The political function of Greek tragedy is of ever increasing interest to scholarship, but there is widespread disagreement over what this function was. Particularly contentious is the relationship between tragedy and Athenian democracy. For some, the very genre is democratic and the politics of the plays speak principally to citizens of a democracy. Others (including the editor of this book) have pointed out that the default political context of tragic drama is heroic monarchy; some plays have a democratic context but these emerge as striking exceptions to the rule; Greek tragedy is political ... More

The political function of Greek tragedy is of ever increasing interest to scholarship, but there is widespread disagreement over what this function was. Particularly contentious is the relationship between tragedy and Athenian democracy. For some, the very genre is democratic and the politics of the plays speak principally to citizens of a democracy. Others (including the editor of this book) have pointed out that the default political context of tragic drama is heroic monarchy; some plays have a democratic context but these emerge as striking exceptions to the rule; Greek tragedy is politically relevant to the Greek polis, democratic or not. But even if this latter view is right, we still need to explain the Athenianness of Greek tragedy, a genre that flourished under the Athenian democracy. It became a distinctively Athenian cultural product and its shop window, the City Dionysia, was the major annual festival in the Athenian calendar. If a conversation about democracy is not to be found in play after play, we need to find other ways to think about tragedy's relationship with the city that nurtured and hosted it. If tragedy was to be the product of one Greek city and none of the others, why Athens? The fourteen chapters and six responses in this volume attempt in different ways to answer this question.