City of Suppliants
Tragedy and the Athenian Empire
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19922348 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Angeliki Tzanetou (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2012 |
| Pages | 206 |
| Publication date | 2012-12-31 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | BOOK |
| Venue | City of suppliants (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | University of Texas Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.7560/737167 |
| OpenAlex | W2265188848 |
| Open Library | OL25238492M |
| ISBN | 9780292737174 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 18 |
After fending off Persia in the fifth century BCE, Athens assumed a leadership position in the Aegean world. Initially it led the Delian League, a military alliance against the Persians, but eventually the league evolved into an empire with Athens in control and exacting tribute from its former allies. Athenians justified this subjection of their allies by emphasizing their fairness and benevolence towards them, which gave Athens the moral right to lead. But Athenians also believed that the strong rule over the weak and that dominating others allowed them to maintain their own freedom. These conflicting views about Athens’ imperial rule found expression in the theater, and this book probes how the three major playwrights dramatized Athenian imperial ideology. Through close readings of Aeschylus’ Eumenides, Euripides’ Children of Heracles, and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, as well as other suppliant dramas, Angeliki Tzanetou argues that Athenian tragedy performed an important ideological function by representing Athens as a benevolent and moral ruler that treated foreign suppliants compassionately. She shows how memorable and disenfranchised figures of tragedy, such as Orestes and Oedipus, or the homeless and tyrant-pursued children of Heracles were generously incorporated into the public body of Athens, thus reinforcing Athenians’ sense of their civic magnanimity. This fresh reading of the Athenian suppliant plays deepens our understanding of how Athenians understood their political hegemony and reveals how core Athenian values such as justice, freedom, piety, and respect for the laws intersected with imperial ideology
Geography · Historical and Environmental Studies · Aeschylus · Euripides · Greek drama · Greek drama (Tragedy) · Greek drama, history and criticism · History and criticism · Sophocles
Music and Dance in Tragedy After the Fifth Century
Hellenistic Tragedy and Satyr-Drama; Lycophron’s Alexandra
Beyond Athens
The Exagōgē of Ezekiel the Tragedian
Theatre Performance After the Fifth Century
The Rhesus
Greek Tragedy After the Fifth Century
The Fifth Century and After
Scholars and Scholarship on Tragedy
Society and Politics in Post-Fifth-Century Tragedy
Attitudes Towards Tragedy from the Second Sophistic to Late Antiquity
Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Century
Orestes and Nothingness
Theban Autochthony and Athenian Ideology in the Phoenissae of Euripides
Representation of Whom? Ancient Moments of Seeking Refuge and Protection
Medea the Refugee
Ἕως ἂν κατέλθωσιν εἰς τὴν αὐτῶν
The Hearth as a Place of Refuge in Ancient Greece
| Unique citing works | 18 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,5 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2023 (10) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 18 |