MEDEA AND THE REFORMATION OF THE TRAGIC POLIS

In the period between the Solonic and the Kleisthenic political reform s, tragedy began to emerge, beginning with Thespis and finding full ex pression in Aeschylus. As hoplite-democracy expressed the power of pol itical legitimacy in unmistakable military victories over the Persians and in the creation of the Athenian Empire, Attic tragedy and its thr ee greatest exponents flourished. No ornament of a newly rich society, tragedy was a substantive part of the development of Athens. Tragedy was the school of Athenian democracy, training its citizens in emergin g forms of the political in an era of unprecedented change. Not only d id tragedy help to legitimate new forms of decision-making based on ne w political structures in the face of rapidly changing events, it alte red the Homeric warrior ethic to the needs of hoplite-democracy. More reliable and cooperative heroes were needed and in ever greater number s if Athens were to win and hold its wealth and power to say nothing o f its empire. Tragedy educated Athenians to the requirements of reconc iling the individual with the needs of the society, the hero with the army, and the household with the state. Euripides, who fully appreciat ed the possibilities which flowed from the resolution of age-old human dilemmas, including the expansion of freedom, feared that Athens woul d not continue to develop. He wished to alert Athenians to the need to reform the polis by expanding the freedom of its citizens. It was tim e to bring women into the political. It is no accident that the sixth century B.C. saw the rise of the drama or that its birthplace was the city-states of the Greeks. Like the formation of the city-state itself , like the expanding commercialism which accompanied such a formation, like democracy and free speech which resulted from it, the rise of th e theater was one symptom in a far reaching social changeover. It was part of the passage from tribal culture to political life.1