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TREASON AND ATIMIA IN FIFTH-CENTURY ATHENS: THE EVIDENCE FROM TRAGEDY

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2026

Kevin Woram
Kevin Woram*
Affiliation:
Porter-Gaud School, USA
*
kww4eg@virginia.edu
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Abstract

This article traces how changes in the depiction of atimia (loss of honour/citizen rights) in Athenian tragedy provide crucial information for understanding how the actual punishment evolved in the fifth century. Scholarship on the term has long agreed that the archaic personal form of atimia differed from the legal version of the fourth century, but has failed to explain why and when that change occurred. The tragedians’ discussion of atimia reveals when the punishment took on its legal aspects and how its scope expanded after the restoration of democracy at Athens, when the Four Hundred were declared traitors and atimoi.

Keywords

atimiatragedyAeschylusSophoclesEuripidesprodosiaataphiareligiondishonourcitizenship

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Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 73 , Issue 1 , April 2026 , pp. 123 - 148
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Copyright
© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association

Introduction

In Greek city-states, atimia (literally, loss of honour/timē) was a punishment that deprived citizens of their rights of citizenship, either partially or entirely. The scholarship has focused primarily on understanding atimia through Athenian legal oratory of the fourth century,Footnote 1 but there have been comprehensive studies on atimia in Homer,Footnote 2 in inscriptions (Athenian and non-Athenian),Footnote 3 and during the Hellenistic and Roman periods.Footnote 4 New methods – sociological and behavioural – have also been employed to study atimia.Footnote 5 It is generally agreed that archaic atimia was more social than legal, particularly in consideration of the legal prominence that atimia gained in fourth-century Athens,Footnote 6 but the transition from one stage to the other has not been fully sketched out. Fourth-century atimia is relatively well documented in forensic speeches, but the term is not discussed in any such extant fifth-century speeches (of which there are very few). Indeed, there is relatively little evidence for atimia in the fifth century, apart from inscriptionsFootnote 7 and references in tragedy. The studies on atimia in the tragic context are few and seek to demonstrate continuity rather than change.Footnote 8 By contrast, this study contends that the evidence for atimia from tragedy details a development in the Athenian understanding of atimia from a predominantly social concept in the archaic period to both a social and legal concept in the fourth century.Footnote 9 Drama is a useful genre for understanding Athenian politics because tragedy – as well as comedyFootnote 10 – was a medium for political discourse, both shaping and being shaped by legal and political rhetoric of the time.Footnote 11 This study seeks to bring in the tragic evidence for dishonour/atimia to trace how and by when the city’s conception of the obligations of citizenship changed and to speculate about the historical context of these changes.Footnote 12 First, Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and The Eumenides present an earlier social form of atimia that lacks the legal components that were added by or in the fourth century but indeed appears somewhat earlier in Euripides’ Phoenician Women and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus.Footnote 13 Second, an association between atimia and treason (prodosia) in a (spurious) decree in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes indicates a moment on the path by which treason came to be punished with atimia. This passage, generally accepted as not the work of Aeschylus, should be dated to 410/9 bce, just before the restored democracy of Athens deemed members of the oligarchic Four Hundred traitors and atimoi. Lastly, the application of atimia to treason by the restored democracy occurred because of the religious nature of atimia, which is also evident in the use of atimia to punish those who fail to respect the status of successful supplicants, as depicted in Aeschylus’ Supplicants.

Exile, justice, and dishonour

The older, personal sense of atimia is often described from the perspective of the atimos, who usually uses the verb atimazō both to describe the act of dishonouring and to claim that he is being dishonoured unjustly. This act of dishonouring someone was a matter between the individual dishonouring and the person he dishonours: there was no set punishment such as a fine, exile, or a loss of rights (the last of which was impossible anyway in a world without polis-based citizenship).Footnote 14 Over time the legal sense of atimia, in which the atimos is given that status because of a decree or decision of a court or political body, developed and became distinct from the older sense. Consequently, atimoō/atimaō became the verb used to describe the procedure of declaring someone a political atimos.Footnote 15 An example of the use of the technical verb is in a fifth-century Athenian inscription forbidding the contravention of the new laws regarding Chalcis reintegrating into the Delian League.Footnote 16 The closely related phrase atimos einai also appears in this inscription, and in several others where the punishment of atimia was levied against those who failed to follow the inscriptions’ laws. These inscriptions always include a confiscation of property with a tenth set aside for the gods.Footnote 17 This type of atimia was automatic: no legal procedure is mentioned so, presumably, someone could be treated as an atimos simply for not adhering to these laws. By the fourth century, someone could also be declared an atimos by a decree or court decision. There were, according to a passage from Andocides’ On the Mysteries (399 bce), three different kinds of atimia.Footnote 18 The atimia for state debtors deprived them of their citizen rights, but this penalty could be lifted once their debts had been paid; if debts were left unpaid, the punishment passed on to their heirs. A second kind of atimia was ‘full dishonor’ (pantapasin atimia), which deprived atimoi of their citizen rights but did not include a fine or confiscation of property. This atimia was inflicted on those convicted of bribery, embezzlement, failure to fulfil military duties, maltreatment of parents, and perjuring themselves three times. Lastly, one could be punished with partial atimia, which restricted certain political rights based on the nature of the crime. For example, the soldiers – all, not just the hoplites – who stayed in Athens during the reign of the Four Hundred retained all their citizen rights except the ability to speak in the assemblyFootnote 19 and serve in the boulē.Footnote 20 There were also other crimes that merited atimia.Footnote 21 While the fourth-century Athenian atimia was systematized and distinct from informal dishonouring, in the Homeric evidence there was no such formal sense of atimia, so both atimazō and atimoō/atimaō were used in the poems to describe the act of an individual personally dishonouring someone.Footnote 22

Tragedy provides crucial information about the Athenian audiences’ understanding of the term, as its components and applications changed throughout the fifth century. The story of Polynices, the exiled son of Oedipus who returned with six Argive champions in a doomed attempt to take back Thebes,Footnote 23 illustrates the contrast between the earlier and later conceptions of atimia through the differences between the Aeschylean play and the later versions of the same story by Euripides and Sophocles. In Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (produced in 467 bce),Footnote 24 Polynices frames his conflict with Eteocles as a matter of personal honour, claiming that his exile is an unjust dishonour imposed by an unjust individual and that his march on the city is just (that is, not dishonourable). In the later Phoenician Women (411–409 bce)Footnote 25 by Euripides, Polynices walks through Thebes as an atimos and describes his punishment in terms of the particular citizen rights that he has lost. Conversely, Oedipus – in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (written in 406 bce, produced in 401 bce)Footnote 26 – dismisses Polynices’ claim that he has been unjustly made an atimos by insisting that Polynices is himself guilty of unjust dishonouring, for he exiled Oedipus, thereby mistreating his own father (a crime that was punished with legal atimia by the early fourth century).

In Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, Polynices’ understanding of his exile from Thebes is explained through a messenger speech (for which Eteocles is the audience): Polynices believes that he has been personally dishonoured. The speech occurs in a moment of great dramatic tension in the middle of the play, after the messenger has just described the first six attackers and Eteocles has selected the defenders to match them. The messenger then comes to the seventh, Polynices, and describes his goals in attacking the city:

σοὶ ξυμφέρϵσθαι καὶ κτανὼν θανϵῖν πέλας,
ἢ ζῶντ’, ἀτιμαστῆρα τὼς ἀνδρηλάτην,
φυγῇ τὸν αὐτὸν τόνδϵ τϵίσασθαι τρόπον.
τοιαῦτ’ ἀυτϵῖ καὶ θϵοὺς γϵνϵθλίους
καλϵῖ πατρῴας γῆς ἐποπτῆρας λιτῶν
τῶν ὧν γϵνέσθαι πάγχυ Πολυνϵίκους βία.
ἔχϵι δὲ καινοπηγὲς ϵὔκυκλον σάκος
διπλοῦν τϵ σῆμα προσμϵμηχανημένον.
χρυσήλατον γὰρ ἄνδρα τϵυχηστὴν ἰδϵῖν
ἄγϵι γυνή τις σωφρόνως ἡγουμένη.
Δίκη δ’ ἄρ’ ϵἶναί φησιν, ὡς τὰ γράμματα
λέγϵι· “Κατάξω δ’ ἄνδρα τόνδϵ καὶ πόλιν
ἕξϵι πατρῴαν δωμάτων τ’ ἐπιστροφάς”
(Aesch. Sept. 630–48/652).
To join battle with you, kill you, and die beside you,
or else, if you survive, to punish you, as the one who dishonoured him
and drove him out into exile, in the same manner.
Such is the cry of powerful Polynices, and he is calling on
the ancestral gods of his fatherland to look favourably on
his prayers in every way.
He has a new-fashioned, well-rounded shield, and a
double device cunningly worked upon it:
one beholds a man-at-arms, made of gold,
led by a woman who walks ahead of him with modest gait.
and as the writing proclaims, she says that she is Justice,
‘And I will bring this man back from exile, and he will
possess his father’s city and returns to his halls.’Footnote 27

The speech distills for the audience the conflict of the play, which is centred on honour. Polynices calls Eteocles a dishonourer (ἀτιμαστήρ) who drove Polynices out of Thebes for, as the story goes, Eteocles refused to give up his rule over Thebes even though the two had agreed to alternate years of kingship. The noun ἀτιμαστήρ that the messenger uses comes from the non-technical verb atimazō, so Polynices is not saying that he has been legally deemed an atimos, but that he has been treated in a dishonourable way. Polynices’ perspective (as related by the messenger) views his unjust exile as a consequence and embodiment of his state of personal dishonour.

