Jocasta condemns Philotimia (ambition, ‘love of timē’), the very personification of intra-elite competition, as “the worst deity (daimōn)” (531–532). She uses the word intradiegetically as a synonym for turannis – sole rule – which Eteocles has just personified as the greatest goddess.119 But philotimia was also associated specifically with oligarchs and oligarchy, and in particular with the fragility of rule of the few.120 Thucydides (3.82.8) explicitly blames stasis on lust for power driven by philotimia and pleonexia (greed). It has been argued that philotimia became an especially problematic and loaded term after the Four Hundred, and that Euripides’ use of it in Phoenissae is entirely topical.121 For Jocasta, philotimia harms oikoi and poleis (533–538). Here, under the conceptual cover of sole rule (turannis), is another subterranean echo of oligarchic egalitarianism (and in particular oligarchic power-sharing) failing, and violent stasis resulting (Hdt. 3.82, Thuc. 3.82.8, 8.89.3). The solution? Equality (Isotēs), which binds together friends, city-states, and allies (Phoen. 536–538, 542). Jocasta virtually mentions isonomia – in Herodotus a synonym for dēmokratia – and so alludes to democracy: “equality (to ison) naturally induces lawfulness (nomimon) in human society” (538).122 Democracy is in this sense a cure for elite competition and stasis. 118 Cf. Eur. Antiope F223 for concerns over elite power-sharing and an optimistic view of the scheduled handover of high office. Date of Phoen.: Mastronarde 1994, 11–14. 119 Mastronarde 1994, ad loc. 120 See e.g. Thuc. 3.82.8 with Caire 2016, 295–296; Thuc. 8.89.3 with Caire 2016, 313–314; Plut. Per. 11.3 with Caire 2016, 34–35; see also Mitchell 2006, 180–181. In ancient sources, φιλοτιμία tends to be associated or conflated with φιλονικία; ambition leads to competition. Since the two words are metrically identical, Jocasta’s condemnation of Philotimia in Phoenissae suggests condemnation of Philonikia also. For democratic inflections of philotimia in the fourth century, see Ober 1989, 231, 283–284; Wilson 2000, 187–194. 121 De Romilly 1965, 36–41. Cf. Mastronarde ad 532 (citing IA 527). 122 Mastronarde 1994, ad 536 associates Isotēs (first attested here and recurring at l. 542) with isonomia, but his note ad 538 does not mention isonomia; nor does Craik 1988, in the note on either line. Spoken aloud, however, these words strongly suggest isonomia: τὸ γὰρ ἴσον νόμιμον, “to gar ison-nomimon” – accepting Mastronarde’s persuasive arguments against reading μόνιμον with Plutarch.

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In practice, however, the solution (such as it is in tragedy) involves elite self-destruction. Menoeceus is the last pure-bred Sown Man, the scion of a quintessentially aristocratic genos (940–942); his suicide ends an era. At the same time, he is a metonymic representative of Thebes; his death saves the polis.123 In this he is an offsider not only to Euripides’ female sacrificial victims, but also to self-serving elites like Eteocles and Polynices. Not that Menoeceus lacks ambition; rather, his ambition is to die for the polis, not rule it (994–997). In sum, Phoenissae dramatizes intra-elite competition threatening the stability of a political community to such an extent that, given the inevitability of elite philotimia (and the failure of the rhetoric of equality to persuade rival elites to cooperate), the least bad option is for civic-minded elites to sacrifice themselves for the good of the community.124

Euripides, Orestes Orestes likewise depicts a dispute over dynastic succession and a breakdown of intra-elite relations in a polis under a heroic kingship.125 The focus, however, is on the elite hetaireia (‘gang’) and counter-revolutionary violence.126 Pylades, Orestes, and Electra are elite conspirators planning to incite stasis, reverse a sovereign decree of the polis, and take sole rule. They form a hetaireia (1072, 1079) which after the decree of execution becomes a sunōmosia (‘sworn conspiracy’). There is talk of reprisals (timōria, 425) and even counter-revolution (1539–1540). The citizenry at large is also involved (e.g. 427, 431). In particular, Euripides’ Argives hold an open-voting full assembly to decide the murder case – which from one perspective seems a proto-democratic institution.127 In turn, proto- or quasi-democratic elements in Euripides’ Argos emphasise Orestes, Pylades, and Electra’s quasi- or proto-oligarchic bent. The conspirators share characteristically anti-democratic attitudes to the dēmos (e.g. 108, 119, 612, 1157) and to demagoguery (696–697). Yet elite actors in Orestes are also well aware of the need to secure some kind of support from the polis (446, 974–975, 704–705). Ultimately, the result is not rule of the few or rule of the many but sole rule over Argos by Orestes (1660), with peace cemented by Apollo through elite inter-marriage (1625–1665, 1682–1683). On the other hand, according to one influential view of Orestes, the ending entails an ironic failure of closure and a kind of tragi-comic licence: Apollo ‘fixes’ everything; at the same time, everything remains broken.128 With this in mind, we might see in Orestes a dim view of intra-elite competition and elite-led stasis, and indeed a dim view of the likelihood of solving the problem without reprisals, or at least without a deus ex machina. Orestes even worries, explicitly, about a people’s champion (prostatēs tou dēmou) turning the Argive populace (hoi polloi) against the conspirators (772) – a danger which specifically threatened historical oligarchies.129 All in all, Griffith’s general observation about later tragedy holds: “ambitious and hyperactive aristocratic families are seen as both comprising the problem and often providing the solution as well (if any solution at all is offered).”130

123 Rabinowitz 1993, 64–65. Bacchae presents a mirror image: the self-destruction of the royal house ultimately benefits the polis. 124 See further Simonton 2017, 265, n. 155, for bibliography and comment (“The political ideals espoused in [Phoenissae] . . . seem to point to the importance of equality within the ruling elite of an oligarchy”). 125 Griffith 2011, 201–207. 126 E.g. Euben 1986a (222: “Euripides’ Orestes is about political corruption”); Hall 1993; Zimmermann 1998. According to Griffith 2011, 207, the positive outcome of Orestes depends on both elite familial institutions and political institutions. 127 The plot hinges on a decision made by a full (plērēs) and sovereign (kurios) Argive assembly, apparently modelled on the full-assembly court, often associated with the ‘Heliaia’ (e.g. Or. 48, 729–730, 884, 1035). One key difference, however, is that the court in Orestes judges a homicide case, and homicide in Athens was the province of the Areopagus, a restricted and fundamentally – at least at first – elite institution. Oligarchies often allowed open, full assemblies but typically restricted jury service to full members of the regime: Arist. Pol. 4.1301a12–13; Simonton 2017, 110. For discussion of the assembly in Or., see e.g. De Romilly 1972; Carter 2013, esp. 39–46. 128 Dunn 1996, 158–179. 129 See above on Pleisthenes F626. Pylades admittedly responds that a good prostatēs brings about good decisions (773); but Orestes is unenthused: εἶἑν κτλ. (774). 130 Griffith 2011, 176.

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Critias It has been proposed that radical oligarchs under the post-Periclean democracy engaged with theatre precisely because they had no other public venue in which to air unpopular anti-democratic ideas.131 And for all the democratic ideology supposedly stitched into Greek tragedy, one ought to keep in mind that we do have evidence for a practising oligarch– tragedian: Critias, son of Callaeschrus, the poet, tragedian, political theorist, oligarch, and sworn enemy of Athenian democracy. In addition to testimonia hinting at Critias’ theatrical activity, and a handful of unplaced fragments, we have remains of four plays which have been attributed – by Wilamowitz, with a mixed reception – not to Euripides but to Critias: Pirithous, Rhadamanthys, Tennes, and Sisyphus (apparently a satyrplay).132 We know Critias developed a comprehensive theory of hard-line meritocratic oligarchy.133 He was also a highly engagé sympotic poet in the mode of Solon and Theognis; a major theme of his poetry was rejection of all things Athenian in favour of an aristocratic, Spartan way of life.134 Finally, we know that Critias’ oligarchic and broadly Laconophile political philosophy centered on the rule of the best men, selectively chosen for their innate aretē.135 And what of the plays? To be sure, I see in the dramatic fragments of Critias nothing like the oligarchic theorizing of the Euripides passages surveyed above. Yet Critias’ plays – or what I will persist in referring to as Critias’ plays – do seem to have consistently engaged in sociopolitical reflection, aspects of which resonate with Critias’ political philosophy.136 In Centanni’s reading, the speaker of the famous Sisyphus fragment embodies beneficial rationalism and the pragmatic application of human ingenuity to social problems.137 In turn, the tragedies Pirithous, Rhadamanthus, and Tennes share a common motif which is legible as an oligarchic ideal: elite philia; hetaireia and loyalty in the face of the ultimate test (exile or death).138 In each of these tragedies, an elite character voluntarily faces death or exile alongside a philos. Together with Sisyphus, moreover, all these plays address the idea of exclusion from the polis. According to Centanni’s attractive argument, this makes for a thematically connected tetralogy: elites banding together to face the ultimate test and make a place for themselves in the polis. As Centanni puts it, “Crizia rilancia costantemente nei suoi miti tragici gli stessi temi e gli stessi scenari: l’amore e l’odio fraterno, l’esilio, il limite tremendo di Ade, il riscatto e la salvezza come premio di una straordinaria prova di areté.”139 The historical context of Critias’ theatrical activity is significant: between 411 and 405, precisely when oligarchs and oligarchic sympathizers faced the spectre of atimia, exile, or worse. At the very least, these plays engaged consistently, and at a crucial time, with ideas of clear relevance to Critias’ oligarchic project. This mirrors certain preoccupations of Euripides’ Phoenissae and Orestes, and (to a lesser extent) of Sophocles’ late plays: elite philia and hetairia, elite aretē, and the right of the so-called beltistoi to live in – and rule – the polis. None of this is to say that any of these late plays explicitly mentions or depicts rule of the few. Rather, that in a post411 milieu, we can see consistent engagement with a cluster of what one might call ‘oligarchical’ – oligarch-ish – themes and motifs: in times of crisis, elites (sometimes companions, sometimes co-conspirators) must prove their aretē and risk life and limb, sometimes for each other, sometimes for their own share of power. Sophocles (Oedipus at Colonus, Philoctetes) depicts heroic philia ultimately benefiting the community, with dynastic succession treated as being essentially unproblematic (cf. Eur. HF). Euripides presents what one might call a sceptical view of elite philia and elite competition; Critias presents a positive view. Tragedy after 411 appears to have incorporated divergent retrospective views of oligarchy, presented under the guise of mythical elites.

131 Iannucci 2002, 26 with n. 11. 132 TrGF I 43. Collard 2007, 56–68, surveys the evidence for and against Euripidean authorship of Pirithous. See in particular 64–68 for bibliography and the status quaestionis; see further Alvoni 2011 on the authorship question. Centanni 1997 offers a reading of the four plays in light of Critias’ other poetic and philosophical output; see also Angiò 1989. 133 Bultrighini 1999; Caire 2016, 241–247, 314–318. Among ancient sources, see in particular Xen. Hell. 2.3 (especially the debate between Critias and Theramenes at 2.3.24–56). 134 Iannucci 2002; Wilson 2003b. 135 Bultrighini 1999, esp. 57–68. 136 The following comments are heavily indebted to Centanni 1997. 137 Centanni 1997, 152–159. 138 Centanni 1997, esp. 177–183. There are good grounds for scepticism of Wilamowitz’s theory of a connected Critias tetralogy: see Collard 2007, 60–61. 139 Centanni 1997, 183.

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Oligarchs, oligarchy, and Greek tragedy Fifth-century Greek tragedy was roomy enough to host not only kings, tyrants, and democrats, but also oligarchs and ‘oligarchic’ ideas. In my pre-411 examples, most of which are fragmentary, these interests are more or less explicit. In post-411 tragedy, by contrast, oligarchic discourse shelters under the symbolic umbrella of tyranny. Yet, as the Four Hundred themselves made abundantly clear (and the Thirty would do so again), oligarchy is the true antithesis of, and real-life threat to, Athenian democracy. In that case, why does tragedy concentrate almost exclusively on sole rule? I have already observed tragedy’s generic conservatism about setting: most tragedies dramatize more or less traditional mythical narratives set in more or less traditional mythical communities.140 Most such communities are situated in or around a nucleated palatial settlement ruled by one man. Thus, the poetic path of least resistance in terms of regime-type is, quite simply, to take sole rule as a starting-point. As Carter observes, “The natural political home of tragedy was therefore heroic monarchy. It was possible, however, to manoeuvre the drama into forms of tyranny or democracy.”141 For example, mythical sole rule can take on a proto-democratic aspect if the monarch shares political power in some way with a sovereign dēmos (which can in turn be metaphorized as a monarch). So Carter, again: “the most obvious way in which a tragic poet can bring heroic subject matter into the political present is by tinkering with the constitution of the city where the drama is set, tugging it away from the world of myth”.142 In practical terms, it is more difficult – impossible, one might say – to depict ‘oligarchical’ sole rule, for ‘the few’ can only govern a community with neither a sole ruler nor a sovereign dēmos, such as Euripides’ Delphi. And yet, as we have seen, there is a place for oligarchy in tragedy. Oligarchy’s low profile is not a rule but a convention; this convention is strong – particularly with respect to the chorus – but not unwavering (pace Carter et al.). In any case, this strong convention is itself a function of the strong preference for traditional mythical settings (which typically entail sole rule). Every oligarch secretly (or openly) wants to be first among equals – if not to rule alone and absolutely.143 And in Greek political thought, tyranny remained the ‘Big Bad’ (so to speak) of regime-types, while oligarchy was more or less assimilated to tyranny over time.144 Thus the so-called ‘Thirty Tyrants’, and thus Thucydides’ description of the mutilation of the Herms as being part of “an oligarchic and tyrannical conspiracy” (6.60.1). So Lynette Mitchell: [O]ligarchy was linked to tyranny because in the development of Greek political theory, both at the popular and more reflective and philosophical levels, tyranny informed and even provided the analytical framework for understanding constitutional forms. In a conceptual and ideological world where definitions of constitutional forms were neither fixed nor clearly defined, tyranny represented a fixed point against which other types of constitution could be formulated, analysed and criticised.145

A polity must be governed by someone or someones (Arist. Pol. 1279a27–28). Given that the difference between one and many is always greater than that between one and few or few and many, the conceptual polar opposite of democracy is not oligarchy but sole rule: “oligarchy was assimilated to tyranny in order to force a contrast between oligarchy and democracy which could not be sustained in terms of the constitutional forms themselves”.146 In Greek tragedy, likewise, the conventional antithesis of democracy is tyranny.147 Hence, for example, the vituperation of both sole rule per se and the so-called ‘sole rule of the oligoi’ in the Auge fragment (see above): even actual oligarchs are metaphorized as sole rulers. Hence, also the stereotypical tragic tyrant. Sole rule in tragedy is both a generically conventional element of mythical settings and a prevalent symbolic vehicle for alternatives to democracy, a capacious category which includes kingship, tyranny, and oligarchy. And so to conclude. Whether or not one accepts all my examples, it is clear that, in the aggregate, the remains of Greek tragedy do show an interest in oligarchy. (The quotations in Stobaeus 4.4, “about hoi dunatoi in poleis”, likewise attest to the genre’s interest in the public affairs of elites in general.) It has been suggested that oligarchy is insignificant 140 For the settings of known tragedies and satyrplays, see now Stewart 2017, 201–210 (Appendix 1). 141 Carter 2007, 88, 89. 142 Carter 2007, 84. 143 Thuc. 8.89.3; Simonton 2017, 75–106. 144 Hansen 2004, 83; Mitchell 2006; Caire 2016, 46–51; Simonton 2017, 59–61. Cf. Isocr. 16.36–38. 145 Mitchell 2006, 178. 146 Mitchell 2006, 185. 147 Mills 1997, 120–121; Carter 2007, 83–84, 123–124; Mitchell 2013, 162.

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in tragedy because Athenians were unconcerned about oligarchy before 411. In recovering the oligarchs of tragedy, I would also reverse the terms of that equation. It is only after the Four Hundred (and the Thirty even more so) that oligarchy becomes more or less unthinkable in tragedy. Tragedy thus rehearses a move that oratory and philosophy would also make: provisionally accept a democratic discursive frame, in which oligarchy is to be rejected or ignored; at the same time, claim as much conceptual wiggle room as possible to press moderate democracy or proto-democratic kingship into the ideological space once occupied by oligarchy or elite-led regimes; in the process, throw oligarchy into the same cell as tyranny.148 For tragic poets as for political philosophers, sole rule was especially good to think with, even about oligarchy, especially after 411. Perhaps, then, it is time for scholars of tragedy to spare a thought for the poor – or not so poor – oligarchs.

