Storey, 'Political Art of Greek Tragedy', Bryn Mawr Classical Review 9502 URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/bmcr/bmcr-9502-storey-political @@@@95.2.2, Meier, Political Art of Greek Tragedy Christian Meier, The Political Art of Greek Tragedy. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Pp. 238. $36.50. ISBN 0-8018-4727-3. Reviewed by Ian C. Storey -- Trent University Meier's study, first published in German in 1988 and rendered by Andrew Webber into English, is really an extended essay on "Why the citizens of Athens needed tragedy", (the title of Meier's opening chapter). He rejects tragedy as "mere theatre", and, although he does occasionally allow for the dramatic nature of the genre, tragedy was a forum in which the citizens (a crucial word) of Athens could exercise the great questions and issues of the new civic (and world-) order in which they found themselves. This opening statement is followed by an historical survey (ch. 2) of "Athens' sudden rise to power", the establishment of a communal civic identity, the accelerated change after 480, and what is the core of Meier's approach, "the mental venture of politics" (34-43). Here he takes up Max Weber's phrase "nomological knowledge": ... the general, overarching and normative knowledge to which we relate all our thinking, actions and experience, and in which these must all be incorporated if things are to seem 'right'. and views Athenian tragedy of the first part of the fifth century against this background. The great events of the age (the victory over Persia, the reforms of 462, etc.) raised questions "that were not to be silenced": Tragedy will thus have existed in order to play out the new within the framework of the old, to bring the two together, and so at once to keep alive the old doubts, the darker aspects of reality, and to introduce the old into the new world in new forms. In this way it would have catered for the evolution of the knowledge mankind uses for reference, in other words, for the mental venture of politics. (42/3) Although Meier mentions Aristotle's theory of katharsis only in passing (219), one could construct a model of tragedy as a sort of "political safety-valve" to effect the katharsis of political pity and fear. He continues with discussions of the Athenian festivals (ch. 3), of tragedy's role within the festival of Dionysos (ch. 4--with special emphasis on the political atmosphere and preliminaries), and finally with the dramatists themselves (actually with two of them only). Six plays by Aeschylus are considered (ch. 5), the Prometheus accepted as genuine (137) and the Seven ignored as "less interesting from this point of view" (62). Only two plays by Sophocles are discussed, Ajax and Antigone. Meier takes the wide approach with the dramas. Discussion of specifics and of individual passages is kept to a minimum, although certain passages do recur within his text (e.g. the 'Ode to Man' [Soph. Ant. 332-75], SW 370, and the trial-scene in Eumenides). Three examples will illustrate Meier's treatment of the dramatic texts: (1) Persians is not really about Themistokles' cunning or Xerxes' ate/hybris, nor does Meier deal with the political manoeuverings of Themistokles in 472 or the significance of Perikles' choregeia; it is really about "boundaries" and "justice", and took the form of a re-staging of the greatest event in recent history with the implicit injunction that "if the world-order was affirmed, in as far as the individual who had offended it met with punishment, then the Athenians too would have to stay within their limitations" (78). (2) The agitations of Ephialtes lie behind Suppliant Women, a drama about who should make political decisions, the individual Pelasgos or the sovereign people. These were the issues that lay beneath and led to the attack on the Areopagos in the following year. When the chorus declares to Pelasgos "you are the city, you are the people [Gk. demion]" (v. 370), Meier argues: By seeking to endow Pelasgus with precisely the quality that no individual--nor any body like the Areopagus--can have, namely, complete identification with the city, the Danaids make clear the absurdity of any attempt by an individual to make the decisions that should actually be made by the people that they affect ... Aeschylus is using a distant myth in order to offer to his contemporaries a clear view of their own situation. (96/7) (3) For Eumenides Meier glosses over the possible Athenian connexions at 292ff. and even the business of the Argive alliance (108). Simply put, the new rule of Zeus is the new Athenian democracy dramatised, and the trial of Orestes and the persuasion of the Furies a recreation of the political struggles of 462 and their aftermath. The situation in the divine world "corresponds strikingly to the situation of Athens" (112)--the Furies and the supporters of the Areopagos both appeal to time-honoured law, the conflict arose well after the establishment of the new order (Zeus' rule::Athenian democracy), in both cases "the losers will not have taken the matter lying down" (113), and the need for reconciliation is made paramount. Meier concludes: So the Oresteia worked in manifold and effective ways on the mental