Athenian Life Research Articles

PUBLIC LIFE IN ATHENS

PUBLIC LIFE IN ATHENS

Greek Theatre Performance: An Introduction

In this fascinating and accessible book, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theatre to students and enthusiasts interested in knowing how the plays were performed. Theatre was a ceremony bound up with fundamental activities in ancient Athenian life and Wiles explores those elements which created the theatre of the time. Actors rather than writers are the book's main concern and Wiles examines how the actor used the resources of story-telling, dance, mask, song and visual action to create a large-scale event that would shape the life of the citizen community. The book assumes no prior knowledge of the ancient world, and is written to answer the questions of those who want to know how the plays were performed, what they meant in their original social context, what they might mean in a modern performance and what can be learned from and achieved by performances of Greek plays today.

The Body and its Representations in Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousai : Where Does the Costume End?

Aristophanes' Thesmophoriazousaiis a rich and funny play, but it gives the impression of lacking a sustained point. Theater directors can happily stage it, subverting Aristophanes by casting women and recasting the text to speak to modern disputes over gender, sex, and politics, as Mary-Kay Gamel has done so wonderfully (see her article in this volume). But the student of comedy who wishes to study the play in the context of its original production in 411, probably at the City Dionysia, has a harder time. Because it has no overt political theme it was for long passed over as a paignion, an escape from relevance in the tense atmosphere of that spring. As a "woman play" it seems less satisfactory than Lysistrata or Ekklesiazousai because it has no female lead character and Euripides' nameless kinsman (whom I call "Inlaw") upstages the women and their concerns. 1 With the current interest in performance and the metatheatrical aspects of comedy, Thesmophoriazousai has finally come into its own as a sly dialogue on theater and ritual, comedy versus tragedy, and gender. 2 But the older view remains in effect that the play has no politics. At the same time, it is assimilated to Aristophanes' other plays in its thematics, while its striking anomalies go unremarked. As a result, it still does not quite come into focus. [End Page 369] As a play about ritual and theater, Thesmophoriazousai is said to absorb women's ritual and restage it within its own festival setting at the City Dionysia. Yet this is the only one of Aristophanes' surviving plays in which the principal male characters exit the stage before the end of the play. Here they flee, in female dress to boot, leaving the chorus to play out the final scene with the Scythian slave. 3 Euripides and Inlaw do not share in the fun of sending the slave running in one wrong direction then another. And the play ends as it began, on Nesteia, the day of fasting for the women performing the Thesmophoria. 4 No revelry brings on the transition to feast and renewal that the audience probably expected. No procession points the way to a new instauration created by the comedy. 5 Given the importance of processions in Athenian life as an expression of community revival, this is a speaking absence. 6 As a play about tragedy and comedy, Thesmophoriazousai is said to show the triumph of comedy over tragedy as the more encompassing and flexible art form. The plots of tragedy fail to rescue Inlaw, while a comic plot succeeds: Euripides brings on a dancing girl, Elaphion, who seduces the Scythian slave away for sex while Euripides frees Inlaw. But Euripides' final trick is no comic plot. In the Aristophanic comic plot the [End Page 370] hero wins a desirable young woman, often one whose name promises new fertility, peace, or power; he does not give one away to the blocking figure. 7 Euripides also capitulates to the women, promising never to speak ill of them again. Only by relinquishing both triumph and sex (and thereby also festivity) does he salvage his poor kinsman's life. Euripides' plot fit for a "barbarian nature" (1129) is rather a farcical version of his own rescue-play plot: like Helen and Andromeda it involves deceiving the blocking figure, which allows the principals to escape while leaving others (chorus or a god) to thwart the chase. But its success is based on abandoning pure representation and giving the "real" (within the world of the play) woman away to the internal audience in order to rescue a pseudo-woman. As for gender representation in the play, most analysis holds that men prevail. Different commentators take Aristophanes to be revealing that women on stage are all really men, or questioning what a woman really is since she is the very figure of mimesis, or showing that women deserve...

