Democracy as a tragic regime

Ancient Greece: The Greatest Show on Earth is a documentary from the BBC and the Open University on Greek drama, presented by Michael Scott, whose two-part series Who were the Greeks? I posted on here and here. In this programme – the first of three in the series – Scott looks at tragedy and democracy, arguing that the two are intimately connected and it is no coincidence that tragic theatre emerged at the same time as democracy in Athens. It’s not a bad programme, despite the appearance of a number of leading British classicists, who are a bland lot with nothing particularly exciting to say.

The Greek philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis is also concerned about the connections between tragedy and democracy, asserting that democracy is a ‘tragic regime’ and that tragedy is so connected to the rise of democracy in Athens that it makes more sense to refer to Athenian rather than Greek tragedy. Castoriadis arguments on tragedy and democracy are contained in two of his essays. One is The Greek Polis and the Creation of Democracy, contained in Politics, Philosophy and Autonomy; and the other is Aeschylean Anthropogony and Sophoclean Self-Creation of Man, which is from the collection of essays Figures of the Unthinkable, which is available to download here.

There’s also an essay critical of Castoriadis’ work on tragedy and democracy by Nana Biluš Abaffy, which can be read here.

* See part two of the series here and part three here.

Classics in Britain succumbs to cultural relativism

The obverse of Brexit Britain is cultural relativist Britain and the above lecture by Prof. Michael Scott is a horrible example of the latter. What's interesting and important about the ancient Greeks – and to a lesser extent the Romans – isn't their interconnectivity with Persia, China, Egypt, etc, but what was unique about their civilisation, what made them different to neighbouring civilisations, what drove them independently of others to develop the ideas and forms that shape to a significant degree our own way of looking at the world. 

I knew Scott was on the wrong path as soon as he brought up that old canard of Athenian democracy being fatally flawed by slavery and for excluding women. Of course, we – moderns – don't accept traditional Athenian attitudes in these areas; but that in no way should distract us from the complex and radical nature of Athenian democracy – which questioned itself, in various ways, regarding slavery and women's oppression – and is still worth scrutinising and extolling today if only to appreciate why the Athenians would not recognise our societies – our Greco-Western societies – as democracies at all. 

Finally, for Scott to understand what it was like to experience the Eleusian Mysteries, he doesn't need to go to the British Library to read up on cognitive psychology. Rather, he could go to a Greek Orthodox midnight mass on Easter Friday when the resurrection of Jesus Christ is celebrated, i.e. the triumph of life over death, of light over darkness, which is, of course, what the Eleusian Mysteries were supposed to affirm. If only Scott had more interest in the links between Hellenism and Christianity – rather than Hellenism and Buddhism – he might realise this, even if it meant him having to prioritise and assert Greco-Western civilisation over other civilisations.

Greeks under the rule of barbarian Rome

Above is the final episode in Michael Scott’s BBC series Ancient Greece: the Greatest Show on Earth. (Watch part one here and part two here). Episode three looks at how Greek theatre fared as Rome emerged as a dominant military and political power and Greece and Greek cities and kingdoms lost their independence. It’s not a bad programme, but I find the Romans to be insufferable barbarians, on about the same level as the Seljuks and Ottomans.

Regarding what happened to Greek literature under the Romans, I was reading an essay by Peter Bien from The Greek World: Classic, Byzantine and Modern, in which Bien says the following:

‘It would be a mistake to think that Greek literature died with Greek liberty. Menander’s marvellous comedies of manners, the plays that, by way of Plautus and Terence, set the first theatrical example for the Renaissance, for Shakespeare and for Moliere, were… the growth of an age politically hopeless. Polybius, through whose history we know that Scipio wept over Carthage destroyed, was a Greek hostage. The historical analysis of Tacitus and of Livy depend on history written by losers, by generations of sarcastic Greeks. Machiavelli rediscovered and transfigured their style, mostly through Tacitus and Livy, and Marx read Machiavelli. Clarendon in his History of the Great Rebellion goes back for this style to the same ancient historians. Shakespeare transcribes Plutuarch’s Lives at times almost word for word.’

I’m curious as to which ‘sarcastic Greeks’ Bien is referring to.

Regarding Plutarch, Bien adds:

‘Plutarch’s drawing of Romans is much more effective than his gallery of Greeks. The Greeks lived longer ago, and he knows less about them. The death of Cicero, the suicide of Cato, and the story of Antony and Cleopatra are written in brilliant dryness. It was Plutarch’s sense of tragedy, not that of the tragic poets, that Shakespeare drank in.’

Bien also has this to say:

‘The greatest hero of late Greek literature is Jesus Christ. The gospels are in Greek because the entire eastern Mediterranean world in their time had been Hellenized since before Christ, and one of the thrills and shocks of the gospels is that mixture of cultures. In spite of their linguistic awkwardness, or because of it, they are powerful pieces of simple writing such as Greek had never encompassed before.’

Greek drama and the decline of Athens

Above is the second part of Michael Scott’s series Ancient Greece: the Greatest Show on Earth, which traces the central role of comic and tragic theatre in the culture and politics of ancient Greece. In the first part of the series – Democracy – (see it here) Scott established the links between tragedy and democracy in Athens, while in part two – Kings – he examines how theatre spread throughout the Greek world and changed in content and purpose with the decline of Athens in the aftermath of its defeat in the Peloponnesian war and the emergence of Greek kingdoms, such as Macedon. It’s a good narrative and there’s some interesting detail and points but, again, the British talking-head classicists are a dull lot, with the exception of Oliver Taplin. In fact, what is most exciting in the series is the travelogue element. Greece always looks stunning and Scott visits some evocative sites, such as the Syracuse stone quarries where 7,000 Athenian prisoners were held after the disastrous Sicilian expedition in 413 BC and Chaeronea, where the Macedonians led by King Philip the Great defeated an Athenian-led force to claim control over Greece in 338 BC.

* See part three of the series here.