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Thebes in Fifth-century BCE Tragedies: Politics and Paideia
With Aeschylus setting the trend, Attic tragedies of the 5th century BCE tended to reflect the language of instruction, which concerned not only issues of teaching and learning, but was also a tool of political criticism. Tragedies accumulated mytho-historical models that were formed long before the tragedies themselves were created and were limited to popular stories, among which those of the royal house of Thebes played a special role. The reasons for this were not purely dramatic, but Thebes could also be exemplified through the intermediary of a triangular model: topography, politics, and paideia. The Theban mytho-historical tradition, imprinted in city names and landmarks and rooted in the Mycenaean past, was transformed during the Geometric and Archaic periods into a special type of urban educational space. Traces of this tradition are preserved in Pausanias and Attic tragedy, and can be distinguished through comparison with archaeological and topographical data. Thus, tragedies by Aeschylus (Seven Against Thebes) and Euripides (Phoenician Women, Heracles) considered in the context of literary tradition, enable us to address the question of when politics begins to influence mytho-history, or more precisely, when mytho-historical plot becomes suitable for political purposes. The line between mytho-history and politics is quite thin, just as mythos can influence politics, so politics can turn to modelling mythos for itself. Aeschylus’s Seven Against Thebes and Euripides’s Phoenician Women depict the political struggle involving Boeotian poleis during the Archaic period, while Euripides’s Heracles reflects the political background of the Peloponnesian War. Local mythical and historical topoi were intertwined with a wide range of political events, and employed by playwrights to instruct the audience.
