Theater and Ritual

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Theater and Ritual Robert S. Knapp 7 October
2009
Tanya Moiseiwitsch Designer The House of
Atreus Tyron Guthrie, Director
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Aeschylus Herodotus
City Dionysia founded by Peisistratus ?
490 BCE
Marathon
424 BCE
458 BCE
508 BCE
534 BCE
525 BCE
Oresteia
Histories (terminus ante quem)
Cleisthenes Reforms
Aeschylus Born
Herodotus Born
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Some Essentials in the Development of Theater

• Thespis dons a mask, interacts with a chorus
  (maybe at a rural Dionysia c. 534 BCE)
• Aeschylus invents the second actor (470s?)
• Scripts (permitting multiple modes of speech,
  carefully sequenced chains of action, imagery,
  etc.)

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Aspects of the City Dionysia

• Its main features (after 508 BCE)
• The interconnection of politics and religion
• The connection between ritual and the Oresteia

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Ritual vs. Text?

• Ritual could stand in opposition to text, as
  fixed, ideological and structural, compared to
  the critical, skeptical, ambiguous,
  differentiating powers of text
• Ritual could be (Catherine Bell) a redundant,
  circular, and rhetorical universe of values and
  terms whose significance keeps flowing into other
  values and terms
• City Dionysia--and the play--a festival occasion
  for Athens to stage and reflect upon itself, but
  not in a simple or straightforward way.

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The Festival and its Politics

• Seven-day springtime event (dating to 508 BCE)
• Cleisthenes changing Athenian tribes from four
  to ten
• private religious rites must be grouped into a
  small number of public celebrations . . . every
  device must be employed to make all the people as
  much as possible intermingled with one another,
  and to break up previously existing groups of
  associates.
• --Aristotle (Politics)

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Reconstructions of Theater of Dionysuswww.theatro
n.org
Skênê
Temple of Dionysus
Altar?
Earliest
Fifth Century
Roman
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Aerial View of Athens
Theater (hidden)
S
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Parthenon
Agora
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Aerial View of Theater Acropolis
N
S
Temple of Dionysus Eleuthereus
Theater of Dionysus
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Acropolis Map
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Eleutherae
Athens
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• Annexation of Eleutherae in late 6th century
• the connotations connecting Eleutherae to
  e?e??e??a must have been especially welcome to
  Athenians at this juncture.
• --W. R. Connor
• Dionysus a god of liberation, of wine, of the
  effacement of boundaries, of the release of
  otherness - - and of liberation from tyranny
  and oppression.

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Three Images of Dionysus
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ExtantTheater of Dionysos
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Theater of Dionysus (c. 2000 vs. c.1900)
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Seven Days of FestivalFive Days of Performance

• Audience composed of Athenian men, metics,
  foreigners, some women
• Two days of dithyrambic competitions (choruses of
  fifty men or fifty boys from each tribe)
• Three days of dramatic competition
• Each day three tragedies and one satyr play
• Each performance judged by panel of ten judges

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Academy
Theater
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Commemorations of the xenismos of Dionysus

• Mythic Dionysus rejected during reign of
  Pandion (son of Erichthonius, child of Athena,
  King of the Rock) men punished with disease
  of the genitals (probably priapism)
• Historical the annexation of Eleutheriae
• Regulated hospitality to outsiders liberation
  from a certain sort of tyranny

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Hybris

• Pride
• More specifically, wanton violence,
  insolence, outrage, shaming others for ones
  own pleasure
• any kind of wrongful, insulting, insolent, or
  excessive behavior directed towards free
  persons, male or female
• --David Cohen

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Eros, Kanephoros, Dionysos
Eros
Dionysus
Basket for Sacrifice
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Ephebe Phallic Monument
Head of Kouros Acropolis Museum 5th century
Phallic Monument Delos c. 300 BCE
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Theatre at Thorikos

• Before 500 B. C. E.

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Cleisthenes Ten Tribes
Table by Bernard Suzanne
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• Choregoi (mostly members of old families)
• Sponsors of the events
• Patrons employing a substantial portion of the
  citys free citizens
• Cost for one day annual tribute from small city
  of the Delian League
• dramatic, symbolic enactment of social tensions
  and issues surrounding philotimia
  -- Peter Wilson

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Plan of the Acropolis
Street of Tripods
Theater
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• Choregoi (mostly members of old families)
• Sponsors of the events
• Patrons employing a substantial portion of the
  citys free citizens
• Cost for one day annual tribute from small city
  of the Delian League
• dramatic, symbolic enactment of social tensions
  and issues surrounding philotimia
  -- Peter Wilson

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Pre-dramatic stages of the City Dionysia

• Purification of the theater (a bleeding pig
  carried round the auditorium)
• Libations by the ten strategoi (generals)
• Tribute from cities of Delian League
• Crowns or garlands for benefactors
• Parade of grown orphans of fallen soldiers

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Festival and Ideology?

• Created a sense of solidarity
• Affirmed the authority of the dêmos
• Expressed the gratitude of the city toward
  benefactors
• Manifested common yet differentiated identity of
  children of Athena

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The Oresteia
If only they are revering the citys gods, the
shrines of the gods who love the conquered
land, no plunderer will be plundered in
return. Just let no lust, no mad desire seize the
armies to ravish what they must not
touch-- overwhelmed by all theyve won.
--Agamemnon 322-27
The Athenians are conspicuous not only for their
humanity but also as much for their devotion to
religion. --Pausanius (1st
century C.E.)
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Perverted, abnormal, sacrilegious ritual and
sacrifice

• Sacrifice of Iphigenia
• Rape of Troy
• Sacrifice of Agamemnon and Cassandra
• The odor of the bloody shambles
• Aegisthus the third libation to Zeus
• The execution of Clytemnestra

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Dikê vs. hybris
Answer 1 (of two)

• Hybris is impietys child (Eumenides 530)
• Dikê and balance

The things that are perish into the things out
of which they come to be, according to necessity,
for they pay penalty and retribution to each
other for their injustice (adikê) in accordance
with the ordering of time . . . .
--Anaximander
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Injustice and Wealth
But ancient Violence longs to breed new Violence
comes when its fatal hour comes, the demon
comes to take her toll . . . . But Justice
shines in sooty hovels, loves the decent
life. From proud halls crusted with gilt by
filthy hands she turns her eyes to find the pure
in spirit-- spurning the wealth stamped
counterfeit with praise, she steers all things
toward their destined end. --Agamemnon 755 ff.
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The Oresteia as new foundation myth

• A change of political institutions
• From tyrannoi to dêmos
• From reciprocal violence and sacrilege to a new
  form of justice and a new civic cult
• From delusion and self-destruction to democratic
  justice and civic harmony

The evolution of a culture in a progress from
savagery to democracy --Robert Fagles
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Answer 2 (of two)
Not the suppression of great families, but their
reinvention as guarantors of the citys freedom,
liberators of the community who rely upon their
personal network of international and divine
allies (Pylades and Apollo and Athena)
Speaking male representatives of non-noble
families only in the Agamemnon. In the other
plays, only the aristoi speak the jury of the
Eumenides is mute, the choruses are composed of
slave-women, furies, or female devotees of Athena.
--Mark Griffith
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Pronomos Vasec. 400 B.C.E.
Didaskolos (playwright-director with script
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Plan of the Theater
Altar
Temple