The Double Vision of Euripides' Cyclops: An Ethnographic Odyssey on the Satyr Stage

1 COMPAKATIVE i ama Volume 33Fall 1999Number 3 The Double Vision of Euripides' Cyclops: An Ethnographic Odyssey on the Satyr Stage Carol Dougherty Theater—the very word means to be a spectator—is all about looking, wondering, and watching the action on stage, and this visual experience transports the audience temporarily to new worlds and places.1 Euripides' satyr play, the Cyclops, for example , offers its fifth-century BCE Athenian viewers the slightly skewed vision of a hybrid world—part contemporary, part Homeric , part fantastic. The play blends the ribald conventions of satyr drama with a contemporary, late fifth-century setting; it combines the myth of Dionysus' capture by satyrs with the famous Odyssean episode ofPolyphemus, the man-eating Cyclops. In fact, as many scholars have noted, the plot of Euripides' satyr play is unexpectedly faithful to its Homeric model—the shipwreck , Maron's wine, the blinding of Polyphemus, and the "Nobody " pun all appear in Euripides' play just as in they do in Book 9 of the Odyssey? In other words, the play transports the audience to the long-ago and far-away world of Odysseus. While scholars have paid a great deal of attention to the relationship of Euripides' play to its Homeric predecessor, the question of why Euripides would invoke Homer so carefully has not been ad313 3 14 Comparative Drama dressed. Euripides, after all, is a poet known for his mythographic creativity. Why take such pains to present a clearly recognizable epic version of the story on a satyr stage? What is it that epic in general or the Odyssey specifically brings to the late fifth-century Athenian audience? The Odyssey, like theater, offers its audience a glimpse into brave new worlds and peoples. It is a rich and exciting tale of overseas travels and foreign encounters, and I will argue that it is this "ethnographic" quality of the Odyssey that Euripides draws upon here to set the stage for his updated presentation of the Odysseus and Polyphemus tale. Like many later, more explicitly ethnographic texts, the Odyssey combines a curiosity about the exotica of far-off lands with a more inwardly-focused examination ofhow the Greek world at home is changing and adapting to the new world emerging around it. At the same time, the genre of satyr drama holds contemporary Athenian life up to a "fun-house mirror"—satyrs distort the basic categories of life to interrogate (within the safe circle of the Dionysiac theater) the very essence of what it means to be human or Athenian. Thus, in the Cyclops, thanks to this melding of genres, the reflexivity ofthe Odyssey's ethnographic gaze combines with the comic self-scrutiny of satyr drama to provide the Athenian audience with a kind of double vision—a comic but critical view of their role as an imperial power toward the end ofthe fifth century, and perhaps a renewed insight into the complicated relationship between home and abroad . I An Ethnographic Odyssey. Let's start by exploring the ethnographic nature of the Odyssey in order to understand better what Euripides brings to the satyr stage when he invokes the famous story of Odysseus' encounter with the man-eating Polyphemus . Homer's Odyssey is a poem about travel, cross-cultural contact, and narrative, and in it new world accounts of trade and overseas exploration intersect with familiar tales from epic poetry to produce a rich and complex picture of a world in transition .3 Homer's fabulous tales of savage lands and magical palaces are more than folktale or fantasy; they are also steeped in the social, political, and cultural transformations taking place in the archaic Greek world. By this I do not mean that the Odyssey offers us an unproblematic reflection of the archaic period in Greece (or indeed of any one historical period)—the world ofthe Carol Dougherty315 Odyssey is a highly-constructed, poetic world and for this reason will not strictly conform to any one time period.4 Nevertheless, it is my contention that a poetic text like the Odyssey is very much a part of the world that produced it—it actively engages in the political and cultural negotiations of the archaic period rather...