The nature of the atimia of Aeschylus’ Polynices is broad, because it resembles the personal dishonouring seen in Homer. In contrast, Polynices in the later fifth-century plays – Euripides’ Phoenician Women and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus – makes specific reference to the rights that he is losing and the crimes of which he has been (wrongfully) convicted. In Euripides’ Phoenician Women, at the point when the conflict between the brothers is deemed irreconcilable, Polynices states that he is suffering explicitly as (or as if) an atimos (ὡς ἄτιμος … πάσχων; Eur. Phoen. 627). The bonds that would make him a citizen in fifth-century Athens are weakening: his freeborn status, his rightful parentage through his father, his participation in the military training for youths,Footnote 28 his ancestral home, and his participation in religious rituals.Footnote 29 Euripides, thus, remodels the atimia of the mythological Homeric world into what had become the political atimia of his time.

The same distinction appears in Sophocles’ depiction of Polynices in Oedipus at Colonus, where the character Polynices appears, towards the end of the play, to supplicate Oedipus and ask for his help in retaking Thebes after having been unjustly expelled from the city. Oedipus responds that he himself is the one who has been utterly dishonoured (exatimazō), for it was Polynices himself, when ruling as king in Thebes, who drove Oedipus out. Polynices has acted dishonourably by failing to take care of his parent, unlike Antigone and Ismene. That act of dishonour was certainly punishable by atimia in Athens by 399 bce, according to Andocides’ speech, but the date of that penalty should now be moved earlier, to the date of this play.Footnote 30 The argument between father and son pits the older conception of atimia that belongs to the Homeric world (Polynices dishonoured and driven out of Thebes)Footnote 31 against (one element of) the legal atimia that was developing in Athens (Polynices’ abuse of Oedipus).Footnote 32 The process resembles the dokimasia procedure, as known in the fourth century, where those selected for office were screened to determine whether they were in good standing.Footnote 33 The fourth of six questions asked at that time was whether a person had mistreated his parents. If the person could not disprove an allegation that he had mistreated his parents, he was denied the right to hold office and declared atimos.Footnote 34 It seems, then, that Sophocles refers to the fact that the Athenians punished those who abused their parents with atimia. Euripides and Sophocles, thus, are building on the story of Aeschylus while incorporating into their tragedies aspects of the more legal version of atimia in existence at the end of the fifth century.

The differences between Homeric and later atimia in Athens can also be traced in Aeschylus’ Eumenides (458 bce),Footnote 35 where Athena placates the Furies by assuring them that they will neither feel compelled to leave Attica because of dishonour nor have to remain there dishonoured. Whether or not Athenian atimoi were often sent into exile in the archaic period is a matter of debate, but in the fifth century atimoi were allowed to remain in Attica despite their lack of citizen rights.Footnote 36 In Eumenides, the Furies claim to be atimos (in the singular) because the verdict for Orestes’ trial has denied them their right to exact vengeance for matricide.Footnote 37 In answer, Athena assures them that she will arrange that the Furies will not be atimos or suffer atimia, but, instead, will be given new powers and this gift will restore their honour.Footnote 38 The Furies were indignant because, although allowed to reside in Athens, they would have been, as they say, atimos in that land (ἐν γᾷ τᾷδϵ), and dwelling there (κατά τϵ γᾶν οἰκϵῖν) would have brought them great pain (odunē; Aesch. Eum. 794–6, 880–3).Footnote 39 Athena, presuming that the Furies would then feel the need to leave Attica, states that she does not want the Furies to be atimos and wandering as exiles.Footnote 40 There appear, therefore, to be two options. One can be atimos in exile. Or, one can be atimos in the place that has inflicted the dishonour, but suffer great pain. Aeschylus is juxtaposing the two consequences of atimia: the older, exile, which Athena assumes the Furies will be driven to by their shame; and the newer, which they do not want, of staying but feeling dishonoured and in pain.Footnote 41 He is thus highlighting the position of Athenian atimoi in the middle of the fifth century: allowed to stay, but feeling the pain of dishonour. In the end, the Furies regain their honour through the granting of new powers, and become the Eumenides, just as atimoi in the fourth century could regain their citizen rights. The Furies’ understanding of atimia reflects the older understanding; Athena imagines, and sets out to cure, the new reality.

The character Polynices in the plays of Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, as well as the Furies in Aeschylus’ Eumenides, juxtapose the earlier and later senses of atimia. The three tragedians distinguish the personal and general dishonour felt by earlier atimoi, who may have been pressured to go into exile, from the atimoi of the fifth century, who, by mid-century, were permitted to stay in Athens but with a reduced and dishonoured citizenship status enforced by the polis, and who, by the end of the century, were deprived of certain specific rights and liable to penalty if they did not support their parents.

Treachery and burial

The story of Polynices, Eteocles, and the house of Laius presents another dramatic dilemma: whether the body of Polynices should receive burial. This question drives the plots, entirely or partially, of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus (406/401 bce) and Antigone (442/441 bce).Footnote 42 The dilemma is also pertinent to an unresolved Athenian legal question about prodosia (treason/treachery), namely, whether prodosia merited not just ataphia (a refusal of burial) but also atimia and, if so, when this development took place.Footnote 43 On the one hand, it seems logical that treason would incur atimia, since, in the fourth century, shirking one’s duty to fight for the city merited atimia, as Andocides and Lycurgus make clear, and treachery, betraying the city, was a more serious crime.Footnote 44 On the other hand, treason was punished with the death penalty,Footnote 45 so there was seemingly no point in declaring a dead person atimos. Hansen argued for an early connection between treachery and atimia,Footnote 46 but in the sixth and most of the fifth centuries, treachery was not punished with atimia,Footnote 47 and direct evidence comes either from a late-fifth-century decree of questionable authenticity found in Plutarch,Footnote 48 or, after that, only from the decree against subversion of the democracy from 337/6 bce. The punishment for treason seems to have expanded over time: for most of the fifth century, treason was punished with ataphia and/or confiscation of property, but not, it appears, atimia.Footnote 49 By the late fourth century, however, an equivalence was drawn between prodosia and failing to fight for the city with both meriting atimia, while the punishment of hereditary atimia was imposed on those who tried to overthrow the democracy after Chaeronea.Footnote 50 The evidence from a passage interpolatedFootnote 51 into Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes regarding treachery, atimia, and ataphia suggests an intermediate phase in this convergence of crimes and penalties, precisely because the definition of prodosia would very soon include overthrowing the democracy. I would place this expansion of the penalties for prodosia to 410/9 bce, when the Four Hundred were retroactively (I argue) charged with treason for attempting to overthrow the democracy and appealing for Spartan aid to do so, and punished with ataphia and atimia. Moreover, the growing conceptual connection between treason and atimia, as seen in the dramatic tension regarding Polynices’ burial, was encouraged by the fact that the ataphia associated with treason was considered a punishment for assaulting a city’s relationship with the divine, and atimia was, fundamentally, a religious punishment that banned a man from the city’s religious rituals.

The passage from Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes is a decree of the Cadmeans, communicated by a herald at the conclusion of the play,Footnote 52 which states that Eteocles is to be buried with full honours while Polynices is to be deprived of the honour of proper burial.