infrastructure of the Athenians--among other things, by situating the revolt historically and significantly modifying prevailing views of the world-order, so that the revolt came to make sense. (136) Aeschylus' own position on the reform of the Areopagos is not really important for Meier; the reconciliation of opposing forces within the polis is. In this Meier takes the same position as Alan Sommerstein in his excellent commentary (Cambridge 1989), but where Sommerstein stresses the dramatic potential of an ambiguous presentation, Meier sees it as politically relevant. He is less successful in relating Prometheus (137-65) and the two Sophoklean plays (Ajax, Antigone--ch. 6) to particular political events and issues. Having argued earlier for an identification of the Athenian democracy with the new rule of Zeus, he has to avoid the uncomfortable inferences from Prometheus that "the victorious demos of Athens was tyrannical, or that it treated its opponents as roughly as Zeus treats Prometheus" (158) or that Prometheus corresponds to the Athenian aristocracy or the Areopagos. Rather the "oppositions within the tragedy were only very rough approximations of reality" and Meier concludes "that if the action of the play had been a more exact replica of the real situation in the polis, the play could no longer be regarded as a proper tragedy" (159). However, "a more exact replica" seems to be what Meier is claiming for both Suppliant Women and Eumenides. He distinguishes Sophokles from Aeschylus, not in their subject--both for Meier are highly political--but in the confidence that each places in the new political order. For Sophokles (in Meier's view) "everything is unsure and subject to change ... the problem is not now with a particular order, but with rationality itself" (186). In Ajax a human (Odysseus) has replaced Athene as the reconciler of factions, while in Antigone Sophokles "confronted the citizenry with a picture of itself ... made clear with unerring realism, where tyranny lurked among them" (202). A final chapter (7) deals with the question of the appeal of such classical relics as tragedy, and restates with considerable force his thesis that the correlation of the vigorous spirit of Athenian democracy and the existence of such powerful (and popular) poetry as tragedy is not coincidental, that democracy needed tragedy, that "tragedy could be the citizens' answer to the question of human destiny" (215). Meier himself admits that much in his interpretation is not novel (219), but insists that his relation of tragic texts to nomological knowledge and the character of Athenian citizenry is a new approach. His conclusion that "Attic democracy was as dependent upon tragedy as upon its councils and assemblies" sums up his overall thesis. Much of Meier's case depends on speculation, of creating a sociological model--to this end the text is full of questions, of "perhaps" and "this would mean", of hypotheses and further speculation. One would be foolish to deny the place tragedy held in the polis--but was its political function its primary one? What about pure entertainment, the thrill of antagonism and opposition dramatised? The purely dramatic outcome of the dilemma of Pelasgos and the Danaids, of the Fury-chased Orestes is all but lost on this approach. One gets the impression that Meier began with two factors that marked fifth-century Athens, tragedy and democracy, and sought to find some essential connexion. One is tempted to add the third distinction, the navy--do we then insist on a fundamental link between tragedy and the navy? Meier is creating a model, one certainly worth contemplating, but one that is essentially one-sided and would preclude much of what we call "literary criticism". As observed above, Meier discusses few texts in detail, preferring the larger view to textual interpretation. One passage does receive recurring attention, the Sophoklean 'Ode to Man', but on p. 32 the text at v. 356 is poorly rendered, as hypsipolis, apolis are translated as "highly political" and "unpolitical". Andrew Brown more correctly sees them as meaning "of lofty city", "without a city" (Sophocles Antigone, Warminster 1987)--they have nothing to with political involvement as if they were synonymous with polypragmon, apragmon. More bothersome is lack of citations to other Greek texts. In his running surveys of the plays line references are given, but other texts are only generally referred to. Most readers will have no problem in locating (28/9) Thucydides' "Corinthian politician" [= I.68-71] and Perikles' funeral speech [= II.35-46], but where does Herodotos say "that towards 500 BC Athens was the most powerful city in Greece, next to Sparta" (10), where does Eupolis pose the question, "Is nothing beyond the Athenians?"--fr. 234, actually, but it was a long search--and where does Platon (the comedian) have a character complain how much Athens has changed in three months (32/4)? The reader cannot immediately locate an ancient text to see if it can bear the interpretation placed on it by Meier. Even more unfortunate is the lack of citation and discussion of critical views. There are no footnotes, and the bibliography is limited to three pages of running comments about various studies, some a generation old. Podlecki is cited for his study of politics behind Aeschylus, but so much has been done on Eumenides that is not cited (e.g., Dover, Macleod, Winnington-Ingram, and Conacher's excellent summary).