148 Cf. e.g. Ober 1998: 280–289.

Robert Cowan

13 Fault on Both Sides: Constructive Destruction in Varius’ Thyestes L. Varius Rufus’ tragedy Thyestes is, by any reckoning, one of the most significant lost works of Classical literature. The disappearance of all but six words is even more frustrating if, as has been suggested, a copy survived as late as the end of the eighth century.1 The preservation of any tragedy written and performed in the four and a half centuries between the posthumous staging of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus in 401 BC (or perhaps that of the Rhesus in the fourth century) and the earliest of Seneca’s plays, probably in Gaius’ or Claudius’ principate, would immensely enhance our understanding of the history of the genre.2 Yet while any play by Astydamas, Alexander of Aetolia, or Accius might offer similar enlightenment, the consensus of ancient testimony is that Varius’ Thyestes was a masterpiece. Tacitus has his Maternus group it with the works of Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Virgil, and Ovid as examples of poetry more renowned than oratory.3 Quintilian goes still further when, amidst qualified praise of other Roman tragedians, he asserts that “Varius’ Thyestes can be compared with any Greek tragedy you wish”.4 Yet, quite apart from its intrinsic quality and its importance in literary history, Varius’ Thyestes is arguably most fascinating – and elusive – as a key moment in the history of Classical theatre and autocracy. A note preserved in two eighth- and ninth-century codices gives the following testimonium about the play’s first performance: Lucius Varius cognomento Rufus Thyesten tragoediam magna cura absolutam post Actiacam uictoriam Augusti ludis eius in scaena edidit, pro qua fabula sestertium deciens accepit. Lucius Varius, surnamed Rufus, produced on the stage a tragedy, Thyestes, perfected with great care, after Augustus’ victory at Actium at his games, for which play he received one million sesterces.5

There are inevitably questions about the text and even the reliability of this testimonium.6 Questions too arise about whether the ludi referred to are the Actian Games or a series of ludi scaenici which the Commentator Cruquianus claims were given as part of the young Caesar’s triple Triumph later in 29 BC.7 Jocelyn offers the further suggestion that the tragedy might have been performed at the dedication of the Temple of Actian Apollo in 28.8 Fortunately, for the purposes of this chapter, such ultimately unknowable and unprovable details do not affect the central argument, which proceeds on the basis that the play was staged as an integral part of one or other public celebration of the young Caesar’s victory at Actium and in the civil wars as a whole, and his establishment of peace and order as the pre-eminent

1 Housman 1917, disputed by Lindsay 1922. For a sceptical discussion, see Jocelyn 1980. 2 On Augustan tragedy, see Tarrant 1978, 258–261; Coffey 1986; Boyle 2006, 160–176; Lehmann 2013. 3 nec ullus Asinii aut Messallae liber tam inlustris est quam Medea Ovidii aut Varii Thyestes. Tac. Dial. 12, 6. 4 iam Vari Thyestes cuilibet Graecarum comparari potest. Quint. Inst. 10, 1, 98. 5 Note preserved in Parisinus Lat. 7530 and Casanatensis 1086. I use the term ‘note’ instead of the more common ‘scholion’ in accordance with the arguments of Jocelyn 1980, 387–393. 6 See for example Heubner 1979. 7 itaque cum Augustus ab Actio Epiri promuntorio superato Antonio esset uictor reuersus, ludos scaenicos Romae celebrauit in honorem Apollinis et Dianae, sed praecipue Apollinis quod putaret se ab illo praecipue fuisse defensum et propter hos ludos et carmen Augustus Diuus tunc esse meruit in cuius gratiam Horatius Capitolio decantari fecit a pueris et puellis hoc carmen a se edoctis. (“So, when Augustus, after overcoming Antonius, had returned from the cape of Actium in Epirus, he celebrated theatrical games at Rome to the honour of Apollo and Diana, but especially of Apollo because he thought that he had been especially protected by him and because of these games the Deified Augustus also commissioned that there be a hymn on that occasion, to which end Horace made this hymn to be sung on the Capitol by girls and boys who had been trained by him”), Scholion Cruquianum ad Hor. Carm. saec. The association of Horace’s carmen saeculare with 29 BC is of course wildly anachronistic, but scholars have thought that a confusion with Varius’ Thyestes may lie behind the reference. 8 Jocelyn 1978, 780. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-014

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figure in the Roman world.9 The question then arises as to how a tragedy about Thyestes of all characters could serve the propagandistic aims of such a performance.10 Such a play would almost certainly have depicted an episode from the conflict between the brothers Atreus and Thyestes, vying for the throne of Argos (or Mycenae) and taking reciprocal vengeance for each other’s terrible crimes. Thyestes seduced Atreus’ wife, Aerope, and used her to steal the golden lamb (or ram), possession of which conferred the kingship, but Atreus managed to regain power and exile his brother.11 However, the tragedy most probably depicted the so-called cena Thyestae, in which Atreus avenged himself by murdering Thyestes’ sons and tricking him into eating them at a banquet. Before considering how the play’s plot could have served the young Caesar’s political ends in the early 20s, let us consider the status and connections of its author. L. Varius Rufus was a distinguished poet and a member of the circle of Maecenas. He is frequently referred to by Horace as a good friend and fine poet, and, in the recusatio of Odes 1, 6, as one whose talents would be well suited to writing an epic in praise of Agrippa’s military achievements.12 He was also a close friend of Virgil and became, with Tucca, his literary executor and posthumous editor of the Aeneid.13 His closeness to the circle around the young Caesar is therefore clear. Attacks on Marcus Antonius have also been suspected in a fragment of his Epicurean didactic poem of the 40s, De morte.14 Varius’ literary skill and political affiliations can therefore be established with reasonable confidence, which offers a solid foundation for proceeding to explore how even such a skilled poet could have made a Thyestes serve the propagandistic ends of his political allies. Before turning to that question, it is worth noting one other oddity about the testimonium: the assertion that Varius received one million sesterces for the Thyestes. Such a large sum of course suggests – and was doubtless intended to suggest, both in reality and in later accounts – that the young Caesar considered that the play had fulfilled the purpose that he intended it to and had done so with great success. However, it does raise interesting questions about the economics and especially the hermeneutics of poetic patronage in this period. Despite the considerable quantity of scholarship that has been devoted to this topic, the precise economic relationship between Maecenas and Horace or Virgil remains obscure, let alone how, if at all, the young Caesar and, in his later guise, Augustus fitted into the system. Nevertheless, in a world where the key term was amicitia and the emphasis was on Sabine farms and Mantuan estates, the hard cash payment to Varius is not only striking but even jarring. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to consider the question in any detail, but it would be interesting to explore how this monetary transaction related to the discourse of gift exchange versus financial remuneration in the interaction between Greek tyrants and dramatists. It is also tempting to speculate that a cash fee may have evoked the aedile’s payment to a Republican playwright or leader of the grex and thus have been intended to align the performance with ludi scaenici for the people, as opposed to the private entertainment which a patron’s gift might elicit.15 But such speculations as to why the young Caesar paid Varius for the Thyestes in the manner he did must give way to a more thorough consideration of why he paid him for it at all.

9 Owing to the problematic nature of the names Octavian, which he never used, and Augustus, which he did not adopt until 27, the victor of Actium will be referred to throughout as the young Caesar. On this period, see esp. Osgood 2006; Welch 2012. In the interests of brevity, I shall refer henceforth to the Actian Games as the occasion of the performance, without further qualification, but this does not indicate a strong preference for that over the other possibilities. 10 I use the terms propaganda and propagandistic throughout with no apology, following the lead of Morgan 1999, 7–9 and passim in believing that art which advances a political agenda need not be banal, crude, ugly or simplistic. 11 The golden animal is a lamb in most versions, including Accius fr. 211 R3, but Seneca makes it a ram (Thy. 226). There is no indication of its nature in Varius, but it is overwhelmingly probable that it was mentioned. 12 Friendship and poetry: Hor. Sat. 1, 5, 39–42; 1, 5, 93; 1, 6, 54–55; 1, 9, 22–23; 1, 10, 43–45; 1, 10, 81–84; 2, 8, 20–21; 2, 8, 63–64; Epist. 2, 1, 245–250; Ars P. 53–55. Agrippa: Carm. 1, 6. This is not to take this extremely ironical and ludic ode at face value, but the association of Varius with panegyric of the Augustan regime remains highly significant. 13 For a sensitive overview of the relationship between Virgil and Varius in life and poetry, see Hollis 1996. He has also often been thought to lie behind the pseudonym Lynceus in Prop. 2, 34, an idea originated by Boucher 1958 and recently revisited by O’Rourke 2011. 14 uendidit hic Latium populis agrosque Quiritum | eripuit, fixit leges pretio atque refixit. (“This man sold Latium to the nations and stole the fields of Roman citizens, and fixed and refixed laws for a price”), fr. 147 Hollis. 15 White 1993, 147–148, in discussing how extremely rare such direct rewards for specific poetic works were, makes a similar suggestion, but takes the similarity to normal aedilic procedure as natural rather than tendentious: “drama had an institutional function which set it apart from other kinds of poetry. It had long been customary for magistrates and other producers of public shows to pay for the scripts which playwrights proceeded”.

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In the absence of further evidence, it cannot be ruled out that the value of the tragedy and its performance for the young Caesar lay not in the ideological import of its plot, but rather in its prestige value. The tragedy was, as we have seen, highly esteemed by succeeding generations and there is no reason to think that it did not make the same impression at its premiere. Moreover, Varius was one of the leading poets of the age, and the nurturing of Virgil, Horace and Propertius by Maecenas offers ample evidence of the importance that the new regime placed on a close relationship with Rome’s top talent. Though he does not articulate it, some such idea presumably lies behind H.D. Jocelyn’s magisterially ex cathedra comment that “[i]f it is true that Octavian paid Varius a million sesterces for the Thyestes the cause of such liberality is not to be sought in the substance of the script”.16 Adrian Hollis was more explicit, expressing with characteristic modesty his “opinion [that] the fact that the play was hailed as an artistic masterpiece would be quite sufficient cause for Octavian’s pleasure. No doubt he was also gratified to think that people would remember the circumstances of its first production”.17 After a thorough and measured assessment of the evidence, Walter Wimmel came to much the same conclusion, that “[t]he Thyestes [. . .] was in essence neither a civil-war drama nor a victory drama”.18 The prestige both of tragedy and tragedian are unquestionably important in the autocrat’s quest for cultural capital. The aetiological justification for Hieron’s new city provided by the Women of Aetna and the genealogical glorification offered to Archelaus by the play named after his eponymous ancestor need to be balanced against the cultural cachet of having these plays written by Aeschylus and Euripides.19 Nevertheless, the political resonances that the myth of Atreus and Thyestes possessed, especially on the tragic stage, from Accius to Maternus, make it hard to imagine that the subject matter of the play performed at such a politically charged event as the Actian Games was irrelevant.20 There is a severe risk of circularity in basing a political interpretation of Varius’ Thyestes on speculative political interpretations of Accius’ Atreus and other lost plays, plausible though many of them are: Varius’ tragedy must have been politically charged because it depicted the Thyestean feast, which was also treated in Accius’ tragedy, whose subject matter means it must have been political. Nevertheless, there is more than ample ancient testimony for the political import of the myth. The sole extant version, Seneca’s Thyestes, however one interprets its relationship to the Claudian or Neronian context of its composition, directly engages with kingship theory in the second choral ode and even with the more innovative field of tyranny theory, in Atreus’ self-conscious elaboration of his philosophy of despotism in dialogue with the satelles.21 Still more telling are the numerous testimonia showing how Roman audiences and readers read political meanings into Thyestes-plays. Even if it remains unproven and unprovable that, as Bronislaw Biliński argued, Accius’ Atreus was an attack on the tyrannical aspirations of the Gracchi, it is certain that Seneca read the play politically when, with chronological confusion, he wrote of its most famous line, oderint dum metuant, that “you would know it was written in the era of Sulla”.22 Yet more explicit testimonia occur in the historiographical record, as in the case of Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus, who was forced to commit suicide in part because his Atreus was taken as an attack on Tiberius.23 Tacitus, in the Dialogus, has Curiatius Maternus declare that his Thyestes will supply anything that his Cato left unsaid, with the clear implication that the utterances were of political significance.24 None of this is incontrovertible proof of the political significance of Varius’ Thyestes qua Thyestes-drama. However, the combination of politically charged subject-matter and politically charged performance context make it sufficiently likely that we ought at least to try to make sense of the politics of the play as a whole. Yet at the same time it is the very nature of the subject matter and the performance context that make it so difficult to imagine how the former could fit with the latter. As the numerous examples above demonstrate, the tragic depiction of Atreus and Thyestes tends to dramatise either fraternal strife (and its analogue, civil war) or tyranny, or both. While modern eyes might look on these as eminently appropriate themes for the emergence of the Principate from the 16 Jocelyn 1978, 780. 17 Hollis 2007, 276. 18 “Der Thyestes war also im Kern weder ein Bürgerkriegs- noch ein Siegesdrama”, Wimmel 1981, 21 = 1983, 1601. 19 On these plays, see esp. Poli-Palladini 2001; Duncan 2011; Katsouris 2005. 20 Discussions of the politics of this myth at Rome include Biliński 1958; Lana 1958–1959; La Penna 1979a; Della Corte 1985; Pociña 2003; Aricò 2005; Fantham 2005; Boyle 2006, 123–127; Cowan 2013; Russo 2017. 21 Sen. Thy. 336–403 and 176–335, esp. 204–218. Most studies at least touch on the play’s politics, but see esp. Boyle 1983; Calder 1983; Rose 1986–1987; Schiesaro 2003, 131–176; Schwazer 2016. 22 Biliński 1958. Sullano scias saeculo scriptam. Sen. Dial. 3, 20, 4. 23 Cass. Dio 58, 24, 3–5; Tac. Ann. 6, 29, 4–7 only mentions an unspecified tragedy. 24 Tac. Dial. 3, 3: quod si qua omisit Cato, sequenti recitatione Thyestes dicet.

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war against Marcus Antonius, they are hardly those to which one would expect the young Caesar to wish attention to be drawn at his Actian Games. The apparent incompatibility between the two has led some, like Jocelyn, Hollis and Wimmel, to reject the relevance of the myth altogether. Those who have been prepared to accept its significance tend to privilege either its civil-war/tyranny associations or its need to celebrate the young Caesar’s victory, at the expense or even to the total exclusion of the other. At one end of the spectrum are those who, on the basis of the myth itself and its treatment elsewhere, argue that Varius’ Thyestes must have been about civil war and so it cannot have served celebratory or propagandistic ends. Fernand Delarue puts particular emphasis on the fact that the Thyestean feast, as well as representing a horrifying act of kin-killing in itself, is also only one step in a series of crimes stretching back to Tantalus and, crucially, on into the future through Aegisthus, Clytemnestra, and Orestes. His interpretation of the play is therefore that it was didactic and admonitory: how can a connection with the contemporary situation be possible, when the conflict of Atreus and Thyestes, far from being an end, represents only one step in the chain of crimes? But the Romans had just witnessed precisely this renewal of hatreds and fratricidal conflicts, from age to age, from generation to generation. We see in Varius’ tragedy less the joyous celebration of the end of civil wars than a bitter reflection on the recent past, a warning also against the ever-living temptations to revive it.25

This is a highly plausible interpretation of how a Thyestes-drama might be conceived and received in a Rome which had just emerged – but, lacking hindsight, could not yet be confident that it had fully emerged – from twenty years of actual civil war and over a hundred of intermittent internecine conflict. However, it is very hard to see how such a “bitter reflection on the recent past” could fit into the performance context of the young Caesar’s Actian Games in 29 BC. Indeed, it is instructive to compare Delarue’s interpretation with the similar one by Pier Vincenzo Cova. The latter offers an, if anything, more thoroughly condemnatory depiction of civil war and the dangers of political ambition, in keeping with Varius’ Epicurean affiliations. However, the incompatibility of such a Thyestes with the Actian Games leads Cova to redate the tragedy: Varius’ tragedy will rather have been the execration of the fratricidal struggle, expressed consistently with the ideology and morality of a member of that community in which [. . .] Epicurean brotherhood was practised. If anything, Varius may have reflected in the myth the meaning (not the facts) of the contemporary episode of the spirit of Cain: the Thyestes may be the tragedy of the civil war, not of its end. Therefore, according to internal logic, it preceded Actium, even if it is very difficult to be exact about how much.26

Considering the scanty evidence we possess about Varius’ Thyestes, we cannot of course rule out Cova’s redating of the play. At the same time, it does smack of desperation to ignore one of the most important of those few items of evidence, and in particular to subordinate it to assumptions – given a veneer of objectivity as ‘internal logic’ – about the play’s meaning, rather than using the evidence to form an argument about its meaning. At the other end of the spectrum stands the one scholar who has made a thoroughgoing attempt to make the Thyestes fit into the programme of the Actian Games, by radically reimagining, not only what a Thyestes-drama might be made to signify, but what its plot might be. Eckhardt Lefèvre’s short monograph argued that a tragedy which would celebrate both the end of the civil wars and the rise to pre-eminence of the young Caesar could not be centred on the cena, which positively exacerbated the cycle of fratricidal conflict and offered few opportunities for coded encomium. Instead, he posits a play whose action covered later episodes in the story of Thyestes:

25 “comment un rapprochement avec la situation contemporaine est-il possible, alors que le conflit d’Atrée et de Thyeste, loin de constituer une fin, ne représente qu’une étape dans l’enchainement des crimes? Mais précisément les Romains venaient d’assister à ce renouvellement des haines et des conflits fratricides, d’âge en âge, de génération en génération. Nous voyons dans la tragédie de Varius moins la célébration joyeuse de la fin des guerres civiles qu’une âpre réflexion sur le passé récent, un avertissement aussi contre les tentations toujours vivantes de le faire renaitre”. Delarue 1985, 122–123. Cf. Tarrant 1979, 150: “the possibility that [Varius] presented the cena Thyestea as a negative example illustrating the consequences of civil strife should not be discarded”. 26 “La tragedia di Vario sarà piuttosto l’esecrazione della lotta fratricida, espressa in coerenza con l’ideologia e la morale di un membro di quella comunità in cui [. . .] si praticava la fraternità epicurea. Se mai, Vario può aver rispecchiata nel mito il senso (non i fatti) dell’episodio contemporaneo dello spirito di Caino: il Tieste può essere la tragedia della guerra civile, non della sua fine. Perciò, secondo una logica interna, precede Azio, anche se è ben difficile precisare di quanto”, Cova 1988, 28. Cf. Cova 1989, 9–19.

