Academic literature on the topic 'Theater of Dionysus (Athens, Greece)'

The tradition of the holidayswhich dedicatedtotheendof the grape harvest, was born in Hellada in ancient times, in the countryside and gradually moved to the cities. This process began in the VIII century BC. Holidays were dedicated to God Dionysus, he was responsible about the natural forces of the earth and vegetation, the mastery of viticulture and winemaking. The holiday started to name Dionysuy. One of the most important action –dance around a circle. Then it becamenational, it conducted in cities, where was taken the new forms. Actors or other free citizens of the city performed on the level of the round plan as a symbol (similar to the village dance in a circle) citywide holiday, the audience were also residents of the city, seats for which came down to the playground of actors in the form of a semicircular funnel. Initially, such places were arranged on artificial sub-constructions of wood. Such structures were prefabricated and were used many times. There have been cases of their collapse. Only after being in Athens to the second part of VI century BC such structures collapsed during the performance, it was decided more of this type of sub-exercise not to be used. From the end of the VI century BC, places for spectators were cut downin the natural hills. And the theaters themselves turned into stationary facilities, which contributed to many spectacular innovations and conveniences of actors -all this increased the visual efficiency of performances. From a simple place of national celebration gradually theaters turned into city-wide centers of state-political information (where the words of the actors conveyed to the audience the general provisions of state policy). For example, in the time of Pericles (444-429 BC), the poor free citizens of Athens were given theatrical money from the state treasury, which they had the right to spend solely on watching theatrical productions. Taking into account the fact that the theaters gathered several thousand spectators at the same time, the performances contributed to the dissemination of state information at a time for a large number of residents of the city. The Theatre of Deonis in Athens under the acropolis of the Acropolis accommodated 17,000 spectators from the total number of citizens in the heyday of 100,000. In addition, it was noticed that certain performances contribute to the optimistic mood of the ISSN 2519–4208. ПРОБЛЕМЫ ТЕОРИИ И ИСТОРИИ АРХИТЕКТУРЫ УКРАИНЫ.2020. No 20142audience, and this has a beneficial effect on their health. Therefore, it is no coincidence that theatrical productions (late classics of Hellas) were provided among the medical and recreational procedures in the “Asclepius” treatment and health procedures at VI C. in B.C.). The “Asclepius” architectural ensemble has a theatre as part of a medical and recreational center.Theatrical actions carried to the masses the state lines of ideology and politics, increased the general culture of the population while influencing the audience as wellness procedures. Theatrical performances were more effective than temple services. This is the need for the construction of theaters throughout Hellenism, where there was no city within Hellenistic borders, where there would be no theater. By the end of the III century BC, when the entire East Mediterranean world was subordinated to the Roman Republic, the type of theatrical construction of Hellas was completely formed. This was accepted by the Romans for their theatrical productions, gradually adapting it to the features of their mass-entertainment culture.

The article is devoted to a thematic study of the history of the emergence and development of the architecture of theater buildings as a specific area of architectural creativity. Theater buildings have always been located, and are located today, in the public centers of large cities and urban agglomerations. These buildings perform an important cultural and educational function and are distinguished by architectural uniqueness and originality. They play an important organizing role in the architectural ensembles of city streets and squares, emphasizing the prospects of avenues and boulevards. The article gives examples of theatrical buildings of antiquity, the Renaissance, the classical period and theatrical buildings of recent years. The image of the theater of Dionysus in Athens, on the slope of the Athenian acropolis, is used as an image of an ancient theatrical building. The most characteristic example of the Italian Renaissance theater is the Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza, designed by Andrea Palladio in 1580. In the interior of the theater, Palladio imitated the open space of Greek amphitheaters and the architectural style of ancient Rome. The Odessa Opera House can serve as an example of the development of the achievements of theatrical architecture of the 19th century. The most achievements of theatrical architecture of the 19th century. The most striking example of the theater of the 20th century is the Sydney Opera House – a symbol of new architecture created based on new building technologies. The 21st century is represented by more modern buildings: the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Poly Grand Theater in Shanghai, the New Philharmonic in Paris. Each building is a certain iconic phenomenon in the history of architecture and opens up new perspectives for rethinking the historical experience of the formation of such buildings. The architects made the most of the entire set of expressive means in order to draw the viewer's attention to the external appearance of the theater. Creating a background for the perception of a theatrical production and forming a sense of the continuity of the cultural space of theatrical art.

O objetivo desta pesquisa é buscar uma melhor compreensão do papel desempenhado pelo culto de Dioniso na cidade grega da época arcaica e clássica. Partimos do princípio de que o teatro como instituição grega expressa a presença do culto de Dioniso na pólis e de que o ambiente construído expressa elementos organizacionais da sociedade e interage com ela. Nossa intenção é, a partir de uma amostragem definida, estudar o teatro grego em seus aspectos físicos/materiais, focalizando sua inserção no disciplinamento do espaço na cidade-estado grega. Ainda que seja impossível ignorar a documentação escrita e a bibliografia existente sobre o teatro grego na Atica, pretendemos ampliar a nossa perspectiva, lidando com material arqueológico proveniente de outras pólis. Nosso recorte cronológico estará constituído pelos séculos VI ao III a.C

The author, President of the al Chalabi Group (ACG), Ltd., Chicago, USA, is an architect, graduate of the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, and of the Graduate School of Ekistics of the Athens Technological Institute, Greece, and also a member of the World Society for Ekistics (WSE). Ms al Chalabi has over 30 years of experience as an urban and regional economist. In addition to her work on the 16-year planning effort for the Third Airport for Chicago, she was instrumental in saving and rehabilitating the landmark Chicago Theater. Ms al Chalabi has developed numerous corridor development strategies; designed and conducted innovative market surveys for long-distance travel; and has written extensively for the Urban Land Institute. The text that follows was distributed to the participants at the WSE Symposion on "Defining Success of the City in the 21st Century," Berlin, 24-28 October, 2001, which the author was finally unable to attend.