δοκοῦντα καὶ δόξαντ’ ἀπαγγέλλϵιν μϵ χρὴ
δήμου προβούλοις τῆσδϵ Καδμϵίας πόλϵως·
Ἐτϵοκλέα μὲν τόνδ’ ἐπ’ ϵὐνοίᾳ χθονὸς
θάπτϵιν ἔδοξϵ γῆς φίλαις κατασκαφαῖς·
στέγων γὰρ ἐχθροὺς θάνατον ϵἵλϵτ’ ἐν πόλϵι,
ἱϵρῶν πατρῴων δ’ ὅσιος ὢν μομφῆς ἄτϵρ
τέθνηκϵν οὗπϵρ τοῖς νέοις θνῄσκϵιν καλόν.
οὕτω μὲν ἀμφὶ τοῦδ’ ἐπέσταλται λέγϵιν·
τούτου δ’ ἀδϵλφὸν τόνδϵ Πολυνϵίκους νϵκρὸν
ἔξω βαλϵῖν ἄθαπτον, ἁρπαγὴν κυσίν,
ὡς ὄντ’ ἀναστατῆρα Καδμϵίων χθονός,
ϵἰ μὴ θϵῶν τις ἐμποδὼν ἔστη δορὶ
τῷ τοῦδ’. ἄγος δὲ καὶ θανὼν κϵκτήσϵται
θϵῶν πατρῴων, οὓς ἀτιμάσας ὅδϵ
στράτϵυμ’ ἐπακτὸν ἐμβαλὼν ᾕρϵι πόλιν.
οὕτω πϵτηνῶν τόνδ’ ὑπ’ οἰωνῶν δοκϵῖ
ταφέντ’ ἀτίμως τοὐπιτίμιον λαβϵῖν,
καὶ μήθ’ ὁμαρτϵῖν τυμβοχόα χϵιρώματα
μήτ’ ὀξυμόλποις προσσέβϵιν οἰμώγμασιν,
ἄτιμον ϵἶναι δ’ ἐκφορᾶς φίλων ὕπο.
τοιαῦτ’ ἔδοξϵ τῷδϵ Καδμϵίων τέλϵι.
(Aesch. Sept. 1011–31).
I must announce what seemed right and what was agreed upon
by the committee of the people of this Cadmean city:
it was decreed out of goodwill to bury this man Eteocles
in his own grave in the earth,
for, repelling the enemies, he chose death in the city,
being devout to the sanctuaries of his fatherland and free from reproach.
He died just as it is noble for young men to die.
Thus it was commanded to speak about him:
yet, about this one, this dead brother Polynices,
it was decreed to throw him out unburied, as prey for dogs,
as a destroyer of the Cadmeian land,
if one of the gods had not, in opposition, stood against him
with his brother’s spear. In death, too, he will be held as a stain
on the sanctuaries of his fatherland; having dishonoured them,
he took this foreign army to attack the city.
Thus it is decreed that this man pay the price,
buried without honour beneath the winged birds,
and no one will attend him with the placing of earth on the tomb,
nor will anyone perform rituals with harsh-crying laments;
he will be deprived of the honour of being carried away by loved ones.
Such things were decreed for this man by the government of the Cadmeians.

The passage does not describe Polynices outright as an atimos: there is no atimos einai or atimos estō phrase, as found in the epigraphical decrees.Footnote 53 It does, however, signal the concept of atimia by employing the term three times in different forms: the verbal atimazō, the adverbial atimōs, and the adjectival atimos. Polynices seems to be dishonoured by the punishment (ataphia) decreed by the Cadmean people for betraying his city by trying to take it with a foreign army. The passage, thus, associates atimia, prodosia, and ataphia.

The treatment of Polynices in the play strongly resembles the fate of some members of the Four Hundred, who seized power in the early summer of 411 bce and were subsequently prosecuted by either the moderate oligarchy of the Five Thousand or, more likely, the subsequent restored democracy. One of the first signal events in the complex history of the downfall of the Four Hundred was the murder and later condemnation of one of its members, Phrynichus. Opposition to the Four Hundred had been growing, so Phrynichus went to Sparta to sue for peace and was assassinated in Athens upon his return. After Phrynichus’ death in the summer of 411 bce, the Four Hundred were ousted and replaced by the Five Thousand.Footnote 54 Phrynichus was, by March/April 409 bce,Footnote 55 convicted posthumously of prodosia for going to the Spartans and trying to make peace, which, as earlier traitors who had negotiated with the Persians discovered, was deemed equivalent to betraying the city of Athens to the enemy.Footnote 56 And as in the case of previous traitors, he too was denied burial in Athens, so his bones were removed from Attica.Footnote 57 A passage from Plutarch’s Lives of the Ten Orators contains the summary of the (undated) court judgement (katadikē) of two other members of the Four Hundred, Archeptolemos and Antiphon:Footnote 58

Τούτῳ ὑπογέγραπται τῷ δόγματι ἡ καταδίκη. Προδοσίας ὦφλον Ἀρχϵπτόλϵμος Ἱπποδάμου Ἀγρύληθϵν παρών, Ἀντιφῶν Σοφίλου Ῥαμνούσιος παρών· τούτοιν ἐτιμήθη τοῖς ἕνδϵκα παραδοθῆναι καὶ τὰ χρήματα δημόσια ϵἶναι καὶ τῆς θϵοῦ τὸ ἐπιδέκατον, καὶ τὼ οἰκία κατασκάψαι αὐτῶν καὶ ὅρους θϵῖναι τοῖν οἰκοπέδοιν, ἐπιγράψαντας “Ἀρχϵπτολέμου καὶ Ἀντιφῶντος τοῖν προδόντοιν.” τὼ δὲ δημάρχω ἀποφῆναι τὴν οὐσίαν αὐτοῖν καὶ μὴ ἐξϵῖναι θάψαι Ἀρχϵπτόλϵμον καὶ Ἀντιφῶντα Ἀθήνησι, μηδ᾿ ὅσης Ἀθηναῖοι κρατοῦσι· καὶ ἄτιμον ϵἶναι Ἀρχϵπτόλϵμον καὶ Ἀντιφῶντα καὶ γένος τὸ ἐκ τούτοιν, καὶ νόθους καὶ γνησίους· καὶ ἐάν τις ποιήσηταί τινα τῶν ἐξ Ἀρχϵπτολέμου καὶ Ἀντιφῶντος, ἄτιμος ἔστω ὁ ποιησάμϵνος. ταῦτα δὲ γράψαι ἐν στήλῃ χαλκῇ· καὶ ᾗπϵρ ἀνάκϵιται τὰ ψηφίσματα τὰ πϵρὶ Φρυνίχου, καὶ τοῦτο θέσθαι. (Pl. X Orat. 834a–b).

Under this enactment the judgment is written: Archeptolemus, son of Hippodamus, of Agryle, and Antiphon, son of Sophilus, of Rhamnous, both being present, were found guilty of treason. The sentence passed upon them was that they be handed over to the Eleven for execution, that their belongings be confiscated and ten per cent thereof be given to the Goddess, that their houses be torn down and boundary-stones be set up on their sites with the inscription “Land of Archeptolemus and Antiphon the two traitors”; and that the two demarchs make a declaration of their property; and that it be forbidden to bury Archeptolemus and Antiphon at Athens or in any place ruled by the Athenians; and that Archeptolemus and Antiphon be made atimos, and also their descendants legitimate and illegitimate; and that if anyone shall adopt any descendant of Archeptolemus or Antiphon, he who so adopts shall be atimos; and that this be inscribed on a bronze tablet, which shall be set up where the decrees relating to Phrynichus are placed.

Archeptolemus and Antiphon received the punishments associated with treason (execution and ataphia), but also atimia and the punishments associated with atimia (confiscation of property, tithing of the property, and passing on of atimia to descendants). The provision about placing the inscribed version of the judgement next to the decrees condemning Phrynichus was meant, presumably, to depict, visually at least, these three members of the Four Hundred as co-conspirators to the same treachery. Indeed, Thucydides treats the deeds of Antiphon and Phrynichus as equivalent (although not referring to them as traitors).Footnote 59 These three members of the Four Hundred may have been prosecuted and convicted by the Five Thousand, who would have been looking to establish themselves as a more moderate government, but the timing and the precise punishments are not clear and the Five Thousand’s time in power was short, less than a year.