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[. . .] the Varian Thyestes of the year 29 was a festival play in honour of both Octavian and Apollo, and accordingly had Atreus’ punishment and Thyestes’ reinstatement into his rule by Aegisthus as its subject matter.27

Lefèvre’s ingenuity, as well as his meticulous scholarship, have been universally acknowledged, but his conclusions have failed to win credence.28 The main objection has been to the extended timescale and multiple locations which the reconstructed plot would require and which would be unparalleled in what is known from extant tragedy and can be plausibly deduced about lost plays.29 Reviewers were also troubled by the radical notion that Aegisthus, despite his status as an avenger of his father, could be made into a typology for the young Caesar.30 It is certainly challenging to imagine a play in which Aegisthus is the hero, but it is just such an act of imagination that is required if the conflicting expectations of a Thyestes-drama and an Actian Games Festspiel are to be reconciled. Edward Champlin has demonstrated how unpromising mythological figures such as Agamemnon and Orestes could be refashioned as positive avatars of Pompey, the young Caesar, and Nero.31 If Orestes can be made into, not a polluted matricide, but a divinely mandated avenger of his father, could not a similar operation be performed on Aegisthus? In fact, the objection this in turn raises to Lefèvre’s thesis is not that his manipulation of myth is too radical, but that it is not radical enough. Why posit an obscure and sprawling plot for a play whose title inevitably evokes the cena, when it is surely no more difficult to make a hero of Atreus than of Aegisthus? If Delarue and Cova sacrifice context to myth, then Lefèvre sacrifices myth to context. The challenge is to find an interpretation of Varius’ Thyestes which can accommodate both. The most successful and frequently cited study of the Thyestes attempted to do just that. In a 1996 article, Matthew Leigh placed more emphasis on the tyrannical than the civil-war connotations of the cena, but still demonstrated how it could serve the young Caesar’s ends in 29 BC. Drawing on a range of texts from Plato to Ovid, he showed how imagery common to political philosophy and diverse genres of poetry depicts the tyrant as, literally and metaphorically, a gluttonous and blood-thirsty cannibal. Then he compared these with passages from Cicero’s Philippics and a number of historiographical accounts which depict Antonius in precisely these terms. Since gluttony and tyranny are both prominent motifs in the cena, it is easy to see how they could be manipulated to demonise Antonius. There remains too little of Varius’ tragedy for us to know how he made his Atreus look like an Antony, but we can surely see how Antony was simultaneously made to look like an Atreus.32

Leigh’s connection of tyranny and gluttony is surely correct, and his interpretation has the unique virtue of connecting the cena with the Actian Games. However, as this summation shows, there is a problem with his argument. He wants to cast Antonius as the tyrannical Atreus, but it is Thyestes who is the myth’s blood-thirsty, gluttonous cannibal. This is not hair-splitting. The myth does lend itself to the blurring of the distinction between the two brothers and the notion that they are as bad as each other. While we should always be cautious about reading backwards from Seneca, his Atreus’ musing that ‘some crime must be dared, awful, bloody, the kind of thing that my brother would prefer to be his’33 surely reflects an underlying implication of any reading of the myth, where the chain of adultery, usurpation, and kin-killing mean that, in a much ill-used phrase, there is fault on both sides. Yet if it is gluttony, bibulousness, and cannibalism which are to mark out the play’s Antonius-figure, then surely it is Thyestes rather than Atreus whom the audience would identify with the elder triumvir. Indeed, if Thyestes’ adultery with Aerope was also foregrounded, as it was in Accius and would be in Seneca, then the connection with the sexually incontinent Antonius of hostile sources

27 “[. . .] der varianische Thyestes des Jahres 29 ein Festspiel in honorem et Octaviani et Apollinis gewesen ist und demzufolge Atreus’ Bestrafung und Thyests Wiedereinsetzung in seine Herrschaft durch Aegisth zum Inhalt gehabt hat”, Lefèvre 1976, 40. 28 See esp. the reviews by Jocelyn 1978; Bardon 1979; Delarue 1979; Tarrant 1979. 29 “My first question is whether it is likely that a poet still admired by Horace at the time the latter was writing his Ars poetica (vv. 53–5) and presumably possessed of similar attitudes to general literary issues would have composed a tragedy without regard for the unity of time or the unity of place”, Jocelyn 1978, 779. 30 “It is also hard to believe that Octavian saw himself reflected in Aegisthus, who remains the archetypal coward and adulter in later Augustan literature”, Tarrant 1979, 150. 31 Champlin 2003. 32 Leigh 1996, 189. 33 aliquod audendum est nefas | atrox, cruentum, tale quod frater meus | suum esse mallet. Sen. Thy. 193–195.

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would be even stronger.34 Leigh’s article sheds a great deal of light on how Varius may well have used the myth of the cena to denigrate Antonius. However, the nature of that light, the centrality of the imagery of gluttony and cannibalism, mean that we in fact need to think about how Varius made his Thyestes look like an Antonius and, by extension, how he made his Atreus look like a young Caesar. The idea that audiences might draw parallels between Atreus and the young Caesar in Varius’ Thyestes has been suggested before, but only that they might do so as an accidental result of the uncontrollability of reception. Tony Boyle accepts Leigh’s thesis but notes the slipperiness of the typologies, so that an attack on Antonius-as-Atreus could be derailed as audiences saw the young Caesar instead as the bloodthirsty Atreus. Perhaps Octavian was trying to appropriate its ideology, making of the play a negative paradigm which his own hegemony disavowed. Previous association in political literature, especially in Cicero’s Philippics, of Atreus or of tyrannical atrocities and an appetite for blood with Mark Antony may have assisted a pro-Octavian reading. But, whatever the details of Varius’ plot, nothing could have prevented the suggestion that Atreus mirrored Octavian, whose rise to power had been as bloody as that of Antony and who had recently put to death Julius Caesar’s son by Cleopatra.35

It is not clear whether Boyle is suggesting deliberate, coded subversion by Varius or that the playwright could not foresee or forestall the risk of the audience’s associating the wrong Pelopid with the wrong triumvir. While neither of these scenarios seems especially likely, Boyle’s emphasis on the unpredictability of audience reception is salutary, and even more significant is his observation that, especially in the years immediately following Actium and Alexandria, the public perception persisted of the young Caesar as a sanguinary and headstrong youth with the blood of civil war on his hands. This raises the question as to whether the association of Atreus with the young Caesar might have been – and in this context I make no apology for invoking authorial intention – deliberate, rather than accidental as Boyle suggests. Again, there is a precedent for this, albeit less direct, in the scholarship. In his gloriously and self-consciously provocative study of Seneca’s Thyestes, William Calder declared his intention to ‘attempt a paradoxical thesis. Seneca meant that Nero understand and admire Atreus’.36 Seneca’s Atreus is so self-aware and hyperbolical in his carefully theorised tyranny that it is hard to accept Calder’s arguments on their own terms. Yet his paradoxical, almost perverse position serves as a salutary challenge to think afresh about how tragic paradigms might operate in an often-alien value-system and in particular about how the relationship of theatre and autocracy might differ from that of theatre and democracy. How then are we to make a young Caesar of Varius’ Atreus, and one who is neither deliberately nor accidentally subversive? Let us return one last time to the central problem of relating the Thyestes to its performance context, that a tragedy about the cena must be a pessimistic one evoking tyranny and civil war, and hence sit ill with the optimistic tone required for its celebratory performance context at the Actian Games of 29 BC. If we accept both these premises, the only solutions involve doing violence to some aspect of what we know about the play. The pessimism of the myth can be retained but at the expense of abandoning the optimistic tone of the performance, with Delarue, or the performance context itself, with Cova. Alternatively, the optimism can be retained, with Lefèvre, but the cena improbably supplanted as subject-matter. Leigh’s third way retains the dark theme of tyranny but tries to reconcile it with a propagandist interpretation by associating the negative elements solely with the Antonian side, resulting in the inconsistencies we have noted. All of these diverse approaches are based on the unstated assumption that a tragedy which includes negative elements in its depiction of a young Caesar-figure cannot serve a propagandistic agenda. It is time to interrogate that assumption. In the last twenty years, two scholars have challenged the assumption that the depiction of civil war in Latin literature is unequivocally negative, and with it the basis of much of the reductive optimistic/pessimistic dichotomy that still dominates Virgilian and other studies. Tim Stover’s monograph on the Flavian epic poet Valerius Flaccus’ Argonautica reads that poem as a post-AD 69 reaction to the nihilism of Lucan’s Bellum Civile. In place of a Lucanian, Neronian poetics and politics where both sides in civil war are equally guilty of nefas and all boundaries are blurred, Stover’s Valerius offers a Vespasianic worldview where there was a right side and a wrong side in the civil war between the Flavians and the Vitellians, and between the sides in the various actual and crypto-civil wars in the Argonautica. “Valerius offers his audience a moralised civil war in which strong lines of demarcation exist between heroes and villains, 34 qui nón sat habuit cóniugem inlexe ín stuprum. Acc. Atreus fr. 205 R3; cf. fr. 206–213, coniugem stupro abstulit Sen. Thy. 222. On Antony’s characterization as sexually incontinent, see the classic Griffin 1977 and most recently Fertik 2017. 35 Boyle 2017, lxxvii. 36 Calder 1983, 189.

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between good and evil, and between the forces of order and chaos”.37 Many, including myself, have found Stover’s thesis refreshing and challenging but ultimately unconvincing, in part because it is so thoroughgoing in its recasting of civil war as a conflict of ‘good and evil’ that it does not account for the more troubling elements which Valerius retains in his depiction of kin-killing and internecine conflict.38 Nevertheless, the notion of a civil war with lines of demarcation, even if not such strong ones as Stover proposes, is an important one and a useful lens through which to examine Varius’ Thyestes. A more satisfying approach to the poetics and politics of civil war, as well as one that deals with the same historical conflict as Varius’ play, is Llewelyn Morgan’s interpretation of Virgil’s Georgics and Aeneid using the concept of ‘constructive destruction’.39 Unlike Stover, Morgan does not shy away from the elements which tend to make poetic depictions of civil war so troubling, the extreme violence and the affinity of the opposing sides. Rather it is Virgil’s very acknowledgment of the violence and horror of Roman fighting against Roman that enables his readers to come to terms with the trauma of civil war and to see it as something that, terrible though it was in itself, nevertheless had a positive outcome. Using the paradigms of sacrifice and Stoic cataclysm, Morgan shows how an act as brutal as Aristaeus’ pulverizing of the bullock in the bougonia does not taint the wonder of the bees’ rebirth, but rather dramatises the way in which terrible violence can be miraculously productive, just as the civil wars led to the pax Augusta.40 Although the Georgics of the early 20s BC present the closest chronological parallel to Varius’ Thyestes, it is Morgan’s reading of the slightly later Aeneid, and particularly the Hercules and Cacus episode of book 8, that offers the most helpful model for tackling our play. In a manner not dissimilar to that of Varian scholars, polarised Virgilian critics of the so-called Harvard and Augustan schools have tended to overemphasise one aspect of this episode to the exclusion of the other.41 ‘Pessimistic’ critics have stressed the brutality of Hercules and the frequent indistinguishability – physically and ethically – of the hero and the monster he is fighting, but ignore the ultimate victory of order over chaos and the peace brought to Latium by that victory. ‘Optimistic’ critics tend to do precisely the opposite. Again as with Varius, the methodological reason – to leave aside ideological concerns – for such polarised approaches is the assumption that a propagandistic reading cannot accommodate troubling elements and so the detection of troubling elements precludes (or at least subverts) a propagandistic reading. Morgan’s insight is that propaganda, in its most sophisticated form, can, not merely accommodate, but even exploit troubling elements: It is in this way, I think, that the emphatic violence of the Hercules and Cacus episode was meant to be interpreted: the brutality of the conflict and the similarity of the combatants recalls civil war, but the struggle is described in terms which assimilate it to instances of violent destruction which are paradoxically constructive.42

As well as the aforementioned Stoic and sacrificial imagery, Morgan also includes among those ‘instances of violent destruction’ Romulus’ killing of Remus, the originary act of Roman fratricidal civil war for Horace and Lucan, but also a foundation sacrifice which guaranteed the safety and prosperity of the newly-established Rome.43 The conflict between Hercules and Cacus is a brutal one and, because of their similarity, it evokes civil war. Yet, not only is the destruction paradoxically constructive, but there is an inescapable implication that, despite their similarity, Hercules is in some way superior  –  physically and ethically – to Cacus, just as is Aeneas, his analogue in the narrative, to Turnus, and Augustus, his analogue in the world (as well as on the shield), to Antonius. We are still a long way from Stover’s heroes and villains, good and evil, and Virgil’s Hercules, Aeneas and Augustus are infinitely more defiled by the pitch of civil war than (Stover’s) Valerius’ Jason and Vespasian. Nevertheless, constructive destruction shows that a positive figure can be tainted by the violence of civil war and likewise someone tainted by the violence of civil war can still be a positive figure. Which brings us back to Atreus and the young Caesar.

37 Stover 2012, 148. 38 Cowan 2014, 244–247. 39 Morgan 1998; Morgan 1999. 40 “Throughout the Georgics disastrous events are presented which are clearly designed to reflect the recent cataclysmic Civil Wars. When Virgil depicts the slaughter of cattle as one such appalling event, but subsequently presents cattle-slaughter as constructive, he is implying the potential of the Civil Wars also – in a manner analogous to the miraculous processes of sacrifice – to be constructive”, Morgan 1999, 115. 41 Typical examples of the former and latter respectively are Lyne 1987, 27–35, and Galinsky 1966, both discussed by Morgan 1998. 42 Morgan 1998, 186. 43 Morgan 1998, 186. Civil war: Hor. Epod. 7, 17–20; Luc. 1, 95. Foundation sacrifice: Prop. 3, 9, 50; Flor. 1, 1, 8.

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It is possible for Varius’ Thyestes to have dealt with the cena, to have associated its eponymous figure with Antonius, and to have celebrated at the Actian Games the young Caesar’s victory and his ascendance to pre-eminence. To do this, the play would have deliberately drawn parallels between the young Caesar and Atreus, and depicted the latter’s vengeance upon his brother and murder of his nephews as emblematic of the terrible violence of civil war which miraculously and mysteriously constituted constructive destruction. Varius’ Atreus would not have been whitewashed so as to reflect better on his analogue, the young Caesar. It is hard to imagine such a whitewashing’s being possible, given the unalterable aspects of the myth, but more importantly it would be pointless for Varius to select Atreus as his typology of the young Caesar and then render him unrecognizable as Atreus. If he had wanted the (for want of a better word) hero of his tragedy to be a boy scout, he could have chosen a figure like Theseus, who, though he did have skeletons in his mythological closet, could easily be depicted as an idealised leader, as in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus and Euripides’ Suppliant Women.44 Varius chose Atreus because he wanted to acknowledge not only the horrors of civil war but the young Caesar’s role in them.45 One strand of Augustan ideology and of Latin poetry depicted the Actium and Alexandria campaign as a bellum externum against Cleopatra’s Egypt, downplaying or even omitting Antonius and with him the war’s status as a bellum ciuile.46 Nevertheless many did not, and we have already seen how Morgan’s reading of the Georgics and Aeneid rests on the acknowledgment and justification of civil war.47 The figure of Atreus, like those of Virgil’s Aristaeus and Hercules, enabled Varius to engage with the young Caesar’s involvement in the civil war, but in such a way as not utterly to condemn him or it. While it is easy to imagine how Varius could have depicted Atreus’ revenge on Thyestes as emblematic of the civil war between the young Caesar and Antonius, it is a little harder to think of how he might have palliated both. On the spectrum of appalling violence, the butchering of one’s nephews and serving them as a meal to one’s brother is a notch or two above the bludgeoning of a bullock, the throttling of a fire-breathing monster, or even the frenzied killing of a suppliant on the battlefield. Considering the importance that Morgan places on sacrifice as the essence of constructive destruction, it is tempting to wonder whether the imagery of the murders as a perverted sacrifice that Seneca so powerfully deployed ninety years later might have a precedent in Varius where the emphasis was less on grotesque perversion than on the unperverted conception of sacrifice as horrific but productive violence, but this can only be pure speculation.48 As always with the Thyestes, the reconstruction of details inevitably relies on a degree of speculation, but most can be based on probabilities and helpful scraps of evidence and it is on these that we shall focus. It seems likely that Varius’ Atreus was not the self-aware tyrant, rabid butcher, and insatiable sadist depicted in acts two, four and five of Seneca’s Thyestes. This likelihood is supported by hints in the fragments. Already in Accius’ Atreus, although he is often depicted as the archetypal tragic tyrant, there are hints that he is – in his own perception, at least – as much sinned against as sinning. Fr. 198–199 R3, iterum Thyestes Atreum adtractatum aduenit, | iterum iam adgreditur me et quietum exsuscitat (“again Thyestes comes to harass me, again he approaches me and rouses me from my peace”), suggests a scenario rather different from that of Seneca’s play, with Thyestes not lured into a trap by Atreus but returning to Argos on his own initiative, perhaps with hostile intent. The sole surviving fragment of Varius’ Thyestes itself also hints at, not a justification, but at least a palliation of Atreus’ crimes. They are, as Quintilian specifies when quoting them, spoken by Atreus himself: iam fero infandissima iam facere cogor Now I bear the most unspeakable things, now I am compelled to do them49 44 On Theseus in Attic tragedy, see Mills 1997. 45 Cf. Morgan 1999, 128: “If Virgil’s agenda was propagandistic he would have had to confront the fact of the generally appalling experiences of his readership over at least the previous fifteen years. In fact the single greatest demand on such a propagandist at this time would have been to engage with – and, so to speak, neutralize – the violence and destruction that had visited Rome for the previous decade-and-a-half, and Octavian’s central role in it” (original emphasis). 46 Lange 2009, 79–81, challenges the notion that Actium was ever depicted as a bellum externum but, while a salutary corrective to the assumption that it always was, his claim is too strong. 47 Comparable approaches to civil war in the Georgics can be found in Nappa 2005; Powell 2008; and Bunni 2010. 48 Sen. Thy. 682–729, with Boyle 1983, 212–213. 49 Var. Thy. fr. 1 R3 apud Quint. Inst. 3, 8, 45.