The paper argues that the act of looking, as defined between the story of Gyges, Candaules, and the offended queen and the story of Solon's visit to Lydia, functions in the first book of Herodotus, and perhaps also elsewhere throughout the Inquiry, as a metaphor for the relation of the histôr to the object of his investigation. Further, by a careful comparison of the Gyges story in Herodotus with the queen's own narration in the enigmatic "Gyges Tragedy" (P. Oxy. 2382), we can define a Herodotean psychology of spectation that bears a striking resemblance to the specifically tragic psychology manifest in the fragment. Herodotus positions his readers, the paper argues, in the place of Gyges, forcing them to look-in their imaginations-on what does not belong to them, just as the theatai in the Theater of Dionysus must look in imagination on the scene described by the queen. While the tragic audience is protected from the fate of Candaules and of Gyges' descendant Croesus by the constitutive blindness of tragedy that prevents the spectators from seeing what happens in the mukhos, Herodotus' audience must seek some other reassurance that they will not face the voyeur's penalty. This paper finally argues that Solon's theôria, with its crucial purpose of establishing the nomoi of Athens and its crucial ethic of looking not at the object of desire but at the end, installs in Herodotus' historiê the psychology of tragedy: to look desiringly is to lose, but to look inquiringly is to learn.

The main objective of this study is the metaphysics of the urban space of Athens in the classical age. It determined the forms of transition of the social behavior of citizens from ancient religious algorithmic rituals to creative theatricality. Both poles comprised various aspects of human life - private and public, political and psychological, legal and religious. However, transitivity was not exhaustive: the poles, although modified, persisted for a long time. This made the Athenian community multi-dimensional, which was quite evident in the landscape of the city. We decided to overcome the usual formality of the architecture of the City, highlighting its metaphysical features on the background of political philosophy and mathematics, moral theory, and aesthetics. In this regard, the following points of the Athenian landscape are subject to analysis and interpretation - the City walls and gates, the Areopagus, the Agora, the Acropolis, and the Theater of Dionysus.

IntroductionThe common origin of the adjective “corporeal” and the noun “corpse” in the Latin root corpus points to the value of mortuary practices for investigating how the human body is objectified. In post-mortem rituals, the body—formerly the manipulator of objects—becomes itself the object that is manipulated. Thus, these funerary rituals provide a type of double reflexivity, where the object and subject of manipulation can be used to reciprocally illuminate one another. To this extent, any consideration of corporeality can only benefit from a discussion of how the body is objectified through mortuary practices. This paper offers just such a discussion with respect to a selection of two contrasting mortuary practices, in the context of the prehistoric past and the Classical Era respectively. At the most general level, we are motivated by the same intellectual impulse that has stimulated expositions on corporeality, materiality, and incarnation in areas like phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty 77–234), Marxism (Adorno 112–119), gender studies (Grosz vii–xvi), history (Laqueur 193–244), and theology (Henry 33–53). That is to say, our goal is to show that the body, far from being a transparent frame through which we encounter the world, is in fact a locus where historical, social, cultural, and psychological forces intersect. On this view, “the body vanishes as a biological entity and becomes an infinitely malleable and highly unstable culturally constructed product” (Shilling 78). However, for all that the cited paradigms offer culturally situated appreciations of corporeality; our particular intellectual framework will be provided by cognitive science. Two reasons impel us towards this methodological choice.In the first instance, the study of ritual has, after several decades of stagnation, been rewarded—even revolutionised—by the application of insights from the new sciences of the mind (Whitehouse 1–12; McCauley and Lawson 1–37). Thus, there are good reasons to think that ritual treatments of the body will refract historical and social forces through empirically attested tendencies in human cognition. In the present connection, this means that knowledge of these tendencies will reward any attempt to theorise the objectification of the body in mortuary rituals.In the second instance, because beliefs concerning the afterlife can never be definitively judged to be true or false, they give free expression to tendencies in cognition that are otherwise constrained by the need to reflect external realities accurately. To this extent, they grant direct access to the intuitive ideas and biases that shape how we think about the world. Already, this idea has been exploited to good effect in areas like the cognitive anthropology of religion, which explores how counterfactual beings like ghosts, spirits, and gods conform to (and deviate from) pre-reflective cognitive patterns (Atran 83–112; Barrett and Keil 219–224; Barrett and Reed 252–255; Boyer 876–886). Necessarily, this implies that targeting post-mortem treatments of the body will offer unmediated access to some of the conceptual schemes that inform thinking about human corporeality.At a more detailed level, the specific methodology we propose to use will be provided by conceptual blending theory—a framework developed by Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner, and others to describe how structures from different areas of experience are creatively blended to form a new conceptual frame. In this system, a generic space provides the ground for coordinating two or more input spaces into a blended space that synthesises them into a single output. Here this would entail using natural or technological processes to structure mortuary practices in a way that satisfies various psychological needs.Take, for instance, W.B. Yeats’s famous claim that “Too long a sacrifice / Can make a stone of the heart” (“Easter 1916” in