It may instead have been the restored democracy that took on the task of prosecution and conviction. In May/June 410 bce (after the battle of Cyzicus) the democrats took back power from the Five Thousand and it is more likely that it was the democrats who eventually enshrined into law the idea that subversion of the democracy was a form of treachery and that both crimes merited atimia. For this restored democratic government passed the decree of Demophantos in late 410 or early 409 bce, a decree that declared that all Athenians had to swear that those who try to set up tyranny, overthrow the democracy, or betray the city, could be killed with impunity, and to which Athenians were to swear by the Dionysia of 409 bce.Footnote 60 In addition, their property was to be confiscated and tithed, as happened to the property of atimoi, but those convicted of these criminal acts were not declared atimoi, presumably because they were already dead. It seems that only a law later than the Decree of Demophantos and its swearing at the Dionysia of 409 bce punished traitors and subverters of the democracy with atimia, and this penalty was then applied only retroactively to the Four Hundred, as the summary of the judgement regarding Archeptolemos and Antiphon, all in the past tense, reads. Indeed, both Aristophanes and Andocides state that the Four Hundred, in general, were made atimoi, but in works of 405 and 399 bce respectively.Footnote 61 As an inscription makes clear, Phrynichus’ non-Athenian murderers were also made citizens for their actions in March/April of 409 bce.Footnote 62 This act foreshadows the restored democracy deciding, some time after the decree of Demophantos and the early spring of 409, that atimia (deprivation of citizen rights) should apply to traitors and subverters of the democracy. Indeed, they may have justified this additional penalty by ‘finding’ a Solonian law that made setting up a tyranny, equated in the decree of Demophantos with treason and subversion of the democracy, punishable by atimia.Footnote 63 The judgement (katadikē) preserved in Plutarch thus reflects a legal association between overthrowing the democracy, treason, and atimia that developed over time from the murder of Phrynichus through to the restoration of the democracy, and the penalty of atimia may have become official law later in 409 bce, to be retroactively applied to executed members of the Four Hundred.

The crimes of and punishments for Phrynichus, Antiphon, and Archeptolemus greatly resemble the deeds of Polynices and their consequences, according to the decree of the Cadmeans. The three members of the Four Hundred sought to ‘betray’ Athens to Sparta and they seized the governance of the city, while Polynices attacked Thebes with a foreign army and sought to oust his brother as king. The three members of the Four Hundred were denied burial in Athens, and Polynices too was refused a proper burial (and whatever burial he got was presumably outside the city).Footnote 64 Furthermore, this pseudo-epigraphic, interpolated passage from Aeschylus’ Seven suggests that Polynices was considered dishonoured, if not an outright atimos as an Athenian audience might have understood it. The deeds of Phrynichus, Antiphon, and Archeptolemos furnished examples of behaviour that the restored democracy in 409 bce deemed both the crime of treachery and a subversion of the city, which came (perhaps later in 409 bce) to be punished with atimia. The same seems to be occurring in the decree from the Seven with Polynices’ attempt to take the kingship of Thebes with a foreign army. The decree deems Polynices dishonoured (described in the language of atimia) and denies him a proper burial. The passage from Aeschylus’ Seven therefore seems to reflect the fact that the Athenians were deciding, in 409 bce, to apply atimia to traitors in addition to ataphia, and suggests the tantalizing possibility that the interpolated passage was added for a reperformance of the play at the Dionysia of either 410 or 409 bce.Footnote 65

Indeed, the association of prodosia with subversion of the city as well as atimia only strengthened over time.Footnote 66 In the latter half of the fourth century, prodosia could be prosecuted by the recently standardized procedure of eisangelia (often translated as impeachment) and, according to a speech by Hyperides,Footnote 67 now covered not just treachery and subversion of the democracy, but also the foundation of conspiratorial clubs and deception of the people by an orator. In 337/6 bce, the so-called Areopagus Decree, passed after the battle of Chaeronea, echoed the Demophantos decree in declaring that anyone who attempted to overthrow the democracy or aided in the establishment of tyranny could be killed with impunity.Footnote 68 Furthermore, any member of the Areopagus who met after the democracy had been overthrown would be punished with atimia along with his children. Failure to uphold one’s military duty, a crime that made one atimos (by 399 bce at the latest),Footnote 69 was (by a decree of c. 330 bce) equated with treachery in Athens, as Lycurgus suggests in his speech against Leocrates, who was charged by Lycurgus with treachery for abandoning Athens after the battle of Chaeronea.Footnote 70 Aeschines links the same Leocrates whom Lycurgus was targeting in his speech with another person found guilty of prodosia for ‘fleeing’ to Samos.Footnote 71 As Lycurgus explains, the Athenians came to understand shirking military obligations as the same as treachery, because abandoning the city was the equivalent of turning it over to the enemy.Footnote 72 Treachery and atimia were thus brought even closer together over time as crimes that had merited atimia came to be considered forms of treachery.

The changes to laws on treachery in 409 bce also marked a point when the atimia that was associated with families of traitors changed from social dishonour to legal atimia. The long-standing punishment of ataphia had always affected the family of the person who committed the crime. As tragedy suggests, in the fifth century ataphia imposed a sort of social dishonour on the family of the traitor, because, in being denied the right to perform burial rites, the family, as well as the traitor, suffered a form of dishonour. In the passage from the Seven Against Thebes, Polynices’ burial is described as dishonourable both for him and for those dear to him: he is to pay the price of being buried without honour (ταφέντ’ ἀτίμως τοὐπιτίμιον λαβϵῖν) and he is to be deprived of the honour of being carried out by loved ones (ἄτιμον ϵἶναι δ’ ἐκφορᾶς φίλων ὕπο; Aesch. Sept. 1027, 1030).Footnote 73 Numerous other characters in tragedy describe not being able to bury loved ones as a sort of dishonour (atimia).Footnote 74 It seems, however, that the social dishonour associated with ataphia became legal atimia when the Athenians punished members of the Four Hundred. In the case of the oligarch Phrynichus, those who attempted to bury him were to receive the same punishment of being forbidden burial in Attica.Footnote 75 The same involvement of family also starts at this point to appear with atimia: in the Plutarch decree, the atimia of Archeptolemos and Antiphon also passed on to their children.Footnote 76 In the fourth century, we can observe more cases of atimia being extended to families: the families of state-debtors and those who attempted to install a tyranny or overthrow the democracy shared in the atimia as well. The punishment of ataphia had always brought social dishonour (atimos and atimazō) to the punished and his family, but after 410/9 bce the atimia applied to the families of certain atimoi became legal as well.

It made sense to the Athenians to declare traitors atimoi after treachery was made equivalent to overthrowing the government of the city: the Athenians understood their city’s constitution to be a covenant with the divine and atimia was, fundamentally, a removal of an individual from the religious community. Atimia almost always came with a tithing of the property of the atimos and it prevented the atimos from exercising his citizenship by denying him access to sacred spaces.Footnote 77 This connection is evident too in the Cadmean decree of Aeschylus’ Seven, which distinguishes Eteocles and Polynices by the piety of the former towards, and the sacrilege of the latter against, the city sanctuaries. Eteocles has acted hosios to the hiera of his community,Footnote 78 while Polynices has stood against the gods and stained and dishonoured the sanctuaries of his fatherland (agos theōn patrōōn; Aesch. Sept. 1016, 1024). Participation in the hosia and hiera, as Josine Blok has argued, was the expression of Athenian citizens’ membership in the covenant between the citizen-body and the divine.Footnote 79 This distinction, moreover, corresponds with the fact that, at Athens, ataphia was used as a punishment not just for those who committed treason but also for those who committed sacrilegious acts. According to Xenophon, writing about a speech given in 406/5 bce, the crimes of treason and temple-robbing could be tried under the same law (τόνδϵ τὸν νόμον), and required the punishments of ataphia and confiscation of the offender’s property.Footnote 80 Diodorus Siculus claimed that the law against temple-robbing and the corresponding punishment of ataphia were common to all Greeks.Footnote 81 Proper burial was a manifestation of the dead person’s good relationship to both the city and its gods.Footnote 82 Similarly, Lycurgus accuses Leocrates of attempting to destroy the temples and sacred areas of Athens through his betrayal of Athens.Footnote 83 The passage from the Seven and the speech of Lycurgus suggest that treachery and sacrilege were considered not just parallel, but even conjoined, because betraying one’s city was an attack on the city’s relationship with the divine. The penalties of both ataphia and atimia for treachery officially severed the convicted individual’s relationship with the city’s gods. Thus atimia needed to be imposed even on a dead man, and the property of Archeptolemos and Antiphon was not just confiscated, but tithed to the gods.

The spurious passage in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes suggests that the Athenians’ association of treachery with both atimia and subversion of the city/democracy seen in the late- fourth-century Areopagus decree and in Lycurgus’ speech of c. 330 bce occurred much earlier and has prompted another look here at the events of 411–409 bce. This association took root after the restoration of the democracy in 410 while the Athenians were grappling with the aftermath of the successful overthrow of their government by elements from within, men who had also attempted to enlist help from enemies. The nature of both treachery and its proper punishment were reconsidered, and a stage in this process is reflected in the treatment of Polynices by various tragedians. They depicted the anguish experienced by communities and family members and the feelings and reality of being personally and politically dishonoured (atimos). The passage from the Seven was probably added to the play soon after the restoration of the democracy, but certainly before atimia was extended to traitors and those who tried to subvert the democracy. And this association certainly preceded the expansion of the list of crimes that were considered treachery by the last third of the fourth century, when treachery came to include cowardice, that is, abandoning one’s city.

