Euripides’ Hecuba : Nothing to Do with Democracy? Over the last decade it has become fashionable to discount democracy as a factor in the production and reception of Athenian tragedy. This trend began in earnest with Jasper Griffin’s review of Nothing to Do with Dionysos in which he reduced the relationship between tragedy and democracy to a tautology. 1 Simon Goldhill and Richard Seaford responded to Griffin after publication of his article. Goldhill stressed the power of democratic ideology to encompass and recuperate difference, arguing that “From within democracy, it is hard to think transgression, alternatives, contestation except in democratic terms” (Goldhill 2000: 46). Since then, Peter Rhodes has argued that the City Dionysia and the plays staged there are generic polis events. Identifying elements of the festival in non-democratic poleis, he concludes that “...Athenian drama...reflect[s] the polis in general rather than the democratic polis in particular” (Rhodes 2003: 119). Consider Rhodes’ argument for a moment. To maintain that because nondemocratic poleis had χορηγοί, the institution was not democratic, as Rhodes does, is tantamount to claiming that because Saddam Hussein was president of Iraq, presidencies are not democratic institutions. It is fairer to say presidencies can be dictatorial or democratic; the same applies to χορηγία. So far as the Athenians are concerned, the χορηγία is a democratic institution par excellence. As Peter Wilson observes, “The actions of the rich were open to construal as an index of their commitment to the political form of democracy, and of their disposition toward their fellow citizens” (Wilson 2000: 53). First, there is the ἀντίδοσις procedure, whereby a citizen selected for a χορηγία could challenge a man he thought wealthier, but was not 2 assigned to assume the burden or to exchange property. Pseudo-Xenophon considers Athenian χορηγία an instrument by which the poor majority redistributes wealth to itself, strengthening the democracy by weakening the rich. He connects this phenomenon with the law courts, where, he claims, “justice is not a concern to them more than their own self-interest” (1.13). 1 Griffin (1998) 47: “It seems that all we can really mean is that in the heyday of Attic tragedy Athens was a democracy, and so the festival at which the tragedies were produced, an occasion which had a patriotic element, was at that time a festival of the democracy” 2 Christ (1990) 162 on the ideology of the antidosis procedure: “it represented an articulation of the absolute responsibility of the liturgical class to provide public services: …the demos were to receive their due.” *1* Second, there is a forensic discourse of the χορηγία in which litigants detail their expenditures in the hope of winning favor with the dikasts. Athenian χορηγοί represent themselves as embodying the demos’ authority. Some litigants refer to χορηγίαι and other liturgies as money spent for the dikasts as representatives of the demos or depict their performance of liturgies as “doing everything for you [sc. the 3 dikasts as demos] that was ordered.” As Demosthenes tells the dikasts, describing himself as the target of Meidias’ punch: “he did not commit an outrage against me, as being only Demosthenes on that day, but as your chorēgos” (οὐ γὰρ εἰς ∆ημοσθένην ὄντα μ᾿ ἠσέλγαινε μόνον ταύτην τὴν ἡμέραν, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς χορηγὸν ὑμέτερον· (D.21.31). Demosthenes was not the victim of a punch, but his “tribe, a