Yeats 57-8). Here, the poet exploits a generic space—that of everyday objects and the effort involved in manipulating them—to coordinate an organic input from that taxonomy (the heart) with an inorganic input (a stone) to create the blended idea that too energetic a pursuit of an abstract ideal turns a person into an unfeeling object (the heart-as-stone). Although this particular example corresponds to a familiar rhetorical figure (the metaphor), the value of conceptual blending theory is that it cuts across distinctions of genre, media, language, and discourse level to provide a versatile framework for expressing how one area of human experience is related to another.As indicated, we will exploit this versatility to investigate two ways of objectifying the body through the examination of two contrasting mortuary practices—cremation and inhumation—against different cultural horizons. The first of these is the conceptualisation of the body as an object of a technical process, where the post-mortem cremation of the corpse is analogically correlated with the metallurgical refining of ore into base metal. Our area of focus here will be Bronze Age cremation practices. The second conceptual scheme we will investigate focuses on treatments of the body as a vegetable object; here, the relevant analogy likens the inhumation of the corpse to the planting of a seed in the soil from which future growth will come. This discussion will centre on the Classical Era. Burning: The Body as Manufactured ObjectThe Early and Middle Bronze Age in Western Europe (2500-1200 BCE) represented a period of change in funerary practices relative to the preceding Neolithic, exemplified by a move away from the use of Megalithic monuments, a proliferation of grave goods, and an increase in the use of cremation (Barrett 38-9; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Brück, Material Metaphors 308; Waddell, Bronze Age 141-149). Moreover, the Western European Bronze Age is characterised by a shift away from communal burial towards single interment (Barrett 32; Bradley 158-168). Equally, the Bronze Age in Western Europe provides us with evidence of an increased use of cist and pit cremation burials concentrated in low-lying areas (Woodman 254; Waddell, Prehistoric 16; Cooney and Grogan 105-121; Bettencourt 103). This greater preference for lower-lying location appears to reflect a distinctive change in comparison to the distribution patterns of the Neolithic burials; these are often located on prominent, visible aspects of a landscape (Cooney and Grogan 53-61). These new Bronze Age burial practices appear to reflect a distancing in relation to the territories of the “old ancestors” typified by Megalithic monuments (Bettencourt 101-103). Crucially, the Bronze Age archaeological record provides us with evidence that indicates that cremation was becoming the dominant form of deposition of human remains throughout Central and Western Europe (Sørensen and Rebay 59-60).The activities associated with Bronze Age cremations such as the burning of the body and the fragmentation of the remains have often been considered as corporeal equivalents (or expressions) of the activities involved in metal (bronze) production (Brück, Death 84-86; Sørensen and Rebay 60–1; Rebay-Salisbury, Cremations 66-67). There are unequivocal similarities between the practices of cremation and contemporary bronze production technologies—particularly as both processes involve the transformation of material through the application of fire at temperatures between 700 ºC to 1000 ºC (Musgrove 272-276; Walker et al. 132; de Becdelievre et al. 222-223).We assert that the technologies that define the European Bronze Age—those involved in alloying copper and tin to produce bronze—offered a new conceptual frame that enabled the body to be objectified in new ways. The fundamental idea explored here is that the displacement of inhumation by cremation in the European Bronze Age was motivated by a cognitive shift, where new smelting technologies provided novel conceptual metaphors for thinking about age-old problems concerning human mortality and post-mortem survival. The increased use of cremation in the European Bronze Age contrasts with the archaeological record of the Near Eastern—where, despite the earlier emergence of metallurgy (3300–3000 BCE), we do not see a notable proliferation in the use of cremation in this region. Thus, mortuary practices (i.e. cremation) provide us with an insight into how Western European Bronze Age cultures mediated the body through changes in technological objects and processes.In the terminology of conceptual blending, the generic space in question centres on the technical manipulation of the material world. The first input space is associated with the anxiety attending mortality—specifically, the cessation of personal identity and the extinction of interpersonal relationships. The second input space represents the technical knowledge associated with bronze production; in particular, the extraction of ore from source material and its mixing with other metals to form an alloy. The blended space coordinates these inputs to objectify the human body as an object that is ritually transformed into a new but more durable substance via the cremation process. In this contention we use the archaeological record to draw a conceptual parallel between the emergence of bronze production technology—centring on transition of naturally occurring material to a new subsistence (bronze)—and the transitional nature of the cremation process.In this theoretical framework, treating the body as a mixture of substances that can be reduced to its constituents and transformed through technologies of cremation enabled Western European Bronze Age society to intervene in the natural process of putrefaction and transform the organic matter into something more permanent. This transformative aspect of the cremation is seen in the evidence we have for secondary burial practices involving the curation and circulation of cremated bones of deceased members of a group (Brück, Death 87-93). This evidence allows us to assert that cremated human remains and objects were considered products of the same transformation into a more permanent state via burning, fragmentation, dispersal, and curation. Sofaer (62-69) states that the living body is regarded as a person, but as soon as the transition to death is made, the body