The theories of Aristotle about tragedy, as
articulated in The Poetics, are
potentially valuable both in an historic context – that is, as part of the
study of ancient drama – and as a set of standards and ideas against which to
judge subsequent theatre and theories of theatre. However, despite Aristotle’s
interest in the Universal (citation) both uses can be clarified by a brief
discussion of The Poetics’ historical
context: the environment from which Aristotle emerges may offer clues to his philosophical
positions.
Aristotle was born at the end of a
dynamic period of social and political upheaval. As tutor to Alexander The
Great, the Macedonian conqueror of Greece and the Persian Empire, he was
intimately involved with the events that led to the expansion of Hellenic
cultural into the east. Yet a mere century earlier, Greece had been a far more
fragile and fragmented entity. Even following a spectacular victory over an
invading force from Persia, the basic unit of the Greek state was the city, and
rather than a unified nation, Greece was divided into many city states, each
one with its own government and cultural concerns.
Traditionally, the two states of Spartan
and Athens have come to represent the extremes of Greek politics. While Sparta
was orientated to an austere military organisation – with two kings and the
Ephors (a group of older citizens) at the top of the hierarchy, Athens was a
direct democracy, with all male citizens entitled to vote on matters of policy.
This simple contrast hides a far more
complicated history. Athens instituted democracy in 509 BC, following its
liberation from a series of ‘tyrants’ (autocratic leaders without a hereditary
entitlement), partially through the aid of the Spartan army. In the following
century, Athens would become a military power in its own right – through its
remarkable naval power – and a hub for artistic and philosophical revolutions.
By the time that Aristotle was old enough to decide to pursue philosophy,
Athens was the place to be.
The Athenians themselves regarded their
cultural supremacy as an inevitable consequence of their political system,
which encouraged freethinking and debate. In Thucydides’ version of Pericles’
funeral oration, the great general made a point of connecting the growth of
Athens to its spirit of freedom.
The myth of Athenian freedom is,
ironically, echoed in praise directed at the Spartan state. The film, and
graphic novel, 300, despite its
rather imaginative description of the facts surrounding the battle of Thermopylae,
captures the spirit of Herodotus’ attitude towards the Spartans, and their own
belief that the Spartan state offers freedom. In the aftermath of the Persian
Wars, the whole of Greece could see itself as being a haven of individualism
and intellectual freedom, by comparing itself to the Persian Empire, with its
monarchy and monolithic cultural identity.
Athens, however, does have a solid claim to
its beliefs. Even before the triumphant rejection of the tyrants, through
Cleisthenes’ revolution, it had made several attempts to create a state based
on equality. The concept of isonomia - equality before the law – was considered
even in the disappointingly reforms of Draco. In drawing up a new system of
punishment for crimes, Draco decided that every crime was worthy of death,
leading to the modern epithet ‘draconian.’ While his practice was somewhat
extreme, his theory was, at least, guided by isonomia.
A more fondly remembered ancestor to
democracy was Solon, one of the ancient world’s great sages – who would also
offer a little criticism to Thespis, the first author of tragedy. However,
following the overthrow of Peisistratus in 507, the Athenians made serious
efforts to expand equality into the political sphere, developing a form of
democracy that revolved around regular assemblies that were open to all
citizens.
At this point, the traditional note is
that, of course, citizens were tightly defined: slaves and women were excluded
from the assembly – and the various guiding panels and councils that surrounded
it. Aristotle makes it quite clear that he shared the prejudices of this age in
The Poetics when he observes that
women are inferior to men. However, this glaring omission aside, Athenian
democracy, and its legal system, was based on a far more egalitarian system
than its neighbours, who might have been ruled by Kings or oligarchies (that
is, groups of aristocrats).
That the shining exemplars of democratic
leadership came from a tight-knit group of families, who had previously been
competing for oligarchic power in Athens, is generally either ignored or
approved. The fundamental
principal of Athenian democracy, nevertheless, is considerably more inclusion
than the representative democracy that passes for government in contemporary
Britain.
Alongside democracy, Athens had another
innovation – this time in the arts. Attic Tragedy evolved very rapidly from the
dithyramb – a choral hymn, usually to Dionysus – and within thirty years of the
institution of democracy, it had become a showcase for Athenian cultural
hegemony within Greece. But before the Athenians could boast of this
achievement, the fledgling democracy had to fight off an external threat – the
Persian Invasions of 490 and 480.
In Herodotus’ Histories, a book that does put the lie to the suggestion that
Persian was purely barbarian and culturally monolithic, the invasions by the
Persian Emperors Darius and Xerxes did pit two opposing ideologies at war.
Persia was a monarchy, with a considerable emphasis on centralised control.
Greece was a patch-work of independent city states which, as history reveals,
were are happy fighting each other as defending their shared country.
The odds were long against a Greek victory.
In 490, Darius sent an expeditionary force, which was defeated by a Greek army,
led by the Athenians, at Marathon. When Darius’ son, Xerxes, made a more
serious attempt in 480, a holding strategy by the Spartans at the narrow pass
of Thermopylae allowed the Athenians to evacuate the city and lead the Greek
navy to a stunning victory just off the Island of Salamis. The Persians were
sent packing, and Athens begun boasting about its power. The capture and
burning of Athens became an opportunity to rebuild, and the spectacular
Acropolis that still attracts visitors to this day – even after Lord Elgin
stole all the fittings – was the result.
In 470, about the time that Aeschylus was
writing The Persians (his earliest
extant tragedy and one that bucks the trend of using mythology for the plot),
Athens was feeling pretty tasty. In Aeschylus’ trilogy The Oresteia, the finale happens in Athens, and the bloodguilt of
the hero is purified by the intellectual logic of the defence council and the
inherent justice of the Aeropagus, an ancient tribunal. Athens is even able to
overturn the natural cycle of vengeance that has previously passed for justice,
through a compromise with The Eumenides – previously terrifying embodiments of
revenge, given a new shrine and role as protectors of the city.