The protection of supplicants and atimia

Tragedy presents another example in which atimia manifests a community’s decision to recognize an individual’s transgression against the gods by punishing that individual socially and legally. In Aeschylus’ Suppliants, the threat of atimia is used to protect the new status of the supplicants, the Danaids, who become metics (although the word itself is not used).Footnote 84 The tragedies affirm later evidence from Aeschines that failure to uphold the agreements made for or with supplicants was punished with atimia. Indeed, the language used by Aeschylus resembles atimia clauses in Attic decrees, but it predates the earliest such clause by twenty years. This early association of atimia with enforcing religious norms helps to explain how the punishment came to apply to traitors in Athens, who, by 409 bce, were treated as those who sought to overthrow the government of the city, a type of religious as well as political crime.

In Aeschylus’ Suppliants, a decree is recited midway through the play and serves as a turning point in the drama. Danaus and his daughters, who have come to Argos begging for protection and integration into the community, successfully make their case to King Pelasgus and the Argive people. Danaus explains how the Argives voted to provide refuge to him and his daughters and make them resident foreigners:

ἔδοξϵν Ἀργϵίοισιν οὐ διχορρόπως,
ἀλλ’ ὥστ’ ἀνηβῆσαί μϵ γηραιᾷ φρϵνί·
πανδημίᾳ γὰρ χϵρσὶ δϵξιωνύμοις
ἔφριξϵν αἰθὴρ τόνδϵ κραινόντων λόγον·
ἡμᾶς μϵτοικϵῖν τῆσδϵ γῆς ἐλϵυθέρους
κἀρρυσιάστους ξύν τ’ ἀσυλίᾳ βροτῶν·
καὶ μήτ’ ἐνοίκων μήτ’ ἐπηλύδων τινὰ
ἄγϵιν· ἐὰν δὲ προστιθῇ τὸ καρτϵρόν,
τὸν μὴ βοηθήσαντα τῶνδϵ γαμόρων
ἄτιμον ϵἶναι ξὺν φυγῇ δημηλάτῳ.
(Aesch. Supp. 605–14).
It was decreed by the Argives, not in a wavering manner,
but in such a way that it will rejuvenate me in my old mind.
For the air bristled with the right hands
of those who unanimously passed the following decree,
that we are to live together in this land as free people,
not to be taken by men, and with asylum.
Also, no one, neither inhabitant nor foreigner, is to take
us as slaves. If someone should use physical force against us,
the person among the landowners who does not provide help to us
will be declared atimos with public banishment.

Any Argive who fails to protect the Danaids against those bringing physical force against them (that is, seizing them as slaves) will be punished with atimia. In other words, the Danaids have a new status within the Argive community and the Argives have obligations to protect them as successful suppliants. Danaus employs the languages of Attic decrees by beginning with ἔδοξϵν, using indirect statements for the stipulations of the decree, and ending with the punishment for not following the decree.Footnote 85 Furthermore, as Danaus goes on to explain, the Argive King Pelasgus convinced the Argives to vote for the proposal by warning them of potential divine wrath from Zeus, protector of suppliants, and this warning won over the assembly. This decree from Aeschylus provides the earliest direct reference to legal atimia (in its adjectival form) in Athens.

The decree marks a turning point in the play, and the threat of the punishment of atimia, along with the disfavour of Zeus should the Argives abandon the Danaids, drives the rest of the plot. After the decree has been passed, the parties have new relationships to one another, and these relationships are defined by obligations enforced by Zeus as protector of suppliants. Pelasgus and his Argives transition from proxenoi (sponsors of foreigners) to prostates (sponsors of resident aliens/metics);Footnote 86 the Argives must provide housing to the Danaids, now metics;Footnote 87 and the Egyptians who come later are hostile xenoi, and indeed xenoi who do not treat the gods of Argos properly.Footnote 88 Through the religious process of supplication, the duties of citizenship at Argos are expanded, and atimia is employed to ensure that citizens adhere to those alterations.

The scene, although set in the mythical past, resembles the process of deliberation, and resulting decrees, of Athens.Footnote 89 The decree was certainly meant to remind Athenians of the, perhaps recent, creation of the metic status at Athens, seeming to praise the Athenians for their open and dynamic society.Footnote 90 That a real situation is reflected, that Athenians who refused to protect the status of successful supplicants were punished with atimia, is made more likely by the religious nature of atimia emphasized in both the historical evidence and the reasoning of the Argives.Footnote 91 Supplication – itself a religious action – integrates the Danaids into both the Argive polity and the Argive religious community, while failure to protect members of those communities merits both atimia and a response from the divine. The decree from Suppliants predates evidence from a fourth-century speech of Aeschines, where he seems to suggest that Timarchus should be punished with atimia for not respecting a pledge he made to a supplicant.Footnote 92 The reckoning of political change and employment of atimia to enforce new laws seen in Aeschylus’ Suppliants, therefore, resembles, provides precedent, and helps to explain the events of 410/9 bce and the tragic decree added to Aeschylus’ Seven. In the wake of the ousting of the Four Hundred, the Athenians determined that betraying the city was equivalent to trying to overturn its constitution (a covenant with the gods) and, therefore, required a punishment of atimia, even though the condemned would be put to death, to signal that the city acknowledged the condemned’s transgression against the gods.

Conclusion

The evidence from tragedy suggests that over the fifth century atimia became more polis-centred in nature: atimoi went from social exiles to politically disenfranchized resident citizens of Athens. The character of Polynices in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes (467 bce) embodies the earlier understanding of an atimos, one whose social dishonouring forces him into exile. Indeed, the Aeschylean Polynices may have reminded the Athenians of Themistocles, who had recently been ostracized for, allegedly, conspiring with the Persians, for an ostrakon has been found that declares the nominee for ostracism atimos (the nominee’s name is lost).Footnote 93 Soon after, Aeschylus’ Suppliants (462 bce)Footnote 94 presents a more legal atimia that is imposed (by vote) for not protecting new members of a community. In 458 bce, the situation of the Furies at the end Aeschylus’ Eumenides highlights the tension between the older social form of atimia, the shame of which would drive someone into exile, and the later political form, under which a person could remain atimos, if unhappy, in the city. Sophocles’ Antigone associates atimia with ataphia and treachery, but only in the earlier social sense: in 442/1 bce, atimia was not yet used as a punishment for treachery. After the overthrow of the Four Hundred in 411 bce and the restoration of democracy in 410 bce, we can see that atimia was imposed on traitors posthumously as an acknowledgement by the Athenians of the traitor’s transgression against the gods. Euripides’ Phoenissae (411–409 bce), in Polynices’ description of his dishonouring, underscores the specific rights that he lost as an atimos (like the members of the Four Hundred),Footnote 95 and the interpolated decree at the end of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes associates treachery and ataphia with atimōs behaviour. Lastly, in Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, two types of atimia are represented: the social dishonour of Polynices and the quasi-legal atimia that Oedipus charges Polynices with for not taking care of his father.Footnote 96 Atimia on the dramatic stage thus reflected, if only indirectly, the political events at Athens and the gradual change in atimia from a social to a legal punishment. In these many ways, examples from tragedy allow us to re-examine key questions about the development of atimia in the fifth century. The multiple versions of Polynices’ story distinguish the archaic, personal form of atimia from the classical, communal, and eventually legal version, when atimoi were no longer expected to leave Attica. The interpolated decree about Polynices’ burial from the Seven Against Thebes associates treachery with atimia without making an explicit link, thus illuminating an intermediate step in the development of laws on treason. This association was facilitated by the Athenians’ understanding that treachery required a religious punishment (ataphia had always been a penalty) and that the adding of atimia was, fundamentally, an announcement of the separation of the individual from the religious life of a community. Lastly, the evidence from Aeschylus’ Suppliants affirms the Athenian understanding that atimia was meant as a mortal punishment for a crime against the gods, as in the cases both of those who did not protect the status of suppliants and of those who sought to betray the city.

Abbreviations

  1. IG Various editors (1873–) Inscriptiones Graecae (Berlin).

  2. ML R. Meiggs and D. M. Lewis (1969) A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B. C. (Oxford: Clarendon Press).