Theseus, Tragedy and the Athenian Empire

This book traces the development of the Theseus myth and its importance for Athens from the earliest evidence down to the end of the fifth century. The author examines all extant tragedy in which Theseus appears, even including the fragmentary drama in which Theseus is known to appear, to assess the significance of his role as mythological representative of Athenian greatness. The author argues that the Theseus of most Athenian tragedy is carefully drawn to exemplify the idealized image of the Athenian 'national character' that was prevalent in the age of the Athenian empire. Every nation needs role models: the Athenians were no exception. Handsome, brave, intelligent, and just, Theseus seemed the perfect Athenian, but under the exterior lay a heartless seducer, rapist, and killer of his own son. The author describes Athenian attempts to cope with these contradictions in her discussion of how the Theseus of Athenian tragedy relates to Athenian life and imperial ideology.

Plato's Charmides and the Socratic ideal of rationality

SCHMID, W. Thomas. Plato's Charmides and Socratic Ideal of Rationality. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. xi + 225 pp. Cloth, $59.50; paper, $19.95--In this book Schmid holds that traditional and ideal of moderation is enough of an established fact that Charmides can be held up against it to make distinctions and similarities which will then provide for necessary reference for interpreting drama Plato uses in dialogue. The Preface and section I define cultural setting in which ancient Greek ideal of sophrosune was situated (p. 2). Here Schmid defines complex political and setting of ancient Greece out of which dialogue is to be interpreted and thereby sets stage for drama and speech of dialogue as a whole. Once this is done, to relate definitions to traditional (p. 20) of sophrosune in section 2 Schmid simply adumbrates his formulation of definitions of dialogue. He, accounting for his methodological approach (p. vii) of defining ideals, holds that examining what Charmides and then Critias say in regard to them, Socrates examines ideal as it was and came to be understood in ancient Greek, especially ancient Athenian history (p. 21). Thereby Schmid contends that the definitions are intended to represent multi-dimensional meaning of that moral ideal, and also to represent way in which it was superseded, in Athenian life, by a very different of thought (p. 21). This mode of thought, Schmid contends, was advocated by Socrates and involves of serf to reason (p. 43). In section 3 Schmid analyzes highpoint (p. 40) of or definition that serves to organize dialectical structure of dialogue as a whole (p. 40), that is, definition of sophrosune as the of what one knows and what one does not know (167a7). Schmid argues here that there are two different conceptions of the of knowledge at work at 165b3-167a8. One is that of Critias which constitutes a form of cognitive and moral vice (p. 42) other is that of Socrates which involves of self to reason (p. 43), characterized by Socratic ideal of rationality. Furthermore, Schmid holds that Socrates' conception of sophrosune pre-supposes self- and other-relations mediated by values of reason, not emotions of self-assertion or appetite (p. 56). Schmid reminds one here that these differences are brought out only indirectly and that one needs to consider role of drama and speech in dialogue, as formulated in Preface and section 1. In section 4 Schmid examines both positive and negative aspects of Socratic ideal of rationality by which Socrates' elenchus (his method of education he employed [p. 13]) sought to purge Athenians of their fever of wisdom, and bring them to a state of cognitive moderation of what they knew and what they did not know (p. 64). Schmid also examines here relation between dialectic and concept of soul (p. 62). With both these concerns Schmid argues that the subject matter of Socrates' questions reflects central value in his interlocutor's self-understanding, while that self-understanding itself determines, at least to some extent, meaning of conceptions examined in inquiry (p. 65). Moreover, regarding this, Schmid holds that one of chief contentions of his book is to show that the Charmides teaches that this preference, this choice, depends on interlocutor himself, and that volitional dimension of self-knowledge cannot be eliminated, but is inherent in process of elenchus inquiry (p. …

Worshipping Athena: Panathenaia and Parthenon. By Jenifer Neils.

