Tragic Failures

Evina Sistakou

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9783110480634
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Ancient & Classical Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This is the first study considering the reception of Greek tragedy and the transformation of the tragic idea in Hellenistic poetry. The focus is on third-century Alexandria, where the Ptolemies fostered tragedy as a theatrical form for public entertainment and as an official genre cultivated by the Pleiad, whereas the scholars of the Museum were commissioned to edit and comment on the classical tragic texts. More importantly, the notion of the tragic was adapted to the literary trends of the era. Released from the strict rules established by Aristotle about what makes a good tragedy, the major poets of the Alexandrian avant-garde struggled to transform the tragic idea and integrate it into non-dramatic genres. Tragic Failures traces the incorporation of the tragic idea in the poetry of Callimachus and Theocritus, in Apollonius' epic Argonautica, in the iambic Alexandra, in late Hellenistic poetry and in Parthenius' Erotika Pathemata. It offers a fascinating insight into the new conception of the tragic dilemmas in the context of Alexandrian aesthetics.

1.Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria

The contexts of Hellenistic tragedy

Whereas the tragic is “a condition of existence and a process in art”33 and therefore a universal, almost transcendental phenomenon of human society and culture, tragedy is the finest product of one city in a particular period of history. In a way similar to Renaissance Italy or Elizabethan England, icons of unprecedented achievements in art and literature, classical Athens was the necessary and sufficient condition for tragedy to exist and develop from its very beginnings until its maturity and inevitable ‘death’. It was during the subsequent fourth century that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were considered the canon, their tragedies became a standard repertoire in theatres across Greece and an official copy of their plays was preserved in the state archive of Athens, and it was then that Aristotle gave his own account of tragedy as a genre in completion and perfection in the Poetics: all manifestations of the end of an era—or perhaps not?34 Considering the fact that during the next centuries a wealth of original tragic plays was written and performed alongside the classical ones,35 it is worth asking why ‘Hellenistic tragedy’ marks a gap in the history of literature, primarily as regards the textual transmission of the plays, until the revival of the genre in imperial Rome. An obvious explanation for the lack of records for Hellenistic tragedy, and drama in general, is the standardization of literature by later scholarship, chiefly of Atticistic orientation, as well as the performative habits and school practices in the ancient world. A different explanation should be sought in the direction of the new political, religious and social circumstances following the emergence of the Hellenistic empire.36

The polis formed the core around which fifth-century tragedy revolved, while the complex matters of city and citizenship were addressed onstage by recourse to tragic myth. The obsession of Greek tragedy with politics in the broadest sense was a unique phenomenon in both the ancient and the modern world. Actually it was much more than this:37

It is possible to see the entertainment of the Great Dionysia as offering a single message to the citizens. First, we get the preplay ceremonials which display the positive image of Athens as a city, then there are the grim warnings of the tragedy which show what happens elsewhere to other people, a negative image of how things can go wrong. Together, the plays and the rituals teach the Athenians what the proper values of citizenship are…The whole occasion of the Great Dionysia, in this model, is a truly civic occasion, using the full range of spectacle and drama to celebrate and educate the city…The ‘pity and fear’ aroused by tragedy leads to a cleansed moral awareness of what it means to be a citizen. Aristotle, unlike Plato, thought tragedy made the citizens better men.

Tragedy was the occasion that glorified the city, while at the same time questioned its constitutions; it operated as an assembly and a court, and above all as a school for the citizens.38

The intensity of civic engagement in the Great Dionysia and of the political messages conveyed by tragic performances in Athens is unparalleled in postclassical times. After the death of Alexander older poleis with their democratic machinery continued to exist alongside newly founded cities, whereas the Hellenistic age saw the dawn of the cosmopoleis and their powerful kings. Greeks and non-Greeks, natives and foreigners, travelers and immigrants, merchants, soldiers and officials, wandering intellectuals and scientists, constituted a mosaic of cultures in the big cities, populations that could hardly integrate into a unified community. This inevitably resulted in a growing awareness of individuality sharply contrasting with the communal spirit presupposed by classical drama. As a consequence the theatre could no longer function as a locus where city affairs might be negotiated in public. On the other hand, monarchy, apart from patronizing the arts, became the defining factor of the novel political ethics; one of the side-effects of this development was the close interaction between kingship and the production and/ or performance of drama.39 If we add to these parameters the use of tragedy as a vehicle for propaganda or the dissemination of new ideas, then the gulf between classical and Hellenistic tragedy becomes evident.

During this epoch of transition religion underwent even more dramatic changes, thus affecting the ritual context of drama. It is well-known that Athenian tragic festivals, and each performance, were introduced by rituals featuring sacrifices and that the beginnings of the dramatic genre can be traced back to Dionysiac cult, whereas religion was vital for the synthesis of many classical dramatic plots. No doubt Greek religion survived in Hellenistic times and the Olympian gods continued to be revered alongside their eastern counterparts and, of course, the Hellenistic rulers. Numerous hymns were still composed to be performed in local religious festivals, dedications were continually made, temples and sanctuaries systematically visited. Yet a transformation of the religious belief was felt, since gradually cult became a matter of personal choice, an affair of the individual, instead of a communal duty.40 Dramatic festivals, however, mushroomed across the entire Mediterranean. This trend may be attributed not only to the global appeal of Dionysus but also to the association of the dramatic contests with other gods or kings and the festivals honoring them.41 Although the degree of religiosity among Hellenistic audiences is a matter still debated and therefore the prevalence of the spectacle occasioned by the secularization of drama seems to provide a realistic basis for the understanding of Hellenistic tragedy, a subtler reading of epigraphical evidence suggests that dramatic performances were regarded with piety and respect by the citizens.42

Theatre formed an essential part of the Hellenistic lifestyle.43 The building of stone theatres in the old centers and the new spaces created after the conquests of Alexander testify to the fact that the dramatic spectacle was high on the agenda of the Hellenistic monarchs. The proliferation of performances of old and new plays, with a preference for tragedy, goes hand in hand with innovations in theatrical practice, among which the formation of actors’ associations is the most prominent. Costs for producing and attending a performance were escalating rapidly already by the fourth century, a fact enhancing the prestige of theatregoing as a social activity. The tragic festival, mainly the Dionysia, preserved its role as the most ceremonial occasion for the announcement of honorific decrees, although gradually choral and gymnic festivals provided an equally important framework for the public acknowledgement of eminent citizens and foreigners.44 The theatre was not only a source of high status but also a space maintaining Greekness in foreign environments. Indeed the theatre, alongside the gymnasium, functioned as a center for the preservation of the Greek identity. And although democracy was dying out, the values of competition between citizens and entire cities, even if only in the field of culture or athletics, did not.

One should be wary of painting a black and white picture of Hellenistic theatre, since its political, religious and social contexts were highly diversified in the various places and historical phases of the Hellenistic era. A plethora of epigraphic and historical evidence speaks for a continuing tradition of festivals and dramatic performances with an emphasis on tragedy in the Greek cities during the last three centuries BC.45 But to suppose that Athens with its dazzling dramatic inheritance, or Italy and Sicily with its rich scenic tradition, or Delphi and Delos where theatre was closely related to religious practice, and Antioch or Seleucia in their oriental environment were equally engaged in tragic writing and performance would be a misconception of the idiosyncrasies inherent in the Hellenistic world. A striking case is Ptolemaic Alexandria: despite being an exception as regards its cosmopolitanism and cultural innovations, it has become the rule against which Hellenistic aesthetics is weighed and appreciated. Therefore, Hellenistic tragedy will be examined not in its local variety, from which parochialism and traditionalism were not absent, but mainly from the vantage point of Alexandria, because it was there that the avant-garde poetics of the era flourished and scholarship emerged. It is tragedy in, and because of, this cultural metropolis that will be studied here as defining the fortunes of the tragic genre in antiquity.46

Ptolemaic cultural politics and tragedy

As seen, the image of Hellenistic tragedy as a genre in decline is a distorted one, even in places where artistic novelty prevailed. And if Athens exported its legacy through the spread of its dramatic repertoire throughout mainland Greece and the theatrical scenes all over the Aegean and the Mediterranean,47 Hellenistic kings had to invent a role for tragedy and the tragic in their newly founded urban centers. Later biography and historiography saw a potential for theatricality with tragic undertones in the life of the Hellenistic monarchs themselves. In recording tragic episodes, or events fictionalized as such, historians portrayed the Hellenistic hegemones as tragic actors in the world’s stage. The legendary anecdote recounting King Philip’s assassination during a theatrical performance in 336 BC is perhaps the most illustrative paradigm of how history can be transformed into tragedy.48

Ancient and modern citizens are always attracted by the way life imitates art, as in the case of the tragic conception of Hellenistic politics; but the Realpolitik of the time dictated otherwise. In effect, the Hellenistic rulers were primarily concerned with their own ability to exercise political power through culture, and the Ptolemies were masterful at doing this. To this end, they founded the Library and the Museum; but they also exploited theatre, and tragedy in particular, to promote their cultural politics. Although scholarship has underestimated or at times neglected the significance of drama for the Ptolemaic regime, an alternative hypothesis argues the case. In what follows I will attempt to outline the performative and ideological contexts of theatre and tragedy as part of a broader cultural vision of the Ptolemies in Alexandria.

Ptolemaic culture was a colonial one, developed in juxtaposition and interaction with non-Greek civilizations of Egyptians and also Jews; therefore the consolidation of a Greek identity, nostalgic, retrospective and self-sufficient, was an imperative for the new rulers in the Egyptian territory. The Hellenic side of this culture, including art and literature, is archaicizing in style:49 it is a central tenet of research that Hellenistic, viz Alexandrian, aesthetics draws inspiration primarily from archaic artistic and poetic models. It should be noted, moreover, that Alexandria was designed by Demetrius of Phaleron as the new Athens,50 and therefore must have adopted many traits of the culture and lifestyle of its model city. The reconnection with local traditions of the various city-states was achieved within a broader project of creating a universal metropolis for which Athens could, at least partly, provide an ideal.

Among the large-scale monuments of Alexandria the urban planning of the Ptolemies must have f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: From Tragedy to the Tragic
• 1. Tragedy, from Athens to Alexandria
• 2. The Metaclassical Tragic
• 3. Alexandrian Tragedy
• 4. Callimachus Displaces the Tragic
• 5. Redefining the Tragic in the Idylls of Theocritus
• 6. Tragedy into Epic in Apollonius’ Argonautica
• 7. In the Metatragic Cosmos of the Alexandra
• 8. The Romantic Tragic
• Conclusion: Tragic Failures and Hellenistic Challenges
• Bibliography
• Index
• Fußnoten