While further study of Aeschylus will come
when I write my best-seller on the character of Greek drama – it is worth observing
that at this time, the politics and principals of Athenian society were
reflected in the plays.
Sadly, this newfound confidence went to
their heads all too quickly. A close reading of Herodotus reveals that the
Persian invasions were provoked by Athenians messing about in the revolutionary
activities of certain Ionian cities on the coast of Turkey – then known as Asia
Minor and part of Darius’ empire. After the war, Athens became the centre of a
Greek naval alliance system, which was supposed to have a shared treasury at
Delos. Encouraged by the onion-headed hero Pericles, who would become an
Athenian hero, the city decided that this treasury would be better used
smartened up its Acropolis than just sitting on Delos as a financial assurance
of future military collaboration.
Having spent their allies’ money –
effectively turning alliances into tributes – the Athenians decided to meddle
in national politics. They went for a period of cold war strategies against
Corinth and Sparta, eventually refusing the Megarians access to a particular
market. This was one of the factors that encouraged the Spartans to declare war
on the Athenians, plunging Greece into a war that would last from 431 until the
end of the century.
The nature of Athenian democracy was
unashamedly imperialistic. Even during the war with Sparta, they found time to
send an expedition to Sicily, which is one of the biggest military failures
ever: and during a brief break in hostilities, they sent a warship to Egypt to
wind up the locals (and possibly find new trade routes). Apart from drawing a
cheeky comparison with contemporary democracies like the USA, who also have a
habit of adventuring against nations with non-democratic government, it is
possible to suggest that the very nature of Greek democracy encouraged this
imperialism.
There is a twisted logic, but the inclusion
of the poorest citizens in the decision-making process made Athenian policy
vulnerable to populist measures that would provide work for these citizens. A
quick trip over to Egypt provided plenty of work for the oarsmen… however, this
line of inquiry collapsed at the suggestion of Eric Caroulla that Alexander the
Great was also imperialistic, and he didn’t necessarily pay attention to the
assembly.
Thucydides’ history of Peloponnesian War is
a great attempt to develop a history that is stripped of the anthropology that
makes Herodotus interesting but discursive. However, a real good book doesn’t
excuse over a quarter of a century of seasonal warfare that would eventually
destroy Athens’ power and confidence.
The end of the Peloponnesian War – after a
few false reprieves and surprises, such as the Peace of Nicias and a brief
period when a group of oligarchs seized the government – saw a Spartan army
arrive in Athens again. Fortunately, the Spartans were not enthusiastic about
extending their empire and went home – they already had another conquered
people, the helots, to oppress and were not hot for ruling a Greek empire.
The democracy reasserted itself, and spent
time condemning Socrates to death before making a dumb decision to fight Philip
of Macedon, another invader. Philip conquered Athens, and his son went on to
conquer Persian, creating a Pan-Hellenic culture that spread as far as Egypt.
Indeed, this Greek culture was so important that people forget that Cleopatra
was a Greek – part of the Ptolemy family who inherited Egypt after Alexander’s
empire collapsed on his early death.
In brief, the Athenian democracy flourished
very briefly for around a century. It was always argumentative and had great
difficulty avoiding demagogues – populist politicians who would persuade the
assembly to do something stupid. In its early stages, during the threat of
Persian invasion, it had sterling leaders, like Miltiades, who combined
rhetorical and military brilliance. After the death of Pericles, who was a
victim of the plague (another factor in their defeat by Sparta), it ended up
with characters like Cleon, who was mocked by comic poet Aristophanes for being
ill-educated and was killed on an expedition he encouraged, or Alcibiades, who
might have cut off the penises of religious statues before defecting to Sparta,
sleeping with the wife of the king there, and finally running away to Persia.
There were further controversial debates,
including the decision to prosecute a group of generals en masse for a defeat,
which was illegal, and the brutal decision to kill everybody on the island of
Melos for refusing to join their alliance. Frankly, if it wasn’t one thing, it
was another. And the love of a good argument attracted a particular sort of
teacher to gravitate towards Athens, which accounts for something of the city’s
intellectual atmosphere.
Plato, who was born towards the end of the
century, calls these teachers sophists, mainly to distinguish them from
Socrates, his hero and a proper philosopher. But they are better described as philosophers themselves,
probably with an interest in rhetoric. They flocked to Athens, and made it the
centre of intellectual ferment.
Plato is possibly the most important
thinker of ancient Greece – he was the first to write down his ideas in a
series of eloquent books, and his influence is such that the whole history of
western thought has been described as footnotes to his work. He was a follower
of Socrates, who was called the wisest man of the time by the Delphic Oracle,
and who preferred dialectic – conversation – to rhetoric. Apart from being
mightily annoyed by the democracy that killed Socrates, Plato had a suspicion
of the other philosophers, whom he regarded as having wild ideas and placing
more emphasis on the quality of argument that its relative truth.
It was Plato who taught Aristotle: after a
few adventures that involved trying to persuade a tyrant to use a rational
system to govern, then getting captured by pirates, he set up a school, The
Academy. There’s a really cool painting that imagines the pair of them in
conversation, and sums up their differences in a single image more clearly than
all the words wasted in analysis.
Before dedicating some time to Plato, who
told the best joke in history, it’s important to note that Athens was full of
smart-ass intellectuals. Even the plays were full of arguments. Athenian
democracy encouraged debate and new ideas. Now and again, they might kill
someone for the new ideas – like Socrates. But generally, Athens was a city
that was growing throughout the fifth century, with democracy, theatre,
philosophy and the architecture all racing ahead together.
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