Chapter 13 Tragedy, Tribes and the Civic Landscape in Classical Athens
In: Politeia and KoinōniaSearch for other papers by François de Polignac in
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Abstract
The Athenian tragedy played an important part in the reshaping and reinterpretation of local cults and religious traditions and thus contributed to the history and transformation of the religious landscape of Attica. But there were other perceptions of space, other kinds of landscapes in the experience of the Athenian citizen. One of them, the civic organization of Attica, was immediately present and played a decisive role in the dramatic festivals: the Cleisthenic tribes provided the institutional frame of the dramatic competition. Obviously, tragedy and tribes are two different realities, belonging to two different registers. Does this imply that they were totally unrelated in the awareness that the Athenian citizen had of his polis? This paper examines some of the articulations which, around some important cult places, can be identified between the civic space set up by Cleisthenes and the space staged by the tragedy. It aims to show how political reflection and dramatic representation played with categories already present in the religious tradition and reinvested them in their own way to create a unified landscape where the different components of civic experience and their proper spaces could come together.