tenth part of you, were co-victims and the laws through which each of you is safe, and the god for whom I had been appointed χορηγός...” (D. 21.126). It is difficult to detach Athenian χορηγία from democracy. Democracy imprinted its stamp on polis institutions to the extent that they are impossible to abstract from their democratic setting, the χορηγία not the least. Thus in response to Rhodes, we might say that once a democratic culture adopts a practice such as the χορηγία, the fact that non-democratic cultures have or had similar institutions is irrelevant. Indeed, to frame the question of the relationship between democracy and drama in this way—to state that Athens was a democracy but this did not matter to the performance of drama as Griffin does, or to try, only to fail, to define the City Dionysia and its component parts as “democratic”—is a red herring. Linkage of drama and democracy features in conventions of audience address in the theater, law court, and assembly, where speakers denominate their audiences as the Athenian demos—a real or imagined socio-political group—that exercised ultimate power in the polis. Contemporary analysts and observers of Athenian society detail the effects of drama in political terms. Aristotle in the Rhetoric, Poetics, and Politics and Plato in the Gorgias and Laws note how mass audiences determine the horizons of theatrical and musical performances in much the same way as they do political performances. The canonical emotions of tragedy—pity and fear—are fundamental to the psychology of democratic citizenship; and interlocking relationships between the emotional and cognitive content of democratic citizenship and of tragic spectatorship constitute an essential part of Athenian political culture. Pity is the norm of the 3 “Spent for/on you”: Lys. 19.10; Is. 5.41; D. 38.25; Aisch. 1.11-12; “did everything ordered for you” (καὶ πάνθ᾿ ὑμῖν τὰ προσταττόμενα ποιεῖν): Is. 7.36; Lys. 7.31; 12.20; see Christ (1990) 156 n.42 for τὰ προσταττόμενα without qualification. Cf. “you have learned…to avoid performing liturgies for these men here” (τουτοισί, D. 42.23). At the time of [Arist.] Ath. Pol., the eponymous Archon and Archon Basileus assigned choregic liturgies (56.3-57.1). *2* Athenian democratic character. Demosthenes affirms that “the man who acts on behalf of the polis and will encounter you as gentle has to seem to have the character of the polis. And what is this? To pity the weak and not to allow those who are mighty and powerful to commit hubris and to treat the many savagely …” (τὸν γὰρ ὑπὲρ τῆς πόλεως πράττοντά τι καὶ πράων ὑμῶν τευξόμενον τὸ τῆς πόλεως ἦθος ἔχοντα δεῖ φαίνεσθαι. τοῦτο δ᾿ ἐστὶ τί; τοὺς ἀσθενεῖς ἐλεεῖν, τοῖς ἰσχυροῖς καὶ δυναμένοις μὴ ἐπιτρέπειν ὑβρίζειν, οὐ τοὺς μὲν πολλοὺς ὠμῶς μεταχειρίζεσθαι... D. 24.170-71). Extant tragedy from Aeschylus’ Suppliants to Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus implies that this is true of fifth-century Athens. As Adrastos explains to Theseus in Euripides’ Suppliants, Athens is his only hope for a successful supplication: Sparta is ‘savage’ and “the other poleis are small and weak. Athens alone has the power to undertake this labor: it has a keen eye for what is pitiable” (τὰ τ᾿ οἰκτρὰ δέδορκε, E. Su. 187-90). The collective disposition to pity is bound up with the ethos of a democratic society. A cognitive prerequisite for pity, fear undergirds democratic consensus and enables the accumulation of collective power through the deliberative procedures of the