The foremost religious festival of ancient Athens-the city dedicated to Athena, goddess of war, fertility, arts, and wisdom-was the Panathenaia. Challenging old assumptions and refuting new theories, Worshipping Athena addresses the many problems of interpretation and understanding that have swirled for years around the Panathenaia. Among the issues discussed is the recent sensational controversy over the Parthenon frieze, perhaps the best known but least understood work of Greek art. For centuries the frieze has been thought to represent the Panathenaia procession, but recently the argument has been advanced that it depicts the sacrifice of the daughters of the Athenian king Erechtheus. Worshipping Athena offers compelling evidence that the frieze does indeed depict the festal procession and also demonstrates that scenes of contemporary ritual were not unique to the Parthenon. Editor Jenifer Neils and the contributors-eminent classicists, archaeologists, and art historians-explore the role of the Panathenaia in Athenian life and compare it with similar festivals held throughout the ancient Greek world. They discuss such topics as the Panathenaia's mythical origins, the phenomenon of the festival's valuable prizes (oil-filled amphoras, rather than the customary laurel wreath), and the architecture, sculpture, and painting related to the festival. Worshipping Athena will provide valuable insights to scholars and students concerned with ancient religion, mythology, art, literature, and gender issues, as well as anyone with a keen interest in the ritual topography of the Athenian Acropolis and the iconography of the Parthenon frieze.

DWARFS IN ATHENS

Summary. This paper examines the status of short people in everyday Athenian life. It reviews written and iconographic sources which provide complementary information. In literature, especially in the works of Aristotle, dwarfism appears as a physical handicap which involves various disorders, such as sleepiness, erratic reasoning and abnormal sexuality. Vase‐paintings moderate this negative view. Short people are shown as full humans, though close to childhood, who have a specific place in the community; they are associated with satyrs and the world of Dionysos.

Athènes : une ville qui n'appartient pas à sa municipalité

After nearly a century and a half of intensive and uncontrolled urbanisation, hopes to improve the quality of urban life in Athens arise with the setting up of the Urban Development Scheme of 1983. However, excessive centralism and bureaucracy of the Greek State, by impeding the work of institutions, make alterations of the objectives and elaboration procedures necessary at the expense of local democracy.

History without women : necessity or illusion ?

More than any known ancient Mediterranean society, Athenian culture was characterized by a polarization of the sexes and the elimination of the female from its political and artistic life. As a result, the women of Athens have left few traces in the historical record, and modern historians have largely treated ancient Attica as a single-sex male state. The question has been posed whether this approach to the past in dictated by the patriarchal bias of our sources, and hence inevitable, or whether, in disregarding familial and sexual patterns, it bypasses the most fundamental aspects of human existence and is, therefore, illusory. ; Modern scholarship on women in Athens has produced a number of studies, but these have thusfar remained on the fringes of historiography. For my recent book The Reign of the Phallus : Sexual Politics in ancient Athens I have tapped a source hitherto virtually unexploited for social history , nameVy the Attic red-figured vase paintings, which present a panorama of Athenian life, and especially its male-female relationships. The present article constitutes a sampling of my methodology and attempts to show that, with the aid of the pictorial record, an entirely new portrait of Athenian culture can be constructed.

The Human Significance of Philosophy

Although he was not the first Western philosopher, Plato was the first to define clearly the aim that has characterized Western philosophy since its beginnings. The principal capacities in which the human being acts are scientific, moral, mathematical, artistic, political, and religious, and the aim of philosophical activity was to achieve a standpoint providing complete explanation and justification by finding and eliminating the elements of dogmatism, unrealized ignorance, and mere hypothesis by which, in the capacities mentioned, the human being is influenced. The ideal envisaged was the self-inclusive understanding, achieved by the understanding's successive advancement and containment of all conceivable criticism of itself. The criticisms by Parmenides and Zeno of Ionian and Pythagorean physics and Socrates’ criticism of various aspects of Athenian life were excellent examples.