  3. RO P. J. Rhodes and R. Osborne (eds.) (2003) Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404–323 B.C. (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

  4. OR R. Osborne and P. J. Rhodes (eds.) (2017) Greek Historical Inscriptions 478–404 BC (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

  5. SEG Various editors (1923–) Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum (Leiden), and – https://referenceworks.brillonline.com/browse/supplementum-epigraphicumgraecum

  6. TLG Various editors (1831–65) Thesaurus Linguae Graecae, Paris.

Footnotes

*

This piece owes much to the guidance of Elizabeth Meyer, who shepherded its development from a faint idea to its current form. J. E. Lendon also made significant contributions in the editing and refinement processes. An earlier version of this piece was presented to the UVA Karsh Institute’s Paradoxes of Ancient Citizenship workshop and there it received invaluable feedback from the audience. Thanks are also due to the editors and copyeditor of Greece & Rome as well as the anonymous reviewer who provided meticulous and insightful feedback.

References

1 H. Swoboda, ‘Arthmios von Zeleia’, Archaeologisch-epigraphische Mitteilungen 16 (1893), 49–68; H. Swoboda, Beiträge zur griechischen Rechtsgeschichte (Weimar, 1905); M. H. Hansen, Apagoge, Endeixis and Ephegesis Against Kakourgoi, Atimoi and Pheugontes: A Study in the Athenian Administration of Justice in the Fourth Century B.C. (Odense, 1976); S. Vleminck, ‘La valeur de ἀτιμία dans le droit grec ancien’, Les Études Classiques 49 (1981), 251–65; R. W. Wallace, ‘Unconvicted or Potential “Atimoi” in Ancient Athens’, Dike 1 (1998), 63–78; V. Hunter, ‘Policing Public Debtors in Classical Athens’, Phoenix 54 (2000), 21–38; M. Youni, ‘The Different Categories of Unpunished Killing and the Term ἄτιμος in Ancient Greek Law’, in E. Cantarella and G. Thür (eds.), Symposion 1997. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Cologne; Weimar; Vienna, 2001), 117–37; E. Poddighe, ‘Ateniesi infami (atimoi) ed ex Ateniesi senza i requisiti (apepsephismenoi). Nuove osservazioni in margine al fr. 29 Jensen di Iperide sulle diverse forme di esclusione dal corpo civico di Atene’, Annali della Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia dell’Università di Cagliari 61 (2006), 5–24; D. Kamen, Status in Classical Athens (Princeton, 2013), 75–81; S. Dmitriev, ‘Athenian Atimia and Legislation Against Tyranny and Subversion,’ CQ 65 (2015), 35–50; M. Youni, ‘Atimia in Classical Athens: What the Sources Say’, Dike 22 (2019a), 361–78; M. Youni, ‘Outlawry in Classical Athens: Nothing to Do with Atimia’, in G. Thür, U. Yiftach-Firanko, and R. Zelnick-Abramovitz (eds.), Symposion 2017. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Vienna, 2019b), 137–56; C. Joyce, ‘Atimia and Outlawry in Archaic and Classical Greece’, Polis: The Journal of the Society for Greek Political Thought 35 (2018), 33–60; L. Rocchi, ‘Atimia: Dishonour, Disfranchisement, and Civic Disability in Archaic and Classical Athens’ (Unpublished) PhD Thesis. University of Edinburgh (2023); V. Hunter, ‘Institutionalizing Dishonour in Plato’s Laws’, CQ 61 (2011), 134–42, discusses atimia in Plato. B. Manville, ‘Solon’s Laws of Stasis and atimia in Archaic Athens’, TAPA 110 (1980), 213–21, explores atimia in the archaic period. E. van’t Wout, ‘Neglected Evidence for the Nature of atimia: Agora P 17615 and DTA 107’, ZPE 176 (2011), 126–34, examines appearances of the word atimia in ostraka from Athens.

2 A Maffi, ‘Ἀτιμάζϵιν e φϵύγϵιν nei poemi omerici’, in P. Dimakis (ed.), Symposion 1979. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Vienna, 1983), 251–60.

3 J. M. Rainer, ‘Über die Atimie in den griechischen Inschriften’, ZPE 64 (1986), 163–72; E. van’t Wout, ‘From Oath-Swearing to Entrenchment Clause: The Introduction of Atimia-Terminology in Legal Inscriptions’, in A. P. M. H. Lardinois, J. Blok, and M.D. Poel (eds.), Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy, and Religion (Leiden; Boston, 2011), 143–60; K. Woram, ‘Archaic and Classical Atimia: Citizenship, Religious Exclusion, and Pollution’, TAPA 152 (2022), 303–44.

4 A. Dimopolou-Piliouni, ‘Ἀποξϵνοῦσθαι: Ἀτιμία in Roman Times?’, in T. Gerhard (ed.), Symposion 2009: Vorträge zur griechischen und hellenistischen Rechtsgeschichte (Vienna, 2010), 223–40, reviews the evidence for atimia in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. E. Poddighe, ‘L’ ἀτιμία nel διάγραμμα di Cirene: la definizione della cittadinanza tra morale e diritto alla fine del IV secolo a.C’, Aevum 75 (2001), 37–55, looks at atimia in the Ptolemaic constitution for Cyrene.

5 For example, in the most recent comprehensive survey of the subject, Rocchi (n. 1) has applied sociological approaches and behavioural science to the topic of atimia, arguing for an inclusive non-zero-sum conception of timē in ancient Greece.

6 Maffi (n. 2); Joyce (n. 1), 40–53. Rocchi (n. 1), 60–83. There were laws on atimia that were attributed to Solon. They punished with atimia those who altered laws on homicide (Dem. 21.113; 23.62) and those who attempted to install a tyranny ([Arist.] Ath. Pol. 16.10): P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (Oxford, 1981), 220–3. They also punished with atimia those who refused to take a side in times of stasis: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 8.5; D. F. Leão and P. J. Rhodes, The Laws of Solon: A New Edition with Introduction, Translation and Commentary (London; New York, 2016), 59–66). Many of the supposedly Solonian laws, however, were actually more recent laws that the Athenians attributed to their archaic lawgivers when they revised their laws from 410–399 bce: Leão and Rhodes (n. 6), 1–9.

7 Rainer (n. 3); van’t Wout (n. 3); Woram (n. 3); Rocchi (n. 1), 84–106.

8 For example, Rocchi (n. 1) does not mention tragedy or comedy once. Van’t Wout (n. 3) and Youni (n. 1), 363–4, discuss atimia in the Oresteia (discussed on pages 10–11 below), but only as part of wider surveys. I know of no other treatments of atimia in tragedy.

9 Maffi (n. 2); Joyce (n. 1), 40–3; Youni (n. 1, 2019a), 361; Rocchi (n. 1), 57–84.

10 V. Wohl, ‘Comedy and Athenian Law’, in M. Revermann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Comedy (Cambridge, 2014), 322–5, discusses how comedy and legal rhetoric in Athens shaped one another. For example, Lys. 1 draws on the trope of the ignorant cuckold from comedy, and Aristophanes’ Wasps includes a trial of a dog for stealing a piece of cheese (Arist. Vesp. 760–1000). As Wohl claims, comedy and the law courts shared a similar function: they both used the conflict (agōn) between two parties and the judgement of the dēmos (the audience or jury) to render a just verdict, fictional or not, that reinforced the power of Athenian legal and political institutions.

11 J. Ober and B. Strauss, ‘Drama, Political Rhetoric, and the Discourse of Athenian Democracy’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 237–70. At the same time, playwrights had to be wary of whether their plays commented directly on topics too sensitive for the public: the playwright Phrynichus was fined 1,000 drachmas for reminding the Athenians of the fall of Miletus to the Persians (Hdt. 6.21.2). On Aeschylus and Athenian politics: R. W. Wallace, ‘Democracy’s Age of Bronze: Aeschylus’s Plays and Athenian History, 508/7–454 bce’, in P. Burian and J. Bromber (eds.), A Companion to Aeschylus (Hoboken, 2023), 16–27; Sophocles and Athenian politics: R. Osborne, ‘Sophocles and Contemporary Politics’, in K. Ormand (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Newark, 2012), 270–86; Sophocles and Athenian law: E. M. Harris, ‘Sophocles and Athenian Law’, in K. Ormand (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Newark, 2012), 287–300; Euripides and his tragedies as a medium for political discourse: V. Wohl, Euripides and the Politics of Form (Princeton, 2015).

12 This paper touches on only a handful of instances of atimia in Greek tragedy. A TLG search reveals that ατιμ- appears in tragedy 107 times total: in Aeschylus forty-eight times; Sophocles thirty-three times; Euripides twenty six times. ητιμ- appears five times, only in Euripides. This study will examine the fourteen mentions that I find most significant.

13 The social and interpersonal aspects of atimia persisted even as atimia took on defined legal and political penalties: Joyce (n. 1), 34–9; Youni (n. 1, 2019a). Indeed, both aspects could be referred to even in the same speech, as Rocchi (n. 1), 67–9, explains in the case of Dem. 26.

