CHAPTER 17
Ethnicity and the Stage
Efi Papadodima
Greeks and Barbarians on Stage
Fifth-century Attic drama, and especially tragedy, frequently represents the interaction
among characters of different ethnic backgrounds or offers more theoretical insights
into the theme of ethnic differentiation. The major historical and intellectual develop-
ments of the fifth century—notably, the Persian Wars; the growth of Athenian democracy
and hegemony; the Peloponnesian War; and the flourishing of ethnography, historiog-
raphy, medicine, and philosophy—fostered the interest in issues of identity, including
ethnicity. The Persian Wars, in particular, gave rise to an idea of Hellenic solidarity
(even if for a short space), while the Peloponnesian War reinforced the reality of Hel-
lenic fragmentation—a theme dominant in Euripides and Aristophanes. The inter-ethnic
and intra-Hellenic confrontations as represented in drama are often intertwined in com-
plex ways. Athenian drama’s social function (including the interrelationship between the
civic and the theatrical and the extent to which tragedy should be regarded as a specif-
ically Athenian or democratic art form), itself a controversial question (Goldhill 1990:
97–129, butcontrasee Ober and Strauss 1990: 237–70; Cartledge 1997: 3–35; Easter-
ling 1997: 21–37; Griffin 1998: 39–61; Carter 2007), is very pertinent to the formation
and discussion of identity, and would certainly call for closer inspection.
Numerous extant and fragmentary plays, particularly by Aeschylus and Euripides, bring
on stage mythical (or historical) barbarians, who are usually in conflict with Greeks, even
though their particular statuses vary (e.g., monarchs–enemies, slaves or victims of war,
mythical heroes), as does their precise relation to the Hellenic world. The spectrum
includes Easterners, Northerners, semi-barbarians, and figures who pose as represen-
tatives of a specific ethnic group, such as the supposedly Lydian Dionysus inBacchants
and Aeschylus’Edonians. In Aristophanic comedy in particular, the boundaries between
A Companion to Ethnicity in the Ancient Mediterranean, First Edition. Edited by Jeremy McInerney.
© 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.