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Athena/Athens on Stage: Athena in the Tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles

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ATHENA/ATHENS ON STAGE: ATHENA IN THE TRAGEDIES OF AESCHYLUS AND SOPHOCLES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Rebecca Futo Kennedy, M.A. * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor June Allison, Adviser Professor Erik Gunderson _________________________ Adviser Professor Victoria Wohl Department of Greek and Latin ABSTRACT By 440 BC, the Athenians had created an empire for themselves with Athena, patron of their city, as patron of the empire. This dissertation discusses the dynamic relationship between Athena and her city and how the Athenians negotiated their role as imperialists by characterizing her on stage. Understanding Athena in this way shapes how we understand changes in Athenian hegemony. As the nature of Athenian power shifted so too did the way Athena was presented. The implications behind this understanding are that the more ruthless aspects of Athenian imperialism belong not to the post-Periclean period, but begin to emerge in the 470’s and 460's. The tragedians themselves are aware of the changing nature of Athenian power and used their plays as platforms from which to comment on imperial policies. Athena stands, I argue, within the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles as a symbol for contemporary Athens and her empire. Aeschylus’ plays on the surface both support Athenian hegemony and help create a favorable image of that hegemony. He creates an idealized image of Athens that could be used as support for the empire by portraying Athena and Athens as the source of a system of justice superior to other systems. This endorsement of legal dominance also lends itself readily as a confirmation of the military dominance of Athens. In the character of Athena Aeschylus creates a paradigm both for Athenian imperial and democratic ideology. ii Sophocles presents Athena in two plays through which he both supports and questions Athenian power. In Ajax Locrus, Athena appears similarly to Aeschylus’ Athena. She, while having strong grounds for punishing Lesser Ajax, opts instead for a trial by jury. This is similar to the portrayal found in Aeschylus' Eumenides and in the legal documents from the fifth century that connect Athena to courtroom justice. This changes in Sophocles’ Ajax. For here Athena embodies those very elements of punishment that she worked so hard to suppress in Eumenides. She, like the empire she now represents in the mid fifth century, is concerned with authority at the expense of true justice and the freedom of others. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I wish to thank, first and foremost, my advisor, June Allison, for her support, encouragement and honesty during the production of this dissertation and before. My graduate school experience would not have been nearly as tolerable without her. I am grateful to Professors Victoria Wohl and Erik Gunderson for introducing me to so many new ideas and approaches to reading and understanding Greek and Roman culture and literature. Their teachings will continue to influence both my writing and thinking. My thanks to Mary Cole and Betsy Tannehill for their continued assistance with the more mundane aspects of being a graduate student such as getting paid and turning in paperwork on time. I would also like to thank my fellow graduate students in the Department of Greek and Latin, especially Gillian McIntosh Nichols, who have kept me sane and focused throughout the years. It is possible to finish. Most importantly, however, I wish to thank my husband, Christopher Kennedy, for supporting me through every stage of this dissertation. I could not have succeeded if it were not for him. I could not continue to succeed without him. Thank you more than I can say. iv VITA February 20, 1974 ...................................Born – Charleston, South Carolina March 1997 .............................................B.A. Classical Studies, University of California, San Diego June 1999 ...............................................M.A. Greek and Latin, The Ohio State University 1998 – present ........................................Graduate Teaching and Research Associate, The Ohio State University FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Greek and Latin Classics v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Acknowledgments..............................................................................................................iv Vita .....................................................................................................................................v List of Figures...................................................................................................................viii Chapters: 1. Introduction...........................................................................................................1 Overview: Athena and Athens.................................................................................1 Methodology..........................................................................................................16 2. Aeschylus............................................................................................................24 Aeschylus: An Overview.......................................................................................24 Persae....................................................................................................................29 Eumenides.............................................................................................................46 Athena, Politics and Geography in Eumenides.........................................46 What it Means to be σύµµαχος...............................................................63 Power and Persuasion...............................................................................76 Conclusion................................................................................................87 3. Sophocles.............................................................................................................92 Athena in Sophocles: An Overview.......................................................................92 Ajax Locrus............................................................................................................95 Ajax......................................................................................................................105 The Problem of Athena............................................................................105 The Date of Ajax......................................................................................113 The Politics of Meaning in Athens..........................................................120 Athena and Ajax .....................................................................................126 Athena, Menelaus, the Melians and Eumenides......................................152 Conclusion..............................................................................................168 4. Conclusion...................................................................................................................171 vi Appendix A: Figures........................................................................................................180 Appendix B: A Note on Athena in Euripides’ Trojan Women.......................................186 Bibliography....................................................................................................................193 vii LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1 Map of Athenian Hegemony in the Aegean ...........................................180 2 Text of the Erythrai Decree ....................................................................181 3 Illustration of the sack of Troy at the Stoa Poikile at Athens..................182 4 Illustration of the sack of Troy at the Knidian Lesche at Delphi ............182 5 Athena and Ajax on a Chalcidean Amphora c. 540 BC .........................183 6 Athena and Ajax on an Attic red-figure c. 490 BC .................................183 7 Achilles and Ajax at play by Exekias c. 560 BC ....................................184 8 Athena, Ajax and Achilles on an Attic red-figure c. 510 BC .................184 9 Ajax, Menestheus and Athena go to Troy ..............................................185 10 Athena, Erichthonius and the birth of Erechtheus ..................................185 viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Overview: Athena and Athens The special bond between the goddess Athena and her namesake city Athens is well attested in our ancient sources and well accepted by modern scholars. Athena gave her name to the city after being chosen over Poseidon as protector of that land.1 She was the pseudo-mother of the autochthonous child, Erichthonius, from whom the Athenians themselves sprang.2 In Homer, the name of Athena is synonymous with the rock of the Acropolis3 and it was upon that same Acropolis that the Athenians built Athena’s great temple, the Parthenon. The Panathenaia, reorganized in 566/5 BC and in the fifth century the greatest Athenian festival, was celebrated every four years in her honor.4 But one aspect of Athena’s relationship to Athens has been, for the most part, ignored—her patronage of the arche. 1 Apollodorus 3.14.1 Herodotus tells us that Erechtheus, after ascending the throne of Kekrops, renamed the Kekropidae Athenians in honor of his patron goddess, Athena (8.44). 2 See especially, N. Loraux The Invention of Athens (Eng. trans., Cambridge, Mass., 1986) 132-171, 145- 155
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