assembly. Fear is a prospective emotion (Arist. Rh. 1381a21-22). Its cultivation in democratic discourse is critical to motivating pre-emptive and rationally self-interested collective action. Fear underlies the characteristic Athenian virtues of reverence and piety (σέβας, εὐσέβεια). As Perikles asserts, in their collective life Athenians “do not transgress especially through fear...of the laws, particularly so many of these as were made for the victims of injustice and so many, because unwritten, carry an agreed4 upon shame” (Th. 2.37.3). In extant tragedy, the identity of democratic decrees and “unwritten laws” protecting suppliants, strangers, victims of violence, and the right of the dead to burial is axiomatic. Together, pity and fear are as indispensable to the construction of democracy as a political, religious, and moral order and to the operation of democratic persuasion as they are to the experience of tragedy. In the theater, however, pity and fear are elements of a complex form of pleasure. Contrary to Jasper Griffin’s assertion that “…pleasure has no history,” 4 ἀνεπαχθῶς δὲ τὰ ἴδια προσομιλοῦντες τὰ δημόσια διὰ δέος μάλιστα οὐ παρανομοῦμεν, τῶν τε αἰεὶ ἐν ἀρχῇ ὄντων ἀκροάσει καὶ τῶν νόμων, καὶ μάλιστα αὐτῶν ὅσοι τε ἐπ᾿ ὠφελίᾳ τῶν ἀδικουμένων κεῖνται καὶ ὅσοι ἄγραφοι ὄντες αἰσχύνην ὁμολογουμένην φέρουσιν, Th. 2.37.3. “In private we associate without annoyance; in public we do not transgress through fear especially, by obedience to those holding office at any given time and of the laws, particularly so many of these as were made for the victims of injustice and so many, because unwritten, carry an agreed-upon shame.” *3* pleasure has a history within Athenian democracy. And from the 420s onwards, participants in Athenian culture—including characters in drama—describe the 5 mandatory effect of political discourse as the demos’ gratification. For Plato, indiscrimination toward pleasure defines the democratic ethos: judging all pleasures of equal value irrespective of their benefit or harm, the democrat enjoys them all; pleasures proliferate and rule (R. 560c2-561c4). We do not need to attribute literal truth to Plato’s caricature to see that the demos’ power and pleasure are interconnected elements of Athenian democratic society and that the theater is one institution in which this connection is realized. Keith Baker defines political culture as a “set of discourses or symbolic practices” by which “individuals and groups in any society articulate, negotiate, and enforce the competing claims they make upon one another” (Baker 1990: 4). Litigants satisfy the demands of ordinary citizens for respect and phrase their own claims upon ordinary citizens in a language of pity; political orators use fear to motivate the demos; the demos instills fear in the elite in an attempt to restrain their power and compel its members to achieve the demos’ interests. Pleasure is the elocutionary aim of political and dramatic rhetoric. In this sense, pity, fear, and pleasure form the spine of Athenian democratic political culture; and tragedy nests within this political culture. Or does it? Euripides’ Hecuba conflates the political and the democratic, defining ethics as the antithesis and finally the subversion of the political. The army unleashes unholy violence on the world—decreeing the sacrifice of Polyxena, annihilating Troy in an act of brutality that resembles nothing so much as a home invasion (E. Hek. 905-52), and preventing the punishment of Polymestor (854-63), the