The Peloponnesian War affected how mass and elite interacted at Athens and how the public sphere worked there. The Athenians themselves thought in terms of two ruptures, one at the death of Perikles, one at the end of the war. But the degree of rupture in both cases has been exaggerated, and it is better to think in terms of how power was exercised. Here we see various ways in which the people’s control of the elite was strengthened during the war, and indeed the use of exile and atimia (disenfranchisement) as penalties fatally weakened Athens by causing factional strife. The Peloponnesian War concentrated the people inside Athens and the Long Walls and increased the number of spaces in which Athenians were mixed up with metics and enslaved people, enhancing the deep politicisation of Athenian culture, which affected the wealthy as well as the poor and promoted the hetaireiai and, eventually, concentration of political factions into particular spaces. War enhanced the Athenians’ emotional investment, and this came out in particular over the Sicilian Expedition. It was because war affected the Athenians in a variety of different ways, each with their own timescale, that the traumatic effects emerged only after fifteen years.

Mostly, Greek historians treat going to war as something that Greek states do, without there needing to be much account of why they do it. Different were epic wars – the Trojan War and then the Persian War – and Thucydides’ long treatment of the causes of the Peloponnesian War is a direct product of his insistence that this was the greatest war. What his account shows us is what he thought needed explanation, and it is as much his identification of factors as the scale of his discussion of causation that makes Thucydides’ account stand out. His is an account peculiar for the failure to point the finger at individual political leaders, something that elsewhere in his History Thucydides is not reluctant to do. Thucydides never asks whether different action by Athens might have avoided war, avoiding discussing either Athenian policies or politics. The reasons for that are best sought not in Thucydides’ politics, but in his determination that this should be seen as an epic war.

This chapter explores the ways in which the Athenian Empire influenced and was influenced by the Peloponnesian War. First, it investigates the ways in which the Athenians made use of allied military resources, arguing that there was no formal system which governed this practice. The Athenians drew on allied manpower when it was convenient to do so, perhaps for punitive reasons, and perhaps as a way of encouraging or allowing visible demonstrations of loyalty to the Empire. The impact of military service on allied communities is hard to reconstruct, but it is likely that it was very unevenly felt: some states might have had little or no active involvement in the war; some might have lost significant proportions of their (male, fighting-age) populations. The second part of the chapter explores Athenian representations of allied military service. For the most part, the Athenians consistently under-represent the contributions made by allied states, or by individual allies. However, some changes in this approach might be visible in the final phase of the war and should perhaps be connected with a wider shift in Athens’ style of imperial leadership, one which becomes based less on coercive force and more on cooperation and concession.

The pressure of war often drives change. This was no less true of the Peloponnesian War in its effect on constitutional thinking at the end of the fifth century. While Thucydides in his analysis of the Peloponnesian War suggests that it was differences between constitutional types that lay behind the conflict (democracy versus oligarchy), it was in fact the war that clarified these differences. Thus it was that ideas around democracy became more clearly defined. However, it was thinking about oligarchy which experienced the most radical changes. Earlier in the fifth century, oligarchy had been recognised as a constitutional form but had been fairly loosely defined. By the end of the war, however, some Athenians in particular, who wanted to effect regime change, played with ideas of oligarchy in a fairly imprecise way based on number, wealth or class. Initially, this lack of clarity worked in the favour of the reformers, but eventually it led to the downfall of both the oligarchies of 411 and 404/3. Nevertheless it was the war itself which ultimately forced the conceptual opposition between oligarchy and democracy, which Thucydides was then able to write retrospectively into his analysis of the Peloponnesian War.

Cicero and his brother, Quintus, went on a two-year study tour of Greece and Asia Minor, visiting major centers such as Athens and Delphi and seeking training from the leading teachers of rhetoric and philosophy. This enabled Cicero to rebuild his oratorical technique so that he could speak with less exertion. Upon his return, Cicero resumed his career at the bar and then stood for the office of quaestor. Duly elected, he was allotted a post in Sicily, where he served for a year. When he returned to Rome, he took his seat in the senate and continued pleading in the courts, mostly for unimportant clients, and publishing his speeches.

This chapter expands on and completes the analysis of Aristides’ political use of lyric. It argues that both Athens and Rome are depicted by the sophist through lyric and song imagery, and that these musical representations allow for a comparison between the two cities and how Aristides conceived of their role as imperial centres. Among other texts, a close reading of the celebration of past and present Athens in Or. 1 and that of imperial Rome in Or. 26 shows that the ways in which the two capitals ‘make music’ foreground some important similarities between their imperial politics. At the same time, Athenian and Roman ‘music’ point to the difference between Greek and Roman political cultures and approaches. Rather than indicating a critical attitude towards the current Empire, however, Aristides’ musical depiction of Athens and Rome is open to ambiguity and enables different co-existing interpretations, adding complexity and depth to our understanding of the political dimension of Aristides’ corpus.

This chapter discusses both the dramatic and the literary canons of Greek tragedy. First, I review the plays that entered the repertoire of ancient actors by focusing on the elements that they share. These include specific features, scenes and motifs, ranging from accessible Greek to large main roles, recognition and reunion scenes, mad heroes, the legends surrounding Dionysus and those related to Athens. Second, I discuss the scholarly activities that preserved most of the extant tragedies. My discussion spans from fourth-century Athens to the Byzantine period. Drawing from literary and papyrological sources, I identify the reasons underlying the literary selection of Greek tragedies: a narrow focus on the three canonical tragedians, generic definitions, considerations about specific authors and plays as well as pedagogical needs. Finally, I discuss the relationship between the two canons, arguing for their independence. They derive from two different kinds of selection, each driven by its own set of criteria.

The warfare of the Greek city states was limited by their means, lacking military academies, professional officers and standing forces. Small communities fought local wars with levies of citizens, often highly motivated, but precious to the polity, which could not be kept in the field for long. Fruits of victory were modest, and defeat could put the survival of the whole state at risk. Fortification as a passive defensive policy was essential. In offensive warfare, states and coalitions mostly pursued a strategy of opportunism, in which the desirable was subordinated to the attainable. Commanders typically tried to avoid decisive engagements due to the risks involved; they focused their attacks on exposed targets like farmland, small towns, isolated garrisons and unprepared enemy troops. They relied heavily on local dissenters and deserters to guide and facilitate operations. When wealthier states like Corinth, Athens and Syracuse found themselves able to invest in warfare, we clearly see their dissatisfaction with this strategic straitjacket. The rapid development of fleets, extensive fortification networks, standing corps of specialist troops and siege technology allowed these states to dominate their less fortunate neighbours. This gives the lie to old notions that the Greeks preferred their wars to be limited in scope. A state that had much more than the others could disrupt the entire system, as Macedon would eventually show.

Classical Greece was a high period for city networks, with trading centers dotting the map of the Aegean Sea like “frogs around a marsh” in the words of Aristotle. These were strange times, where Spartans annually declared war on their slaves. Where the Athenian reformer Solon banned the export of vital foodstuffs – on penalty of death – while at the same time laying the groundwork for unprecedented political pluralism. Yet we see an uncommon iteration of city networking that was well ahead of its time. Embedded in the lives of these cities was an early echo of the modern. Athens was the alpha city in a polis system of autonomous city-states that, at its height, spanned from Spain to Africa to the Black Sea with a total population of thirty million people. This was an incredible period of seafaring. Language, culture, aesthetics, and revolutionary political ideas flowed in the currents alongside goods and services in an elaborate trading network. Far from localized cultures of self-sufficiency, most Greek cities depended on trade for basics such as foodstuffs, but also for military, intellectual, and cultural production.

This chapter is focused on a battle in the Athenian law-court between two great orators. Aeschines was trained as a tragic actor who worked in a mask, and brought the skills of the stage to the democratic arena. He argued for making peace with the new rising imperial power, Macedon, and tried to persuade the jury to position themselves as authentic democrats. Demosthenes was a skilled writer who wrote speeches for others, and later learnt how to present himself as a public speaker. He won the debate for two reasons. He persuaded the jury to position themselves in nationalistic terms as Athenians, and he also persuaded them that he was sincere while his opponent was merely acting. The reputation of Demosthenes has undergone many changes, and it was only in the nineteenth century that he emerged as an archetypal democrat. In Demosthenes’ day the drive for sincerity was tied to a shift from communitarian thinking to a higher degree of individualism, in a political context where the city was losing its power of self-determination. I end by drawing on Peter Brook’s minimalist definition of theatre to create a definition of democracy.

Let us begin by looking at a tragedy that is largely choral. Aeschylus’ Persians was staged at the Great Dionysia in 472, only one year after the Battle of Salamis, where the Athenian fleet had defeated Xerxes’ armada. The Great King had invaded continental Greece, and on reaching Athens had set fire to the Acropolis and destroyed the temple of its tutelary deity Athena, the Old Parthenon. Aeschylus’ choregos was none other than Pericles. Here we follow the dramatic – and choral – unfolding of this tragedy whose action takes place in Susa, the capital of Persia.

Chapter one argues for the significance of visualized divine music by situating ancient viewers’ experience of representations of divine music within their ancient contexts, thereby establishing a well-defined space in which divine music could have been seen, imaginatively heard, and experienced. Laferrière takes as her focus a corpus of fourth-century BCE votive reliefs that depict Pan playing his syrinx and the Nymphs dancing; dedicated to these same gods, the reliefs were consistently deposited in cave shrines throughout Attica. Since the clear archaeological record allows for a reconstruction of the worshipper’s religious experience, Laferrière draws attention to the ways the reliefs provoked specific sensory experiences in the ancient worshippers. Within the cave shrines, worshippers could have gazed upon votive reliefs that were visually similar to the physical cave, so that the distinction between image and reality blurred and collapsed. As a result, these reliefs allowed for a fully embodied experience of the Nymphs: by imaginatively listening to the music that Pan plays, and perhaps even contributing their own music, worshippers are invited to join in the Nymphs’ dance.

The introduction establishes the characteristics of divine music. Noting the discrepancies between the visual and literary accounts of the gods and the variability in the instruments with which they choose to perform, Laferrière argues that the gods’ active use of their instruments lends a sonic quality to their representation. In demarcating divine music-making as distinct from human musical practices, she shows that these images require a correspondingly distinct mode of interpretation and analysis, since the scenes feature musical performances that are undertaken outside the human world.