becomes an object; this is an “ontological shift in the perception of the body that assumes a sudden change in its qualities” (62).Moreover, some authors have proposed that the exchange of fragmented human remains was central to mortuary practices and was central in establishing and maintaining social relations (Brück, Death 76-88). It is suggested that in the Early Bronze Age the perceptions of the human body mirrored the perceptions of objects associated with the arrival of the new bronze technology (Brück, Death 88-92). This idea is more pronounced if we consider the emergence of bronze technology as the beginning of a period of capital intensification of natural resources. Through this connection, the Bronze Age can be regarded as the point at which a particular natural resource—in this case, copper—went through myriad intensive manufacturing stages, which are still present today (intensive extraction, production/manufacturing, and distribution). Unlike stone tool production, bronze production had the addition of fire as the explicit method of transformation (Brück, Death 88-92). Thus, such views maintain that the transition achieved by cremation—i.e. reducing the human remains to objects or tokens that could be exchanged and curated relatively soon after the death of the individual—is equivalent to the framework of commodification connected with bronze production.A sample of cremated remains from Castlehyde in County Cork, Ireland, provides us with an example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in a Western European context (McCarthy). This is chosen because it is a typical example of a Bronze Age cremation burial in the context of Western Europe; also, one of the authors (MG) has first-hand experience in the analysis of its associated remains. The Castlehyde cremation burial consisted of a rectangular, stone-lined cist (McCarthy). The cist contained cremated, calcined human remains, with the fragments generally ranging from a greyish white to white in colour; this indicates that the bones were subject to a temperature range of 700-900ºC. The organic content of bone was destroyed during the cremation process, leaving only the inorganic matrix (brittle bone which is, often, described as metallic in consistency—e.g. Gejvall 470-475). There is evidence that remains may have been circulated in a manner akin to valuable metal objects. First of all, the absence of long bones indicates that there may have been a practice of removing salient remains as curatable records of ancestral ties. Secondly, remains show traces of metal staining from objects that are no longer extant, which suggests that graves were subject to secondary burial practices involving the removal of metal objects and/or human bone. To this extent, we can discern that human remains were being processed, curated, and circulated in a similar manner to metal objects.Thus, there are remarkable similarities between the treatment of the human body in cremation and bronze metal production technologies in the European Bronze Age. On the one hand, the parallel between smelting and cremation allowed death to be understood as a process of transformation in which the individual was removed from processes of organic decay. On the other hand, the circulation of the transformed remains conferred a type of post-mortem survival on the deceased. In this way, cremation practices may have enabled Bronze Age society to symbolically overcome the existential anxiety concerning the loss of personhood and the breaking of human relationships through death. In relation to the former point, the resurgence of cremation in nineteenth century Europe provides us with an example of how the disposal of a human body can be contextualised in relation to socio-technological advancements. The (re)emergence of cremation in this period reflects the post-Enlightenment shift from an understanding of the world through religious beliefs to the use of rational, scientific approaches to examine the natural world, including the human body (and death). The controlled use of fire in the cremation process, as well as the architecture of crematories, reflected the industrial context of the period (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 16).With respect to the circulation of cremated remains, Smith suggests that Early Medieval Christian relics of individual bones or bone fragments reflect a reconceptualised continuation of pre-Christian practices (beginning in Christian areas of the Roman Empire). In this context, it is claimed, firstly, that the curation of bone relics and the use of mobile bone relics of important, saintly individuals provided an embodied connection between the sacred sphere and the earthly world; and secondly, that the use of individual bones or fragments of bone made the Christian message something portable, which could be used to reinforce individual or collective adherence to Christianity (Smith 143-167). Using the example of the Christian bone relics, we can thus propose that the curation and circulation of Bronze Age cremated material may have served a role similar to tools for focusing religiously oriented cognition. Burying: The Body as a Vegetable ObjectGiven that the designation “the Classical Era” nominates the entirety of the Graeco-Roman world (including the Near East and North Africa) from about 800 BCE to 600 CE, there were obviously no mortuary practices common to all cultures. Nevertheless, in both classical Greece and Rome, we have examples of periods when either cremation or inhumation was the principal funerary custom (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21).For instance, the ancient Homeric texts inform us that the ancient Greeks believed that “the spirit of the departed was sentient and still in the world of the living as long as the flesh was in existence […] and would rather have the body devoured by purifying fire than by dogs or worms” (Mylonas 484). However, the primary sources and archaeological record indicate that cremation practices declined in Athens circa 400 BCE (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 20). With respect to the Roman Empire, scholarly opinion argues that inhumation was the dominant funerary rite in the eastern part of the Empire (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 17-21; Morris 52). Complementing this, the archaeological and historical record indicates that inhumation became