[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Among the most compelling and interesting developments in the academic study of classical drama is an expanded focus on reception history and a widening perspective, both temporally and geographically, beyond the stages and canonical playwrights of Athens and Rome. Increasing attention has been devoted to lesser-known playwrights along with actors and audiences, performers and patrons, art and architecture, as indispensable to a robust understanding of the history of ancient theater.
This collection of studies, edited by a septet of distinguished scholars and arising from a 2018 colloquium hosted at the University of Sydney, offers a welcome complement to this growing body of research. Its thematic focus on autocracy—rule by one man—provides a compelling counterpoint to historical analyses that emphasize the centrality, even necessity, of Athenian democracy to the origin of drama. Thus, one thesis animating this volume is that across antiquity theater consistently appealed to kings, tyrants, and emperors, evident in their enthusiasm for its performance and quest to control its modes of production for political ends. If such a foregrounding of autocracy destabilizes idealized conceptions of classical Athens as the common birthplace of both democracy and theater, so also does the book’s second central impetus: a repudiation of the theory of decline. As the authors of the introduction (Eric Csapo, Elodie Paillard, and Peter Wilson) articulate in detail, since the influential work of Ludwig Friedländer in the nineteenth century, it has been widely accepted (at least implicitly) that after the fifth century, the production of drama steadily and irreversibly deteriorated. This decline, so it is often supposed, neatly parallels the fall of free, democratic city states first to Hellenistic kingdoms then to the Roman Empire. Under these new political arrangements, public funding gave way to the patronage of wealthy donors; productions occurred in secular rather than religious contexts; choruses were professionalized; mime and pantomime came to be preferred to comedy and tragedy; and plays were often relegated to private and excerpted performances rather than full-scale civic productions. Over against such historical narratives, Csapo, Paillard, and Wilson emphasize that autocracy was prominent in fifth-century Greece, and both Aeschylus and Euripides were known to have been patronized by tyrants, at Syracuse and Macedon, respectively. Moreover, democracy did not disappear starting in the fourth century, as many cities continued to have democratic governance, if only at the local level.
The thirteen chapters in the book are organized into three sections, concerning Greek autocrats (Part I), Roman autocrats (Part II), and dramatic representations of autocracy and its alternatives (Part III). In the first chapter, Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson survey the role of tyrants in the fifth and fourth centuries BCE. They begin with the establishment of musical and dramatic festivals throughout the Greek-speaking world as well as the construction of impressive stone theaters, and they proceed up to Alexander, who extended dramatic performances along with his campaigns in the east. While this period of time gave way to numerous transformations in the production of drama, they demonstrate a continuity in the interconnection between autocracy and theater. Brigitte Le Guen’s chapter picks up the narrative in the world of Hellenistic empires. She begins with Ptolemaic Alexandria where there is robust evidence in both literary and epigraphic sources for imperial investments in public performance, and she moves on to the less well-known case of Cyprus. In both Alexandria and Cyprus, she establishes that patronage of dramatic artists (technitai) was closely tied to cults of Dionysus and functioned to bolster their respective ruler cults. In view of this, it is no coincidence that Ptolemy IV Philopater came to be identified as a “New Dionysus.” A different Hellenistic ruler is taken up by Christopher de Lisle, whose chapter concerns Hieron II of Syracuse and in particular the theater which was “the centrepiece of a building programme” (at 60). Its strategic position within the Neapolis signaled Hieron’s authority over both the urban population and the rural, agricultural communities of Sicily.
The fourth and final chapter of Part I moves in a different direction concentrating on satyr drama, a genre that has received comparably less attention within standard histories of ancient theater. As Paul Touyz observes, after the fifth century in Athens, satyr plays become detached from tetralogies and consequently developed in new directions as freestanding productions. They were characterized by their distinctly Dionysian qualities and consequently, Touyz argues, afforded Hellenistic rulers occasions for Dionysiac self-fashioning, an assessment that complements the conclusions of Le Guen’s earlier chapter.
Chapters 5 through 10 make up Part II on Roman autocrats, the first of which, by Elodie Paillard, provides an effective transition surveying Greek dramatic performance in Roman Italy. From the Republican Period through the philhellenic phases of the Empire, Greek theater was highly valued among elites, particularly for the private enjoyment of the educated. As public entertainment, however, drama would need to become fully Romanized in order to be deployed effectively by political power players for the signaling of their cultural virtues. While Greek plays could be celebrated for their evocation of classical Athens, in Rome they were rarely taken as markers of democratic ideals. The ascendency of Augustus marks a turning point in autocracy at Rome, and Marie-Hélène Garelli’s chapter explores the corresponding evolution of ludi scaenici as their management shifted from the senatorial aristocracy to imperial control. While some cultural elites of Rome in the first and second centuries CE expressed distaste for what they regarded as baser forms of theatrical entertainment, emperors largely catered to popular tastes. To do so, they exerted control over the genres that were performed and at the same time regulated seating arrangements that would reinforce social hierarchies among Romans and between Romans and foreigners.
