Performing Interpersonal Violence: Court, Curse, And Comedy In Fourth-century Bce Athens (mythoseikonpoiesis)

This book offers the first attempt at understanding interpersonal violence in ancient Athens. While the archaic desire for revenge persisted into the classical period, it was channeled by the civil discourse of the democracy. Forensic speeches, curse tablets, and comedy display a remarkable openness regarding the definition of violence. But in daily life, Athenians had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They did so by enacting a discourse on violence in the performance of these genres, during which complex negotiations about the legitimacy of violence took place. Performances such as the staging of trials and comedies ritually defined the meaning of violence and its appropriate application. Speeches and curse tablets not only spoke about violence, but also exacted it in a mediated form, deriving its legitimate use from a democratic principle, the communal decision of the human jurors in the first case and the underworld gods in the second. Since discourse and reality were intertwined and the discourse was ritualized, actual violence might also have been partly ritualized. By still respecting the on-going desire to harm one's enemy, this partial ritualization of violence helped restrain violence and thus contributed to Athens'relative stability. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . V I. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Notions of Violence – State of Research – Goals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Methodology: The Performative Turn and Ritual Studies (A Brief Overview) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 The Controlling Function of Ritualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Sources – Chronological Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 II. Forensic Speeches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Ritual Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Constructing Violence: Discursive Rules of Violence I (Interaction) 32 Contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 First Blow versus Self-Defense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Murder versus Lawful Homicide . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Public versus Hidden Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Day versus Night . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65 Inebriation versus Sobriety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Old Age versus Young Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 Thresholds (invasion of homes versus protection of oikos) . . . . 72 Disturbance of Public Duty versus Maintenance of Public Order 82 Perversion of Religious Customs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 Perversion of Gender, Citizenship Status, Social Rank and Role 84 Mediated (Sanctioned) versus Direct Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 Escalation versus De-escalation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 Images of Violence: Discursive Rules of Violence II (Mental and Cultural Representation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 The Depiction of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Selfless Motives versus Selfishness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 Anger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Transgression of Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119 Hubris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 Tyrants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126 Barbarians . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 Old versus New Discourse Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131 Functions of Ritualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 How to Plead in Court – A Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158 III. Curse Tablets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164 Proportions – Social Origins of Cursers – Functions of Tablets . . . . 169 Ritual Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 Ritual Actions (drmena) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178 Ritual Words (legomena) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182 Degree of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Diachronic Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 IV. Old and New Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Ritual Framing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Ritual Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238 Theater Production as Ritual Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243 Ritual Efficacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247 The Discursive Rules of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Aristophanes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251 Three Case Studies: Wasps, Birds, and Clouds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285 The Double-Layerdness of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 311 Aristophanes Discourse on Democracy – Summary . . . . . . . . . 316 Menander . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319 Menanders Discourse on Society – Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364 Ritual Functions of Scenes of Violence in Comedy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 367 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373 V. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Chronological Development of the Violence Discourse in Different Genres . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379 Three Theses on Athenian Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384 Controlling Function of Ritualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 387 Social Origins of Perpetrators of Violence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389 A State Monopoly on Violence? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391 Outlook on Violence in Athenian Foreign Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392 VI. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 1. Corpora of Athenian Curse Tablets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395 2. Abbreviated Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396 3. English Translations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397 4. Secondary Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 398 Index locorum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 Literary Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441 Inscriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 456 Papyri . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 Iconographical Sources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461 General Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463 Important Greek and Latin terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471 Ancient proper names (historical and fictional persons) . . . . . . . 474 This book offers the first attempt at understanding interpersonal violence in ancient Athens. While the archaic desire for revenge persisted into the classical period, it was channeled by the civil discourse of the democracy. Forensic speeches, curse tablets, and comedy display a remarkable openness regarding the definition of violence. But in daily life, Athenians had to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable behavior. They did so by enacting a discourse on violence in the performance of these genres, during which complex negotiations about the legitimacy of violence took place. Performances such as the staging of trials and comedies ritually defined the meaning of violence and its appropriate application. Speeches and curse tablets not only spoke about violence, but also exacted it in a mediated form, deriving its legitimate use from a democratic principle, the communal decision of the human jurors in the first case and the underworld gods in the second. Since discourse and reality were intertwined and the discourse was ritualized, actual violence might also have been partly ritualized. By still respecting the on-going desire to harm one's enemy, this partial ritualization of violence helped restrain violence and thus contributed to Athens' relative stability