most egregious villain in extant tragedy—a man who kills his guest-friend and ward for his gold, strips and mutilates his body, and tosses it into the sea (25-30, 679-863). The Hecuba stresses the democratic organization of the panhellenic army: 6 anachronistic designations for the decree to sacrifice Polyxena abound in the play. 5 E. Hek. 131-40; 251-57; Su. 409-25; Or. 904-13; Ar. Eq. 43-54; V. 45, 418-19, 590-93, 1028-38; Pax 751-61; Phryn. fr. 21; Th. 2.65.8, 11; cf. 3.38.7, 40.3; Pl. Grg. 464e2-65a2; 465b1-2; 501c1-5; 513d7-8; cf. [Pl.] Def. 415e9-10: “Flattery (κολακεία): association for pleasure in the absence of what is best; a social disposition towards pleasure that exceeds the right measure.” Isok. 8.9-10; 15.133; D. 4.38; 8.34; 9.4; cf. 18.4, 138; Aisch. 3.127; Arist. Pol. 1274a5-11, 1292a4-38, 1304b19-1305a7, 1313b32-14a5, 1320a4-6; [Arist.] Ath.Pol. 28.3; [And.] 4.12. 6 γύναι, δοκῶ μέν σ᾿ εἰδέναι γνώμην στρατοῦ/ ψῆφόν τε τὴν κρανθεῖσαν· ἀλλ᾿ ὅμως φράσω./ ἔδοξ᾿ Ἀχαιοῖς παῖδα σὴν Πολυξένην /σφάξαι πρὸς ὀρθὸν χῶμ᾿ Ἀχιλλείου τάφου. “I think you know, lady, the army’s resolution and enacted decree: the *4* The decree’s veneer of unanimity masks the polarization of army. Two factions formed, one around Agamemnon and another around the Theseidai who argued “to crown the Achilleion tomb with fresh blood, and they did not think they would ever prefer the bed of Kassandra to the Achilleian spear” (123-29). The sons of Theseus express an uncontroversial ranking—Achilles’ spear is more valuable to the army than Agamemnon’s concubine. Yet they lack an argument that justifies the sacrifice of Polyxena as an appropriate expression of Achilles’ value to the army. Hence the assembly remains deadlocked. Odysseus enters the debate to offer this justification. Naming him in a series of compound adjectives, the chorus deprives him of moral authority before he utters a word: “the wily-minded, hair-splitting, speaking-to-please, demos-gratifying son of Laertes persuaded the army” (ὁ ποικιλόφρων/κόπις ἡδυλόγος δημοχαριστὴς /Λαερτιάδης πείθει στρατιάν, 131-33). Hecuba augments the stereotype of Odysseus as a democratic orator, branding him and his entire class ἀχάριστον to their friends 7 provided that they say “something πρὸς χάριν to the many.” This accusation is difficult to reconcile with Odysseus’ argument: “Do not to thrust away the best of all Danaoi because of slave sacrifices and do not let anyone of the dead standing beside Phersephone say that the Danaoi left the plain of Troy lacking gratitude to Danaoi 8 who died on behalf of Hellenes.” But it is true that his proposal to reward Achilles violates his debt of χάρις to Hecuba—Odysseus successfully supplicated her to spare his life, when he, she claims, was her slave (239-50). Odysseus protests that he did not violate his obligation to Hecuba, since “I am ready to save your life, by which I was fortunate, and I don’t say otherwise” (301-02). Relations of reciprocity are transitive; by proposing to sacrifice Polyxena, Odysseus harms Hecuba and violates their relationship. By contrast, Agamemnon’s ties to Kassandra prompt him to speak Achaians have resolved to sacrifice your daughter Polyxena at the raised mound of the Achillean tomb (218-21; cf. 107-09, 188-90, 195-96). 