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These six words bear a striking and perhaps deliberately allusive resemblance to a fragment from another tragedy where revenge is taken by the feeding of a child to his father, Sophocles’ Tereus, generally thought to have been delivered by a deus ex machina in the exodos: ἄνους ἐκεῖνος· αἱ δ᾿ ἀνουστέρ ἔτι |. . .|; μεῖζον . . . τῆς νόσου τὸ φάρμακον (‘He was deranged but they [acted] still more derangedly . . . the remedy greater than the disease’ Soph. Tereus TrGF F 589, 1–3). Although the similarities are striking, the differences are still more significant. The shift from positives to comparatives in Sophocles (ἄνους to ἀνουστέρ, μεῖζον) marks the revenge taken by Procne and Philomela on Tereus as disproportionate and expresses divine censure at the escalation of retaliation, one of the major ways in which revenge was problematised in Attic tragedy as it was in Athenian society.50 By contrast, Varius’ parallel cola, with the anaphora of iam, the taking of infandissima ἀπὸ κοινοῦ, and the almost polyptotonic effect of the antithesis between fero and facere cogor, emphasise the precise reciprocity of Atreus’ revenge. Yes, he is compelled to do unspeakable things – and even here there is a marked contrast with the spontaneous, enthusiastic, creative villainy of Seneca’s Atreus – but in exact proportion to the unspeakable things he has suffered. Revenge was at the centre of the young Caesar’s ideological programme, already in the 40s with the lex Pedia and on into his principate with the temple of Mars Ultor, and culminating in the programmatic statement at the start of the Res Gestae that he ‘took vengeance on the crime of those who murdered [his] father’ (qui parentem meum trucidaverunt . . . ultus eorum facinus, Aug. RG 2).51 Calder writes of Seneca’s Atreus, ‘We must avoid an anachronistic morality. Vengeance is not a Christian virtue. It was a pagan duty’.52 We might hesitate to apply this generally sound maxim to the specific case of a character who so revels in sadistic cruelty and whose embodiment of the quintessentially Senecan maius-motif assimilates him to the escalation and disproportion of Procne’s revenge.53 Nevertheless, it holds generally true for the Classical, Roman, and especially Augustan world, and shows the potential for Varius to make his Atreus’ revenge, still unspeakable, but comprehensible and redeemable. While the central point of my argument is that Varius fully acknowledges the horrors committed by both Atreus and Thyestes, the young Caesar and Antonius, the fault on both sides, the propagandistic element still requires that, with just a hint of paradox, Atreus be made the slightly less culpable and Thyestes the slightly more culpable of the two equally culpable brothers. While Atreus and Thyestes, like Hercules and Cacus, bear the uncomfortable mutual resemblance of opponents in a civil war, there must also be a sense in which the audience or reader wants the cannibal and the giant to be defeated. We have just seen some of the ways in which Varius might plausibly be imagined to have palliated Atreus’ actions at the cena. How might he have further demonised Thyestes? We have seen how all of Leigh’s excellent insights into the image of the tyrant as bloodthirsty, gluttonous cannibal apply better to Thyestes than to Atreus in any plausible reconstruction of the plot, and that Thyestes’ adultery with Aerope would further correspond both to the traditional sexual incontinence of the stereotypical tyrant and to the specifics of Antonius’ hostile press. There are other hints in the surviving evidence which add to this picture. As ever, Seneca’s Thyestes offers a useful comparand, but also a template that we must beware of imposing uncritically on Varius’. Most critics have moved away from Marti’s image of Seneca’s Thyestes as Stoic proficiens or even sapiens, seeing him as self-deluding and as appetitive as his brother.54 Nevertheless, his weakness and manipulability still render him, though not admirable, a pitiable figure whose impotence amplifies the impression of Atreus’ wickedness as much as of his power. We should by no means assume that this was the dynamic in Varius’ Thyestes, or in any other tragic version of the story. Indeed, we have already seen how a fragment of Accius’ Atreus suggests a Thyestes with more agency and initiative who returns to Argos uninvited to harry Atreus. Another suggestion of Thyestes’ aggressive role in Varius’ play can be found in Horace Odes 1, 16. Horace was a friend of Varius and had already alluded to the Thyestes in Odes 1, 6 as an example of his skills in the higher genres which would suit him to write a panegyrical epic for Agrippa.55 It seems very probable, then, that Horace’s reference in his palinode to how “rages laid Thyestes low in overwhelming destruction” (irae Thyesten exitio graui | strauere, Carm. 1, 16, 17–18) would evoke Varius’ tragedy in

50 On the problematization of revenge in Attic tragedy, see esp. Allan 2013. 51 On Augustus and the ideology of revenge, see Flaig 2009. 52 Calder 1983, 189. 53 On the maius-motif in Seneca, see Seidensticker 1985; Schiesaro 2003, esp. 34–35, 130–131; Cowan 2017, 94–97. 54 Marti 1945, 239–241. Thyestes’ detractors include Boyle 1983, 216; 1997, 23–24; Tarrant 1985, 43–45, 148–159; Davis 2003, 66–67; Schiesaro 2003, 149 (cf. 57). 55 Friendship: Hor. Sat. 1, 9, 23; 1, 10, 81; saeuam Pelopis domum, Carm. 1, 6, 8.

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most readers’ minds, especially since the tragedy had made such an impression only six years earlier. The reference is curious, however, as Nisbet and Hubbard note: There is some difficulty about Horace’s version of the story. The anger referred to must be that of Thyestes; there would be no point in saying that Atreus’s anger destroyed Thyestes. Yet it is Atreus who usually illustrates the evils of vengeful anger [. . .] perhaps Varius introduced a new form of the legend in which Thyestes’s anger played a more significant part.56

The evidence is far from conclusive, but this does offer a further suggestive hint which fits with the picture of an aggressive, irascible, destructive (and here self-destructive) Thyestes who could be aligned with Antonius, and set simultaneously in parallel and antithesis with an equally destructive but more sympathetic Atreus qua young Caesar. Once more, there is fault on both sides, because this is civil war and must be acknowledged as such, but, because the play is celebrating the victory of one side, there is slightly less fault on his. The proposition of this chapter is that Varius’ Thyestes, performed at the Actian Games (or possibly the triple triumph) in 29 BC to celebrate the end of the civil wars and the young Caesar’s attainment of pre-eminence at Rome, depicted a fraternal conflict of horrific violence that would have clearly symbolised the recent civil wars to a Roman audience. The figure of Thyestes, aggressive, gluttonous, drunken, bloodthirsty, cannibalistic, lustful, tyrannical, was made to correspond to Antonius, whose depiction as all of these things can be found in Cicero’s Philippics and various other hostile sources. The figure of Atreus corresponded to the young Caesar. Varius did not shy away from the horrors of the civil war or the horrors that the young Caesar had committed in that civil war but, as Virgil was simultaneously doing in the Georgics and would do again in the Aeneid, he represented that terrible violence as, like sacrifice, miraculously productive of positive ends, in short as constructive destruction. While the propagandistic (in the most sophisticated and nuanced sense) aims of the play demanded that the fratricidal/civil war nature of the conflicts and the element of fault on both sides be acknowledged and processed, Varius nevertheless used subtle hints to increase the culpability of Thyestes-Antonius and lessen or at least palliate that of Atreus-young Caesar. Unless a text of Varius’ Thyestes emerges carbonised from Herculaneum or discovered in the cellar of a Tuscan monastery, nothing about this proposition can be categorically proven or disproven. Much of it depends on conjecture and speculation, but it is all based on the existing evidence, direct and indirect, and built on careful balancing of probabilities. Unlike earlier theories about the play, it gives full weight to all the apparently conflicting direct evidence about the play, its pessimistic subject-matter and its optimistic performance context, and indeed demonstrates that they need not be conflicting. The idea that the young Caesar could be celebrated by associating him with Atreus, often depicted elsewhere as a tyrant and kin-killer, is admittedly a difficult one to come to terms with. However, it is the very difficulty, verging on paradox, of the typology which enabled Varius to produce his drama of constructive destruction. If nothing else, my proposition may act as a salutary thought experiment to extend the scope of how we approach the idea of theatre and autocracy. The notion that there is an unbreakable link between drama and democracy has long been exploded, and with it the related assumption that drama must always be subversive and questioning.57 However, we should also challenge the notion that drama which celebrates power, and especially autocratic power, must necessarily be crude and simplistic. Varius’ Thyestes, in this reconstruction, would have presented an immensely complex and nuanced picture of the causes, nature, and effects of civil war, but it would have done so, not to offer a lament or critique, but to celebrate the emergence of the new regime while acknowledging and explaining the horrors of the past.58

56 Nisbet and Hubbard 1970, 211 ad loc. 57 See Kelly 2015 for a discussion of Sophocles’ Ajax which asserts its democratic message by rejecting notions of subversion. For recent re-evaluations of tragic politics, see the articles in the special issue Polis 34 (2017), Carter 2007 and Cowan 2019. 58 Oral versions of this chapter (under the title ‘Dinner for Two’) were delivered at the Theatre and Autocracy conference and at a Marcus Antonius workshop organized by Kathryn Welch at the University of Sydney in January 2019. I am grateful to both audiences for their helpful questions and suggestions, and also to this volume’s anonymous readers for comments on the written version.

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General Index Acamas (Theseid) 183, 189, 190–191, 198 Accius (tragic poet and scholar) 110, 219, 221 – Atreus 221, 223, 226, 227 – Tereus 95 Achilles (hero) 133 n.40 Actian Games 117, 118–120, 125, 219, 220 n.9, 221, 222–223, 224, 226, 228 – comedy at 118 – tragedy at 118 Actium, Battle of 118, 163, 219 actors 1, 3, 6, 7–8, 10, 26, 27, 30, 34, 45, 94, 106, 123, 124 – and autocrats 27, 34–35, 81 – comic 26, 45, 80, 97, 102 n.66, 118, 124 – competitions of 73 n.16, 97 – religiosity of 10–11 – of satyrplay 72, 81 – tragic 34–35, 45, 80, 90, 97, 99, 106 n.15, 124, 164, 169 Adrastus (hero) 18, 185–186, 187 Aegae, theatre 20, 26, 31 Aegisthus 201, 222, 223 Aelius Aristides (sophist) – citations of tragedy by 170, 174–180 – On the Prohibition of Comedy 168 Aemilianus of Amastris 80 Aemilius Paullus, Lucius (Macedonicus) 90–91, 92, 95, 103, 114 Aeneas (hero) 225 Aeschines (politician and orator) 156 n.30 Aeschylus (tragic poet) 2, 23, 34, 64, 71, 74, 88, 158, 201, 203,  see also Three Tragedians, Lycurgan statue of – catalogue of quotations in other writers 179–180 – and papyri 172, 174 – portraits of 149, 150, 151, 156, 157 Aeschylus, dramas by – Agamemnon 174, 200 n.18 – Choephoroe 201 n.23 – Eumenides 64 n.44, 201, 202–203, 205, 206 – Oresteia 165, 179, 180, 203 – Persians 19, 23, 64, 201 – Prometheus Vinctus 174, 179, 201 – Ransom of Hector 170 – Seven against Thebes 174, 179, 200 n.18 – Suppliant Women 174, 206 n.81 – Women of Aetna 2, 19, 30, 32, 64, 221 Agamemnon (hero) 201, 223 Agathon (tragic poet) 20, 34, 74 agonothetes/agonothesia 8, 9, 10, 35, 80, 82, 111, 120, 122, 124 Alcaeus (lyric poet), statue of 157 n.39 Alcibiades (general and politician) 192–193 Alexander of Aetolia (tragic poet) 219 Alexander III (‘the Great’) of Macedon 11, 20, 26–27, 30, 31, 32, 33, 40, 46, 76, 147 – and actors 34–35, 74, 81 – and the Agen (satyrplay) 28, 73, 74, 75, 83 – and Dionysus 30, 47–48, 71, 75, 77, 83 – and Greek drama 74 – and musical contests 32–33 – priesthood of 44 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-016

– and satyrs 76 – and theatre construction 20 n.27, 26 – and theatre festivals 22, 32–33 Alexander of Pherae 20 Alexandria, Library of 40 n.40, 157 n.39 Anacreon (lyric poet) 19, 20 n.29 – statue of 159 n.60 Andocides 193 Antigonus I Monophthalmus (the ‘One-Eyed’) 34 n.160, 35 Antiochus IV of Syria 28, 31 n.131 Antiochus VI 31 n.131 Antiochus XII 31 n.131 Antipater of Hierapolis 164 Antiphon (tragic poet) 34 Antisthenes (philosopher), portraits of 157 n.39 Antoninus Pius 31 n.131, 110 n.46, 117, 129, 132, 143 – statue of 132–134 Antonius Polemo 169 Apelles of Ascalon (tragic actor)  115, 124 Aphrodisias, theatre 129, 130 Aphrodite 129 n.4, 188 – and Cleopatra VII 49 – at Paphos 41, 46, 129 – statue of 134 Apion of Alexandria (grammarian, orator and poet) 120, 164 n.13 Apollo 19, 29, 30, 58, 118, 119, 122, 192, 194, 203, 205, 214, 219 Apollonides (tragic actor) 49 n.136 ‘appended’ festivals 121 Arcesilas IV of Cyrene 20, 23–24 Archelaus I of Macedon 4 n.48, 20, 21–22, 25, 31, 32, 34, 74, 221 Archestratus (tragic poet), Antaeus 169 Areopagite council 202–203, 212 Argos, theatre building 2 Arion (lyric poet) 17 Ariston (agonothete) 122 Aristotle, portraits of 158 Aristaeus 225, 226 Aristonike (wife of Aristokrates) 50 Aristophanes (comic poet) 154 n.21, 168 – Thesmophoriazusae 13 n.131 Aristophanes of Byzantium (scholar) 156 n.27 Arsinoe II 39 n.27, 43–44, 63 Artavasdes of Armenia 28 Artemis Lyaia 65 Artists of Dionysus see technitai Asclepius (hero and god) 152–153 – statues of 159 n.60 Asinius Pollio (politician and writer) 133 – library of 157 Asklepiades (actor of satyrplay) 82 Asklepieia (festival) 111 Asklepieion (Athens) 152 Asklepiodoros (comic actor) 49 n.136 astici ludi 97 Astydamas (tragic poet) 29, 149–150, 219 Atellan Farce 12, 105 n.7, 108, 110 Athena 18, 158, 202

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Athenodorus (tragic actor) 27, 34–35 Athens 186 n.7, 200, 202–203 Atreus (mythical king) 6 n.60, 220, 221, 223–224, 226–228 Attalids 11, 30, 35, 37, 39, 43, 52, 71, 79, 80 Attalus I Soter of Pergamum 79, 80 n.77, 83, 147 Atticus (Titus Pomponius) 157, 158 audiences 3, 65 n.57, 92, 123, see also claques – private, 13 Augustus 6 n.60, 97–98, 105, 109, 110, 117, 121, 122, 124, 125–126, 219, 220, 222, 223, 225 – and Actian Games 118–119, 125–126 – and actors 107, 113 – Ajax 165 – and architecture 62, 147 – and Atreus 224, 226, 228 – and comedy 97, 169 – and pantomime 12, 105, 106 – Res Gestae 125, 227 – and revenge 227 – and seating arrangements in theatres 113–114, 116 – statue at Prima Porta 133 – and theatre 94, 97–98, 106–107, 108–109, 125–126 auletai see pipers Aura, statue of 146 autocrats/autocracy see also Dionysus, monarchy, satyrplay, tragedy, tyrants – constructing theatres 1, 2 – displays of generosity by 26–27 – and divinity 30–31, 74–75 – festivals named after 34 – friendships with poets and actors 34–35 – and theatre 2–3, 5, 6, 14, 17, 19–21, 24–26, 32, 33, 66, 74, 88, 101–103, 112, 163, 165–166, 199, 228 – theatrical self-presentation by 27–28, 66–67 – writing/performing poetry 28 Bacchylides (lyric poet) 20 n.29, 194, 198 Barberini Faun 79 Basileia (festival) 45–46 Bathyllus (pantomime artist) 105 Battiads 23 Benevento, theatre 146 Berenike I 44 Berenike II 44 n.79, 46, 63 Berytus (Beirut) 124 ‘Brother-Sister Gods’ (Θεοὶ Ἀδελφοί), cult of 39, 44 Bruttius Praesens, villa of 159 n.60 Brutus (politician and orator) 96 Cacus (giant) 225, 227 Caecilius (Quintus, comic actor) 124 Caesarea (festival at Corinth) 121, 122 Caligula (Emperor) 5 n.55, 31 n.131, 115, 116, 124, 125, 146 n.129 Canosa, ‘tempio di Giove Toro’ 133 Canutius (actor) 96 Capitoline Games 100, 110 n.46, 117, 120 Caracalla, bronze coin of 131, 132 Carneades (philosopher) 156 Castel Gandolfo, theatre 133, 159 Catania, theatre 146

Cato the Elder 91 n.18, 95 Ceyx 202 Chaeremon (tragic poet), Achilles 169 Chamaeleon (scholar) 22 choregoi/choregia 8, 10, 11, 20, 45, 81 n.88, 122, 194 choruses/choreuts 11, 17, 18, 81, 90, 205–206 – comic 11, 45 n.93, 163 n.5, 168 – lyric 3, 47 – in parades 18–19, 45 – professional 11 – recruited from local communities 11, 81, 82 – in satyrplay 11, 71, 77, 81–82 – supposed decline/disappearance of 7, 8, 11, 80–81 – tragic 11, 18, 45 n.93, 163 n.5, 205–206 – trainers of (chorodidaskaloi/hypodidaskaloi), 11, 45, 81, 82 Chrestus of Byzantium 164 Chrysippus (philosopher), portraits of 155 n.26, 156, 158 n.44 Cicero (orator and writer) 6, 158 – and Greek entertainments 95–96 – Philippics 228 – villa decorations of 158 Cimon (politician) 192, 193, 194, 198, 211 Cinesias (lyric poet) 34 cithara players 45, 121 citharodes/citharoedia 45, 121, 163 claques 3, 112, 115, 116 Claudius (Emperor) 98, 100 n.61, 114, 117 Clearchids 20 Clearchus of Heraclea 5 n.55, 22, 26 n.84, 28, 29, 30 Cleisthenes of Athens 192 Cleisthenes of Sicyon 18, 19 Cleopatra II 42 n.62 Cleopatra III 42 n.62 Cleopatra VII 41, 49 – and Aphrodite 46, 49 comedy 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 19, 26, 45, 65, 81, 82, 97, 100, 108, 118, 124, 163, 164, 172, see also New Comedy, Old Comedy – choruses of 11, 82, 163, 168 – and democracy 1 – and freedom of speech 167 – Middle Comedy 4, 167 – ‘new’ 5, 12, 122, 164, 168 – ‘old’ 4, 12, 97, 122, 164 – and oligarchy 3 – revision (diaskeue) of 168 – Roman 4–5 Commodus (Emperor) 31 n.131, 110, 111 Corinth 17 – theatre building 20 n.27, 133 costume/prop designer (σκευοποιός) 45 Cratinus (comic poet) 155 n.26, 168, 193 Creon (king of Thebes) 165, 201, 206 Critias (tragic poet and politician) 207, 208, 215 crowns, honorific 27 Curiatius Maternus (tragic poet) 221 – Cato 221 – Thyestes 221 Cyclops (dithyramb) 32 Cyprus 37, 42, 43, 49, 130, 135, see also Paphos Cyrene (theatre buildings) 19–20

General Index  

dancers 45, 90, 105, 107, 110–111, 115, 125, see also pantomimes decadence/decline theory (of drama) 6–13 Deianeira (mythical princess) 201–202 Deidameia (tragic drama) 170 Deinomenids 22–23, 65 Delia (festival) 18 Delphi 203 Demeter and Kore, in Sicily 58–59, 65 Demetrius of Phaleron 4 n.45, 10, 28 n.103, 29 Demetrius Poliorcetes (the ‘Besieger’) 20 n.27, 28, 30, 34 n.160, 66 Demetrius of Tarsus (poet of satyrplay) 73 democracy 5–6, 9, 14, 88, 102, 135, 183, 187, 193, 194, 200 – and choregia/agonothesia 10 – in Hellenistic and Imperial eras 9 – and theatre history 1–2, 7, 8, 10, 17 – in tragedy 184–186, 187, 192, 198, 201, 203, 209, 210, 212, 213 Demokopos 60 Demophon (Theseid) 183, 189–191, 193, 198 Demosthenes (politician and orator) 32 – portraits of 156 n.26, 158 Dexion (hero) 152–153 Didascaliae (inscription) 71–72, 73 Didyma, oracle 205 Dio of Prusa (Chrysostom) – citations of tragedy by 171, 175–180 – On Fame 171–172 Diogenes (philosopher) 167 Diognetos ‘the Whale’ 66 Dionysia (festival) – at Athens (‘Great’) 2, 18–19, 34–35, 66, 71, 194 – at Naucratis 47 – at Opous 122 – at Ptolemais 46–47 – at Smyrna 5 – at Teos 79 Dionysius I of Syracuse 19, 23, 24–25, 27, 29–31, 33, 34, 59, 64, 67, 74, 170 – and Dionysus 11, 29–30, 74 – and Euripides 23, 30, 58 n.13 – Limos (satyrplay) 74, 75 – and theatre building at Syracuse 25–26 – theatricalised self-presentation 27–28, 74, 75 – writing tragedy 19, 23, 24–25, 28, 33, 64, 74 Dionysius II of Syracuse 30, 66 – Dionysiokolakes 30 Dionysodorus of Sicyon 79, 83 Dionysus 10, 37, 47–49, 74–75, 77, 78, 83 – and Alexander 48, 74–75, 77 – and Antony 46, 49, 106, 118 – and the Attalids 79 – and autocrats 11, 29–31, 74 – and Dionysius I 11, 29–30, 74 – festivals of 17–19, see also Dionysia – Kathegemon 52, 79 – priesthood of 10, 38–39, 78 n.59 – and the Ptolemies 38 n.17, 40, 47–49, 52, 77 – representations of 29 – sanctuary of (Athens) 18, 19