Athenian Marriage Patterns: Remarriage

To an earlier study1 demonstrating that marriage between first cousins was a frequent occurrence among wealthy Athenian families it is now possible to add evidence to show the importance of remarriage in Athenian society. While there are sixteen certain or probable instances of first cousin marriage projected or performed,2 one can find more than fifty of remarriage in the orators and other literary sources.3 Of course, we cannot make any direct comparison between the two sets of data, for in the inheritance cases and other civil suits that provide most of our information the speaker generally has more reason to refer to a half-brother or stepfather than to mention the fact that he or some one else has married a first cousin.4 Despite this caveat, however, it should be apparent that remarriage was a significant factor in Athenian life. Not only is the total of examples large, we also find an impressive number of clusters. In one case from the Corpus Demos thenicum we learn that among the speaker's ancestors no fewer than five remarried. He says this explicitly of his mother, her father, and her first husband, and of his father's grandfather,5 and we can infer that his

Gregory of Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 87 framework. Noteworthy is also the author's comment that in this tradition of "psychological guidance" man's individuality was seen, but that because of the rather narrow frame of reference it could not develop very much (pp. 29 ft.). The second part of the investigation is devoted to Seneca's doctrines of "psychological guidance" in particular. He is found to be more or less in agreement with the rest of ancient philosophy. For him the highest goal was the "eudaimonia." More for practical than for theoretical reasons he emphasized the partial goals as leading to the "eudainomia." "True knowledge" must not only be known, but must be firmly acquired through "exercise" and "regular practice." As such it becomes "knowledge as habitus," and leads to "securitas" and "tranquillitas animi" which are the two most important aspects of the "vita beata.'" How much of a chance is there for a man who sincerely wishes to achieve these goals? An answer to this question requires further theoretical consideration of the problems of man's natural inheritance of bad influences from the cultural environment Ihome and school!), and of his age in regard to the rise and defeat of evil in him. In addition, the functions of self-knowledge and will, as well as of the role of the "psychological guide" as "friend" and "authority" must be taken into account. In conclusion, the author discusses the question of the relationship between the traditions and Seneca's originality. She recognizes that his significance cannot be seen in new ideas, which he is not interested in introducing, but in the rigorous reworking of the older traditions and their effective literary presentation and distribution. The volume is further enriched by an extensive bibliography and indices. In spite of the wealth of material available, the study under review is worked out entirely on the basis of primary sources. With great competence and methodologaca! clarity, the author has succeeded in explaining Seneca's views and relating them to the philosophical tradition of his time. Her work is also helpful in that she often takes pains to relate the issues to present day psychology and pedagogy. Special mention should be made of the fact that she always treats Seneca's doctrines in relation to the literary forms which he employs. There can be no doubt that the author has made a highly significant contribution, not only to research on Seneca, but to the history of ancient anthropology and ethics. HANS DmTER BETZ School of Theology at Claremont Gregory o[ Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher. By Rosemary Radford Ruether. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1969. Pp. viii+ 184. $5.50) The Greek Church Fathers have attracted attention in recent years along with the increasing interest in Byzantine civilization. Nevertheless, studies of their works are still rare in any language, especially English. Of these Greek thinkers, Gregory of Nazianzus, overshadowed as he is by his compatriot and friend, Basil the Great, tends to be particularly neglected. Rosemary Radford Ruether's book, Gregory o[ Nazianzus: Rhetor and Philosopher, is thus remarkable by the mere fact that, according to 88 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Miss Ruether's. bibliography, it is the only fuU-length study of Gregory's thought written in the past thirty years. The book deserves attention for more legitimate reasons, however. Written in a lively style and providing some excellent translations of Greek material, it avoids the usual pitfalls of such works: purely peripheral or merely linguistic concerns. Miss Ruether's aim is to present Gregory's thought and to fit it into the history of the period when Hellenism and Judaism met and modern western cultural tradition began. She does this by combining scholarship with a presentation which makes many of Gregory's problems directly relevant today. Thus, aside from the purely rhetorical study (Chapter II), the value of her work reaches beyond the scholar and specialist to the literate layman. This is particularly the case with the biographical section, taken mostly from Gregory's Poem on His Lile, which describes university life in Athens and the student problems of the early fourth century. Her general theme, the traditional conflict of rhetoric and philosophy, is somewhat confusingly presented in her...

