Staging Power: Alexander, Athens and the Contests at Tyre

Abstract

At a time of waning military prestige in the fourth century, Athens attached great importance to its choral and dramatic heritage as a source of civic display and pride. In spectacular festivities staged at Tyre in 331 bce and detailed by Plutarch (Alex. 29.1–5; de fort. Alex. 334 d-e), Alexander the Great drew upon elements of the Athenian contests in his own celebrations. I suggest here that he did so in order to articulate his own power with a Greek—and more particularly an Athenian—audience in mind, and that his gesture was shaped by apprehensions of instability in the Peloponnese.