 263

– in Sicily 65 Diphilus (comic poet) 157 n.36 dithyramb 4, 11, 17, 19, 20, 45, 80, 81 Domitian (Emperor) 100, 107, 114, 116, 117 – villas of 159 drama see also comedy, satyrplay, theatre, tragedy – excerpts/extracts of 8, 13, 99, 163 – Italic 88 – private performances of 8, 12, 13, 31, 88, 101, 163 – written in Greek by Roman elites 98 education (paideia) see also philhellenism – in Greek culture 13 n.119, 94 n.33, 100, 101, 102–103, 158–159, 160, 161 – role of drama in 163–164 Elagabalus (Emperor) 31 n.131 Epagathus (choraules) 170 Epaminondas of Acraephium 121–122, 126 Ephesus 135 – theatre building 2 epic poetry 45 Epicharmus (comic poet) 3, 157 n.36 Epictetus (philosopher) 118, 170 – and tragedy 167–168 Epipolai 59 Eratosthenes of Cyrene (scholar) 47 Erechtheus (king of Athens) 183, 191–192 Eubulus (comic poet), Dionysius 29–30 Eucharistos (mime) 144 euergetism 9–10, 60, 112, 143 n.100 Eumenes II (king of Pergamum) 52, 80 Euphronios of Chersonesos (poet) 48 Eupolis (comic poet) 155 n.26, 168 – Androgynoi 170 Euripides (tragic poet) 4, 20, 88, 219, see also Three Tragedians, Lycurgan statue of – and Archelaus 20, 34, 74 – catalogue of quotations in other writers 175–179 – and Dionysius I 30, 31 – and education 163 – and Nero 165 – and pantomime 106 – in papyri 172–173 – portraits of 149, 150, 154–155, 156, 157, 159 – portrayal of kings/tyrants 5 n.56, 183, 193, 201 – writing materials of 23, 30, 31, 58 n.13 Euripides, dramas by – Aegeus 173, 177 – Aeolus 165 n.30, 177 – Alcestis 71, 172, 175 – Alcamenes 173, 177 – Alcmaeon 173, 177 – Alexander 173, 177 – Andromache 172, 175 – Andromeda 49 n.126, 173, 177 – Antigone 165 n.33, 177 – Antiope 170, 173, 177 – Archelaus 25, 169, 173, 177, 213, 221 – Auge 173, 177 – Autolycus 177

264 

 General Index

– Bacchae 172, 175 – Bellerophon 178 – Children of Heracles 189–190, 191, 195, 198 – Chrysippus 178 – Cresphontes 173, 178 – Cretans 173, 178 – Cyclops 71, 172, 175 – Danae 178 – Dictys 178 – Electra 172, 175 – Erechtheus 173, 178, 191–192 – Hecuba 172, 175, 190–191, 192, 198 – Helen 172, 175 – Heracles 169, 172, 175, 188–189, 194, 198 – Heraclidae see Children of Heracles – Hippolytus 172, 175, 178, 187–188, 189, 192, 193, 198 – Hypsipyle 170, 173, 178, 204 – Ino 173, 178 – Ion 172, 175, 192–193, 198, 199, 203–205 – Iphigenia at Aulis 172, 176 – Iphigenia at Taurus 172, 176 – Ixion 178 – Licymnius 178 – Medea 170, 172, 176 – Melanippe Desmotis 173, 178 – Melanippe Sophe 178 – Meleager 173, 178 – Oedipus 173, 178 – Oeneus 178 – Oenomaus 173, 178 – Orestes 165 n.31, 169, 173, 176, 203, 214 – Palamedes 173, 179 – Phaethon 173, 179 – Philoctetes 179 – Phoenissae 171, 172, 173, 176, 213–214 – Phrixus, 173, 179 – Pirithous 215 – Pleisthenes 209–210 – Polyidos 173, 179 – Protesilaus 179 – Rhadamanthys 215 – Rhesus 173, 177 , 219 – Sciron 173 – Scyrioi 179 – Sisyphus 215 – Stheneboea 179 – Suppliant Women 173, 177, 183, 184–187, 189, 190, 191, 193, 194, 198, 226 – Telephus 173, 179 – Tennes 215 – Theseus 173, 177, 179 – Thyestes 173, 179 – Trojan Women 173, 177, 198 Ezechiel (tragic poet), Exagoge 4 Favorinus, On Exile 170 Five Thousand, government of 211 freedom of speech (parrhesia) 167, 169, 185 Fronto (grammarian) 110

Gaius Marius (politician and general) 93, 101 Gelon I of Syracuse 4 n.48, 19 n.23, 22, 25, 29, 31, 58 n.14, 66–67, 88 n.9 Gelon II of Syracuse 62, 68 Germanicus (Julio-Claudian general), comedy by 98 Gnaeus Calpurnius Helix (priest) 122 gnomai see tragedy Gracchi 221 grammatici, 163, 164, 169 Greek culture see also philhellenism – and Roman elites 93, 101 – and Roman superiority 91, 93, 95, 101 Greek theatre, in Italy 87–103 passim griffins, in sculpture 133–134, 147 Gythion, games at 109 Hadrian (Emperor) 102, 110, 111, 113 n.64, 117, 134, 147 – and comedy 169 – portraits of 157 n.39 – revision of festival calendar 111 – statues 133, 134 Hadrianeia (festival) 110 Hadrianus of Tyre 164 n.10 Hagia Sophia 139 Halicarnassus, theatre 20, 24 Harpalus (treasurer of Alexander) 81, 83 Hecatomnids 20, 21, 24, 25 Helenos (governor of Cyprus) 50 Hephaesteion 194–198 Hephaesteia 194 Hephaestion (Macedonian noble), funeral games of 33 Heracles/Hercules (hero) 74, 157 n.37, 188–189, 194, 195, 198, 201–202 Heraclides of Pontus 22 Herennius Severus 157 herm / double herm 150–158 Herod I, king of Judaea 118, 123–125, 126 Herod Agrippa 124–125 Herod Antipas 124 Herodes Atticus 134, 160 n.69, 169 Herodotus (historian), statue of 157 n.39 Hesiod (poet) 63, 122, 154 n.21 Hierapytna, theatre 134 Hieron I of Syracuse 2, 4 n.48, 19, 22–23, 25, 30, 32, 34, 74, 88 n.9, 221 Hieron II of Syracuse 55–69 passim, 88 n.9 – and agriculture 65 – and architecture 2 n.27, 3 n.28, 25 n.77, 31, 57, 60–62, 74, 83 – Syrakosia 61, 65 Himera, Battle of 19, 22 n.43, 23 Hipparchus (Pisistratid) 19 Histriones 94, 105, 106 n.12, 109 n.34 Homer (poet) 18, 219 – in education 164 – portraits of 150, 156, 157 n.39 Horace (poet) 220, 221, 225, 227 – carmen saeculare 219 n.7 humanitas 13 n.119, 101, 103

General Index  

internet, and democracy 5–6 Ion (son of Apollo) 192–193 Isagoras (tragic poet) 164 Isocrates (orator) 22 – Areopagiticus 203 n.50 isonomia 213 Itálica, theatre 136, 137 Iuvenes 115 Jerash, South Theatre 144, 146 Juba II, Theatrical History 118 Judaea, and theatres/festivals 118, 123–125 Julius Caesar 94, 107, 114–115, 116, 133, 171 Juvenal (poet) 102 n.66, 108, 165 Juvenalia (festival) 98, 109 Kaisareia (festival) 117, 123–125 komasts 17 Kommodeia Sebasta (festival) 111 Kourion, theatre building 130–131, 135 n.50 Laberius (mimographer) 106 n.9, 114 lex Hieronica 64 lex Iulia theatralis 69, 125 lex Pedia 227 lex Roscia theatralis 69, 113–114 libraries, decorated with portraits 157–158 Livia Drusilla/Julia Augusta 122 Livius Andronicus (poet) 87 n.6, 163 Lucan, Bellum Civile 224 Lucian (writer) – Gout 164 – On Dance 112 – and the Nero 166 n.39 Lucius Anicius Gallus 89, 90–92, 101 n.63, 114 Lucius Cornelius Scipio (Asiaticus) 89 Lucius Mummius (statesman and general) 89 n.11 Lucius Verus (Emperor) 129 ludi Apollinares (44 BC) 95, 96 ludi saeculares 97, 98 Lycon (comic actor) 26, 35 Lycophron (tragic poet and scholar) 73, 77, 78 – Menedemus 81 Lycurgus (king of Nemea) 204 Lycurgus (Athenian politician) 149, 151, 152, 155, 191 Lysander (Spartan general) 34 Lysias (speech writer) 156 Lysimachos, son of Ptolemaios (benefactor) 50 Maecenas (patron) 105, 220, 221 maenads 18, 57, 61, 65 Mamercus (tyrant of Catane) 28 Mamercus Aemilius Scaurus (rhetor and poet) 171, 221 – Atreus 221 Marcellus, games of 108 Marcus Aurelius (Emperor) 109 n.32, 110, 129, 134, 144, 169 n.61 – and pantomime 110 – on role of comedy 166–167 – on role of tragedy 166–167 – statue of 132, 134

 265

Marcus Fulvius Nobilior 89, 90 Mardonius (Persian commander) 23, 193 Marius (Gaius Marius, politician and general) 93, 101 Marcus Marius 93–94 Marcus Valerius Messalla Messalinus 122 Mark Antony 31 n.131, 41, 46, 49, 106, 118, 220, 222, 224 n.34 Mars Ultor 227 – statue of 133 Martial (poet) 108 Maternus see Curiatius Maternus Matidia Minor 144, 146 Mausolus (king of Caria) 20, 24, 25, 33 Megalopolis, theatre building 2, 29 n.116 Melanippides (lyric poet) 20, 21 n.34, 34 Melpomene (muse) 153 Menander (comic poet) 4, 88, 97, 110, 155, 157 – Androgynos 170 – double herm with Homer 156 n.27 – mosaic in Antioch 160 n.63 – Pompeii, casa del Menandro 157 n.42 – portraits of 4 n.37, 157 n.37, 160–162 – reception of 160 – and sententiae 155 n.24 – statue in Athens 149 – statue base in Eretria 160 n.61 Midas (Phrygian king) 76, 79, 83 Mime 1, 5, 8, 12, 83, 87 n.2, 105, 106 n.9, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 114, 116, 144 Mithridates VI 31 n.131 monarchy 1, 200, 209, see also autocrats, tyrants – and divine origins 47, 63 – Hellenic vs barbarian 190 – legitimation of 24–26 – proto-democratic 187, 201, 212, 216 – and succession 33 Mouseia (festival) 83, 122 Neoptolemus (son of Achilles) 202 Neoptolemus (tragic actor) 33 Nero (Emperor) 3 n.32, 5, 28, 98–99, 100, 107, 108, 109, 114, 116, 119 n.33, 131, 135 n.59, 164, 165–166, 171, 172, 223, 224 – as citharoedus 99, 107 n.19 – and pantomime 109 – performing Greek tragedy 165–166 Neronia (festival) 99, 110 n.46, 111 New Comedy 4, 97, 167, 168 New Music 4 Nicagoras (tyrant of Zeleia) 30 Nicetes of Smyrna 164 Nicias (politician and general) 192, 193 Nicocles (king of Cyprus) 20 Nicopolis (Greece) 119, 123 Niobe 99 Nysa (Maeander), Gerontikon 137 Octavian see Augustus Odysseus (hero) 169, 191, 212 n.116 Old Comedy (Attic) 4, 5, 63, 97, 155 n.26, 163, 166–167, 168–169 – countering arrogance of elites 167, 169, 172

266 

 General Index

– freedom of speech in 167, 169 – written by women 168 Old Oligarch 202, 211 oligarchs/oligarchy 1, 9, 199–200, 206–207 – assimilated to tyranny 209, 216 – avoidance of/disinterest in theatre 3, 19, 199 – and decline of theatre 7, 8–9, 10 – in tragedy 3 n.36, 9 n.80, 199–217 passim Olympia (festival, at Macedon) 27, 32 Orestes (hero) 157 n.36, 214, 222, 223 ostracism 193, 194 Ovid (poet) 219, 223 paideia see education Palatine Games 115 palliatae 106 n.9, 108 Panathenaea (festival) 18, 193 n.36 Panhellenia 110 pantomimes 1, 8, 12, 105, 110, 114, 116, 163 – and Augustus 12, 105, 106–107, 108–109 – banishment of 107, 115, 125 – contests of 111 – excluded from Greek festivals 111–112 – and factionalism 105 – and Nero 109 Paphos (Cyprus) 43 n.68, 127–147 passim, 135 – Chrysopolitissa basilica 131, 137 – Earthquake 131, 133 – as metropolis 135 – rivalry with other cities 135 – trade 130 Paphos, theatre building 127–147 passim – Antonine reconstruction 127, 131, 135–136 – column capitals 137–139, 147 – dedicatory inscription 127–130, 132, 147 – griffin reliefs 133–134, 147 – marble 136–137, 141 – orchestra 139, 147 – recycling of 131 – seating 144 – statues in 132–133, 134–135, 141–142, 143, 147 Papposilenus 77 papyri, preserving tragedy 170, 172–174 Parion, theatre 138 Patara (Lycia), theatre building 142, 143–144, 146, 147 Perdiccas II of Macedon 21 Pergamum 37, 39 n.37, 52 n.160, 79, 80, 82, 83, 111, 135, 147 – library of 157 n.39 Periander of Corinth 17, 19, 187 n.10 Pericles (politician) 59 n.20, 186, 192–193 – Odeon of 192–193 periodos (festival circuit) 25, 111 n. 49, 117, 118–120 Phalaris of Acragas 59 Pheidon (king of Argos) 25 Philhellenism 13 n.119, 76, 90–91, 92, 93, 95, 96, 102–103 Philip II of Macedon 5 n.55, 20 n.27, 22, 26 n.84, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 81, 125 Phili(s)cus of Corcyra (tragic poet) 38, 78 n.59, 163 Philistis (wife of Hieron) 62, 63 Philistus of Syracuse 28, 29, 30, 75

Philippopolis 138 Philostratus (the Elder) 164 Philostratus (the Younger) 153, 164, 165, 166, 171 – citations of tragedy by 170, 174–180 philotimia 213–214 Philoxenus (lyric poet) 34, 157 n.42 Phrynichus (tragic poet) 19 n.23, 23, 34 – Phoenician Women 23 n.51 Pindar (lyric poet) 17, 20 n.29, 23 – Pythian 1 23 – Pythian 4 20 – Pythian 10 20 n.29 pipers (auletai) 8, 28, 35, 90, 91, 92 n.25, 121 Pisistratus (tyrant of Athens)/Pisistratids 18, 63, 147, 195 n.47 Plato (comic poet) 34, 155 n.26 Plato (philosopher) 22, 25, 205, 207, 210, 223 – and Dionysius I 27 – portraits of 158 – and theatrocracy 6, 183 – and tragedy 19, 183, 193–194 Platonios (scholar) 4 Plautus (comic poet) 110, 113 n.62, 114 Pleiad (Alexandrian) 38 n.19, 73, 163 pleonexia (‘greed’) 171, 213 Pliny the Younger 107–108, 130, 157, 158 Plutarch (historian and philosopher) 96  citations of tragedy by 165, 170, 172–180  On Exile 170 Polybius (historian) 90, 91 n.24, 92 Polycrates (tyrant of Samos) 18 Polygnotus (painter) 153 n.20, 198 Pompey (general) 93, 106, 123, 130, 147, 223 Posidonius (philosopher) 156 Pratinas (poet of tragedy and satyrplay) 79 Praxiteles (sculptor) 77 Praxithea (queen of Athens) 191–192 priests/priestesses 32, 37, 44, 63, 69, 80, 111, 122, 151–153, 204, 205, see also Dionysus prohedria (honorary seating) 27, 69, 113 Propertius (poet) 221 Ptoia (festival) 121–122, 126 Ptolemaia (festival) 34, 39, 44–46, 47, 48, 72 n.11, 117 n.7 – procession at 47, 48 Ptolemies 11, 30, 31 n.131, 47, 63, 147 – and Dionysus 30, 47–49, 71, 77 – and technitai 35, 38 n.17, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44, 51–52, 78 Ptolemy I Soter 30, 39, 44, 47, 77 Ptolemy II Philadelphus 38, 39, 40, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 51, 77, 117 n.7 Ptolemy III Euergetes 44 n.79, 46, 47 Ptolemy IV Philopator 31 n.131, 44 n.78, 48, 49, 51 – Adonis (tragedy) 28 Ptolemy V Epiphanes 50, 51 Ptolemy VI Philometor 42 Ptolemy VIII Euergetes II 78, 42 Ptolemy IX Soter II 43 Ptolemy XII Auletes 28, 31 n.131, 49 Pylades (hero) 157 n.36, 207, 214 Pylades (pantomime artist) 107 n.22, 108, 113 Pythia (festival), at Delos 17, 18, 45 n.83, 111 n.49, 118, 119, 120 – new Pythia 117