The Written Text in the Athenian Political Culture in the First Decades of 4th Century BC

The Written Text in the Athenian Political Culture in the First Decades of 4th Century BC
 The growing impact of textuality in the classical Greece seems to be generally accepted view. However, the importance of the written text as an autonomous mean of transmission in different spheres of life in Athens in the IV century BC is more complex phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to present a general sketch of this issue with particular emphasis on politics and individuals whose ambition was to have a real impact on the current affairs. In this context the activity of Isocrates and his self-consciousness provides especially interesting material for debate.

The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War (review)

BOOK REVIEWS81 to support the soldiers. Although the war had a leveling effect on the citizenry, the privüeged few were recipients of special favors, and managed to obtain many luxuries as well as most necessities. Mr. Coleman also discusses the problems and changes in industry, business, banking and agriculture; yet he largely ignores the effect of state legislation on economic matters although Georgia enacted more such legislation than did most southern states. Included also is the war's impact on education , religion and social activities. In most cases the clever chapter headings accurately explain the contents, but "Gayer than Richmond" is a misleading description of social life in Athens. Mr. Coleman has relied primarily on local newspapers and manuscripts but has used few monographs on Confederate history, scores of which would have afforded him excellent background material for comparisons and explanations. As it is, he has placed Athens in a vacuum. One omission from the bibliography is especiaUy difficult to explain—College Life in the Old South by E. Merton Coulter, which contains interesting information on Franklin CoUege in wartime and a humorous account of the home guard. Confederate Athens, a heavüy documented study, is factual rather than interpretive . It does not read as smoothly as Mr. Coleman's previous works, nor does he seem to be on as famüiar ground as when writing of the American Revolution. This reviewer believes that more human interest and humor should have been brought into the account. However, this study is a scholarly one and Athens was (and is) an interesting community. A valuable inclusion in the book is a table of local commodity prices for the years 1860-1865 in which can be seen inflation at work. Mary Elizabeth Massey Winthrop CoUege The French Liberal Opposition and the American Civil War. By Serge Gavronsky. (New York: Humanities Press, 1969. Pp. 304. $6.50.) Professor Gavronsky's study is the product of diligent and exhaustive research. He has worked in French and American archives, and the number and variety of his sources are most impressive. Yet, his is a disappointing book. It certainly does not, as claimed in the blurb on the jacket, "establish with utmost precision the influence which the affairs of the United States had on French domestic and foreign policies: on Napoleon IH's administration as weU as on the liberals in an out of government ." During the 1860's the domestic and foreign policies of the Second Empire were shaped by a host of complex factors which the author does not take into consideration . He seems to have lost sight of the forest for his own particular species of trees. There is little in this work to retain the attention of the Civü War or diplomatic historian. This is in no way meant as a criticism, since one of the primary points of the author's investigation was "the role that the United States played in French domestic policy." (11). Indeed, the chief merit of his study is to provide the specialist in French history with a handy compendium of the reactions of the Imperial Government and the Liberal opposition to the nature, issues, and developments of the American Civü War. As might be expected, both the newspapers of the Liberal opposition and the organs of the semi-official press viewed the issues and interpreted each turn of events in a manner designed to improve their respective positions on the home front. Professor Gavronsky shows conclusively that the crisis of American democracy generated a considerable amount of interest, speculation and debate in France. But what did it aU amount to? To what extent did the American Civü War affect policy making in France? To what extent did it influence or hasten the transition from the Authoritarian to the Liberal Empire? The authors offers no new answers to these admittedly difficult and debatable questions. The candor of his concluding para- 82CIVIL WAR HISTORY graph is refreshing: "The United States was not indispensable to the formulation of French political demands. But the chance paraUel between the test of democracy in the United States, and the rise of the French liberals to a position presaging greater activity in the...

