Theatrokratia (Paperback)

The volume gathers for the first time thirty-five scattered articles by Calder published 1958-1998 concerned with the political content of selected tragedies and their staging from Thespis to Seneca. An historian seeks to see tragedies in context, whether Pericles’ Athens or Nero’s Rome. He regularly contests the opinio communis. Eumenides protests against Periclean reform. Zeus in Prometheus is the tyrant Demos. Kreon not Antigone is the hero of Antigone. Neoptolemos in Philoctetes is a clever deceiver from the start. Sophocles Oinomaos was the inspiration of the East Pediment at Olympia. Atreus in Seneca’s Thyestes is the model whom Nero is urged to follow. The usual size of the Senecan chorus was three, never fifteen. Thespis’ chorus was six. Errors in the first publications have been corrected and there are occasional references to later scholarship. A careful index locorum antiquorum ends the volume and makes the material easily accessible.