7 ἀχάριστον ὑμῶν σπέρμ᾿ , ὅσοι δημηγόρους/ ζηλοῦτε τιμάς· μηδὲ γιγνώσκοισθέ μοι, /οἳ τοὺς φίλους βλάπτοντες οὐ φροντίζετε, /ἢν τοῖσι πολλοῖς πρὸς χάριν λέγητέ τι. (254-57). “The whole breed of you is without gratitude, all who covet the honors of public speaking, you who don’t care if you harm your friends, if you say something that gratifies the many.” 8 μὴ τὸν ἄριστον ∆αναῶν πάντων/ δούλων σφαγίων οὕνεκ᾿ ἀπωθεῖν,/ μηδέ τιν᾿ εἰπεῖν παρὰ Φερσεφόνῃ /στάντα φθιμένων ὡς ἀχάριστοι /∆αναοὶ ∆αναοῖς τοῖς οἰχομένοις/ ὑπὲρ Ἑλλήνων Τροίας πεδίων ἀπέβησαν (134-40) “Do not to thrust away the best of all Danaoi because of slave sacrifices and do not let anyone of the dead standing beside Phersephone say that the Danaoi left the plain of Troy lacking gratitude to Danaoi who died on behalf of Hellenes. *5* against Polyxena’s sacrifice and to aid her mother Hecuba and brother Polydoros (824-35). Odysseus’ conduct exemplifies claims such as Aischines’ that “the man who is vile in private could not be noble in public” (οὐδέ γε ὁ ἰδίᾳ πονηρὸς οὐκ ἂν γένοιτο δημοσίᾳ χρηστός, 3.78). It depicts politics and the achievement of collective interest as built upon the transgression of fundamental ethical virtues. Odysseus predicates the moral order of the polis upon the sacrifice of Polyxena (15) defining it as a function of a distribution of rewards in which the good receive a greater share than the bad, much as Achilles does in the Iliad: ἐν τῷδε γὰρ κάμνουσιν αἱ πολλαὶ πόλεις, ὅταν τις ἐσθλὸς καὶ πρόθυμος ὢν ἀνὴρ μηδὲν φέρηται τῶν κακιόνων πλέον. ἡμῖν δ᾿ Ἀχιλλεὺς ἄξιος τιμῆς, γύναι, θανὼν ὑπὲρ γῆς Ἑλλάδος κάλλιστ᾿ ἀνήρ. οὔκουν τόδ᾿ αἰσχρόν, εἰ βλέποντι μὲν φίλῳ χρώμεσθ᾿ , ἐπεὶ δ᾿ ὄλωλε μὴ χρώμεσθ᾿ ἔτι; εἶἑν· τί δῆτ᾿ ἐρεῖ τις, ἤν τις αὖ φανῇ στρατοῦ τ᾿ ἄθροισις πολεμίων τ᾿ ἀγωνία; πότερα μαχούμεθ᾿ ἢ φιλοψυχήσομεν, τὸν κατθανόνθ᾿ ὁρῶντες οὐ τιμώμενον; καὶ μὴν ἔμοιγε ζῶντι μὲν καθ᾿ ἡμέραν κεἰ σμίκρ᾿ ἔχοιμι πάντ᾿ ἂν ἀρκούντως ἔχοι· τύμβον δὲ βουλοίμην ἂν ἀξιούμενον τὸν ἐμὸν ὁρᾶσθαι· διὰ μακροῦ γὰρ ἡ χάρις. (306-320) In this regard many poleis are sick—whenever a good keen man wins nothing more than worse men. For us, Achilles was worthy of honor, lady, dying most beautifully on behalf of Hellas land. Is this not shameful, if we treated him as a friend while he lived but once he died we no longer treated him so? So far, so good. What will someone say, if in the future some collection of an army and struggle with enemies appears? Will we fight or will we save or lives, seeing the dead not honored? What’s more, even if I have little, it would all be enough for me living day-by-day. But I would want my tomb to be seen as worthy of me. For the gratitude is long-term. In the Iliad, Achilles alleges that there is no charis for those who always fight the enemy but “both the bad and the good are in a single honor” (ἐν δὲ ἰῇ τιμῇ ἠμὲν κακὸς ἠδὲ καὶ ἐσθλός, Il. 9.316-19 16). In the Hecuba, Odysseus contends that if the Hellenes need to assemble an army in the future warriors will not fight, “seeing the dead not honored” (τὸν κατθανόνθ᾿ ὁρῶντες οὐ τιμώμενον; 313-16). Does this justify human sacrifice? Odysseus’ argument creates the same contradiction as Kleon’s in the *6* debate on Mytilene: if the Athenians annihilated all rebellious poleis to achieve justice, they would destroy their empire and harm their collective self-interest. If the war-dead merited compensation such as Achilles’, chaos would ensue. Odysseus fails to address contradictions between the honorific decree and general principles of justice, holiness, and legality that Hecuba stressed in her counter-arguments (258-70). These features of the determination and enactment of democratic self-interest reach a critical point after the murder of Polydoros. According to Hecuba, to allow