the primary rite throughout the Roman Empire in the first century CE. Inhumation was considered to be an essential rite in the context of an emerging belief that a peaceful afterlife was reflected by a peaceful burial in which bodily integrity was maintained (Rebay-Salisbury, Inhumation 19-21; Morris 52; Toynbee 41). The question that this poses is how these beliefs were framed in the broader discourses of Classical culture.In this regard, our claim is that the growth in inhumation was driven (at least in part) by the spread of a conceptual scheme, implicit in Greek fertility myths that objectify the body as a seed. The conceptual logic here is that the post-mortem continuation of personal identity is (symbolically) achieved by objectifying the body as a vegetable object that will re-grow from its own physical remains. Although the dominant metaphor here is vegetable, there is no doubt that the motivating concern of this mythological fabulation is human mortality. As Jon Davies notes, “the myths of Hades, Persephone and Demeter, of Orpheus and Eurydice, of Adonis and Aphrodite, of Selene and Endymion, of Herakles and Dionysus, are myths of death and rebirth, of journeys into and out of the underworld, of transactions and transformations between gods and humans” (128). Thus, such myths reveal important patterns in how the post-mortem fate of the body was conceptualised.In the terminology of mental mapping, the generic space relevant to inhumation contains knowledge pertaining to folk biology—specifically, pre-theoretical ideas concerning regeneration, survival, and mortality. The first input space attaches to human mortality; it departs from the anxiety associated with the seeming cessation of personal identity and dissolution of kin relationships subsequent to death. The second input space is the subset of knowledge concerning vegetable life, and how the immersion of seeds in the soil produces a new generation of plants with the passage of time. The blended space combines the two input spaces by way of the funerary script, which involves depositing the body in the soil with a view to securing its eventual rebirth by analogy with the sprouting of a planted seed.As indicated, the most important illustration of this conceptual pattern can be found in the fertility myths of ancient Greece. The Homeric Hymns, in particular, provide a number of narratives that trace out correspondences between vegetation cycles, human mortality, and inhumation, which inform ritual practice (Frazer 223–404; Carney 355–65; Sowa 121–44). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, for instance, charts how Persephone is abducted by Hades, god of the dead, and taken to his underground kingdom. While searching for her missing daughter, Demeter, goddess of fertility, neglects the earth, causing widespread devastation. Matters are resolved when Zeus intervenes to restore Persephone to Demeter. However, having ingested part of Hades’s kingdom (a pomegranate seed), Persephone is obliged to spend half the year below ground with her captor and the other half above ground with her mother.The objectification of Persephone as both a seed and a corpse in this narrative is clearly signalled by her seasonal inhumation in Hades’ chthonic realm, which is at once both the soil and the grave. And, just as the planting of seeds in autumn ensures rebirth in spring, Persephone’s seasonal passage from the Kingdom of the Dead nominates the individual human life as just one season in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. A further signifying element is added by the ingestion of the pomegranate seed. This is evocative of her being inseminated by Hades; thus, the coordination of vegetation cycles with life and death is correlated with secondary transition—that from childhood to adulthood (Kerényi 119–183).In the examples given, we can see how the Homeric Hymn objectifies both the mortal and sexual destiny of the body in terms of thresholds derived from the vegetable world. Moreover, this mapping is not merely an intellectual exercise. Its emotional and social appeal is visible in the fact that the Eleusinian mysteries—which offered the ritual homologue to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter—persisted from the Mycenaean period to 396 CE, one of the longest recorded durations for any ritual (Ferguson 254–9; Cosmopoulos 1–24). In sum, then, classical myth provided a precedent for treating the body as a vegetable object—most often, a seed—that would, in turn, have driven the move towards inhumation as an important mortuary practice. The result is to create a ritual form that makes key aspects of human experience intelligible by connecting them with cyclical processes like the seasons of the year, the harvesting of crops, and the intergenerational oscillation between the roles of parent and child. Indeed, this pattern remains visible in the germination metaphors and burial practices of contemporary religions such as Christianity, which draw heavily on the symbolism associated with mystery cults like that at Eleusis (Nock 177–213).ConclusionWe acknowledge that our examples offer a limited reflection of the ethnographic and archaeological data, and that they need to be expanded to a much greater degree if they are to be more than merely suggestive. Nevertheless, suggestiveness has its value, too, and we submit that the speculations explored here may well offer a useful starting point for a larger survey. In particular, they showcase how a recurring existential anxiety concerning death—involving the fear of loss of personal identity and kinship relations—is addressed by different ways of objectifying the body. Given that the body is not reducible to the objects with which it is identified, these objectifications can never be entirely successful in negotiating the boundary between life and death. In the words of Jon Davies, “there is simply no let-up in the efforts by human beings to transcend this boundary, no matter how poignantly each failure seemed to reinforce it” (128). For this reason, we can expect that the record will be replete with conceptual and cognitive schemes that mediate the experience of death.At a more general level, it should also be clear that our understanding of human corporeality is rewarded by the study of mortuary practices. No less than having a body is coextensive with being human, so too is dying, with the consequence that investigating the intersection of both areas is likely to reveal insights into issues of universal cultural concern. For this reason, we advocate the study of mortuary practices as an evolving record of how various cultures understand human corporeality by way of external objects.ReferencesAdorno, Theodor W. Metaphysics: Concept and Problems. Trans. Rolf Tiedemann. Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.Atran, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002.Barrett, John C. “The Living, the Dead and the Ancestors: Neolithic and Bronze Age Mortuary Practices.” The Archaeology of Context in the Neolithic and Bronze Age: Recent Trends. Eds. John. C. Barrett and Ian. A. Kinnes. 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The PhD dissertation here presented concerns the political significance and function of the theatre and the sanctuary of Dionysos Eleutherios in Athens in a chronological period which runs from the fifth to the first century B.C. Its primary aim is to investigate the practice of displaying inscriptions in the area of the theatre, in order to recognize the ideological value of the documents there exposed and, consequently, to understand the socio-cultural and political meaning of this specific site as an appropriate place for the publication of official texts within the city. This problem is the focus of the first part of the dissertation, which comprises a classification of all the inscriptions displayed in the area of the sanctuary of Dionysos during the Classical and Hellenistic periods. The selection and identification of the documents has been carefully conducted on the basis of the excavation data (fundamental for this research, though not always accurate in recording the precise provenance) and an analysis of their content (in those cases where the texts are not too fragmentary). It should be noted that we are dealing with texts which are often incomplete while other inscriptions which may once have been displayed in the area of the theatre have not survived. However the study of all the surviving inscriptions located in the site – together with an appreciation of each of them in its proper cultural and historical context – has enabled me to investigate in depth the political use and value of the theatre. I drew up a catalogue deploying categories to classify the different inscriptions (for example, decrees, catalogues, dedications, etc…) before arranging the texts within each section into chronological order. The most represented categories are honorific decrees and dedications, exhibited in the area to express gratitude to benefactors or citizens whose activities were linked in various ways to the sacral or theatrical practice of the site and whose behavior served as a model for Athenians. This catalogue provides the following information for each inscription: physical description, provenance, conservation status, dating, text with apparatus, current published editions, brief comment on the most remarkable aspects (concerning palaeography, language, chronology and content) of the document. The readings have been verified thorough autopsy of the texts at the Epigraphical Museum or at the Archaeological Site of the Acropolis. This compilation is complimented by two more sections concerning other inscriptions found in the area of the sanctuary whose original setting in the site is either plausible (section VI) or has to be definitively excluded (section VII); the reasons for the inclusion of each document in these two last sections are detailed in the accompanying notes. Some of the decrees collected in the catalogue explicitly indicate that the decisions handed down by the city were taken during an assembly held in the theatre of Dionysos. This theme lies at the heart of the political significance of the theatre and is the central concern of the second part of the dissertation. The political use of the theatre is attested for in many cities of the Greek world and must be analyzed with an understanding of the diverse values and functions which typified theatrical buildings in Greek society. However, this phenomenon becomes more complex in Athens, because of the presence in the city of a dedicated ekklesiasterion on top of the Pnyx, whose construction saw three different phases between the fifth and the fourth century B.C. and whose activity is documented in the written sources. The custom of assembling in the theatre – seldom documented in the fifth century before becoming more frequently attested to from the second half of the fourth century – is testified not only for the theatre of Dionysos, but also for that of Munichia at Piraeus, which was similarly used for the meeting of the ekklesia in this period. Therefore the second part of the thesis provides a detailed, diachronic examination of all the literary and epigraphic Greek texts mentioning the use of these two theatres as assembly places. Here the purpose is to investigate which factors determined why Athenians chose these sites for assemblies over the Pnyx and to understand how across time the theatre gradually came to supplant the role of the ekklesiasterion. In this regard, particular attention has been paid to the political use of the theatre in the fifth century – a time when the Pnyx was still in use as an assembly place, and the theatre had yet to assume its current monumental form in stone. The literary passages are analyzed individually, while the inscriptions are tabulated according to the formula used to indicate the place of the meetings. The evidence examined include a far more up-to-date survey than previous studies – which though few remain essential – thanks especially to the excavations conducted in the area of the Agora by the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from the 1930s. These sources are analyzed in parallel with an appreciation of the archaeological data pertaining to the Pnyx and the theatre of Dionysos: these data complement the evidence of the written sources, providing information about the shape and size of these sites and, consequently, on the number of people who could be accommodated there. In conclusion, the analysis of the broader material evidence together with historical sources suggests that – while political and ideological contexts remained always significant – changing practical needs after the fifth century were crucial to the changing location of political assemblies.
La tesi di dottorato qui presentata riguarda il significato e la funzione politica del teatro e al santuario di Dioniso Eleutereo ad Atene in un lasso cronologico intercorrente tra il V e il I secolo a.C. Scopo principale della ricerca è quello di analizzare la consuetudine di esporre epigrafi nell’area del teatro, al fine di comprendere il valore ideologico dei documenti ivi pubblicati e, di rimando, di approfondire il significato socio-culturale e politico che tale sito acquisì nel tempo in quanto spazio scelto all’interno della città per la pubblicazione di testi ufficiali. Questo tema costituisce il fulcro della prima parte della dissertazione, che comprende una catalogazione di tutte le iscrizioni pubblicate nell’area del santuario di Dioniso durante le età classica ed ellenistica. La selezione e l’identificazione dei documenti epigrafici raccolti è stata meticolosamente effettuata sulla base dei dati di scavo (fondamentali per questa ricerca, ma non sempre precisi nel registrare con esattezza il luogo di rinvenimento) e l’analisi del loro contenuto (nei casi in cui il testo non è troppo frammentario). È necessario porre l’attenzione sul fatto che tali testi documenti sono spesso lacunosi e che costituiscono un campione certamente limitato rispetto all’insieme di tutte le iscrizioni che potrebbero essere state pubblicate nell’area del teatro nel periodo in oggetto. Ad ogni modo, lo studio complessivo di tutte le epigrafi superstiti collocate nel sito – associato ad un riesame di ognuno di questi testi nel contesto storico-culturale che gli è proprio – ha consentito di approfondire l’uso e il significato politico del teatro. Le iscrizioni sono classificate nel catalogo in base alla tipologia epigrafica dei testi in diverse sezioni (decreti, cataloghi, dediche ecc.), all’interno delle quali i documenti sono organizzati in ordine cronologico. Le categorie epigrafiche più rappresentate sono i decreti e le dediche onorarie, ivi esposti per esprimere gratitudine verso personaggi legati a vario titolo all’attività teatrale o cultuale svolta nel sito e il cui lodevole comportamento nei confronti della città diventa modello per gli Ateniesi. Per ogni epigrafe inserita nel catalogo si forniscono le seguenti informazioni: descrizione e tipologia del manufatto, provenienza, stato di conservazione, datazione, testo con apparato critico, edizioni, commento puntuale sugli aspetti paleografici, testuali, linguistici e storico-cronologici ritenuti più rilevanti per l’esegesi del testo. Le iscrizioni, conservate nel Museo Epigrafico di Atene o nel sito archeologico dell’Acropoli, sono state riesaminate tutte autopticamente. Il catalogo è inoltre completato da due sezioni, in cui sono riunite altre epigrafi trovate nell’area del santuario, la cui pertinenza ad esso è tuttavia solo ipotizzabile (sezione VI) o da escludere (sezione VII); le ragioni che hanno determinato l’inclusione di tali iscrizioni in queste due ultime sezioni sono chiarite nelle note che corredano i singoli testi. Alcuni dei decreti raccolti nel catalogo indicano esplicitamente che la decisione varata dalla città e registrata per iscritto sulla stele fu presa durante un’assemblea tenuta nel teatro di Dioniso. Questo aspetto è molto significativo per l’indagine sulla valenza politica del teatro e rappresenta il tema centrale della seconda parte della tesi. L’uso assembleare del teatro è attestato per molte città del mondo greco e deve essere analizzato alla luce di quella pluralità di valenze e funzioni che contraddistinsero la natura stessa dell’edificio teatrale. Tuttavia, l’analisi di questo fenomeno per il caso ateniese è particolarmente interessante, poiché la città era di fatto dotata di un proprio ekklesiasterion sulla collina della Pnice, la cui costruzione vide tre diverse fasi edilizie tra il V e il IV secolo a.C. e la cui attività è documentata dalle fonti. La consuetudine di riunirsi nel teatro – raramente attestata nel V secolo a.C. e poi sempre più di frequente a partire dalla seconda metà del IV secolo a.C. – è testimoniata non solo per il teatro di Dioniso, ma anche per quello di Munichia al Pireo, che fu analogamente usato per le riunioni dell’ekklesia in quel periodo. Dunque la seconda parte della tesi è dedicata ad un dettagliato esame diacronico di tutti i testi letterari ed epigrafici che menzionano l’uso di uno di questi due teatri come luogo di assemblea. Il fine è di indagare sui fattori che determinarono la scelta di questi luoghi per le riunioni al posto della Pnice e di comprendere in che modo nel tempo il teatro arrivò a sostituire il ruolo dell’ekklesiasterion cittadino. In questo senso, è analizzato con particolare attenzione l’uso politico del teatro nel V secolo a.C., periodo in cui la Pnice era ancora in uso come luogo di assemblea e il teatro doveva ancora assumere una forma monumentale. I passi letterari sono analizzati individualmente, mentre le iscrizioni sono catalogate in base alla formula utilizzata per indicare il luogo di svolgimento dell’assemblea. La quantità dei documenti epigrafici che attestano lo svolgimento di riunioni politiche nel teatro è notevolmente più consistente rispetto a quella presentata negli studi precedenti – che non sono numerosi, ma restano essenziali per questa ricerca – grazie soprattutto al consistente incremento di materiale dovuto agli scavi condotti nell’area dell’agorà dall’American School of Classical Studies in Athens dagli anni Trenta del Novecento. Le testimonianze epigrafiche e letterarie sono esaminate parallelamente ai dati archeologici che riguardano la Pnice e il teatro di Dioniso, dati che completano le notizie desumibili dalle fonti scritte, fornendo informazioni su forma e dimensioni dell’auditorium della Pnice e del theatron e, di conseguenza, sul numero di persone che poteva essere ospitato in tali spazi. In conclusione, l’analisi delle fonti e dei dati archeologici induce a concludere che – pur essendo rilevanti i motivi politici e ideologici – si deve dare il giusto peso a diversi fattori di ordine pratico che, dopo il V secolo a.C., furono senz’altro determinanti per il cambiamento del luogo di svolgimento delle assemblee.

Depuis plus d'un siècle, la Grèce antique ne cesse d'éblouir philosophes et hommes de lettre en Occident. La tragédie occupe une place éminente dans cet émerveillement venu de l'Athènes du Ve siècle avant Jésus-Christ. C'est pour matérialiser cette fascination que ce théâtre a donné lieu à des interprétations de tout genre : philosophique, humaniste, politique et morale... Il s'agit de lectures idéologiques dont la tragédie en général et Sophocle en particulier a fait l'objet. Dans cette perspective, il importait d'effectuer un panorama des lectures de cette tragédie devenue un mythe contemporain. L'oeuvre de Sophocle a servi d'illustration à la visée idéologique d'un théâtre qui s'intégrait à l'origine dans le cadre des manifestations culturelles en l'honneur de Dionysos à Athènes. Y avait-il lieu d'universaliser et d'immortaliser ces interprétations, fruits de l'imaginaire occidental ? Fallait-il continuer la réincarnation des personnages de Sophocle qui aurait avec son Antigone et son OEdipe-roi réussi à élaborer des modèles inimitables de la tragédie et de l'existence de l'homme ? C'est pour questionner cette vision de Sophocle qu'il semble nécessaire d'exploiter les éléments esthétiques (chant, musique) de cette tragédie qui offrent de nouvelles pistes de réflexion en porte-à-faux avec la lecture idéologique observée dans la critique contemporaine.

EPIPHANIES OF SIGNIFICANT MYSTERY: NOTES FROM THE PEREGRINATION ALONG THE ROUTE FROM ATHENS TO EMMAUS In the presented article, I discuss the relationship between the Greek tragedy of the classical epoch and the medieval liturgical drama. They are commonly regarded as the roots of European theater. The ritual of Dionysus, present in the Greek tragedy, and the soteriological sacrifice of Christ, present in the liturgical drama, have the power of purification/redeeming of the human being. Aristotle described it as catharsis (κάθαρσις). Tragedy and liturgical drama also testify to the dialogical and dramatic relationship between God and Man. This cultural and religious experience is anthropological in nature, it is an important element of human existence. The article also discussed the nature of theater in early Christian writings, and focuses on how the barriers to performative activity were broken, and liturgical drama became an important element of the religious culture of the Latin Middle Ages. During the Resurrection Mass, it served as a visualization of the Significant Mystery, the essence of the Christian drama of Salvation.

Abstract Athens’ principal urban festival for Apollo, the Thargelia, has been aptly described as ‘a festival of the arts . . . second only to the City Dionysia’. Although much about the festival remains a mystery, it has received none of the sort of integrated historical and sociopolitical analysis that has been so productive for our understanding of the urban festivals of the Dionysia and Panathenaia. This chapter will initiate such analysis, with an emphasis on the performance practice of the festival as evidenced principally through epigraphy.

Abstract Athenian tragedy of the Fifth century BCE became an international and a canonical genre with remarkable rapidity. There are plenty of reasons for expecting that tragedy might not have had such an impact with such speed. The performance of tragedy is closely linked to the city of Athens both through the festival of the Great Dionysia and through the scripts of the plays themselves, which set its stories of calamitous civic breakdown in the other cities of Greece, and praise Athens when the opportunity arises. The cost of mounting a tragedy was large, not least since it takes a good while to train and equip a chorus, actors, and musicians. A theatre may often have been a temporary site, but even so to seat a large audience and stage a trilogy required considerable eVort and material resources.

Abstract The tragedies and comedies composed for production at the Athenian dramatic festivals in the fifth and early fourth centuries sc are priceless historical documents. For much of the period they are, apart from inscriptions, the only contemporary documents we possess emanating from Athens itself. Their historical interpretation is problematic, of course, in many ways, some of which are discussed elsewhere in this volume. The particular issue that I am going to take up may be approached by considering the question which, it has been said, historians should. always put to themselves in respect of every document they use: who wrote it, for whom, and why? In the case of Greek tragedy and comedy, we usually know the answer to the first question, and we also know the answer to the third: the plays were composed with a view to being successful in a competition, before a small panel of judges whose identity was not known at the time of composition but was known at the time of performance, and who thus, even if their actual voting was secret, in practice (as many remarks in comedy make clear2) were very liable to be influenced by the attitude of the mass of the audience. And as to the remaining question- ‘for whom ‘-we know the answer to that too. Essentially the plays were written to be seen, to be heard, to be judged, to be appreciated by those who sat in the Theatre of Dionysus when they were first staged. There might be other audiences later. Plays seem often to have been reperformed at deme theatres in various parts of Attica. They had begun to be performed abroad, too, as early as Aeschylus ‘ time, and convincing arguments have recently been advanced3 that in the second half of the fifth century there were frequent productions of Athenian tragedy at least in southern Italy.

Abstract In the major cities of the ancient Mediterranean world, much of life unfolded in public settings-theaters, amphitheaters, hippodromes, odeums, stadiums, and circuses. Whereas large installations like stadi ums and circuses tended to be limited to cult centers (Greece) and large cities (Rome), theaters and odeums (small covered lecture halls) were much more common.Depending on the size of the building, crowds could vary considerably: several hundred in small theaters; several thou sand in larger theaters, such as the one at Pompeii; perhaps 50,000 in the Roman Colosseum and the stadium of Herodes Atticus at Athens; and as many as 250,000 (almost one-quarter of the city’s population) for chariot races in the Circus Maximus at Rome.