14 The older personal sense of atimia appears in Homer, Hesiod, the Theognidea, and Tyrtaeus: Rocchi (n. 1), 60–7.

15 On this distinction, see Youni (n. 1, 2019a, in her words, moral judgement vs. technical term); Rocchi (n. 1), 72–84; L. Rocchi, ‘From (Apt) Contempt to (Legal) Dishonor: Two Kinds of Contempt and the Penalty of Atimia’, Emotion Review 15 (2023), 200–6, in her words, apt contempt vs. legal dishonour.

16 IG I3 40.4–10, 32–6 (446/5 bce).

17 Woram (n. 3), 318–28.

18 Andoc. 1.73–6. For a brief survey of atimia in the fourth century, see Youni (n. 1, 2019a), 368–74.

19 Aeschines describes a process called the dokimasia rhētorōn in which a speaker in the assembly could be accused of committing acts that merited atimia and, thus, prohibited the speaker from addressing the assembly (Aeschin. In Tim. 1.27–30). D. M. Macdonald, ‘The Athenian Procedure of dokimasia of Orators’, in R. W. Wallace and M. Gagarin (eds.), Symposion 2001. Vorträge zur griechischen und hellinistischen Rechtsgeschichte, Evanston, Illinois 5–8 September 2001 (Vienna, 2005), 79–87, argues that the dokimasia rhētorōn was meant to prevent unqualified people from advising the dēmos, suggesting that the procedure probably required the accuser to swear to bring a case against the accused in due time. For, as Macdonald contends, if there had been no requirement that the accuser initiate a trial, every politician would have used the procedure to silence his opponents, thereby halting the entire deliberative process. The accused, if guilty, would have incurred automatic atimia, but would not have been formally declared atimos by a court until the trial.

20 Andoc. 1.75.

21 Hansen (n. 1), 54–98.

22 Rocchi (n. 1), 72–3.

23 Tragedians often set their plays in Thebes, a dystopic polis that affirmed an idealistic conception of Athens: F. I. Zeitlin, ‘Thebes: Theater of Self and Society in Athenian Drama’, in J. J. Winkler and F. I. Zeitlin (eds.), Nothing to Do with Dionysos? Athenian Drama in Its Social Context (Princeton, 1990), 130–67.

24 Date is known from the hypothesis on a medieval manuscript: A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes; The Suppliants; Prometheus Bound (Cambridge, 2008), 139.

25 Date range argued by D. J. Mastronarde, Phoenissae (Leipzig, 1994), 11–14, based on scholiastic evidence.

26 Written date argued by G. Guidorizzi, G. Avezzù, and G. Cerri, Edipo a Colono (Milan, 2008), xiii, based on internal evidence, and production date is certain.

27 Translation by Sommerstein (n. 24), modified.

28 Mastronarde (n. 25), 328 (commenting on the phrase ἥλικές θ᾽ οὑμοί).

29 Eur. Phoen. 626–32. The text of Euripides’ Phoenician Women is much debated because many passages are claimed as interpolations: these lines (626–32), which have been so claimed, are defended by Mastronarde (n. 25), 273. On interpolations in the text in general, see Mastronarde (n. 25), 39–49. Euripides is probably responding to Aeschylus’ characterization of Polynices, for Euripides alludes to Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes by commenting, through the character Eteocles, on the length of Aeschylus’ description of the seven attackers in the Seven Against Thebes: Euripides’ Eteocles declares that it would be a waste of time to describe the attackers at each gate: Eur. Phoen. 751–2; I. Torrance, Aeschylus: Seven Against Thebes (London; New York, 2007), 118; Mastronarde (n. 25), 360–1. For other allusions in Euripides’ Phoenician Women to Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes, see Mastronarde (n. 25), 342, 360, 363, 364, 370, 383, 385, 457, 459, 469.

30 See above, n. 18. There are laws against maltreating parents that are attributed to Solon: Plut. Sol. 22.1,4; Diog. Laert. 1.55; D. Phillips, The Law of Ancient Athens (Ann Arbor, 2013), 207–8; Leão and Rhodes (n. 6), 92–7), but their validity will not be explored here.

31 Like Euripides, Sophocles also seems to be responding to the Aeschylean version of the story, because he uses the same atypical list of Argive champions. Sophocles makes a direct allusion to Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes by having Polynices include among the list of seven Argive heroes Eteocles, who only appears in Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes and Euripides’ Suppliants: Soph. OC 1315; Aesch. Sept. 457–60; Eur. Supp. 873–4; J. Beer, Sophocles and the Tragedy of Athenian Democracy (Westport, 2004), 162–3. Like Euripides, Sophocles thus signals that he is engaging with the work of Aeschylus.

32 According to Xenophon, Socrates warned his son Lamprocles not to disregard his parents or he would be dishonoured (ἀτιμάζϵιν) by society (Xen. Mem. 2.2.14). He prefaces his warning by stating that those who do not honour their parents risk upsetting the divine. Similarly, Hesiod describes how Zeus will punish the current generation of iron for their sins, including children dishonouring (ἀτιμάω) their parents (Hes. Op. 185).

33 [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 55.3.

34 Andoc. 1.74; Lys. 31.29; Pl. Leg. 881b–d; cf. B. Keim, ‘Lysias and the Rhetoric of Citizen Honour’, in J. Filonik, B. Griffith-Williams, and J. Kucharski (eds.), The Making of Identities in Athenian Oratory (London: 2019), 102–11. Maltreating one’s parents was also one of the accusations that could be levied against a speaker in the dokimasia rhētorōn. See note 19.

35 Date is certain; see A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylean Tragedy, 2nd edn (London, 2010), 121.

36 For those who argue that archaic atimia entailed exile, see Swoboda (n. 1, 1893), 58; A. C. Scafuro, ‘Ἀτιμία’, in R. S. Bagnall, K. Brodersen, C. B. Champion, A. Erskine, and S. R. Huebner (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Ancient History (Oxford, 2013), 923. For the opposite opinion, see Wallace (n. 1); Joyce (n. 1), 40–53; Youni (n. 1, 2001); (n. 1, 2019a), 368–74; (n. 1, 2019b). Joyce (n. 1), 53–9, demonstrates that exile was not a component of atimia in the fifth and fourth centuries.

37 Aesch. Eum. 778–81. Van’t Wout (n. 3), 152–5, in an article on atimia clauses in inscriptions, compares the language used to describe dishonouring in epigraphic sources with a few passages, including this one, from Aeschylus’ Eumenides.

38 Youni (n. 1, 2019a), 363–6.

39 Aesch. Eum. 870–5.

40 Ibid. 882–3.

41 Andocides (in 399 bce) states that some of those who had opposed the regime of Cleisthenes in 509/8 bce were allowed to remain in Athens as atimoi, perhaps a contrast with earlier treatment of atimoi (Andoc. 1.106), but whether that was a historical obfuscation is debatable. Writing in the fourth century, Isocrates explicitly contrasts atimia with exile, stating that the former was worse than the latter (Isoc. 16.47).

42 For Soph. OC, see above, n. 26; for Antigone, the date is highly certain, see M. Griffith, Sophocles: Antigone (Cambridge, 1999), 1–2. The matter also structures the plot of Euripides’ Suppliants, the date of which is estimated to be in the 420s bce by D. Kovacs, Euripides: Suppliant Women; Electra; Heracles (Cambridge, 1998), 3.

43 On prodosia, see Phillips (n. 30), 463–507.

44 Andoc. 1.74; Lycurg. Leoc. 1.76. In archaic Sparta not fighting in battle brought personal dishonour on a person, as seen in a fragment of Tyrtaeus (fr. 10 West), which is quoted by Lycurgus (Lycurg. Leoc. 1.107). Rocchi (n. 1), 66–7, argues that the atimia in Tyrtaeus is not a specific legal penalty.

45 The first trial for treachery of which later Athenians knew was of Hipparchus, son of Charinus, in the fifth century for aiding the Persians. He was sentenced to death: Lycurg. Leoc. 117; [Arist.] Ath Pol. 22; Plut. Nic. 11; D. M. MacDowell, The Law in Classical Athens (Ithaca, 1978), 177; Phillips (n. 30), 470–1. Supposedly, too, a member of the boulē (named either Lycidas or Krysilus) was killed for trying to propose to the Athenians the peace terms of the Persians in 480 bce: Hdt.9.4–5; Lycurg. Leoc. 122; Dem. 18.204; Phillips (n. 30), 471–2. After Hipparchus, Themistocles was first ostracized and then declared a traitor by the Athenians, also for aiding the Persians. He was denied burial within Attica: Thuc. 1.135.2–136.1, 1.138.6; Idomeneus, FGrHist 338 F 1; Plut. Them. 23.1, 4, 6; 25.3; Phillips (n. 30), 473–4.