this violation to go unavenged threatens the foundation of all moral order: ἡμεῖς μὲν οὖν δοῦλοί τε κἀσθενεῖς ἴσως· ἀλλ᾿ οἱ θεοὶ σθένουσι χὠ κείνων κρατῶν νόμος· νόμῳ γὰρ τοὺς θεοὺς ἡγούμεθα καὶ ζῶμεν ἄδικα καὶ δίκαι᾿ ὡρισμένοι· ὃς ἐς σ᾿ ἀνελθὼν εἰ διαφθαρήσεται καὶ μὴ δίκην δώσουσιν οἵτινες ξένους κτείνουσιν ἢ θεῶν ἱερὰ τολμῶσιν φέρειν, οὐκ ἔστιν οὐδὲν τῶν ἐν ἀνθρώποις ἴσον (798-805). We then are slaves and perhaps weak. But the gods are strong and the conventions of civilized life that rules them. For we believe in gods by convention and we live defining what is unjust and just by convention. If coming before you it is destroyed and those who kill strangers and or dare to pillage the temples of the gods do not pay the penalty, there is nothing in human affairs that is fair and right. Hecuba’s plea trumps Odysseus’ claim that the system of distributive justice required for the health of the polis hinges upon the sacrifice of Polyxena by invoking the very conventions by which humans believe in gods and define what is just and unjust. This requires punishment of certain crimes. If unavenged—τὸ ἴσον—equality, fairness, justice—ceases to exist in human affairs. The examples she uses, pillaging temples and killing xenoi underscore the culpability of the Hellenic army, which pillaged Trojan temples, killed Trojan men in their beds, and provides immunity to Polymestor. Odysseus and the army are untouchable—Hecuba cannot avenge their atrocities. The tragedy displaces vengeance for the sack and annihilation of Troy and sacrifice of Polyxena onto the murder of Polymestor’s sons and blinding of Polymestor (cf. 74950). The second half of the Hecuba redefines moral order as the good’s punishment of the bad. Hecuba appeals to Agamemnon as an ἐσθλός to come to her aid and to harm a κακός: (18) “It is a mark of a good man,” she argues, “to serve *7* justice and everywhere and always to harm bad men” (ἐσθλοῦ γὰρ ἀνδρὸς τῇ δίκῃ θ᾿ ὑπηρετεῖν/καὶ τοὺς κακοὺς δρᾶν πανταχοῦ κακῶς ἀεί, 844-45). The plot of Agamemnon and Hecuba to avenge the murders of Polyxena and Polydoros takes the form of a conspiracy of χρηστοί to punish πονηροί. Agamemnon participates on this basis: “This is common to all, the private individual and the polis, for the κακός to suffer something κακόν and the good man to experience good fortune” (πᾶσι γὰρ κοινὸν τόδε,/ ἰδίᾳ θ᾿ ἑκάστῳ καὶ πόλει, τὸν μὲν κακὸν/ κακόν τι πάσχειν, τὸν δὲ χρηστὸν εὐτυχεῖν (902-04). The interests of the collective prevent Agamemnon from acting in accordance with his emotions and principles—his actions must conform to the army’s 9 determination of who is φίλος and ἐχθρός. He cannot appear to plot Polymestor’s murder “for the sake of Kassandra” (855) and fears the army and its leaders—the thought of being detected acting against the interests of the group induces ταραγμός (857). Hecuba claims that this fear suppresses the ethical judgment of individuals, who must act according to the will of the πλῆθος: φεῦ. οὐκ ἔστι θνητῶν ὅστις ἔστ᾿ ἐλεύθερος· ἢ χρημάτων γὰρ δοῦλός ἐστιν ἢ τύχης ἢ πλῆθος αὐτὸν πόλεος ἢ νόμων γραφαὶ εἴργουσι χρῆσθαι μὴ κατὰ γνώμην τρόποις. ἐπεὶ δὲ ταρβεῖς τῷ τ᾿ ὄχλῳ πλέον νέμεις, ἐγώ σε θήσω τοῦδ᾿ ἐλεύθερον φόβου (864-69). Alas. There is no mortal who is free. He is either a slave of money or of fortune and the majority of the polis or written laws keep him from employing his character according to his judgment. Since you are afraid and you defer to the mob, I shall make you free of this fear. Unable to employ their “character” (τρόποις)—upbringing, education, and judgment—they must conform to the interests of the majority. These interests, rigorously represented and enforced by demagogues, override ethical virtue. The overriding importance of the demos’ self-interest is a pretext for the expression of private profit motives unchecked by custom, tradition, or moral principle. As Demosthenes asserts in the Knights (24) “Leadership of the demos is no longer the 9 τὸν ἄνδρα τοῦτον φίλιον ἡγεῖται στρατός,/τὸν κατθανόντα δ᾿ ἐχθρόν· εἰ δὲ σοὶ φίλος/ὅδ᾿ ἐστί, χωρὶς τοῦτο κοὐ κοινὸν στρατῷ (858-60). “The army considers this man friendly and the dead man an enemy. If he is your loved one, this is separate and not shared with the army.” *8* province of a cultured man or a man of good character but for the ignorant and disgusting” (ἡ δημαγωγία γὰρ οὐ πρὸς μουσικοῦ/ ἔτ᾿ ἐστὶν ἀνδρὸς οὐδὲ χρηστοῦ τοὺς τρόπους/ ἀλλ᾿ εἰς ἀμαθῆ καὶ βδελυρόν, Ar. Eq. 191-93). In the Hecuba, Odysseus and Polymestor violate personal moral obligations in the alleged service of the army’s interests; Agamemnon, by contrast, subverts the interests of the demos, valuing personal obligations and the achievement of justice in the punishment of a πονηρός. He and Hecuba inflict vengeance on Polymestor and on the system of collective selfinterest that enables and sanctions his crime. The mutual exclusion of democracy and moral order was a contemporary topos alongside the identity of the two (e.g. E. Su.). Pseudo-Xenophon refuses to praise democracy because “the bad (τοὺς πονηρούς) fare better than the good” (τοὺς χρηστούς, 1.1; cf. 1.6-9, 1.19, 3.1). Comedy parodies democracy as the rule of πονηροί to the exclusion of χρηστοί (e.g. Ar. Eq. 178-94; R. 718-33; cf. Pl. Com. fr. 202). Aristotle associates the pleasure of seeing the good fare well and the bad suffer with comedy, but claims that audiences of tragedy preferred this sort of ending and that poets gratified them (Poet. 1453a30-36). To conclude by returning to the triad of pity, fear, and pleasure: the Hecuba induces pity for victims of democratically determined self-interest, suspends fear of the demos, and concocts pleasure from a subversion of the democratic army that vindicates the very moral order the rule of the demos displaces. Severing the connection between ethics and politics, it both prefigures the rhetoric of oligarchic subversion as the χρηστοί’s punishment of the πονηροί, and 10 constructs theater as an autonomous institution. And in this regard, it has everything to do with democracy. 10 See esp. [X.] 1.9: εἰ δ᾿ εὐνομίαν ζητεῖς, πρῶτα μὲν ὄψει τοὺς δεξιωτάτους αὐτοῖς τοὺς νόμους τιθέντας· ἔπειτα κολάσουσιν οἱ χρηστοὶ τοὺς πονηροὺς καὶ βουλεύσουσιν οἱ χρηστοὶ περὶ τῆς πόλεως καὶ οὐκ ἐάσουσι μαινομένους ἀνθρώπους βουλεύειν οὐδὲ λέγειν οὐδὲ ἐκκλησιάζειν. “If you are looking for eunomia, first, you will see the most intelligent men making laws for them. Then the chrēstoi will punish the ponēroi and the chrēstoi will give counsel about the polis and not allow crazy people to deliberate, to speak, or to attend the assembly. See further: X. HG 2.3.12–14, 19, 27, 28, 38, cf. 51; [Arist.] Ath.Pol. 35.3; D.S. 14.4.2; cf. Lys. 18.11; 25.19. *9* Select Bibliography Baker, K. (1990). Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carter, D. (2004). “Was Attic Tragedy Democratic?” Polis 21: 1-25. Carter, D. ed. (2010). Why Athens? A Reappraisal of Tragic Politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 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