Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy

The specially-commissioned essays in this 1999 book discuss the ways in which performance is central to the practice and ideology of democracy in classical Athens. From theatre to law-court to gymnasium to symposium, performance is a basic part of Athenian society; how do these different areas interrelate and inform the politics and culture of the democratic city? Drama, rhetoric, philosophy, literature and art are all discussed by leading scholars in this interdisciplinary volume.

1. Programme notes Simon Goldhill; Part I. The Performance of Drama: 2. Spreading the word through performance Oliver Taplin; 3. The aulos in Athens Peter Wilson; 4. Actor's song in tragedy Edith Hall; Part II. The Drama of Performance: 5. Performative aspects of the choral voice in Greek tragedy: civic identity in performance Claude Calame; 6. Actors and voices: reading between the lines in Aeschines and Demosthenes Pat Easterling; 7. Aristophanes: the performance of Utopia in the Ecclesiazusae Froma Zeitlin; Part III. Rhetoric and Performance: 8. The rhetoric of anti-rhetoric in Athenian oratory Jon Hesk; 9. Reading Homer from the rostrum: poems and laws in Aeschines' In Timarchum Andrew Ford; 10. Plato and the performance of dialogue Simon Goldhill and Sitta von Reden; Part IV. Ritual and State: Visuality and the Performance of Citizenship: 11. Processional performance and the democratic polis Athena Kavoulaki; 12. The spectacular and the obscure in Athenian religion Michael H. Jameson; 13. Inscribing performance Robin Osborne; 14. Publicity and performance: kalos inscriptions in Attic vase-painting François Lissarrague.

The specially-commissioned essays from leading scholars in this 1999 book discuss the ways in which performance is central to the practice and ideology of democracy in classical Athens. Drama, rhetoric, philosophy, literature and art are all discussed in an interdisciplinary frame to explore how the culture of democracy depends on performance.