General Index  

Pythia (oracle) 204–205, 205 Pythionice (concubine of Harpalus) 81 Python (tragic poet), Agen (satyrplay) 28, 73, 74, 75, 76–77, 81, 83, 84 Quintilian (writer on rhetoric) 110, 219 Quintus Caecilius (comic actor) 124 Quirinalia (festival) 91–92 Res Gestae 125, 227 rhapsodes 18 rhetores 163, 164, 169 Rhomaia (festival) 72 n.11, 73 nn.12 and 13, 80 Roma (goddess) 121 Romulus and Remus 225 Sabratha (Libya) 137, 138 Salamis, Battle of 23 Salamis (Cyprus) 137 Sappho (lyric poet), statue of 157 n.39 Sarapieia (festival) 72 n.11, 73, 82 satyrplay/satyr drama 1, 3, 4, 8, 22, 71–84 passim, 122, 216 n.140 – and the Attalids 79–80 – and autocrats 3, 71, 75–76 – choruses of 11, 81–82 – costume 77 – at Cyzicus 80 – and Egyptian Artists (technitai) 78 – festivals performed at 72–73 – independence from tragedy 72, 73, 74, 77–78, 81 – at Magnesia 80 – at Pergamum 80, 83 – professionalisation, absence of 81–82 – Roman 83–84 – supposed decline of 71–72 – at Teos 79–80 – at Thespiae 122 satyrs 29, 57, 61, 65, 74, 77, 88 – and Alexander 71, 76 – and the Argeads 76 – and the Attalids 71, 79 – and Dionysius I 29, 74, 75 – and the Ptolemies 71, 75 ‘Saviour Gods’ (Θεοὶ Σωτῆρες) cult of, 44 Scipio Aemilianus (general) 92 Scopelianus of Clazomenae 164 seating, hierarchic 3, 113, 115, 116, see also prohedria Sebasta (festival) at Naples 12, 97, 98, 100 n.61, 108, 109, 110 n.46, 111, 117, 118 n.14, 120, 121, 125 Seleucids 30 Seneca (philosopher and poet) 13, 105 n.7, 110, 154 n.21, 219, 221, 223, 224, 226 – Thyestes 220 n.11, 221, 224, 226, 227 Sessa Aurunca (Campania), theatre 3 n.27, 127, 144–146, 147 ship of state 212 silens 77, 83 Silenus 48 n.120, 74, 76, 79, 81 Silius Italicus (politician and poet) 158 Simonides (lyric poet) 19, 20 n.29 Skirtos (satyr) 79

 267

Socrates (philosopher), portraits of 156, 157 n.39 Soli, theatre 137 Solon (lawmaker and poet) 156, 203, 208, 212, 215 Sophocles (tragic poet) 71, 88, 149, 158, 201, 205, 206, 215, 219 – catalogue of quotations in other writers 180 – and papyri 174 – portraits of 150–153, 156, 157, 158 n.44, 159, see also Three Tragedians, Lycurgan statue of – as priest 151–153 Sophocles, dramas by – Ajax 174, 180, 228 n.57 – Antigone 165, 172, 174, 180, 201, 206 – Electra 95, 174, 180 – Oedipus at Colonus 165, 174, 180, 215, 219, 226 – Oedipus Tyrannus 165, 167, 174, 180, 201 n.23 – Philoctetes 174, 180, 215 – Tereus 227 – Trachiniae 174, 180, 201–202, 206 Sophron (comic actor) 118 Sophron (comic poet) 60 Sositheus (tragic poet) 73–74, 77, 78, 79 Spartocids 20, 22 Stephanion (pantomime artist) 107 n.18, 108 Sulla (general) 83–84, 106 – writer of ‘satyric comedies’  84 synodoi (guilds) of Artists of Dionysus see technitai Syracuse – Apollo Temenites, temple of 58 – Demeter Pyrphoros, sanctuary of 59, 65 – Great Altar of Hieron 59, 60, 64 – Grotto delle Nymphe 57–58, 59, 65 – Gymnasium theatre 146 – Mouseion 58 – reciprocal oath by 68 Syracuse, theatre building 25–26, 55–59, 69 – Capacity 69 – Diazoma 57, 62–63, 69 – Koilon 57, 69 – Orchestra 57 – Prohedria 57, 69 – Skene 55–57 Tacitus (historian), 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 219 Taormina, theatre 146 Teano, theatre 146 technitai (Artists of Dionysus) 10, 11, 33, 35, 37–52 passim, 81, 82, 89, 96, 102, 114, 117, 118, 125, 164 – Athenian association 39, 52, 102 n.66, 164 – benefactors of (φιλοτεχνῖται) 49–51 – Cyprian association (Paphos) 37, 40–43, 45 n.85, 46, 50, 78, 129 – Egyptian association (Alexandria, Ptolemais, Cyprus)  37, 38–40, 42, 43–46, 52, 78 – Ionian-Hellespontine association (Pergamum, Teos) 35, 37, 39, 52, 79–80 – Isthmian-Nemean association (Argos, Chalcis, Corinth, Opus, Thebes) 39 – at Rome 119, 120 – supporting royal ideology 30, 35, 49, 52 – at Syracuse 58, 129 n.4 Telegonus (hero) 157 n.36

268 

 General Index

Telemachus (hero) 157 n.36 Temple of Olympian Zeus (Acragas) 61 Teos 79–80 Terence (comic poet) 92 n.26, 110 Theadelphia (festival) 46 theatre buildings 2, 147 – ban on 113 Theatre of Dionysus (Athens) 29, 144, 149, 156, 193 n.36 Theatre of Marcellus 2 Theatre of Pompey 93, 123 Theatrocracy 3 n.32, 6, 7, 10, 183 Themistocles (general) 22, 192 n.35 Theodectes of Phaselis (tragic poet), Mausolus 20 n.31, 25, 33 Theodoric the Great 105 Theodoros son of Seleucus (benefactor) 41, 42–43, 50, 78 Theron (tyrant of Acragas) 61, 63 Theseus (hero) 5 n.56, 25, 183–198 passim, 200–201, 207–208, 212, 226 Thespiae 122, 168 Thespis (tragic poet and actor) 2 n.21, 19, 156 Thessalus (tragic actor) 27 Thirty Tyrants 207 n.87, 216, 217 Three Tragedians, Lycurgan statues of 29, 149, 150, 155, 159, 160 Thyestes 220, 221, 223, 228 Tiberius (Emperor) 97, 105, 106, 107, 109, 110, 113, 115–116, 121, 122, 142, 158, 171, 172, 221 Tiberius Claudius Flavianus Eudemus 143 Tiberius Iulius Apolaustus (pantomime dancer) 111 Timocles (poet of satyrplay) 72 n. 6 Timoleon (general) 67 Timotheus (lyric poet) 4 n.41, 20, 21, 34, 157 n.39 Timotheus (tyrant of Heraclea Pontica) 33 Titus Statilius Taurus 122 Tlepolemus (regent of Egypt) 51 Trachis 201–202 Trachones (Attica, Euonymon), theatre 144 tragedy 1, 4, 8, 12, 24, 71, 72, 80, 81, 108 n.25, 164, 167, 216 – and autocrats 2, 3, 5, 19–20, 22, 74, 165, 172, 183, 201, 228 – choruses of 11, 82, 163 n.5, 205–206 – and democracy 2, 3, 5, 7, 88, 100, 106, 163, 183, 194 n.38, 201, 215, 228 – in education 88, 163–164 – excerpts/extracts of 13, 163 n.5 – and gnomai 167 – and kingship 200–201 – modern reception of 163, 165

– new 12, 164, 168 – and oligarchy 3, 199–217 passim – and regime types 200–201 – reperformance of 5 n.50, 19, 23, 163 – texts vs performances 95 – and tyranny 216 Tragedians, Three Lycurgan statues of 29, 149, 150, 155, 159, 160 tragoedia cantata 106 tragoidoi 90, see also actors, tragic Trajan (Emperor) 31 n.131, 107–108, 110, 114, 130 tripods 22 n.43, 45 Turnus (king of the Rutuli) 225 tyrannicides (Harmodius and Aristogiton) 196 tyrants/ tyranny 1, 17–35 passim, 61, 88 n.9, 125, 147, 183, 187, 193–194, 206, 209, 216, 220, 223, see also autocrats, monarchy Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 224 Varius Rufus (poet) 219–228 passim, 220 – De morte 220 – paid by Augustus 6 n.60, 108 n.29, 114, 220 – Thyestes 6 n.60, 108, 114, 219–228 passim Varro, Marcus Terentius (scholar), library of, 157 Velia Procula 143 Vespasian (Emperor) 106, 225 – statue of 134 Vibo Valentia, theatre 146 Virgil (poet) 158, 219, 220, 221 – Aeneid 225, 228 – Georgics 225, 228 women, attending theatres 1 n.11, 3 n.30 Xanthos (Lycia), Letoon theatre 144 Xenarchus (mime writer) 34 Xenophon (historian), portraits of 157 n.39 Xerxes (Persian King) 22, 23, 192, 193 Zeno (philosopher) 156 Zeus 25, 30, 44, 47, 201 – Aitnaios 32 – Capitolian 129, 134 – Eleutherios 63, 196 – Olympios 32, 62–63 Zeus and the Muses, festival of 32 Zopyros (tragic actor) 46 n.102

Index locorum Accius – fr. 198-199 R3 226 – fr. 205 R3 224 n.34 – fr. 211 R3 220 n. 11 Achilles Tatius – 5, 1 135 Aelian – VH 9, 9 28 n.103 – VH 13, 37 29 n.117 Aelius Aristides – Or. 23 135 – Or. 49, 38 133 n.31 Aeschines – 3, 168-175 207 n.84 Aeschylus – Eum. 472 202 n.39 – Eum. 487-488 202 – Eum. 526-531 203, 212 – Eum. 681 203 – Eum. 696-697 203 – Pers. 241-242 201 n.24, 202 – Supp. 604 206 n.81 – Supp. 699 206 n.81 – TrGF F 398 210 see also pages 179–180 Andocides – 2, 27 207 n. 87 Anonymous – Vit. Aesch. 9-10 65 n.43 – Vit. Aesch. 18 23 n.50, 65 n.43 Anthologia Graeca – Anth. Pal. 7, 707 73–74 – Anth. Pal. 7, 45 21 n.33 – Anth. Pal. 9, 248 106 n.13 – Anth. Pal. 9, 600 157 n.36 – Anth. Plan. 16, 290 106 n.13 Archilochus – fr. 120 17 n.3 Aristides – Or. 46, 23 119 n.25 Aristotle – [Ath. Pol.] 2, 2 200, 203 – [Ath. Pol.] 9, 1 203 – [Ath. Pol.] 18, 1 19 – [Ath. Pol.] 36, 1 207 n.87 – Eth. Nic. 1166a32-33 170–171 – Poet. 1449b 3 n.35 – Pol. 1275b22-24 200 n.16 – Pol. 1279a26-28 199, 216 – Pol. 1285a15-19 201 – Pol. 1285b3-5 200 n.17, 203 n.49 – Pol. 1290a30-b20 199–200 – Pol. 1292b7-10 207 n.87 – Pol. 1296a22-23 199 n.2 – Pol. 1301a12-13 214 n.127 – Pol. 1305a15 199 n.2 – Pol. 1305b39-40 210 n.108 – Pol. 1310b 6 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-017

– Pol. 1313a3-5 199 n.2 – Pol. 1448a 65 n.53 – Rh. 1403b33 6 n.61 – Rhet. ad Alex. 1424a39-b16 199 n.7 Aristophanes – Eq. 702-704 69 n.72 Arrian – Anab. 1, 11, 1-2 22 n.38 – Anab. 6, 28, 3 33 n.149 – Anab. 7, 14, 10 33 n.155 – Epict. diss. 1, 24, 16 166 n.41 – Epict. diss. 1, 28, 7 167 n.46 – Epict. diss. 1, 28, 31-33 167 – Epict. diss. 2, 16, 30-31 167 – Epict. diss. 3, 4 118 n.20 – Epict. diss. 4, 5, 15 168 Artemidorus Daldianus – 1, 26 110 n.46 – 4, 24 76 n.45 – 4, 33, 14-20 100 Astydamas – TrGF 60 T 2a 149 n.4 Athenaeus – 2, 50f 75 n.34 – 4, 149d 47 – 5, 194a-203b 38 n.14, 77 n.50 – 5, 196f-197a 77 n.56 – 5, 197e-202a 38 – 5, 198c 38, 78 – 5, 198d 78 – 5, 206d-209e 65 n.51 – 5, 208b 61 n.28 – 6, 261c 84 – 7, 276a-b 47 – 12, 542d 28 n.103 – 13, 586d 28 n.109, 75 n.34 – 13, 595e 75 n.34 – 13, 603a-b 27 n.89 – 14, 615a-e 89–90, 114 n.76 Augustus – RG 2 227 – RG 20 125 n.80 Bacchylides – Ode 18 194 Baton – FGrH 268 F 2 30 n.123 Callimachus – Hymn 1 63 n.34 Callixenus of Rhodes – FGrH 627 F 2 38 n.14, 77 n.50 Cassiodorus – Var. 1, 27 105 n.4, 115 n.85 Cassius Dio – 51, 1 119 n.24 – 51, 19 118 n.17

270 

 Index locorum

– 53, 31, 2-3 108 n.28 – 54, 17, 4-5 113 n.63 – 58, 24, 3-4 171 – 59, 5 124 nn.74–75 – 63, 4, 2 116 n.92 – 63, 9, 4 165 nn.26 and 28 – 63, 10, 2 165 n.26 – 63, 22, 6 165 n.28 – 63, 24, 5 166 n.37 – 68, 10 107 n.22 – 68, 15 114 n.72 Chariton – 1, 1, 12 65 n.57 Chion – Epist. 17, 1 26 n.84 Cicero – Arch. 23 103 n.70 – Att. 1, 6 158 – Att. 1, 9 158 – Att. 1, 15, 1 95 – Att. 4, 10, 1 158 – Att. 16, 5, 1 94, 95–96 – Brut. 24 158 – Div. 1, 39 40 – Fam. 7, 1, 2 93 – Fam. 7, 1, 3 93–94 – Fam. 7, 23 158 – Fin. 1, 2 95 – Mur. 39-40 113 n.68 – Off. 3, 82 171 – Orat. 110 158 – Phil. 2, 24-26 106 n.15 – Phil. 2, 44 113 n.69 – Q Fr. 3, 1, 14 158 – Sest. 115 88 n.8 – Verr. 2, 2, 114 64 n.47 – Verr. 2, 2, 154 64 n.47 – Verr. 2, 3, 14 64 n.49 – Verr. 2, 3, 149 64 n.49 – Verr. 2, 4, 119 55 n.4, 63 n.36 – Verr. 2, 4, 122-123 29 n.117, 63 n.38 – Verr. 2, 4, 137 63 n.33 Clement of Alexandria – Protr. 4, 54, 2 48–49 – Protr. 4, 54, 4 30 n.123 Columella – Rust. 1, 1, 8 65 n.51 Cratinus – PCG F 73 59 n.20, 193 – PCG F 258 59 n.20 Critias – 88 A 13 DK 207 Demetrius of Phaleron – 1, 24-25 SOD 29 n.113 Demosthenes – 15, 19 199 n.2 – 19, 192-195 4 n.48 – 19, 192 32 n.144

– 19, 193 27 n.90 – 19, 337 65 n.57 Dio Cassius – 40, 13, 1 103 n.71 – 56, 30, 3-4 147 n.135 – 58, 24, 3-5 171, 221 n.23 – 61, 20, 4 3 n.32 – 62, 20, 1-2 98 – 63, 8, 2 99 – 66, 8, 2-6 3 n.32 – 67, 1, 2 159 n.53 Dio Chrysostom – Or. 2, 2-3 32 n.144 – Or. 3, 133 112 n.58 – Or. 17, 6-7 171 n.74 – Or. 32 3 n.32 – Or. 32, 41-43 165 n.24 – Or. 32, 60 112 n.58 – Or. 32, 94 168–169 – Or. 37, 21-22 29 n.117 – Or. 37, 41 29 n.117 – Or. 48, 10 205 Or. 66, 6 171 Diodorus Siculus – 5, 2-4 65 n.55 – 5, 4, 7 65 n.54 – 11, 26, 5-6 66–67 – 11, 38, 3-5 58 n.14 – 11, 49, 2-4 30 n.128 – 11, 72 63 n.35 – 13, 82 63 n.34 – 13, 91, 3-4 66 n.63 – 13, 94 65 n.57 – 13, 94, 1 55 n.5 – 13, 94, 5-6 24 n.64 – 13, 94-96 66 n.60 – 14, 18 59–60 – 14, 45 66 n.60 – 14, 63, 1-2 65 n.55 – 14, 64-70 66 n.60 – 14, 77, 4-5 65 n.55 – 14, 109 24 n.66 – 15, 6 64 n.45 – 15, 74 64 n.45 – 15, 74, 5 66 – 15, 81, 5 28 nn.102–103 – 16, 10, 3 66 n.60 – 16, 20, 6 66 n.60 – 16, 32, 3 26 n.84 – 16, 55, 1 32 n.144 – 16, 70, 6 63 n.33 – 16, 83 55 n.4 – 16, 83, 2 63 n.36 – 16, 91, 5 22 n.38 – 16, 91, 6-16, 92, 1 27 n.96 – 16, 92, 5 30 n.124 – 16, 92-93 26 n.84 – 16, 93-95 26 n.84 – 16, 95, 1 30 n.124

Index locorum  

– 17, 16, 3-5 32 n.146 – 19, 9 66 n.60, 67 n.65 – 20, 63, 3 67 n.68 – 20, 7 65 n.55 – 20, 108 35 n.172 – 22, 8, 4 66 n.60 Diogenes Laertius – 5, 85 73 n.15 Diomedes (grammarian) – GL I, 486 65 n.53 Dionysius of Halicarnassus – Ant. Rom. 7, 70-73 119 n.26 Dionysius of Syracuse – TrGF 76 F 9-10 33 Dioscorides (epigrammatist) – Anth. Pal. 7, 707 73–74 Duris (Historian) – FGrH 76 F 14 28 – FGrH 76 F 36 32 n.147 – FGrH 76 F 71 34 n.162 Eubulus – PCG F 24 30 n.121 Euripides – Andr. 699-702 204 n.54 – Andr. 1097 203 n.54 – Andr. 1103 204 n.56 – Cyc. 119 207 n.81 – El. 380-382 207 n.89 – El. 385 207 n.89 – Hec. 107-135 190–191 – Hel. 1611 204 n.55 – Heracl. 111-113 186 n.8 – Heracl. 410-424 190 – Heracl. 567-573 190 – Heracl. 849-850 195 – Heracl. 1030-1031 195 n.47 – HF 588-592 206 n.80, 210 – HF 1163-1171 188 – HF 1322-1337 188–189 – HF 1331-1333 198 – Hipp. 983-1035 208 n.95 – Hipp. 986-989 207–208 – Hipp. 1012-1015 206 n. 80 – Hipp. 1286-1295 187–188 – Hipp. 1334-1337 188 n.13 – Hipp. 1414 188 – Hipp. 1460 192 – IA 527 213 n.121 – IA 1260 204 n.55 – Ion 13 204 n.55 – Ion 335 204 – Ion 369 204 – Ion 414-416 204 – Ion 551 204 – Ion 595-606 192, 206 n.80, 212 n.115 – Ion 621-632 192, 206 n.80 – Ion 625-626 204 n.55 – Ion 665 203 – Ion 728 203

