The aim of this engaging book is to explore the persistent connections between absolute rulers and dramatic performances in Greek and Roman drama and history. Drawing on her previous work, Anne Duncan argues persuasively that while any kind of political display has theatrical qualities, ‘tyranny is an especially theatrical mode’ because it ‘forces tyrants and subjects alike into a performance of the social contract upon which the tyrant stakes his shaky claim to legitimacy’ (p.3).
Throughout, Duncan is precise in her definition of terms. Building primarily on the work of Nino Luraghi,[1] she convincingly defines a ‘tyrant’ as exhibiting certain stereotypical behaviours, such as ‘violating ancestral custom and religion, raping women, and harming his own friends/family’ (pp.6-7). She also distinguishes between a tyrant’s relationship with theatricality and with the theatre. The former is defined as the conspicuousness of a tyrant, which arises because he has isolated himself from his subjects, whom he believes are plotting against him. This forces theatricality from both the tyrant and his subjects, who must feign loyalty (p.7). Tyranny and theatre, Duncan defines as the tyrant’s specific use of plays and spectacles to stage his own power and gain public attention and support (p.9).
The book makes several significant contributions to existing scholarship. In the first instance, Duncan supports the general consensus, found in works such as Andrew Bell’s Spectacular Power in the Greek and Roman City (2004), that theatre and spectacle were powerful tools to attain and maintain political power. Inspired by James Scott’s idea of ‘public transcripts’,[2] Duncan successfully examines how ‘certain ancient Greek and Roman autocratic rulers attempted to use theatre as part of their public transcript, and the ways in which theatre could amplify or undermine that message’ (p.2). Duncan’s most unique contribution, however, is her analysis of how the plot and themes of specific plays could be interpreted and manipulated by a ruling authority to communicate with a captive audience. Whilst there have been a few scholarly explorations of this topic, including, for instance, analysis of the Thyestes performed at Augustus’ triumph in 31 BCE, it has not been examined across a broad swath of the ancient world.[3] Tyranny and Theatre demonstrates the value of this avenue of research and its potential to elucidate how ancient political entertainment functioned.
An equally significant contribution is the assertion that there is nothing intrinsically democratic about Greek tragedy. This is a direct challenge to a body of scholarship, influentially encapsulated in John Winkler and Froma Zeitlin’s Nothing to do with Dionysos? (1990), which argues that tragedy and democracy were organically connected institutions (p.41). To the few dissenting voices against this conclusion,[4] Duncan enthusiastically adds her own. She argues, correctly in my opinion, that the ‘multivocality of theatre’, which has been cited as evidence of Athenian tragedies’ democratic nature, is, in fact, evidence of its ideological flexibility, not of its adherence to any one political system. This argument is put forward primarily in Chapters 2 and 7, the former of which has been previously published in Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics (2011). According to Duncan, ‘tragedy could be interpreted quite differently in different performance contexts’ (p.45), and this likely accounts for the genre’s immense popularity across the ancient world.
The book’s nine chapters ostensibly divide their attention between Greece and Rome, although there is a stronger emphasis on the Greek material. This is perhaps to be expected, as Duncan’s primary source base is the extant tragedies, which weigh the discussion in favour of the Greek world. Throughout, there are opportunities for the connections between Greece and Rome to be highlighted more strongly. For instance, the similarities between Dionysius I of Syracuse’s playwrighting (Chapter 4) and Nero’s performances (Chapters 8 and 9) could have been noted in their respective chapters, as could the likeness between Alexander the Great’s quotation of Greek tragedies (Chapter 5) and the Roman Emperors quoting plays (Chapter 8). This limited cross-referencing may explain why the book has no concluding chapter. Concluding remarks could have drawn together the compelling similarities between the uses and abuses of theatre by both Greek and Roman tyrants.
Chapter 1 begins with four case studies of barbarian kings in Aeschylus and Euripides. These kings each menace the Greeks and are all naïve spectators who do not understand theatricalised deception, such as feigned naval retreats or sham religious rituals. In these tragedies, Duncan argues, theatre is a peculiarly Greek power that allowed them to defeat barbican tyrants, but at a cost to their ethical integrity. It is an absorbing chapter and leads neatly into Chapter 2, which discusses fifth-century tyrants at the edges of the Greek-speaking world, who commissioned new tragedies and performances of existing tragedies by Athenian playwrights. Aeschylus visited the court of Hieron I of Syracuse, and Euripides spent ten years at the court of Archelaus of Macedon. Duncan asserts that ‘both playwrights wrote tragedies for these tyrants to celebrate and legitimise their regimes, even as they wrote other tragedies in Athens celebrating democratic values’ (p.10). The chapter thus makes a significant case for the ideological flexibility of tragedy, which could promote either democracy or tyranny.
Chapter 3 argues, contrary to much existing scholarship, that the tyrant was a stock character in fifth-century Athenian tragedy, with consistent characteristics such as paranoia, insecurity and cruelty. These stock tyrants, Duncan reasons, were set up against the ‘good king’, often Theseus of Athens, and came to embody the Athenian ideology of tyranny as democracy’s sinister opposite. Similarly, Chapter 4 offers a compelling argument against an established line of scholarship. This chapter was published previously in Theatre Outside Athens (2012) and examines Dionysius I, the fourth-century BCE tyrant of Syracuse, who wrote his own tragedies, including his Ransom of Hector, which won first prize at the Lenaia festival in Athens in 367 BCE. Duncan suggests, ‘that the comic tradition about Dionysius as a paranoid, untalented hack was an Athenian response to his self-presentation as a Good King Theseus figure, which the Athenians rejected’ (p.11). This is a refreshing argument, and whilst I still tend to consider his win at the Lenaia to be politically rather than artistically motivated, Duncan’s challenge is a stimulating take on the subject.
