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Reading ideology through myth: Institutions, the orators and the past in democratic Athens Matteo Barbato PhD The University of Edinburgh 2017 2 Acknowledgments This research project started as a study of the use and manipulation of myth in Athenian funeral speeches. It was the natural continuation of my MA thesis, which I wrote at the University of Bologna under the supervision of Prof. Simonetta Nannini. I am grateful to her for encouraging me to start a PhD and helping me to produce my first research proposal for this project. My biggest thanks go to my primary supervisor, Dr Mirko Canevaro, whose guidance has been most precious since the beginning of my application process. I am grateful to him for helping me through my transition from the Italian to the British academic system, supporting me in all my endeavours and encouraging me to explore new and fruitful themes and methodologies. Without him, this thesis would not look the same as it does now. I am equally grateful to my secondary supervisor, Prof Douglas Cairns, whose insightful comments and thoughtful guidance have been fundamental to refining my methodology, strengthening my argument and exploring my sources from different perspectives, and to Prof Edward Harris, who has kindly offered me his advice on this and related projects and shared with me several forthcoming essays. In my four years at the University of Edinburgh, I had the opportunity to meet many outstanding scholars. Among them, I thank Prof Judith Barringer, Dr Benjamin Gray, Dr John Holton, Prof David Konstan and Prof Josiah Ober, who all generously offered me feedback, advice or bibliographical suggestions. I am similarly grateful to all my friends and collegues who contributed to this project with feedback, proofreading or bibliographical advice: Sebastiano Bertolini, Sarah Cassidy, Raphaëla Dubreuil, Alberto Esu, Alison John, Alana Newman, Jessica Robinson, Gianna Stergiou, Belinda Washington, Matteo Zaccarini and Sara Zanovello. Any remaining mistakes are of course my own. Last but not least, I am grateful to my friends and family for supporting me through the joys and hardships of the PhD experience. To them I dedicate this thesis. 3 Abstract My thesis investigates the construction of democratic ideology in classical Athens. Ideology has often provided an alternative tool to formal institutions for the study of Athenian political life. An approach that reconciles institutions and ideology can provide us with a fuller understanding of Athenian democracy. Rather than as a fixed set of ideas, values and beliefs shared by the majority of the Athenians, I argue that Athenian democratic ideology should be seen as the product of a constant process of ideological practice which took place within and was influenced by the institutions of the democracy. My thesis focuses in particular on the construction of shared ideas and beliefs about Athens’ mythical past. Ch. 1 lays down the methodology of my work, which is inspired by the trend in the political sciences known as New Institutionalism. Ch. 2 explores the relationship between myth and Athenian democratic institutions. I show that the Athenians interacted with myth at all levels of their public and private lives, and were thus able to appreciate mythical variants and their potential ideological value. I also show that Athenian democratic institutions were characterised by specific discursive parameters which conditioned the behaviour of Athenian political actors. A comparison between mythical narratives produced for public and private contexts shows that the discursive parameters of Athenian democratic institutions influenced the construction of shared ideas about the mythical past in Athenian public discourse. As proven in Ch. 3-5, the Athenians emphasised different values and mythical variants depending on the institutional settings of the democracy. Ch. 3 analyses the influence of institutions on the values of charis and philanthrōpia in the myth of the Athenian war in defence of the Heraclidae. Ch. 4 explores the use or absence of hybris in accounts of the Attic Amazonomachy produced for public and private contexts. Ch. 5 explores how the myth of autochthony was conceptualised in terms of exclusiveness or collective eugeneia in different Athenian institutions. My research therefore provides a dynamic and multifaceted picture of Athenian democratic ideology, and shows that the Athenian democratic institutions enabled the Athenians to produce multiple and compatible ideas about their mythical past. 4 Contents Signed declaration 2 Acknowledgments 3 Abstract 4 Contents 5 List of tables 7 Abbreviations 8 1. Introduction 9 1.1. Ideology: a brief history 10 1.2. Ideology and classical