– Ion 1039 204 – Ion 1107 203 – Ion 1111 203 – Ion 1166-1168 192, 203 – Ion 1215-1228 192 – Ion 1219 204 – Ion 1222 204 – Ion 1225 203 – Ion 1531 203 – Ion 1566 203 – IT 34 204 n.63 – IT 131 204 n.63 – IT 678 207 – Med. 1078-1079 167 n.46 – Or. 48 214 n.127 – Or. 108 214 – Or. 119 214 – Or. 425 214 – Or. 427 214 – Or. 431 214 – Or. 446 214 – Or. 612 214 – Or. 696-697 214 – Or. 704-705 214 – Or. 729-730 214 n.127 – Or. 772 207 n.89, 210 n.103, 214 – Or. 773 214 n.129 – Or. 774 214 n.129 – Or. 884 214 n.127 – Or. 907-913 206 n.80 – Or. 974-975 214 – Or. 1035 214 n.127 – Or. 1072 214 – Or. 1079 214 – Or. 1157 214 – Or. 1496 169 – Or. 1539-1540 214 – Or. 1660 214 – Or. 1625-1665 214 – Or. 1682-1683 214 – Phoen. 72 213 – Phoen. 74-75 213 – Phoen. 76 213 – Phoen. 80 213 – Phoen. 81 213 – Phoen. 344-558 170 – Phoen. 368 167 – Phoen. 393 171 – Phoen. 396 213 – Phoen. 401-405 213 – Phoen. 404 213 – Phoen. 405 213 – Phoen. 406-407 213 – Phoen. 461-464 213 – Phoen. 467-468 213 – Phoen. 506 213 – Phoen. 509-510 213 – Phoen. 524-525 171, 213 – Phoen. 549-567 206 n.80 – Phoen. 531-532 213

 271

272 

 Index locorum

– Phoen. 531-540 171 – Phoen. 533-538 213 – Phoen. 536-538 213 – Phoen. 538 213 – Phoen. 542 213 – Phoen. 555-558 168 – Phoen. 627 213 – Phoen. 940-942 214 – Phoen. 994-997 214 – Supp. 238-245 206 n.80, 212 – Supp. 339-358 185–186 – Supp. 345-347 186 – Supp. 349-351 187 – Supp. 350 186 – Supp. 393-394 186, 187 – Supp. 399 184 – Supp. 399-408 212 – Supp. 403-408 184 – Supp. 410-413 184 – Supp. 414-416 206 n.80 – Supp. 417-418 184 – Supp. 429-455 184–185 – Supp. 433 185 – Supp. 434-441 185 – Supp. 438 185 – Supp. 442 185 – Supp. 442-455 185 n.6, 206 n.80 – Supp. 446-449 187 – Supp. 456-462 185 – Supp. 671 187 – Supp. 713-718 187 – Supp. 726-730 186–187 – Tro. 1169 183 n.1 – TrGF F 21 211, 212 n.115 – TrGF F 48 155 – TrGF F 94 207 – TrGF F 208 166 n.42 – TrGF F 223 213 n.118 – TrGF F 228 25 n.69 – TrGF F 240 213 – TrGF F 243 208 n.96 – TrGF F 244 208 – TrGF F 250 213 – TrGF F 258 213 – TrGF F 275 9 n.80, 209 – TrGF F 282 211 – TrGF F 285, 3-5 212 n.115 – TrGF F 287 166 n.43 – TrGF F 355 208 n.96 – TrGF F 356 208 – TrGF F 360, 1-4 191–192 – TrGF F 362 210 – TrGF F 453 210 n.107 – TrGF F 605 206 n.80 – TrGF F 626 209-10, 214 n.129 – TrGF F 644 210 – TrGF F 752h 204 – TrGF F 757, 925 166 n.44 – TrGF F 774 212 – TrGF F 775a 212 see also pages 175–179

Eusebius – Praep. evang. 15, 2, 4 30 n.123 Eustathius – ad Dionys. Per. 911 76 – Od. 3, 68 55 n.5 Favorinus – De exil. 7, 2-3 170 n.70 Florus – 1, 1, 8 225 n.43 Gellius – NA 10, 18, 5 33 n.152 Heraclitus – 22 B 104 DK 208 Hermippus of Smyrna – FGrH 1026 F 84 23 n.55, 30 n.126, 55 n.5, 58 n.13 – FHG III, 46 20 n.30 Herodotus – 1, 23-24 17 n.3 – 3, 80-82 186 n.9 – 3, 81, 1 206 – 3, 81, 3 202 n.40 – 3, 82 199 – 5, 67, 1 18 n.6 – 5, 67, 5 18 n.7 – 5, 92 187 n.10 – 7, 157, 2 22 n.42 – 7, 157-158 22 n.43 – 7, 165 23 n.48 – 7, 165, 1 23 n.47 – 7, 165-166 22 n.43, 23 n.46 – 8, 113, 3 23 n.47 – 8, 138, 2-3 76 Hesiod – Op. 103-104 133 n.39 – Op. 242-251 63 n.34 Homer – Il. 2, 188-197 212 n.116 – Il. 2, 203-206 212 n.116 – Il. 2, 682 201 n.27 Horace – Ars. P. 53-55 220 n.12 – Carm. 1, 6 220, 220 n.12, 227 – Carm. 1, 6, 8 227 n.55 – Carm. 1, 16 227 – Carm. 1, 16, 17-18 227–228 – Epist. 2, 1, 182 92 n.26 – Epist. 2, 1, 245-250 220 n.12 – Epod. 7, 17-20 225 n.43 – Sat. 1, 1 155 n.26 – Sat. 1, 5, 39-42 220 n.12 – Sat. 1, 5, 93 220 n.12 – Sat. 1, 6, 54-55 220 n.12 – Sat. 1, 9, 22-23 220 n.12, 227 n.55 – Sat. 1, 10, 43-45 220 n.12 – Sat. 1, 10, 81-84 220 n.12, 227 n.55 – Sat. 2, 8, 20-21 220 n.12 – Sat. 2, 8, 63-64 220 n.12

Index locorum  

Isidore of Seville – Etym. 6, 5, 1 157 n.40 – Etym. 6, 5, 2 157 n.40 – Orig. 6, 5 157 Isocrates – 7, 22 202 n.41 – 8, 82 66 n.58 – 15, 318-319 210 n.104 – 16, 36-38 216 n.144 – 17, 52 20 n.30 Josephus – AJ 15, 268-271 123 – AJ 15, 274 123 n.67 – AJ 16, 137-139 124 nn.70 and 72 – AJ 16, 149 124 n.73 – AJ 19, 75-91 115 n.83 – AJ 19, 84-98 125 n.78 – AJ 19, 86 115 n.84 – AJ 19, 336 124 n.76 – AJ 19, 343 124 n.77 Justinus – Epit. 16, 5 28 n.102 – Epit. 16, 5, 10 28 n.103 – Epit. 22, 2 66 n.60 – Epit. 22, 2, 10 65 n.57 – Epit. 25, 5, 8, 12 30 n.123 Juvenal – 2, 4-5 158 – 6, 634 108 n.26 – 7, 1 108 n.26 – 8, 211 109 n.33 – 8, 229 165 n.29 Livy – 24, 21, 9 63 n.36 – 24, 21, 11-12 65 n.51 – 34, 44, 5 113 n.67 – 34, 54, 3-8 113 n.67 – 39, 22 89 – 45, 43, 1 90 n.16 Lucan – 1, 95 225 n.43 Lucian – Ind. 15 33 n.156 – [Nero] 8-9 166 – Salt. 38-60 112 Lycophron – TrGF 100 F 2 81 Machon – fr. 11, 141-7 20 n.30 Macrobius – Sat. 2, 3, 10 114 n.78 – Sat. 2, 7, 18-19 106, 113 n.63 – Sat. 7, 3, 8 114 n.78 Marcellinus – 29-30 4 n.48 Marcus Aurelius – Med. 7, 38 166 n.43

– Med. 7, 38-43 167 – Med. 7, 40 166 n.44 – Med. 7, 41 166 n.42 – Med. 11, 6 166–167 Marsyas – FGrH 135-136 F 16 32 n.147 Martial – 3, 95 116 n.92 – 5, 8 116 n.92 – 5, 14 116 n.92 – 5, 23 116 n.92 – 5, 25 116 n.92 – 5, 35 116 n.92 – 5, 38 116 n.92 – 8, 3 108 n.26 – 12, 94 108 n.26 – Spect. 25 108 n.23 – Spect. 25b 108 n.23 – Spect. 26 108 n.23 Memnon (Historian) – FGrH 434 F 1 28 n.103 – FGrH 434 F 1, 1 30 n.123 – FGrH 434 F 1, 1, 3 26 n.84 – FGrH 434 F 1, 3, 2-3 20 n.30, 33 n.154 Menander – Sik. 156 207 n.84 Moschion – FGrH 575 F 1 61 n.28, 65 n.51 Nepos – Att. 18, 6 157 n.41 – Timoth. 4, 2 65 n.57, 67 n.67 Nicolaus of Damascus – FGrH 90 F 75 84 n.109 Old Oligarch see Xenophon Ovid – Tr. 3, 1, 71-72 157 n.40 Papyri – PKöln VI 245 169 – POxy. 2257 64 n.44 – POxy. 2399 66 – POxy. 2465 63 n.39 – POxy. 2476 117 n.8, 119 n.27 – POxy. 3202 58 n.13 – POxy. 5202 119 n.27, 120 n.38, 120 n.39 – POxy. 5203 170 Pausanias – 1, 2, 3 64 n.43 – 6, 15, 6 68 n.71 – 6, 22, 2 25 n.73 – 7, 17, 1 122 n.53 – 7, 18, 9 119 n.30 – 10, 8, 3 119 n.29 Petronius – Sat. 59 87 n.5 Philistus of Syracuse (Historian) – FGrH 556 F 40b 28 n.107 – FGrH 556 F 57a 29 n.120, 75

 273

274 

 Index locorum

Philo Judaeus – In Flacc. 33-42 3 n.32 – In Flacc. 135-139 3 n.32 – Leg. 203-205 124 n.74 – Quod omnis prob. lib. 141 9, 88 Philostratus – Nero 8-9 166 – V A 4, 38, 5 165 n.34 – V A 4, 39, 2 165 – V A 7, 4, 2 165 – V S 1, 500 28 n.105 – V S 1, 21, 518 164 n.14 – V S 1, 25, 534 169 n.60 – V S 1, 25, 541-542 169 – V S 2, 1, 549 169 n.61 – V S 2, 1, 559 169 n.61 – V S 2, 1, 560-562 169 n.61 – V S 2, 10, 590 164 n.10 – V S 2, 11, 591 164 n.15 – V S 2, 24, 607 164 n.12 Philostratus the Younger – Imag. 13 153 Photius – 502, 21 149 n.4 Pindar – Nem. 1, 13-14 65 n.55 – Ol. 6, 158-162 32 n.143 – Ol. 13, 18-19 17 n.5 – Pyth. 1, 31 30 n.128 – Pyth. 1, 75 23 n.49 – Pyth. 2, 86-88 199, 208 n.95 Plato – Grg. 471a 25 n.68 – Hipparch. 228b-c 18 n.13 – Leg. 659b 66 n.64 – Leg. 700a-701a 6 n.61 – Plt. 291a 207 – Resp. 473d 207 – Resp. 550c 200 – Resp. 555d 210 – Resp. 566b 210 – Resp. 568a-b 183 n.1 – Resp. 568c 19 n.20, 199 n.3 – Resp. 577a-b 27–28 Plautus – Amph. 65-86 3 n.32 Pliny (the Elder) – HN 7, 115 157 – HN 7, 159 108 n.31 – HN 18, 4, 22 65 n.51 – HN 35, 9 157 n.39, 158 – HN 35, 10 157 – HN 35, 10-11 157 n.40 Pliny (the Younger) – Ep. 3, 7 158, 158 n.45 – Ep. 4, 28 157, 158 n.45 – Ep. 5, 19, 3 108 n.25 – Ep. 6, 21 108 n.25 – Ep. 6, 34 108 n.27

– Ep. 7, 4, 2 98 – Ep. 7, 11, 4 108 n.27 – Ep. 7, 17 108 n.25 – Ep. 9, 36, 4 108 n.25 – Pan. 33, 1 108 n.27 – Pan. 46, 1 107 n.20 Plutarch – Alex. 24, 8-9 76 – Alex. 29 26 n.87, 35 n.166 – Alex. 29, 3-4 27 n.88 – Alex. 29, 6 4 n.48 – Alex. 67, 8 27 n.89 – Alex. 71, 5 27 nn.92–93 – Alex. 72 34 n.165 – Ant. 56-57 106 n.15 – Ant. 60, 2-3 49 n.129 – Brut. 21, 5-6 96 – Caes. 61 67 n.65 – Cic. 13, 2-4 113 n.68 – Cons. ad Apoll. 104a 168 n.49 – Crass. 33, 2 28 n.111 – De Alex. fort. 334e 4 n.48 – De Alex. fort. 338b 30 n.123 – De exil. 605f 171 n.72 – De fluv. 25, 1 25 n.71 – De lib. ed. 16a 168 n.49 – Dem. 22, 4 27 n.95 – Demetr. 34 66 n.59 – Demetr. 41 28 n.104 – De vit. pudore 533d 167 n.46 – Dion 33 66 n.60 – Dion 34 66 n.63 – Dion 38, 2 65 n.57 – Dion 42, 8-43 66 n.60 – Dion 43, 1 65 n.57 – Lys. 18, 4-6 34 n.162 – Mar. 2, 2 92–93 – Mor. 292d 204 n.58 – Mor. 334e 26 n.87 – Mor. 1095d 21 n.34 – Mor. 1096b 26 n.83 – Nic. 14, 5 63 n.33 – Per. 11, 3 213 n.120 – Pomp. 52, 5 93 – Sol. 19, 2 212 – Sull. 2 106 n.15 – Sull. 2, 6 106 n.15 – Sull. 19, 11-12 83 n.107 – Sull. 26 106 n.15 – Sull. 27, 2 83 n.108 – Sull. 36 106 n.15 – Sull. 36, 2 106 n.15 – Them. 25, 1 22 n.44 – Tim. 8 65 n.55 – Tim. 31 28 n.108 – Tim. 34, 4 65 n.57 – Tim. 37, 3 66 n.63 – Tim. 38 55 n.5, 67 n.67 – Tim. 38, 6 65 n.57

Index locorum  

– X orat. 833c 64 n.45 – X orat. 837d 157 n.38 Pollux – Onom. 4, 116 28 n.101 Polyaenus – Strat. 5, 1, 1 59 n.21 – Strat. 5, 44, 1, 1-10 20 n.30 Polybius – 1, 8, 3-4 67 – 1, 62, 8 64 n.47 – 4, 20, 8-21 11 n.104 – 5, 88 64 n.46 – 9, 27, 2 63 n.34 – 16, 21, 6-9 51 – 30, 22 89–92 – 30, 22, 1-12 114 n.74 Polyzelus – PCG F 12 27 n.95 Praxiphanes – fr. 21 Matelli 4 n.48 Proclus – In Ti. 70 (Diehl) 208 n.93 Propertius – 2, 34 220 n.13 – 3, 9, 50 225 n.43 Python – TrGF 91 F 1, 14-16 75 Quintilian – Inst. 3, 8, 45 226 n.49 – Inst. 10, 1, 98 108 n.29, 219 n.4 Sallust – Iug. 85, 32 93 Satyrus – FGrH 631 F 1 47 n.112, 77 n.49 – FGrH 631 F 2 63 n.39 Scholia Aristides – 178, 16 27 n.95 Scholia Aristophanes – Ran. 1028 64 n.43 – Thesm. 137 30 n.121 – Thesm. 1059 28 n.110 Scholia Horace (Cruquianus) – ad Carm. saec. 219 n.7 Scholia Pindar – Nem. 1, 7ab 32 n.142 – Ol. 6, 158a 32 n.143 – Ol. 6, 162a, c 31 n.142 Scholia Theocritus – Id. 1, 65 65 n.55 – Proleg. B 65 n.53 Scriptores Historiae Augustae – Hadr. 19, 6 110, 169 n.58 – Hadr. 26, 4 110 n.40, 169 n.58 – Hadr. 27 110 n.46 Seneca (the Elder) – Controv. 7, 3, 9 114 n.78 Seneca (the Younger) – Dial. 3, 20, 4 221 n.22

– Ep. 64, 9-10 158 n.48 – Thy. 176-335 221 n.21 – Thy. 193-195 223 n.33 – Thy. 204-218 221 n.21 – Thy. 222 224 n.34 – Thy. 226 220 n.11 – Thy. 336-403 221 n.21 – Thy. 682-729 226 n.48 Sidonius Apollinaris – Epist. 9, 9, 14 157 n.37 Simonides – Epigr. 15 FGE 23 n.49 – Epigr. 17(b) FGE 23 n.49 – fr. 200b Bergk 65 n.55 Sophocles – Aj. 712 206 n.81 – Ant. 159-160 206 – Ant. 173-174 201 – Ant. 450 165 – Ant. 843 206 – Ant. 940 206 – Ant. 988 206 – OT 410 165 – OT 593 207 – OT 1391 166 n.41 – Trach. 39 202 – Trach. 40 202 – Trach. 127 201 n.31 – Trach. 136 201 n.31 – Trach. 155-156 201 n.31 – Trach. 194 201 – Trach. 274-275 201 n.31 – Trach. 291 201 n.31 – Trach. 374 201 – Trach. 423 201 – Trach. 424 201 – Trach. 430 201 – Trach. 1045 201 – Trach. 1085 201 n.31 – Trach. 1087 201 n.31 – TrGF T 174 153 – TrGF F 589, 1-3 227 see also page 180 Sophron – PCG F 123 60 Statius – Silv. 2, 2, 6-12 118 n.14 Stobaeus – 4, 8, 3 88 – 4, 19, 4 155 Strabo – 5, 4, 7 97 – 6, 1, 5 65 n.55 – 6, 2, 4 63 n.33 – 7, 7, 6 118 n.14, 119 n.24, 119 n.28 – 9, 2, 2 102–103 – 14, 643 52 Suda – α 1982 32 n.144 – κ 1714 28 nn.102-103, 29 n.113 – μ 454 21 n.34

