As we noted above, every society operates with a number of separate but overlapping structures, or fields, of authority, each with its own dynamics and terminologies, and its own representatives and hierarchy of values. In investigating the imaginary world of Greek tragedy, we may distinguish four broad fields and structures of authority: (1) the public, sociopolitical field, including various forms of legal and military authority exercised by and in the city (polis) or army (laos, stratos); (2) the domestic field, including relations between master and slave, and within the nuclear family, as well as most kinds of erotic and sexual interaction; (3) the religious field, including all dealings between humans and divinities, and operations and imaginings of the supernatural in general; and (4) the epistemological and literary/cultural field, including the variously authorized forms of knowledge and truth, proverb and myth, Homeric epic, and other elements of traditional wisdom.
Obviously these four fields do not in fact exist or operate separately: not only do they overlap and interpenetrate one another, but also the structures (especially) of class and gender function somewhat differently within the oikos and in the larger sociopolitical arena outside (as we shall see), and thus have some claim to being treated as separate fields of their own. Nor were these interlocking and competing systems of authority themselves entirely static or stable. Fifth-century Athens was a society experiencing particularly acute - and exciting - growth pains, and along with the relatively new (or newly dominant) structure of democratic and egalitarian values and political principles, we can see an older and deeply entrenched aristocratic and elitist ideology still more or less openly asserting itself. And in addition to these competing democratic and aristocratic/oligarchic ideologies, we may detect also a third: the cluster of ideas and behaviors advanced by such innovative thinkers and social-religious experimenters as the Pythagoreans and Orphics, or a little later, Socrates, Democritus, and others. In the midst of all these social, intellectual, and moral currents, the Theater of Dionysus provided a uniquely attractive and appropriate venue, a ‘‘safe place,’’ in which Athenians could dress themselves up in extravagant clothes and disguise themselves behind masks, in order to teach a chorus (didasko), make up fictions (poiesis, from poieo), and act out stories (hupokrinomai, pratto, drama, from drao) involving the most extreme conflict imaginable, all free from serious real-life consequences or repercussions - an imitation ( mimesis) of life that was both highly serious and consequential (in its struggle for prizes and prestige, as well as its emotional effect), and at the same time almost completely harmless and free from danger.
Such play was both wildly fantastic and disturbingly real, for the tragedies performed in the Theater of Dionysus constructed a world that was an engaging, but inconsistent, blend of‘‘then and there’’ (or ‘‘way back then’’) and ‘‘here and now.’’ The Athenians themselves were conscious that in their own city constitutional power lay with the people (plethos, demos), no monarch had ruled them since the expulsion of the sons of Pisistratus in 510 bce. Thus the Argive, Theban, and Athenian (as well as Egyptian, Thracian, Persian, and so forth) kings, queens, and aristocratic leaders who strut through the theater are figures from a bygone era (or, in the case of Aeschylus’ Xerxes, a remote location), figures whose sociopolitical roles, responsibilities, and capabilities are clearly felt to be distanced from those of the Athenian audience. Yet at the same time the personal and political dilemmas and crises faced by these heroic figures are presented in terms that often appear sharply familiar and similar to those of contemporary Athenian life, in which political and military offices continued even under the democracy to be dominated by the wealthy, especially the old aristocratic families, and brilliant dynastic display and achievement were still highly valued and contested. The result is a persistent uncertainty principle, by which the audience has to interpret and assess the status, legitimacy, and conduct of a tragic monarch or member of the nobility in the light (on the one hand) of the old traditions of Homeric epic and mythology, and (on the other hand) of the Athenian democracy itself, with its insistent suspicions of all traces of ‘‘tyrannical’’ aspiration and its restrictive legislation against elite privilege. Further complicating matters is the continuing phenomenon of monarchy - Spartan, Thessalian, Sicilian, and of course Persian.
With all these provisos in mind, let us now turn to investigate the four categories, which will at least provide us with a workable framework for our analysis of the multiple forms of authority - and resistance to authority - to be found in Athenian tragedy.
World History