Socrates and Aristophanes (review)

Book Reviews Socrates and Aristophanes. By Leo Strauss. (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1966.) One of the most interesting riddles of Athens of the fifth century B.c. is the relationship between Socrates, the iconoclastic teacher, and Aristophanes, the iconoclastic comic poet. Did they know each other? Was there personal bitterness in the caricaturization of The Clouds? Is the ostensive camaraderie of Plato's Symposium a true account of their acquaintance ? A most welcome, though not definitive, addition to the study of this riddle is the recent examination of these two classical figures in Socrates and Aristophanes by Leo Strauss, who is Robert M. Hutchins Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. His book is pleasing to the eye in format and inviting to the intellect. It contains 314 pages, divided into an eight-page introduction and a fourpage conclusion, with the remainder devoted to The Clouds (forty-four pages) and the other ten extant plays of Aristophanes. In addition, there are notes and an index. Strauss notes that the modern reader is confronted with two different pictures of Socrates: the idealized portrait by the artist, Plato; and the Aristophanic cartoon. Reconciliation between these two perspectives might be found by identifying one with the "late" Socrates and the other with the "early" Socrates. Aristophanes' attack, therefore, can be understood as a condemnation, of which Plato himself would have approved, of a youthful , boastful, superficial, sophistic debunker. Strauss proposes that a more accurate historical Socrates is to be found in Xenophon. Modern scholars, however, have hesitated, for good reason, to travel this path with Strauss. As John Burner says in Greelr Philosophy, after examining some of the difficulties with Xenophon's picture (w 115), "it seems hardly possible to doubt that Xenophon got the greater part of his information about Sokrates [sic] from the dialogues of Plato." Anna Banjamin, Professor of Classics at Rutgers, points out in her recent Library of Liberal Arts edition of Xenophon that, by his own words, he admits no firsthand knowledge of Socrates' last days, but draws on information provided by Hermogenes, a Cynic, and even admits in section 22 that his account is not complete. In spite of the fact that the "real" Socrates is as elusive as ever, there can be no doubt that a devastating attack was made on him by Aristophanes. Why? The reader is apprised early in the book of a bias, if one may call it that, which Strauss pursues hopefully as explanatory: he sees Socrates as the founder of political philosophy. The Clouds takes on particular importance in attempting a probe into the relationship between these two men because it is the first reference in classical literature to Socrates. He is presented there, of course, not in a political role, but in an absurdly befuddled, pseudo-scholarly role, humiliated in the end by having his school burned down by an irate father. As Maurice Croiset pointed out in Aristophanes and the Political Parties in Athens (a valuable reference noticeably absent in our current book), there is only one political allusion in the whole play, at line 581ff., probably inserted just before the competition in the Dionysia in 423 s.c., in which the play was judged a failure. This is a trenchant reference to Cleon, and an appeal to the people to get rid of the "robber" as quickly as possible. The Clouds, therefore, is notably different from such obvious political satires as The Knights or The Acharnians, the only two Aristophanic plays in which contemporary political figures were characterized on the stage. C. M. Bowra pointed out in chapter 5 of Ancient Greek Literature (another useful reference not mentioned by Strauss) that The Clouds calls attention to the destructive effects of the new Sophistic education by contrasting it with an idealized picture of traditional Athenian life. Consequently, any political significance in The Clouds must be [287] 288 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY found in the fact that, under Democracy, unjust speech flourished and subverted the traditional values and virtues. Yet, if Aristophanes admired the "good old days" of the aristocracy, it should be noted that it was that very aristocracy which paid enormous fees to the...

The Marriage of First Cousins in Athenian Society

SEVERAL YEARS AGO in this Journal T. L. Shear, Jr. presented a fascinating reconstruction of the complex genealogy of the Alkmeonidai.1 In interpreting the ancient testimonia he was obliged to conclude that Megakles, the son of Hippokrates, married his uncle's daughter, that is, his first cousin. While students of Attic law have always recognized that such unions were legal, no attempt has yet been made to determine whether they were a regular feature of Athenian life or occurred only rarely. To fill this gap I have made a survey of prosopographical data from Athens and present the results here, along with some discussion of possible reasons for marriages between first cousins.2 First we can summarize the evidence for such a union among the Alkmeonidai. We know from Ps-Andokides (4.34) that Alkibiades' maternal grandfather, Megakles, was ostracized.3 He must have been Megakles, son of Hippokrates, of the deme Alopeke, who according to Aristotle (Ath. Pol. 22.5) was ostracized in 487/6. According to a speech of Isokrates (16.26) Alkibiades had Kleisthenes as a great-grandfather on his mother's side. Thus Kleisthenes and Hippokrates are his two greatgrandfathers on that side and consequently the two grandfathers of Alkibiades' mother. We learn from Herodotus (6.131.2) that Kleisthenes and Hippokrates were brothers, the sons of another Megakles, which gives us the following stemma:

Euripides and the Athenians

The general view of the relationship between Euripides and his fellow citizens which seems at present to hold the field received its most recent, most extreme, and most eloquent expression in the Introduction to Professor D. L. Page's edition of the Medea. Here we read: ‘Foreshadowed, too, already in Medea is that great burden of unpopularity which was to oppress the poet throughout his life. The sequel was the ridicule and hatred which Aristophanes reflects: the climax was his voluntary exile to Macedonia in sorrow and disillusion. Euripides was not the only teacher whom the Athenians persecuted, though they returned to him again and again, admiring while they hated, moved while they mocked and slandered.’ After quoting vv. 292 ff., where Medea speaks of the φθόνος incurred by those with a reputation for σοφία, Page continues, ‘History traces a single undeviating line from this passage of Medea through the bitter pages of Aristophanes to the final scene of an old man wandering out into the world friendless and embittered.’ A similar picture had already been presented by Wilamowitz and Murray; though Wilamowitz, in his critical account of the life of Euripides published in 1899, thinks that it was chiefly in the last period of his life in Athens, from the production of the Troades in 415, that the tension between Euripides and his countrymen became acute, and Murray similarly notes as a significant point the production of the Troades, which ‘set a flame of discord for ever between his people and himself’. Of his last years in Athens Murray writes, ‘Whatever the cause, shortly after the production of the Orestes in 408 the old poet's endurance snapped, and at the age apparently of seventy-six, he struck off into voluntary exile.’ The general picture, then, is of Euripides spending the last twenty-five years of his life in Athens, especially from 415 onwards, in an atmosphere of increasing isolation, unpopularity, and persecution, shot through with occasional gleams of approbation, until in 408 the tension became unendurable and he left Athens in voluntary exile.

Personalities in Aristophanes

The Old Comedy, says Plutarch, is unsuitable for reading to a dinner-party taking their wine; it is ill regulated, violent, and sometimes indecent; moreover, it would require a commentator to explain the personal allusions and we should be in school again. These allusions are perhaps even more obscure to us; yet we read our Aristophanes, and what we have of Menander would not make us agree with Plutarch's decided preference for the New Comedy. And they have an interest of their own in giving us glimpses of some of the prominent figures in Athenian life and of the objects of public mockery or reprobation; for Aristophanes would make sure that his personal references were such as to secure applause, and most of them occur in the other comedians of the time.

Simichidas

It is more than a hundred years since the walls of Athens were pulled down to the sound of the flute, since Euripides died, since the fresh, vigorous, political life of Athens passed into the era of orators and philosophers. And even the era of orators and philosophers has lost its power and originality, and no Greek city has taken the place of Athens. The Greek world is a scene of courts and kings, or of effete democracies where the orators cannot even talk as well as Demosthenes. The empire of Alexander has passed over the eastern Mediterranean. Alexandria is growing into a great capital, a civilized capital, a city with a great city population, with library, scholars, critics, and great learning, under the protection of a court. Its poets are elegant imitators, polished elegists, or epigrammatists, and there seems no prospect of a new birth of poetry. The Aegean islands are quiet. No more desperate struggles for liberty: no strains of Sappho or Archilochus. The most interesting island is perhaps Cos, an island fertile and beautiful, famous for its vines and weaving of fine stuffs. It has a close connexion with the Alexandrian court and forms a kind of ‘Villegiatura’ for it. There is in the island a famous school of medicine, and also a literary coterie, with Philetas as its leader, and Philetas is struck with the quaint idea of disguising himself and his friends as shepherds in the poems they write about each other. The idea seems an amusing device for escaping from the academic atmosphere of Alexandria.