Chapter 5 traces Alexander the Great’s use of theatre. I agree with Duncan that ‘our sources describe Alexander becoming increasingly paranoid, mentally unstable, and stagy towards the end of his life’ (p.11) and that there is excellent evidence for Alexander using spectacle and games to control his audiences at home and abroad. However, I am less aligned with Duncan’s interpretation of Alexander’s supposed habit of quoting tragedies. Duncan cites Plutarch, who tells us that Alexander quoted Euripides’ Medea to Pausanias, used lines from Euripides’ Andromache in a shouting match with Cleitus (p.83), and employed lines from Euripides’ Bacchae in a quarrel with Callisthenes (p.84). In my opinion, this is much more likely to be a literary device employed by Plutarch, which was not limited to his Life of Alexander. Plutarch describes Marcus Brutus, for instance, using a line of Euripides’ Medea (334) as he contemplates suicide (‘O Zeus, do not forget the author of these ills!’). Whilst Duncan does acknowledge that Plutarch could have invented the quotation habit (p.84), she counters that Arrian also refers to Alexander quoting tragedy (Ar. 7.16.5-6). I would argue that this is evidence of a common literary device among late first-century authors, rather than evidence for Alexander using tragic quotes in his daily life. Few, I think, would shout lines from a play in the heat of an argument.
Chapter 6 examines mad kings in Greek and Roman tragedy, arguing that their madness is a ‘hidden transcript’ for representing tyranny. Duncan proposes that the mad fits of Orestes, Pentheus, Oedipus, Ajax, and Hercules were used to suggest a nightmarish vision of tyranny, involving isolation, paranoia, distorted vision, and violence. This theme of violent madness is continued into Chapter 7, which explores the myth of Atreus and Thyestes, one of the most popular in Classical antiquity. These brothers were used by generations of Greek and Roman tragic playwrights to signify the perils of the tyrant’s quest for limitless power, including civil war, murder, incest, and cannibalism. Much like Chapter 2, this chapter provides an excellent example of tragedy’s flexibility and how the same story could be used in different politically charged moments to have entirely different meanings. Whether Atreus or Thyestes was the villain could be adapted for a Greek or Augustan setting.
Chapter 8 presents the well-established argument that ancient historians consistently characterised ‘bad’ emperors as theatrical. Duncan adds to this discussion by pointing out that an important litmus test for these emperors was their behaviour at the games. Good emperors were depicted enjoying the theatre in moderation, and bad emperors deliberately blurred the boundary between theatre and real life to dramatise their power. This feeds into the final chapter on the Octavia, which presents the Emperor Nero as a stock tyrant of the tragic tradition. Duncan argues, in alignment with Timothy Peter Wiseman’s ‘drama hypothesis’,[5] that the play provides an accurate portrayal of Nero. She writes: ‘Nero is depicted in our sources as collapsing theatre and reality, he acts as if his family’s lives were a tragic saga and his life were a script’ (p.173). Thus, the overblown character in Octavia is, ironically, a historically accurate version of Nero. Although this is not an entirely convincing argument, it builds on Duncan’s premise that ‘tragedy tyrants began to resemble real rulers, and real rulers began to style themselves after tragedy tyrants’ (p.3).
The breadth of Tyranny and Theatre and its close textual analysis of the extant tragedies is impressive, yet there are two aspects which could have been expanded upon, particularly as the book already contains two previously published chapters. The first is why tragedy, not comedy, was used specifically by tyrants. Chapter 1 opens with a short section on the power of theatre, and Duncan briefly explains that ‘it was tragedy that helped to shape people’s perceptions of what kings and tyrants looked and acted like’ (p.10). Whilst Duncan has certainly shown this to be true, she does not suggest why. Does tragedy get more of a response out of an audience? Does it induce a stronger emotional reaction from the crowds, which a tyrant could commandeer?
The second element to explore further is the use of such tragedies in the Roman Republic. Duncan observes that the ludi put on in the late Republic were, in essence, ‘the continuation of the private use of theatre by [Greek] “big men” to promote themselves’ (p.128). Yet, Tyranny and Theatre skips over these ludi, even though their analysis would have greatly strengthened the book’s argument. Pompey’s theatre was opened in 55 BCE with the performance of two tragic plays, Accius’ Clytemnestra and Naevius’ Trojan Horse, and Caesar’s funeral incorporated Pacuvius’ Contest for the Arms of Achilles and Atilius’ Electra. As Duncan has so powerfully shown, the production of a tragic play was never neutral. What was the meaning and intention of these tragedies in their Roman Republican contexts?
The strength of the argument in Tyranny and Theatre encourages many new lines of enquiry and makes the book a particularly valuable contribution to both our understanding of theatre and theatrical culture in the ancient world, as well as the relationship between spectacle and political power in various Greco-Roman settings.
Notes
[1] Nino Luraghi, The Splendours and Miseries of Ruling Alone (Stuttgart, Franz Steiner Verlang, 2013).
[2] James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990).
[3] E.g., Matthew Leigh, ‘Varius Rufus, Thyestes and the Appetites of Antony,’ PCPS 42 (1996), pp. 171-97; Mario Erasmo, Roman Tragedy (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2004), pp. 102-4, 109-10; Anthony Boyle, An Introduction to Roman Tragedy (London: Routledge, 2006), pp. 161-2.
[4] E.g. Eric Csapo and Peter Wilson, ‘Drama Outside Athens in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries B.C.’, Trends in Classics 7.2 (2015), pp. 316-95.
[5] Timothy Peter Wiseman, ‘Octavia and the phantom genre’, AHB 19.1/2, (2005), pp. 59-69.