 275

276 

 Index locorum

– φ 358 163 n.3 – φ 422 164 Suetonius – Aug. 18 118 n.14 – Aug. 28, 3 147 n.135 – Aug. 29, 5 157 n.40 – Aug. 43, 1 94 – Aug. 44, 1-5 113 n.66 – Aug. 44, 2 114 n.70 – Aug. 45 107 nn.17–18 – Aug. 45, 7 108 n.31 – Aug. 52 67 n.65 – Aug. 58 67 n.67 – Aug. 59 121 – Aug. 68, 1 113 n.65 – Aug. 85 165 n.25 – Aug. 89, 1 97 – Aug. 89, 2 169 n.58 – Aug. 98 121 n.42 – Calig. 3, 2 98 – Calig. 33 124 n.74 – Claud. 11, 2 98 – Claud. 25, 12 114 n.71 – Dom. 4, 4 100 – Dom. 7 107 n.21 – Dom. 8 107 n.21 – Galb. 14 109 n.33 – Gram. 21 108 n.30 – Iul. 39, 1 94 – Iul. 39, 3 114 n.78 – Iul. 44 157 n.40 – Ner. 11 109 n.34 – Ner. 12 109 n.36 – Ner. 20 98, 116 n.93 – Ner. 20, 3 3 n.32 – Ner. 21 99 – Ner. 21, 3 165 n.26 – Ner. 46, 3 165 n.27 – Tib. 6, 4 97 n.46 – Tib. 70, 2 158 – Vesp. 19 115 n.82 – Vesp. 19, 2 3 n.32 Tacitus – Ann. 1, 8 122 n.61 – Ann. 1, 54 105 n.2 – Ann. 3, 18 122 n.61 – Ann. 6, 29, 4-7 221 n.23 – Ann. 13, 54 114 n.71 – Ann. 14, 14 109 n.34 – Ann. 14, 15, 5 3 n.32 – Ann. 14, 20 99, 113 n.60 – Ann. 14, 21, 2 89 n.11 – Ann. 15, 33-34 98 – Ann. 15, 65, 2 112 n.58 – Ann. 15, 67, 4 112 n.58 – Ann. 16, 4 99 – Dial. 3, 3 221 n.24 – Dial. 10, 5 108 n.27

– Dial. 12 108 n.29 – Dial. 12, 6 219 n.3 Terence – Hec. 25-40 92 n.26 Theocritus – Epigr. 18 157 n.36 – Id. 1, 65 65 n.55 – Id. 16, 85-99 65 n.51 – Id. 17 63 n.34 – Id. 17, 26-27 47 n.112 – Id. 17, 27 77 n.49 – Id. 17, 112-113 51 Theophrastus – Char. 11, 3 66 n.64 – Char. 26 207 n.84 Thucydides – 1, 13, 1 200 n.17 – 2, 65 186 – 2, 65, 10 187 n.12 – 3, 37-38 65 n.57, 66 n.64 – 3, 62, 3 207 n.87 – 3, 82, 8 213 – 6, 38, 4 208 n.94 – 6, 75 58 n.14 – 8, 89, 3 213, 216 n.143 – 8, 97 203 n.48 – 8, 97, 2 211 n.112 Timaeus (historian) – FGrH 566 F 22 30 n.122 – FGrH 566 F 102b 65 n.55 – FGrH 566 F 105 30 n.127 Valerius Maximus – 2, 4, 2 113 n.60 – 2, 4, 3 113 n.67 – 8, 7, 7 106 n.15 Varius Rufus – De morte fr. 147 220 n.14 – Thy. fr. 1 R3 226–227 Varro – Rust. 1, 8, 1 65 n.51 Vitruvius – De arch. 6, 7, 9 61 n.28 Xenophon – [Ath. pol.] 1, 5 202 – [Ath. pol.] 2, 18 66 n.58 – Hell. 2, 3 215 n.133 – Hell. 5, 4, 46 207 n.87 – Hier. 11 64 n.46 – Mem. 4, 6, 12 199 n.7 CEG 2(a) 23 n.49 CID IV, 12, 67-68 39 n.34 CID IV, 12, 83-84 39 n.34 CIG 3068A 38 n.22 CIIP 1135 124 n.71 CIL VI, 32323 98 CIL X, 1487 121 n.41

Index locorum  

CIL X, 4645 144 n.112 CIL XIV, 2647-2651 157 n.36 Corinth VIII 1, 14 121 n.48 Corinth VIII 1, 19 121 n.49 Corinth VIII 3, 370 111 n.52 Corinth VIII 3, 693 111 n.52 FD III 1, 551 111 n.52 IAph2007 11, 21 11 n.99 ID 1959 73 n.13 I.Didyma 163 205 nn.70–71 I.Didyma 233 205 nn.70–71 I.Ephesos 2070+1071 111 n.52 IG I3 102 68 n.71 IG I3 117, 31-36 22 n.36 IG II2 18 26 n.81, 27 n.95 IG II2 18, 6-7 24 n.65 IG II2 103 27 n.95 IG II2 212:27 n.95 IG II2 298 27 n.95 IG II2 2320 col. II, 18-31 71–2 IG II2 3157 122 n.54 IG II2 3161, 3-4 100 IG II2 4264 156 n.35 IG II2 4265 156 n.35 IG II3 1, 344 35 n.168 IG II3 1, 346 35 n.168 IG II3 1, 347 35 n.169 IG II3 1, 347, 11-15 35 n.170 IG II3 1, 423 35 n.171 IG II3 1, 929 35 n.171 IG IV, 558, 2-3 39 n.36 IG V 2, 118 169 n.63 IG VII 1760 122 n.56 IG VII 1761 122 n.56, 168 n.53 IG VII 1763 122 n.56 IG VII 1773 82 n.95 IG VII 1773, 22-24 164 n.18, 168 n.55 IG VII 1776, 24-26 168 n.56 IG VII 2447 38 n.22 IG VII 2484, 3 39 n.36 IG VII 2712 121 n.51 IG VII 2712, 77-78 122 IG VII 3197 80 n.78 IG IX 1, 278, 2-3 39 n.36 IG IX 1, 282 122 n.55 IG XI 4, 1060 38 n.18 IG XI 4, 1136, 1-3 39 n.37, 43 n.70 IG XII 4, 845 168 IG XII 6, 334 34 n.162 IG XII 9, 207 81 n.89 IG XII 9, 280 160 n.61 IG XII 9, 910 38 n.23 IG XII 9, 910, 4 39 n.36 IG XIV 3 62–63 IG XIV 7 68 IGR III, 66 143 n.94 IGR III, 1012 120 n.40 I.Iasos 1 24 n.62

 277

ILS 5050 98 I.Magnesia 145 80 n.81 I.Magnesia 146 80 n.81 I.Magnesia 148 80 n.81 I.Magnesia 149 80 n.81 I.Magnesia 151 80 n.81 I.Magnesia 192 110 n.45 I.Mylasa 1-3 24 n.62 I.Napoli 56 121 n.41 I.Napoli 57 121 n.41 I.Napoli 60 121 n.41 I.Olympia 56 97 I.Olympia 230 120 n.36 I.Olympia 231 120 n.37 I.Olympia 405 38 n.18 I.Oropos 528 82 n.95 I.Paphos 45 42 n.62 I.Paphos 85 50 n.146 I.Paphos 90 40 n.44, 41 n.51, 42 n.60, 45 n.85, 50 n.141, 78 I.Paphos 91 40 n.43, 43 n.66, 43 n.69, 50 n.144 I.Paphos 92 40 n.45, 43 n.66, 43 n.69, 50 n.145 I.Paphos 93 40 n.46, 46 n.101, 51 n.150 I.Paphos 94 40 n.45, 41 n.48, 46 n.101, 51 n.149 I.Paphos 95 40 n.47, 51 n.148 I.Paphos 96 40 n.42 I.Salamis 5 40 n.44, 43 n.66, 50 n.144 I.Salamis 6 40 n.44, 43 n.66, 50 n.143 I.Sicily 823 68 n.71 I.Sicily 824 62 n.32 I.Sicily 827 68 I.Sicily 832 58 n.13 I.Sicily 833 58 n.13 I.Sicily 1579 58 n.13 I.Sicily 3009 68 n.71 I.Sicily 3331 68 n.71 I.Smyrna II 1, 656 118 n.19 I.Thespiae 174 122 n.60 I.Thespiae 177 72 n.9 I.Thespiae 178 72 n.9 I.Thespiae 182 122 n.56 I.Thespiae 183 122 n.56 I.Thespiae 358 122 nn.57–58 I.Thespiae 376 122 n.58 I.Thespiae 376, 5-7 122 n.59 I.Thespiae 377 122 n.58 I.Thespiae 392 122 n.58 I.Thespiae 405 122 n.58 LBW 91 79 n.72 LBW 92 79 n.72, 79 n.74, 80 n.75, 82 n.98 LBW 93 79 n.72 OGIS 50 39 n.28, 39 n.32, 43 n.71, 45 n.84, 49 n.135 OGIS 51 39 n.28, 39 n.32, 43 n.71, 45 n.84, 46 n.102, 49 n.136, 50 n.139, 52 n.161 OGIS 51, 43 28 n.112, 45 n.93 OGIS 54 47 n.111, 63 n.39, 77 n.49 OGIS 161 40 n.44, 43 n.66, 50 n.144 OGIS 325 38 n.21

278 

 Index locorum

SEG 11, 464 131 n.21 SEG 11, 923 109 n.38 SEG 19, 332 68 n.71 SEG 25, 501 82 n.93, 82 n.95 SEG 25, 501, 33-34 73 n.14 SEG 26, 208 73 n.16 SEG 28, 46 207 n.82 SEG 33, 770 110 n.47 SEG 35, 1327 80 n.82 SEG 39, 1334 79, 83 SEG 51, 1832, 25-30 202 n.40 SEG 52, 741 20 n.30, 31 n.138 SEG 52, 1496 127–132 SEG 53, 587 31 n.139 SEG 53, 1758 127–132 SEG 54, 516 73 n.13, 82 n.95 SEG 54, 787 168

SEG 57, 443 73 n.13 SEG 57, 1134 79 n.72, 79 n.74, 80 n.75, 80 n.79, 80 n.80, 82 n.98 SEG 57, 1135 79 n.72, 79 n.74, 82 n.98 SEG 57, 1136 79 n.72, 79 n.74, 80 n.75, 80 n.77, 82 n.98 SEG 57, 1137 79 n.72, 79 n.74, 80 n.75, 82 n.98 SEG 62, 1844 120 n.37 Syll.3 460, 3-5 39 n.35 Syll.3 867 135 n.53 Syll.3 1080 169 n.63 Syll.3 3507, 7 39 n.37 TAM II, 408 143 n.94 TE 46A-D 79 n.72 TE 61 28 n.112 TE 62 78 Tit. Cam. 63 73 n.13, 82 n.94

List of Contributors Lucia Athanassaki is Professor of Classical Philology at the University of Crete. She is the author of Mantic Vision and Diction in Pindar’s Victory Odes (PhD Brown University 1990, online) and Ἀείδετο πὰν τέμενος. Οι χορικές παραστάσεις και το κοινό τους στην αρχαϊκή και πρώιμη κλασική περίοδο (Heraklion 2009). She is co-editor of Apolline Politics and Poetics (with R. P. Martin and J. F. Miller, Athens 2009), Archaic and Classical Choral Song. Performance, Politics and Dissemination (with E. L. Bowie, Berlin and Boston 2011), Ιδιωτικός βίος και δημόσιος λόγος στην ελληνική αρχαιότητα και στον διαφωτισμό (with A. Nikolaidis and D. Spatharas, Heraklion 2014) and Gods and Mortals in Greek and Latin Poetry. Studies in Honor of J. Strauss Clay (with C. Nappa and A. Vergados, Rethymnon 2018). She is presently co-editing two volumes, Lyric and the Sacred (with A. Lardinois, Leiden) and Plutarch’s Cities (with F. B. Titchener, Oxford) and also working on a book on Euripides, provisionally titled Euripides’ Athens. Art, Cult and Politics. Ewen Bowie was Praelector in Classics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, from 1965 to 2007, and successively University Lecturer, Reader, and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature in the University of Oxford. He is now an Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College. He has published articles on early Greek elegiac, iambic and lyric poetry; on Aristophanes; on Hellenistic poetry; and on many aspects of Greek literature and culture from the first century BC to the third century AD, including Plutarch and the Greek novels. He has edited (jointly with Jaś Elsner) a collection of papers on Philostratus (Cambridge 2009) and (jointly with Lucia Athanassaki) another entitled Archaic and Classical Choral Song (Berlin 2011). He recently published a commentary on Longus, Daphnis and Chloe (Cambridge 2019) and edited a collection of essays Herodotus. Narrator, Scientist, Historian (Berlin 2018). Robert Cowan is Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Sydney, having previously held posts in Exeter, Bristol, and Oxford. His research interests range over much of Greek and Latin literature. He has published on Sophocles, Aristophanes, Plautus, Lucretius, Catullus, Cicero, Sallust, Cinna, Ticida, Varius, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Columella, Seneca, Statius, Valerius Flaccus, Silius, Martial, Suetonius, and Juvenal, as well as ancient graffiti, the politics of Graeco-Roman tragedy, and the operatic reception of Greek tragedy. His main specialisms are Roman epic and tragedy, and he is currently working on commentaries on Virgil Aeneid 4 and Statius Thebaid 10. Eric Csapo is British Academy Global Professor at the University of Warwick and an Honorary Associate of the Department of Classics and Ancient History, University of Sydney. He is the author of Theories of Mythology (Oxford 2005), Actors and Icons of the Ancient Theatre (Malden MA and Oxford 2010) and co-author, with Peter Wilson, of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC (Cambridge), of which volume II, Theatre beyond Athens, was published in 2020.  Marie-Hélène Garelli, alumna of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, is Professor of Classics at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès. She is the author of Danser le mythe. La pantomime gréco-romaine et sa réception dans la culture antique (Louvain, Paris and Dudley MA 2007), co-author of Le théâtre à Rome (with J.-Ch. Dumont, Paris 1998) and co-editor of Où courir? Organisation et symbolique de l’espace dans la comédie antique, (with J.-C. Carrière et O. Charalampos, Toulouse 2002) and Corps en jeu: de l’Antiquité à nos jours (with V. VisaOndarçuhu, Rennes 2010). She is a contributor to the international project Cultural History of Dance in Antiquity, coordinated by Michel Briand (Bloomsbury 2021). Hans Rupprecht Goette is Professor of Classical Archaeology at Giessen University and the Freie University in Berlin and works at the German Archaeological Institute in Berlin. He publishes on Roman iconography and portraiture and Greek topography (mainly Attica, Aegina, and Euboea), Greek architecture and sculpture. He is the author of Studien zu römischen Togadarstellungen (Mainz 1989), Ὁ ἀξιόλογος δῆμος Σούνιον. Landeskundliche Studien in Südost-Attika (Rahden 2000), Athens, Attica, and the Megarid: An Archaeological Guide (London and New York 2001) and co-author of, with G. Schörner: Die Pan-Grotte von Vari (Mainz 2004), with J. Hammerstaedt: Das antike Athen: Ein literarischer Stadtführer (Munich 2004), with Th. M. Weber: Marathon: Zaberns Bildbände zur Archäologie (Mainz 2004). He has also worked with K. Hallof on IG IV² fasc. II: Inscriptiones Aeginae insulae (Berlin 2007). Richard Green is Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology, the University of Sydney, and Adjunct Professor, the University of Adelaide. He continues his work on the material evidence for Greek and Roman theatre performance, and expects that his expanded, digital version of Monuments Illustrating New Comedy, and his new version of Phlyax Vases will soon be available.  Brigitte Le Guen is Professor Emerita of Paris 8 University. She is the author of Les Associations de Technites dionysiaques (Nancy 2001), editor of De la scène aux gradins. Théâtre et représentations dramatiques après Alexandre le Grand (Toulouse 1997), À chacun sa tragédie? Retours sur la tragédie grecque (Rennes 2007), L’Argent dans les concours du monde grec (Saint-Denis 2010), and co-editor of L’Appareil scénique dans les spectacles gréco-romains (with S. Milanezi, Saint-Denis 2013), Le Masque scénique dans l’Antiquité (with G. Filacanapa and G. Freixe, Montpellier, in press). She is also director of the ‘Chorégie’ collection for de Boccard editions. Christopher de Lisle is an Assistant Professor of Greek History at Durham University. He is the author of Agathokles of Syracuse: Sicilian Tyrant and Hellenistic King (Oxford 2021).

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110980356-018

280 

 List of Contributors

Elodie Paillard is Honorary Associate in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney and lecturer/scientific collaborator in the Department of Ancient Civilizations at the University of Basel. She is currently leading a research project on Greek theatre in Roman Italy, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is the author of The Stage and the City. Non-élite Characters in the Tragedies of Sophocles (Paris 2017) and co-editor of Greek Theatre and Metatheatre: Definitions, Problems, Limits (with S. Milanezi, Berlin and Boston 2021). In parallel to her interest in ancient Greek theatre, she is also working on the social structure of Classical Athens and the emergence of democracy. Simon Perris is Associate Professor of Classics at Victoria University of Wellington. He is the author of The Gentle, Jealous God: Reading Euripides’ Bacchae in English (London 2016) and a co-editor of Athens to Aotearoa: Greece and Rome in New Zealand Literature and Society (Wellington 2017). He is currently writing a study of classical reception in Māori literature. Mali Skotheim is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashoka University. She completed her PhD at Princeton University in 2016 and has held research fellowships at the American Academy in Rome, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the American Research Institute in Turkey, and the Warburg Institute. Publications include an article on festival culture in Philostratus’ Life of Apollonius of Tyana in Eranos (2019), chapters on ancient Greek puppetry and satyr drama in the Hellenistic and Roman era. She is currently working on a monograph on the Greek dramatic festivals in the Roman era. Paul Touyz is Assistant Professor of Classics at the University of Kansas. He works broadly on Greek literature, history, and reception. His current research focuses on the postclassical history of satyrplay and its place in ancient criticism. He has published previously on the ancient reception of Aeschylus as a satyric poet and on Goethe’s reading and appraisal of Aristophanes.  Peter Wilson is William Ritchie Professor of Classics at the University of Sydney. He is the author of The Athenian Institution of the Khoregia (Cambridge 2000), editor of The Greek Theatre and Festivals: Documentary Studies (Oxford 2007) and co-editor of Performance, Reception, Iconography (with M. Revermann, Oxford 2008), Dithyramb in Context (with B. Kowalzig, Oxford 2013) and The Greek Theatre in the Fourth Century (with E. Csapo, H. R. Goette and J. R. Green, Berlin 2014). With Eric Csapo, he is writing a three-volume history of the Greek theatre, of which Theatre Beyond Athens: A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC. Vol. II (Cambridge) was published in 2020.