Theatre, Theatrocracy, and the Politics of Pathos in the Athenian Lawcourt

This chapter explores ancient Greek debates about the value and meaning of performance in the Athenian lawcourt. It looks at the ancient trope of the lawcourt as theatre, the poetics of lawcourt performance, and a set of conflicting views on the use and abuse of theatre, hypokrisis, opsis , and pathos for law. It then turns to a close examination of key passages in Plato, Aristotle, and “Pseudo-Andocides.” These texts offer an alternative to standard accounts of what ancient performance theory teaches: about the function of representing tragedy in the theatre and the courtroom, the ethics and politics of exploiting emotion, the nature of catharsis, and more. On the one hand, legal theatricality appears as potentially toxic: exciting evil passions, encouraging mob rule, riding roughshod on reason. On the other, it appears as a powerful instrument that, rightly used, may rouse virtuous anger, pity, and fear, channeling these not toward catharsis but toward righteous judgment.

Aesthetics · Art · Catharsis · Epistemology · Greatness · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Passions · Pathos · Pity · Poetics · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Tragedy (event) · Trope (literature) · Value (mathematics) · Classical Antiquity Studies · Law · Philosophy