Authority comes in many forms, and goes by many names. Every human society contains several overlapping structures of political, religious, familial, and moral authority, which may or may not appear to its members (or to outside observers) to comprise a coherent system. Many of the key scenes of dilemma and confrontation in Greek tragedy arise from conflicts between different kinds of authority, whether or not the individual characters explicitly frame their concerns in such terms. Indeed, the Theater of Dionysus may be regarded as a site specifically licensed (by the terms of the festival) to confront and explore imaginary breakdowns, resistances, and abuses of authority of all kinds, and to present them in the most verbally and visually compelling manner possible. It may be helpful to begin our discussion with two well-known scenes of confrontation, which will serve both to exemplify the general point and to establish some of the most important terms and issues for the rest of our analysis.
The first scene is the encounter between Antigone and Creon in Sophocles’ Antigone (441-525). Creon has earlier given his reasons for banning burial to the traitorous Polynices. Now, confronted by the one who has been caught defying his ban, he demands:
Creon: do this? Antigone: Creon: Antigone:
Tell me briefly, did you know that it had been decreed [keruchthenta] not to
I knew; how could I not? It was clear.
And yet you dared to overstep these laws [nomous]?
Yes; for it wasn’t Zeus who decreed [keruxas] these things, nor did Justice [Dike], co-resident of the gods below, define such laws [nomous] among human beings;
And I didn’t suppose your decrees [kerugmata] to have so much strength [sthenein] that they could overrun - you a mortal - the unwritten and infallible laws [nomima] of the gods... (446-55)
A little later, we find Creon commenting to the chorus:
She knew then that she was committing outrage [hubrizein], when she overstepped the established laws [nomous];
And now that she has done the deed, this is a second outrage [hubris], to exult over it and laugh about what she has done.
Truly, I am not [a] man [aner], but she is [the] man [aner],
If, with impunity, victory and control [krate] in these things are going to be hers. (480-85)
During this brief exchange, both Antigone and Creon employ terms that explicitly or implicitly base their respective claims on higher or more generally recognized sources of authority. For Creon, the status of his public decree is equivalent to law, and in the present confrontation he claims also the traditional and natural authority of a man over a woman: his young niece’s resistance to such authority amounts therefore to transgression (449, 481) and an indefensible hubris (outrage). But for Antigone, the gods’ eternal laws (such as those requiring burial of her brother) are equivalent to ‘‘justice’’ itself, outweighing any human decrees and therefore authorizing her resistance to a ‘‘foolish’’ (moroi, 470) ruler. Thus the scene is presented as a collision between divine and human (and, as Antigone phrases it, natural and eternal against arbitrary and temporal), as well as between male and female, claims to authority.
In our second exemplary scene (in the first choral ode of Aeschylus’ Oresteia), the Argive Elders sing of the fatal events at Aulis:
I have the authority [kurios eimi] to sing of the fateful power [kratos] of completely-empowered men [andron ekteleon] on the road...
... how the headlong bird-omen, king of birds to the kings of ships, sent the double-throned command [kratos] of the Achaeans, the like-minded lords [tagan] of Greece, against Troy...
.. .And the reliable army-prophet [kednos stratomantis]... spoke thus to interpret the portent:
‘‘In time this road captures the city of Priam...
Only may no curse from god [theothen] darken the great bit fashioned into an army to muzzle Troy.
For in pity holy Artemis resents the winged dogs of her father... ’’
(Agamemnon 104-35)
Here too we find multiple kinds of authority, some in direct collision with one another, others running on separate and apparently unconnected tracks. The human participants (the sons of Atreus) are subject to the directive of divine signs (as interpreted by the prophet Calchas); but the signs are themselves conflicting, as two rival forces can be discerned at work among the gods - Zeus against Artemis, each representing a distinct set of cosmic and familial claims. Likewise among the humans, the political-military power ( kratos) of the Atreidae, and also that of Priam, derives from a quite different source from the peculiar expertise and insight possessed by Calchas, and by the chorus themselves: ‘‘I am authorized to speak... from God’’ (kurios eimi throein... theothen, 104-5).
Within these two passages, we have already encountered a good number of the Greek terms that are used most frequently to convey the notions of ‘‘authority, author, authorize,’’ including: kurios (lord, master); forms of telos (end, perfection, completion, office, with such derivatives as telee, en telei, ekteles, teleios); themis (what is established, right) and nomoi (law, custom, norm); prepon, prepei (what is fitting, proper, admissible) - together with several of the most common words for ‘‘rule, power, control, mastery’’ (kratos/krateO, sthenos/sthenO, despotes/despozO, arche/archO, anax/anassO, basileus/basileuo, and so forth). Each of these terms can carry - in the right circumstances and when properly invoked - the weight of legitimate authority, commanding, justifying, or forbidding certain actions, words, and behaviors. When used in combination, such terms often present conflicting demands, as different individuals make competing claims against one another, or recognize competing demands upon themselves.
Given that the sources and bases of authority can be so varied and contradictory, the theater audience may often have no reliable guarantee as to which of them should (or will) prevail in any particular case. Sometimes, to be sure, we might be aware that the authority invoked by one character may be spurious, or may not apply fully to this particular context; but we also encounter other situations in which obeying one legitimate authority seems ipso facto to involve opposing or violating another. That is the essence of a tragic agoOn; and in such cases the very openness to dispute of the multiple claims to authority, and the strong sympathy aroused for a character’s resistance to an apparently incontrovertible external force, contributes powerfully to the audience’s sense of imminent and inescapable disaster.
Indeed, ever since Hegel, at least, it has been generally recognized by critics that tragedy (in the modern, narrow sense of a play with a catastrophic ending) is characteristically built around conflict, and Athenian theater audiences seem to have relished the representation of radical challenges to conventional morality and attitudes, including striking instances of resistance to authority in all its forms. This chapter focuses on the ways in which tragedy represents the various structures of human, divine, and cosmic authority operating within Athenian society and within the imaginations of its members, and considers too the ways in which the theatrical occasion itself created and imposed its own particular form of cultural ‘‘authority’’ for, and upon, the Athenian audience and its modern counterparts.
World History