Augustan involvements in theater extended throughout the Empire, and Mali Skotheim’s chapter turns our attention to the Greek east, focusing on two contexts. First, in Nicopolis, Augustus reestablished the Actia (which included dramatic contests) and elevated its status among the other panhellenic festivals so as to commemorate his victories there and celebrate the new era of peace to follow. Second, in Judea, Herod, as a client king, constructed theaters throughout his kingdom and established a festival in Jerusalem in honor of Caesar that involved a range of dramatic and musical performances. Richard Green’s chapter takes up a second-century case study, that is, the refurbishments of the theater on Paphos under Antoninus Pius. Through a detailed analysis of inscriptions and archaeological remains, Green establishes a trend toward Roman architectural preferences, such as extensive use of marble to mark a building’s status; this, together with the dedicatory inscription to the emperor, indicates how an imperial connection to an impressive theatrical structure could enhance the status of a city in the Greek east.
Chapters nine and ten establish, in different ways, the ongoing popularity of Attic playwrights in Rome. Hans Rupprecht Goette is concerned with portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander. Copies of the fourth- and third-century originals in the parodos of the Theater of Dionysus in Athens are widely attested in Republican and Imperial Rome indicating the ongoing veneration of these Greek dramatists. It is notable, however, that whereas the Athenian prototypes belonged to the public theater, their Roman replicas were most commonly in the private villas of the elite for whom they signaled literary pretentions even in the absence of the actual reading or performance of plays. Fifth-century tragedies often feature characters expressing vehement critiques of autocracy and plots displaying the destructive consequences of excessive lust for power. Yet, as Ewen Bowie observes, despite the latent potential of both tragedy and comedy “to provoke anti-imperial sentiment in the Greek world” (172), it is striking that no emperor seems to have been concerned over this. Bowie’s chapter concludes with two helpful appendices that enumerate and compare the occurrences of extant and fragmentary plays on papyri and in quotations by Dio Chrysostom, Plutarch, Aelius Aristides, and Philostratus.
The remaining three chapters that make up Part III further pursue the questions raised by Bowie, namely, how plays themselves represent autocracy and its alternatives. Lucia Athanassaki takes as a point of departure Euripides’ portrayal of Theseus which she interprets with a view to iconographic representations of the hero at Athens (especially on the Hephaesteion friezes). Whereas Euripides sometimes appears to be celebrating benevolent tyrants of mythology, Athanassaki presents a more nuanced assessment, suggesting that his plays often function to remind their audiences of the fragility of democracy. Simon Perris offers an insightful overview of the treatment of oligarchy in several tragedies. As Perris cogently demonstrates, while it is tyrants who are most often presented on stage as a threat to democracy, this reflects received mythological narratives. In contemporary political discourse, however, tyranny could stand in for oligarchy, which in Athens took on heightened urgency following the revolution of 411, and Perris’ close readings establish that tragedy engaged strongly with these concerns. Finally, Robert Cowan analyzes the (almost entirely) lost tragedy, Thyestes by L. Varius Rufus, which according to later testimony was performed at the Actian Games celebrating Octavian’s victory over Antony. He articulates a reading of the tragedy’s depiction of Atreus’ revenge on Thyestes which maps onto the recent civil war; in this way he orients the drama within a wider poetic milieu that was navigating the same political circumstances. Cowan argues that the tragedy’s celebration of newly acquired autocratic powers does not preclude its recognition of the horrors of the violence that led to this.
While this brief summary and overview cannot adequately represent the volume’s depth of research or the scope of insight, it should nevertheless be clear that it will be welcomed by scholars and advanced students concerned with an expanded view of theater history and its political intersections. The book makes no claims to exhaustive coverage; as such, it effectively opens the way for further explorations in new directions. There is, for instance, some brief attention to the ways Jewish communities engaged with theater (especially in Skotheim’s chapter), but an additional, complementary case study might be provided in the dramatization of the conflict between Moses and the Egyptian tyrant in Ezekiel’s Exagoge. Christianity also remains to be considered, as the new religious autocracies arising in the fourth century comprise a significant chapter in the narrative traced throughout this volume. For more than a century, it would seem, Christian emperors attempted to enforce new regulations over dramatic productions, such as limiting when they could be performed and assigning actors to a status of ritual impurity. But perhaps the final act of autocratic intervention is marked by the ultimate closure and abandonment of theaters at the end of antiquity.
Authors and Titles
Part I: Theatre and Greek Autocrats
- Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson, Greek Theatre and Autocracy in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries
- Brigitte Le Guen, Artists of Dionysus and Ptolemaic Rulers in Egypt and Cyprus
- Christopher de Lisle, The Autocratic Theatre of Hieron II
- Paul Touyz, Autocratic Rulers and Hellenistic Satyrplay
Part II: Theatre and Roman Autocrats
- Elodie Paillard, Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances
- Marie-Hélène Garelli, Drama and Power in Rome from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (First-Second Centuries AD)
- Mali Skotheim, Augustan Policy Towards the Greek Dramatic Festivals
- J. Richard Green, Theatres and Autocracy in the Roman Period: An Example in Microcosm
- Hans Rupprecht Goette, 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
- Ewen Bowie, Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire
Part III: Representations of Autocrats and Oligarchs in Drama
- Lucia Athanassaki, Charms of Autocracy, Charms of Democracy: Euripides’ Athenian Leaders in the Light of Civic Iconography
- Simon Perris, Oligarchs in Greek Tragedy
- Robert Cowan, Fault on Both Sides: Constructive Destruction in Varius’ Thyestes