Theatre Props and Civic Identity in Athens, 458-405 BC

Rosie Wyles

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350143999
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Drama
• Index: Literature

This book answers the question 'How did Athenian drama shape ideas about civic identity?' through the medium of three case studies focusing on props. Traditional responses to the question have overlooked the significance of props which were symbolically implicated in Athenian ideology, yet the key objects explored in this study (voting urns and pebbles, swords, and masks) each carried profound connections to Athenian civic identity while also playing important roles as props on the fifth-century stage. Playwrights exploited the powerful dynamic generated from the intersection between the 'social lives' (off-stage existence in society) and 'stage lives' (handling in theatre) of these objects to enhance the dramatic effect of their plays as well as the impact of these performances on society. The exploration of the 'stage lives' of these objects across comedy, tragedy, and satyr drama reveals much about generic interdependence and distinction. Meanwhile the consideration of iconography representing the objects' lives outside the theatre sheds light on drama's powerful interplay with art. Essential reading for scholars and students of ancient Greek history, culture, and drama, the innovative approach and insightful analysis contained in this volume will also be of interest to researchers in the fields of Theatre Studies, Art History, and Cultural Studies.

1

Casting Votes in Athens

Theatre’s engagement in civic discourse through the handling of voting urns and ballots (explored in Chapter 2) depended on the symbolic meaning created for these objects in their social lives, specifically in the role that they played in reinforcing Athenian values when citizens voted. This opening case study delineates the objects’ civic symbolism (through a focalized reassessment of the textual and iconographic evidence) to enable a thoroughgoing analysis of its dramatic exploitation (in Chapter 2) and to offer a framework of considerations, through these first two chapters, for the subsequent case studies.

Law courts, and their judicial process, formed a core aspect of Athenian identity in the fifth century BC.¹ The brilliantly absurd response of the comic character, Strepsiades, when presented with a map of the world by a pupil of Socrates (Clouds 206–8), plays on precisely this sense of the centrality of jurors to the city’s identity:²

	ΜΑΘΗΤΗΣ	αὕτη δέ σοι γῆς περίοδος πάσης. ὁρᾷς;
		αἵδε μὲν Ἀθῆναι.
	ΣΤΡΕΨΙΑΔΗΣ	τί σὺ λέγεις; οὐ πείθομαι,
		ἐπεὶ δικαστὰς οὐχ ὁρῶ καθημένους.
	Pupil:	And look, this is a map of the entire world. See?
		That’s Athens right here.
	Strepsiades:	What do you mean? I don’t believe it;
		I don’t see any juries in session.

This joke about Athenian litigiousness becomes a ‘standby’ of Aristophanes.³ In 421 BC, he returned to it in his Peace and extends the observational comedy to the divine plane as Hermes explains to the Athenians why peace eludes them (503–5):⁴

	ΕΡΜΗΣ	καὶ τοῖς Ἀθηναίοισι παύσασθαι λέγω
		ἐντεῦθεν ἐχομένοις ὅθεν νῦν ἕλκετε·
		οὐδὲν γὰρ ἄλλο δρᾶτε πλὴν δικάζετε.
	Hermes	And to the Athenians I say: stop hanging on to where you’re now
		pulling from; you’re accomplishing nothing but litigation.^5

It emerges again in Birds in 414 BC, when Tereus fears that since Peisetaerus and Euelpides are from Athens, they must be jurors (108–11):

ΤΗΡΕΥΣ ποδαπὼ τὸ γένος;

ΠΕΙΣΕΤΑΙΡΟΣ ὅθεν αἱ τριήρεις αἱ καλαί.

ΤΗΡΕΥΣ μῶν ἠλιαστά;

ΕΥΕΛΠΙΔΗΣ μἀλλὰ θἀτέρου τρόπου, ἀπηλιαστά.

ΤΗΡΕΥΣ σπείρεται γὰρ τοῦτ᾽ ἐκεῖ τὸ σπέρμ᾽;

ΕΥΕΛΠΙΔΗΣ ὀλίγον ζητῶν ἂν ἐξ ἀγροῦ λάβοις.

Tereus What nationality?

Peisetaerus Where the fine triremes come from.

Tereus Not a couple of jurors, I hope!

Euelpides Oh no, the other kind: a couple of jurophobes.

