In the preceding chapters I have elaborated the Hippolytos' concern with speech and silence in the light of the play's other structuring polarities and as part of the articulation of its discussions of desire and violence. A specifically theoretical interest in speech and silence, or to put it more succinctly, in language, can be seen to characterise not only twentieth-century critical discourses, but also the intellectual practices of fifth-century Athens. This aspect of Athenian activity has been called ‘rhetorical selfconsciousness’ (Kerferd 1981: 78). In this chapter I shall examine some of the specific ways in which the Hippolytos can be seen to reproduce and articulate the contemporary self-consciousness about language.

Drama may be seen as one of the manifestations of the spoken word which characterise certain special practices of fifth-century Athenian democracy; other such manifestations include the debates in the assembly and the confrontations in the law courts. On such occasions the entire citizenry was, or was entitled to be, present; to put things es meson (in the middle, Herodotos 3.80, 3.142) was both a political gesture, definitive of democracy, and a discursive one. The publicity and consequent accountability of the workings of democracy were two of its salient features. The sites in Athens where political influence and authority could be gained and exercised were thus also sites of publicly exchanged language; tragedy, the third of the cultural forms listed above, can be seen to dramatise both the importance of this exchanged public language and the conflicts of authorisation that such exchanges could articulate.