Athens: beyond Mass and Elite 11 1.3. Toward an institutionalist approach to Athenian ideological practice 15 1.4. Myth, memory and institutions in classical Athens 21 1.5. Outline of the work 25 2. Myth and Athenian democratic institutions 28 2.1. Myth and the polis: a survey 29 2.1.1. The dramatic festivals and the Panathenaea 29 2.1.2. The institutional settings of Athenian oratory 44 2.1.3. Myth in private contexts 54 2.1.4. Myth and variants in classical Athens 57 2.2. The discursive parameters of Athenian democratic institutions 60 2.2.1. The state funeral for the war dead 61 2.2.2. The lawcourts 67 2.2.3. The Assembly and the Council 69 2.2.4. The dramatic festivals 75 2.3. Discursive parameters and myth: the case of Adrastus 77 2.4. Conclusions 83 3. Between charis and philanthrōpia: the Heraclidae 86 3.1. Athens’ help for the Heraclidae: charis or philanthrōpia? 88 3.2. Between charis and philanthrōpia 91 5 3.3. Euripidean tragedy and reciprocity 97 3.4. Lysias: the Heraclidae and Athenian philanthrōpia 104 3.5. Charis and the Heraclidae in Isocrates’ private rhetoric 111 3.6. Conclusions 113 4. Fading shades of hybris: the Attic Amazonomachy 115 4.1. Hybris and the causes of the Attic Amazonomachy 118 4.2. Hybris: an introduction 120 4.3. Lysias: the state funeral and the discourse of hybris 123 4.4. Amazons at the dramatic festivals: Aeschylus’ Eumenides 132 4.5. An allusion to the abduction in a private setting? 135 4.6. The abduction of Antiope in the figurative arts 137 4.7. The abduction of Antiope in mythographers and Attidogrpahers 139 4.8. The abduction of Antiope in Isocrates’ private rhetoric 143 4.9. Conclusions 146 5. Exclusiveness and eugeneia in the myth of autochthony 150 5.1. Autochthony and eugeneia 154 5.2. Eugeneia: from Homeric society to democratic Athens 157 5.3. Autochthony as collective eugeneia at the state funeral 163 5.4. Deconstructing autochthony on the tragic stage 170 5.5. Autochthony as extreme exclusiveness in Apollodorus’ Against Neaera 174 5.6. Conclusions 178 6. Conclusions 181 Bibliography 188 6 List of Tables Table 1: Myths in tragedy and satyr drama 34 Table 2: Myths in the extant funeral speeches 48 Table 3: Myths in the extant forensic speeches 50 7 Abbreviations Ancient authors and works are abbreviated according to the fourth edition of the Oxford Classical Dictionary. Journal abbreviations follow those of L’Année philologique. When referencing the fragments of Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, I have used the numbering of the relevant edition of Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta. All other abbreviations are listed below: BNJ I. Worthington, ed., Brill’s New Jacoby (Leiden 2006-). DK H. Diels and W. Kranz, eds, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (Berlin 1951- 52). FGrHist F. Jacoby, ed., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker (Berlin and Leiden 1923-58). IG Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin 1872-). LIMC Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (Zürich 1981-2009). LSJ H. G. Liddell and R. Scott, A Greek–English Lexicon, revised and augmented by H. S. Jones (Oxford 19409). Maehler H. Maehler, ed., Pindari Carmina cum Fragmentis. Pars II: Fragmenta. Indices (Leipzig 1989). OED J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford 19892) PMG D. L. Page, ed., Poetae Melici Graeci (Oxford 1962) RO P. J. Rhodes and R. G. Osborne, eds, Greek Historical Inscriptions 403-323 BC (Oxford 2003). Smyth, GGC H. W. Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges (New York 1920). Suda A. Adler, ed., Suidae lexicon (Leipzig, 1928-35) TrGF Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta (Gö ttingen 1971-2004). Voigt E.-M. Voigt, ed., Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta (Amsterdam 1971). West M. L. West, ed., Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum Cantati (Oxford 1989-19922). 8 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Ideology, especially after the publication of Josiah Ober’s seminal book Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens in 1989, has become a keyword in scholarship on Athenian democracy. Ideology has often provided an alternative tool to formal institutions for the investigation of Athenian political activity.1 Some recent trends in the political sciences, on the other hand, have successfully challenged extra-institutionalist approaches and brought the formal institutions of the state back to centre stage. The main contention of this thesis is that institutions are still a valuable tool for ancient historians, and that an approach that reconciles a focus on institutions with an interest in ideology can offer a fruitful and yet unexplored perspective for the study of Athenian democracy.