The aim of this treatise is to explain the singular fascination ancient Greek tragedians felt for the non-Greek, "barbaric" world. It sets Greek drama against the historical background of the Panhellenic wars with Persia and the establishment of an Athenian empire based on democracy and slavery. The plays are also set in the context of contemporary anthropology and political philosophy, thus revealing how the poets conceptualized the barbarian as the negative embodiment of Athenian civic ideals. By comparing the treatment ...
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The aim of this treatise is to explain the singular fascination ancient Greek tragedians felt for the non-Greek, "barbaric" world. It sets Greek drama against the historical background of the Panhellenic wars with Persia and the establishment of an Athenian empire based on democracy and slavery. The plays are also set in the context of contemporary anthropology and political philosophy, thus revealing how the poets conceptualized the barbarian as the negative embodiment of Athenian civic ideals. By comparing the treatment of foreigners in Homer and tragedy, the author explains how the new dimension which the idea of the barbarian brought to the Greek tragic theatre radically affected the poets' interpretation of myth and their evocation of the distant past. The dissertation out of which this book was developed won the Hellenic Foundation's prize for the best doctoral thesis in ancient Greek studies in the UK and Republic of Ireland, 1988.
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