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• Title:Theatre and autocracy in the ancient world / edited by Eric Csapo [and 6 others].
  
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• Variant Title:Theater and autocracy in the ancient world
  
• Other Contributors/Collections:Csapo, Eric, editor.
  
• Published/Created:Berlin : De Gruyter, 2022.
  ©2022
  

• Holdings

  Holdings Record Display

  • Location:KOERNER LIBRARY stacks (Floor 1)Where is this?
    
  • Call Number: PA3201 .T54 2022
    
  • Number of Items:1
    
  • Status:Available
    

   
• Library of Congress Subjects:Theater--Greece--History--To 1500.
  Theater--Political aspects--Greece.
  Theater--Rome--History--To 1500.
  Theater--Political aspects--Rome.
  
• Description:x, 280 pages : illustrations, plans ; 29 cm
  
• Summary:Why did ancient autocrats patronise theatre? How could ancient theatre - rightly supposed to be an artform that developed and flourished under democracy - serve their needs? Plato claimed that poets of tragic drama "drag states into tyranny and democracy". The word order is very deliberate: he goes on to say that tragic poets are honoured "especially by the tyrants, and secondly by the democracies" (Republic 568c). For more than forty years scholars have explored the political, ideological, structural and economic links between democracy and theatre in ancient Greece. By contrast, the links between autocracy and theatre are virtually ignored, despite the fact that for the first 200 years of theatre's existence more than a third of all theatre-states were autocratic. For the next 600 years, theatre flourished almost exclusively under autocratic regimes. The volume brings together experts in ancient theatre to undertake the first systematic study of the patterns of use made of the theatre by tyrants, regents, kings and emperors. Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World is the first comprehensive study of the historical circumstances and means by which autocrats turned a medium of mass communication into an instrument of mass control.
  
• Notes:Includes bibliographical references (pages 229-260) and indexes.
  
• ISBN:9783110795967 hardcover
  3110795965
  
• Contents:Theatre and Autocracy: A Paradox for Theatre History
  Part I: Theatre and Greek Autocrats
  1 Greek Theatre and Autocracy in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries
  2 Artists of Dionysus and Ptolemaic Rulers in Egypt and Cyprus
  3 The Autocratic Theatre of Hieron II
  4 Autocratic Rulers and Hellenistic Satyrplay
  Part II: Theatre and Roman Autocrats
  5 Greek Theatre in Roman Italy: From Elite to Autocratic Performances
  6 Drama and Power in Rome from Augustus to Marcus Aurelius (First-Second Centuries AD)
  7 Augustan Policy Towards the Greek Dramatic Festivals
  8 Theatres and Autocracy in the Roman Period: An Example in Microcosm
  9 The Portraits of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Menander in Roman Contexts: Evidence of the Reception of the Theatre Classics in Late Republican and Imperial Rome
  10 Theatre and Autocracy in the Greek World of the High Roman Empire
  Part III: Representations of Autocrats and Oligarchs in Drama
  11 Charms of Autocracy, Charms of Democracy: Euripides' Athenian Leaders in the Light of Civic Iconography
  12 Oligarchs in Greek Tragedy
  13 Fault on Both Sides: Constructive Destruction in Varius' Thyestes
  Bibliography
  General Index
  Index locorum
  List of Contributors.