Tereus Does that seed sprout there?

Euelpides You’ll find a little in the country, if you look hard.⁶

Even while the pair of Athenians protest that they are a couple of jurophobes, Tereus’ incredulity that such a category of person exists in Athens forces them to admit that they are in a minority.⁷ Birds demonstrates the ongoing sense of the importance of this activity to Athenian identity (even if criticisms of that very practice appear later in the play).⁸ In fact, Aristophanes had already alluded to the Athenian delight in law courts in Knights (1317), produced in 424 BC, demonstrating that this trait provided a running joke for at least ten years and suggesting that the Athenian characteristic remained of sufficient cultural prominence to support this sustained comic exploitation.⁹

While these jokes rely on references to jurors, the objects at the centre of the judicial process, the voting urns and pebbles or shells (the ‘ballots’), were equally capable of acting as synecdochic representatives of law courts and the trials held in them.¹⁰ In this capacity these objects were symbols of civic identity.¹¹ Voting in law courts in the fifth century took place as follows: each juror had a pebble or shell (his ballot) and dropped it into one of two urns (either the ‘guilty’ urn or the ‘not guilty’ urn).¹² The voting urns were hydriai, vessels that functioned primarily as water jars. Aspects of their design that made them suitable for carrying and pouring out water, however, proved equally valuable in the object’s repurposed use.¹³ Surviving evidence shows that hydriai could be made of terracotta or bronze, the latter creating an object of value that could serve as a prize at games. A representative example of such a bronze hydria, dating to c. 460 BC, offers insight to the design of such vessels in the period of the Oresteia’s production (Fig. 1).¹⁴

This hydria was most likely a prize and is more elaborate (in its decoration) than the voting urns shown on the Stieglitz cup (Fig. 5).¹⁵ Nevertheless, its shape corresponds to those urns and it offers a helpful indication of the potential proportions of such vessels (it stands at 47 cm high). While the hydriai used for voting in the fourth century were bronze, this cannot be claimed with certainty for the fifth century.¹⁶ The ballots (pebbles or shells, designated by the term ψῆφος) were objects supplied by nature rather than manufactured. Any surviving ballots remain anonymous (in contrast to fourth-century bronze ballots that are readily identifiable from their distinctive shape and official inscription).¹⁷ The urns and pebbles, everyday objects from our perspective, acquired their significance from the framing context of their use and the symbolic meaning which Athenian society attached to them in that setting.¹⁸

The presentation of judicial participation as stereotypically Athenian implies the significance of this activity to civic identity.¹⁹ Moreover, the existence of other Greek communities that also displayed commitment to justice and used voting urns and ballots to carry it out, highlights that the ‘Athenianess’ of this trait was a construct.²⁰ The deliberateness of its civic symbolism in Athens raises the stakes of reflecting upon the meaning that an Athenian citizen may have attached to the process of voting.²¹ The act of casting a vote was delineated as a citizen activity in the first instance through the restriction of jury participation to male citizens over the age of thirty.²² The significance of the action was more profoundly inscribed, however, through the idea that the pool of jurors (numbering 6,000 ordinary citizens, selected by lot annually) represented and acted on behalf of the entire citizen body.²³ The act of voting in the law court, already self-conscious as a performance of a citizen right (to serve in a jury), expressed the ordinary citizen’s acceptance of the idea that his judgment was of equal merit to any of his fellow citizens (and could stand for them); in other words, it represented democratic ideology in action.

The form of the vote reinforced this since the procedure of assessing the judgment through ballots ensured that every vote counted.²⁴ This displayed the city’s confidence in every citizen’s capacity to judge and conferred a sense of individual responsibility on the voter.²⁵ This was in contrast to the alternative mode of expressing opinion used in Athenian democracy (in the Assembly and Boule), the show of hands (χειροτονία), that through its estimation of numbers mini...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Abbreviations
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Propping up Athens
• 1 Casting Votes in Athens
• 2 Trialling Props on Stage
• 3 A Weapon of Democracy
• 4 Swords Drawn on the Tragic Stage
• 5 Swords Redrawn on Stage
• 6 The Mask in Hand
• Conclusion: Evaluating Objects
• Appendix: Clytemnestra’s Sword in the Oresteia
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright