Antiquity in the New Millennium lecture: 'Demagogues and Masses in Athens and the Athenian Theatre'

Dr. Robert Holschuh Simmons will present "Demagogues and Masses in Athens and the Athenian Theatre: Class Anxiety and Apprehensions About Insurgencies in Euripides’ Tragedies."

About the lecture

A new type of politician, the “demagogue,” arose in Athens, Greece, in 429 BCE, in the wake of the death of Pericles, Athens’ long-time most influential politician. Demagogues’ great political innovation was to make the masses of common Athenians their political bloc, unsettling a system based previously on direct elite access to the most recognized statesmen. Contemporaneous critics and historiographers focused their response on mockery and malignation of the demagogues. The arts, however, provided a more nuanced perspective. Certain Athenian tragic plays of the time reveal that it was not just these novel leaders who were sources of preoccupation at the time, but also the previous governing class, whose failings left openings for demagogues to seize power, and the masses of common Athenians whom they led. Examination of language choices and plot elements in tragedies written by Euripides at key points in the demagogues’ main period of influence reveals the extent to which anxieties about the rise of demagogic leadership, the faltering of established leadership that allowed demagoguery to rise, and the power of the mobilized masses had become engrained in classical Athens. It also reveals some of the limits of the sensitive populism that appears consistently in Euripides’ work; the appreciation that his works show for the value and pluck of common Athenians of all sorts seems to diminish markedly when such people coordinate to contribute to revolutionary activities.