No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Herodotus and Aristophanes on Monarchy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2009
Extract
It is a commonplace in the criticism of Attic drama to dwell on its severe, starkly unsympathetic treatment of monarchia, the rule of a single man. The often violent dislike of tyrannical government illustrated in the extant plays has been largely responsible for the widespread assumption among scholars that the attitude of fifth-century Athenians to monarchic rule was one of unrelieved hostility. Certainly it can hardly be doubted that the subsequent portrayal of the tyrant in Attic prose literature as a monster of depravity owes much to the art of Aeschylus and his successors, or, again, that this marked antipathy to sole rule reflects to a considerable extent the feelings of the dramatists' contemporaries.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Classical Association 1979
References
Notes
1. George Thomson collects a formidable number of parallels to the portrait of Zeus in Aeschylus' P. V. in his 1932 edition of the play (pp.6 ff.); cf. his Aeschylus and Athens: a Study in the Social Origins of Drama (London, 1941), p. 452 n.9Google Scholar.
2. Plato, , Rep. 341 a – 42 e, 344 d – 47 e, 472 e ff.Google Scholar; Aristotle, , Pol. 1295a 15 ff.Google Scholar, 1310b 40–1311a8.
3. Herter, Hans, Rh. Mus. 88 (1939), 244–86 and 289–326Google Scholar, provides the fundamental study of Theseus. Examples of other good kings in tragedy: Pelasgus, Darius, Eteocles (Aeschylus); Oedipus, Neoptolemus (Sophocles); Aegeus, Proteus, Peleus, Demophon (Euripides).
4. Hdt. 3.80. 2–6; cf. ibid., 81.1 (Megabyxus' agreement with this view); cf. Euripides, , Ion 621 ff.Google Scholar, Hipp. 1013 ff., Androm. 549 and, most Herodotean of all, Suppl. 444–55; for the fourth century cf. Plato, , Rep. 573 c–6 bGoogle Scholar; Aristotle, , Pol. 1311a ffGoogle Scholar.
5. Hdt. 3.80.3: μουναρχιη, τᾕ ἔξεστι ανευθὐνῳ ποι⋯ειν τ⋯ βο⋯λεται. Cf. Plato, , Laws 761 eGoogle Scholar; Aristotle, , Pol. 1295a 20Google Scholar; Diodorus, 1.70.1; Chrysostom, Dio, Or. 56.5 and 11Google Scholar.
6. By this Thucydidean rather than Herodotean phrase I mean ‘slavery imposed by the stronger' (cf. Thuc.1.8.3).
7. Morrison, J.S., CQ 25 (1941), 11 ffGoogle Scholar. and, further, JHS 70 (1950), 76–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; cf Gomme, A.W., JHS 70 (1950), 77CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8. For the Plato–Dionysius story, cf. Westermann, A., Biographi Graeci Minores (Amsterdam, 1964), p. 157Google Scholar; for Plato's regard for Aristophanes, cf. Mackail, J. W., Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology1 (London, 1890), p. 167Google Scholar, and the sympathetic portrayal in the Symposium.
9. Cf. Seager, Robin, Historia 16 (1967), 6 ff.Google Scholar, and MacDowell, D.M. on Andocides, De Mysteriis (Oxford, 1962), p.97Google Scholar.
10. The accentuation of βασ⋯λεια shows that the concrete rather than the abstract expression is being used here, but clearly the approach is allegorical, the kore embodying the abstract notion of Zeus' sovereignty (βασιλε⋯α)
11. Cf. Homer, , Od. 17.487Google Scholar; Hesiod, , Theogony 902Google Scholar; Alcman, fr. 64; Solon, 3.31 ff.; Xenophanes, fr. 2.19; Pindar, , Ol. 9.15–16Google Scholar, 13.6–10, Isthm. 5.22, Nem. 9.29–30, Paeans 1.10; Bacchylides, 13.186–9, 15.53–6.
12. Cf. Sophocles, , O.T. 380 ff.Google Scholar; Euripides, , Her. 65–6Google Scholar, Phoen. 503–6, 549, Hipp. 1013 f., Ion, 621 ff.
13. Comparable to this in the present century would be the notorious ‘witch-hunt' instigated by Senator J.R. McCarthy's allegations of communism in the American State Department during the final years of the Truman administration.