Before dawn on the fourteenth day of Elaphebolion during the final months of the archonship of Pythodorus, residents of Athens and visitors alike made their way to the theater. The usual buzz and stir surrounded the celebration of the City Dionysia. Before the official opening of the festival, the tragic poet Euphorion had previewed his plays about the Titan Prometheus. Euripides, long overdue for a victory, would offer Medea, Philoctetes, and Dictys, followed by the satyr-play Reapers.
Not all of the excitement had to do with the festival. Two years earlier (433 bce) the Athenians had accepted the Corcyraeans into alliance, and in so doing had embroiled themselves in a quarrel with Corinth, Corcyra’s mother-city and a powerful member of Sparta’s alliance, the Peloponnesian League. The Athenians had hoped that by limiting themselves to a defensive agreement they could avoid direct contact with Corinthian forces, but their plan had misfired. In retaliation the Corinthians sent forces the following year to help the Potidaeans (colonists of theirs but members of Athens’ alliance) secede. Then, with Potidaea besieged and their own forces trapped in the city, they had lobbied the Spartans to invade Attica. Early in the fall, a full synod of the Peloponnesian League had voted that the Thirty Years’ Peace had been broken and that the league should go to war.
Despite the vote, war with Sparta and her allies was not yet certain. Members of both alliances continued to exchange heralds, and as the Greek world knew, despite their reputation as the world’s finest hoplite force - or perhaps because of it - the Spartans were slow to go to war. If Potidaea were to fall soon, war might be avoided; at least the Corinthians could not argue that an invasion of Attica would help their colonists. The Dionysia brought a welcome break from rumors of war.
Euripides won only third prize at the Dionysia of 431; nevertheless, it is tempting to imagine that the crowd leaving the theater that evening spoke mostly of his Medea. The audience would have known the story, but most likely did not suspect the magnitude of the crime Medea would commit in Euripides’ play. Even so, the poet
Had persuaded them to feel sympathy for his protagonist, much as Medea had persuaded the chorus of Corinthian women to keep secret her plan to protect her honor and avenge herself on Jason by murdering her own children. King Aegeus, Medea’s friend and ally (philos), also succumbed to her persuasion and promised her refuge in Athens, provided she could get to the city on her own (723-24). The king’s offer of sanctuary occasions a choral ode in praise of Athens that sits rather oddly in the mouths of the Corinthian women who comprise the chorus. Still, it must have pleased the Athenian spectators to hear their city praised as the birthplace of Harmony (830-34), where ‘‘sweet gentle winds breathe upon the land’’ (838-40).
Within two weeks of the festival, a small band of Thebans invaded Plataea, a Boeotian city allied with Athens. For Thucydides, the invasion marked the beginning of the Peloponnesian War. The historian, however, did not begin his account of the conflict with the attack on Plataea, but with the quarrel between Corinth and her colony Corcyra. This quarrel between philoi, cities related by blood, had escalated into a larger conflict between more powerful philoi, Athens and Sparta, cities tied by the customary obligations of a treaty of peace. Despite limiting themselves to a defensive alliance with the Corcyraeans, the Athenians had invited the quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra into their own city. As in Euripides’ play, honor, revenge, and conflicting obligations - to friendship based on blood ties and friendship based on custom - would all figure prominently in Thucydides’ account.
World History