[[1]] Conspicuously absent are the literary critical studies and the commentators, nor is there any sign of two important studies of the interface between tragedy and society (Goldhill and Walcot).[[2]] It is unfortunate that the translation did not include an up-date of recent work, which has been considerable in the last five years, dealing exactly with the theme of Meier's essay. To take two points only, Meier, assuming the genuineness of Prometheus, places critics such as Griffith and West (unnamed) among those who periodically cast doubt on the play's authenticity (137), and takes the extant play as the opening of a Prometheus-trilogy. Surely some critical notice of opposing points of view is required, if only a footnote. In his account of the trial of Orestes Meier assumes a jury of eleven with Athene making a tie, resolved in favour of the defendant. This is a common view among German critics of Aeschylus, but is by no means universally accepted. This affects his argument as it indicates a partisanship in favour of the old order (both Furies and Areopagos) that only intervention and reconciliation can counter. Again the reader unfamiliar with Aeschylus needs to be warned that this is not the only view of the jury's number. One may be taken aback by a book entitled The Political Art of Greek Tragedy which discusses only six plays of Aeschylus and two of Sophokles, leaving Euripides almost untouched (apart from a brief discussion of Orestes on p. 34). With his emphasis on the civic identity of Athenians (brought into his discussion of Ajax), where is a treatment of Ion? The ongoing depiction by Euripides of Athens (and its human archetype, Theseus) against the background of international war is missing. On p. 5 he proposes to deal with tragedies before the Peloponnesian War; where then is a discussion of Alkestis (all right, not a tragedy, strictly speaking) or Medea or Sophokles' Trachiniai, Elektra--for both of which plays a case for production in the 430s can be made? His omission of Aeschylus' Seven is unfortunate in that he could have brought in Froma Zeitlin's series of studies of Thebes in tragedy as a sort of "anti-Athens", especially Under the sign of the shield, (Rome 1982); and "Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama", in J.J. Winkler & F.I. Zeitlin, Nothing to do with Dionysos? (Princeton 1990) 130-67, a collection whose subtitle, "Athenian drama in its social context", should have recommended it to Meier. I found myself constantly asking questions of the text. In chapter 2 Meier assigns very little influence of the tyrants toward the rise of Athens, as if it all happened under Kleisthenes and the democracy. But was Kleisthenes operating in a vacuum? Did not the "miracle" of Athens begin under the tyrants? On p. 26 he talks of the "great mistrust" outside Athens--but what about the mistrust inside the city? Look at the "Old Oligarch" or the comedies of Aristophanes or the speeches of Andokides. On p. 136 he discusses the tragedian as "teacher", but must all (or even the primary part) of such teaching be political? Tragedy can raise other matters for speculation than matters of state. On p. 184 why is Athene allowed to take a negative view of human behaviour? The goddess of Eumenides and that of Ajax cannot be that far apart in time. I read Meier's essay along with Rush Rehm's new book, Greek Tragic Theater, and found the latter a most useful counterpoint to the former.[[3]] Both deal with the inter-relation between drama and society, but Rehm stresses the essential theatricality of Athenian public life, that the theatre did not follow the political, but rather that the theatrical was intrinsically part of the way Athenians conducted themselves. Thus it was not always politics first and tragedy following, and this is my principal concern with Meier's thesis, that he neglects the purely dramatic and theatrical, the purely entertaining that was inherent in Greek drama. Certainly it did raise major issues and involve the life of the polis, but did the Athenians go in great numbers only to be instructed? They enjoyed Homer and the poets, for the sheer delight of what they performed. Plato was in no doubt about their entrancing and irrational appeal. [[1]] K.J. Dover, "The political aspect of Aeschylus' Eumenides", JHS 77 (1957) 230-7; C.W. Macleod, "Politics and the Oresteia", JHS 102 (1982) 124-44; R.P. Winnington-Ingram, Studies in Aeschylus, (Cambridge 1983), ch. 6; D.J. Conacher, Aeschylus' Oresteia: a literary commentary, (Toronto 1987) 195-222. Winnington- Ingram's excellent Sophocles, an interpretation, (Cambridge 1980) is an especially serious omission, as W-I argues for Sophokles' position in the archaic world view, rather at odds with Meier's humanistic and rationalistic depiction. [ [2]] P. Walcot, Greek Drama in its Theatrical and Social Context, (Cardiff 1976); S. Goldhill, "The Great Dionysia and civic ideology", JHS 107 (1987) 58-76. [[3]] Rush Rehm, Greek Tragic Theater, (London 1992).