46 Hansen (n. 1), 71–4; Woram (n. 3), 138.

47 See above, n. 44.

48 This decree may be a forgery, but that does not mean that the content of the decree is historically inaccurate (see n. 58, below).

49 Dio Chrys. Or. 31.85; Thuc. 1.138.6 (Themistocles).

50 Lycurg. Leoc. 1.52–4; IG II3 1 320.20–1.

51 The passage (lines 1011–31), along with the rest of the play’s ending, is, based on the sudden addition of the characters Antigone and Ismene, generally agreed not to be the work of Aeschylus: Sommerstein (n. 35), 90–5. The inclusion of Antigone suggests that the scene was added after Sophocles’ play of the same name, produced in 442/1 bce, made the character so popular: Griffith (n. 42), 1–2. Some have suggested that the passage was added by Aeschylus’ son, Euphorion, because the language resembles that of Prometheus Bound, a tragedy probably written by Euphorion: M. L. West, ‘Iliad and Aethiopis on the Stage: Aeschylus and Son’, CQ 50 (2000), 351–2; Sommerstein (n. 35), 95, n. 23. Torrance (n. 29), 109, suggests that the addition could have come much later, at the end of the fourth century bce.

52 In contrast, in Sophocles’ Antigone, the decree is laid down by Creon himself, not the people of Thebes (Soph. Ant. 21–38).

53 Woram (n. 3), 318–28.

54 In late 411 bce, the more moderate oligarchs plotted to oust the Four Hundred because the government was overreaching its power and the Athenian fleet in Samos had declared against the Four Hundred. The moderates met in the theatre of Dionysus in Mounychia, marched on the city with a hoplite force, compelled the Four Hundred to give up power, and then voted in the Pnyx for the government of the Five Thousand. For a full timeline of events, see D. Teegarden, ‘The Oath of Demophantos, Revolutionary Mobilization, and the Preservation of the Athenian Democracy’, Hesperia 81 (2012), 435–46.

55 IG I3 102.

56 MacDowell (n. 45), 177–8. Thuc. 8.90–2 mentions Phrynichus’ negotiations with the Spartans while Lys. 13.71–4 only mentions Phrynichus’ involvement with the Four Hundred. Lycurg. Leoc. 112–15, although writing later, does mention treachery. See note 45 for those who were declared traitors for negotiating with the Persians.

57 Lycurg. Leoc. 112–15; Thuc. 8.90–2; IG I3 102.

58 Text and adapted translation from H. N. Fowler, Plutarch: Moralia Volume X (Cambridge, 1936). The text is somewhat problematic because the legal formulae do not resemble examples known from other legal documents. Harris suggests other reasons why the document may be a forgery: E. M. Harris, ‘The Work of Craterus and the Documents in the Attic Orators and in the “Lives of the Ten Orators”’, Klio 103 (2021), 465–75. The content of the decree, nevertheless, could be accurate and reflect how Antiphon and Archeptolemus were punished.

59 Thuc. 8.68.

60 Andoc. 1.96–8; D. M. MacDowell, Andocides: On the Mysteries (Oxford, 1962), 135; MacDowell (n. 45) 175–6, 178; Phillips (n. 30), 479–80. The text of the document is possibly a forgery: Harris (n. 58): 484, n. 76. The substance of the decree, however, is probably accurate based on statements by Hyperides, Lycurgus, and Demosthenes about decrees against those trying to subvert the democracy (Hyp. 4.7–8; Lycurg. Leoc. 1.124–7; Dem. 20.159). According to the text of the decree, the Athenians had to swear to it before the City Dionysia in the spring of 409, when, in further recognition of the restored government, the assassins of Phrynichus were honoured (IG I3 102.12–14).

61 Arist. Fr. 687–99; K. Dover, Aristophanes: Frogs (London, 1993), 73; Andoc. 1.80.

62 IG I3 102; Lys. 13.70–2.

63 Thucydides states that the democratic faction, when preparing to take back the city, believed that the Four Hundred had overthrown the ancestral constitution and that they, the democrats, were restoring it (Thuc. 876.6; see also [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 29.3). According to Plutarch and [Aristotle], Solon crafted laws that imposed atimia on those who tried to establish a tyranny at Athens: [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 8.4, 16.10; Plut. Sol. 19.4; Rhodes (n. 6), 156, 220–2; Phillips (n. 30), 467. These laws were probably not Solonian, for there is no record of Pisistratus being declared atimos.

64 Pausanias (9.18.3) describes the tomb to Eteocles and Polynices as lying outside of Thebes.

65 Shortly after Aeschylus’ death c. 456 bce, the Athenians passed a law allowing anyone to reproduce a play of Aeschylus at the City Dionysia: Quint. Inst. 10.1.66; D. Kovacs, ‘Text and Transmission’, in J. Gregory (ed.), A Companion to Greek Tragedy (Hoboken, 2005), 380–1. The setting would have been ideal for reminding the Athenians of the overthrow of the Four Hundred, for the future Five Thousand had met at the Theatre of Dionysus to plan their coup (Thuc. 8.93–4). A performance in 410 or 409 bce would therefore have been particularly poignant. The City Dionysia was soon after associated with the restored democracy: see above, note 60.

66 In a speech from 388 bce, Lysias 28.11 likens treachery to overthrowing the city when he alleges that the general Ergocles, who had let the fleet of Athens fall into ruin while extorting the Athenian allies, betrayed the city of Athens and was, therefore, the sort of person who would set up an oligarchy in place of a democracy.

67 Hyp. 4.7–8; Phillips (n. 30), 480–1.

68 IG II3 1 320.20–1; [Arist.] Ath.Pol. 16.10.

69 Andoc. 1.74; Lycurg. Leoc. 76. Andocides lists four specific crimes related to military duties that were punished with atimia: abandoning one’s position in battle (lipotaxia), not appearing for muster (astrateia), cowardice (deleia), and – for trierarchs – holding a ship from battle (anaumachia). On the distinctions among these crimes, see D. Hamel, ‘Coming to Terms with λιποτάξιον’, GRBS 39 (1998), 361–405.

70 ἔτι δὲ ὁ δῆμος δϵινὸν ἡγησάμϵνος ϵἶναι τὸ γιγνόμϵνον ἐψηφίσατο ἐνόχους ϵἶναι τῇ προδοσίᾳ τοὺς φϵύγοντας τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος κίνδυνον, ἀξίους ϵἶναι νομίζων τῆς ἐσχάτης τιμωρίας (‘Yet the people, judging this to be terrible, decreed that those fleeing their fatherland were guilty of treason, considering them worthy of extreme punishment [i.e., death],’ Lycurg. Leoc. 53).

71 Aesch. 3.252.

72 Lycurg. Leoc. 147; Phillips (n. 30), 492–5.

73 This description of ataphia in [Aeschylus] also resembles the pleas of the Plataeans who, after the capture of their city in the Peloponnesian War, request that the Spartans not dishonour those who died at Plataea in the Persian Wars and were buried there (Thuc. 3.58.5).

74 In Sophocles’ Electra, the titular character claims that Agamemnon’s improper burial renders him dishonoured and that her inability to mourn for him makes her dishonoured (Soph. El. 444, 1214, 1427). The play was performed for the first time some time between 409 and 405 bce: F. Dunn, ‘Electra’, in K. Ormand (ed.), A Companion to Sophocles (Newark, 2012), 107. In Sophocles’ Antigone, the titular character states that Ismene is dishonouring (atimazō) the gods for not allowing Antigone to bury Polynices, and Ismene states that Antigone not allowing her to die for Polynices is an act of dishonour (atimazō: Soph. Ant. 79, 544; see also Soph. Ant. 1069). In Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus, Polynices, after he failed in his attempts to win Oedipus’ support to retake Thebes, then requests that his sisters not dishonour him by refusing him burial rites (Soph. OC. 1409). This may be a reference to the spurious decree of Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. Sophocles makes other references to the play (see above, n. 31). The latter half of Sophocles’ Ajax (line 866 to the end at 1420) is centred on a debate as to whether the titular character will receive burial, but the debate is not framed in terms of either honour or atimia. Instead, the opposing ideas of friend and enemy dominate the conversation around Ajax’s burial: P. Finglass, ‘Ajax’, in A. Markantonatos (ed.) Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (Leiden, 2012), 68–9. For example, Menelaus and Agamemnon declare Ajax to be an enemy of the Greek army, and Odysseus, once Ajax’s enemy, becomes his friend in the end by defending the right of Ajax’s family to bury him. Atimia is mentioned in the second half of the play only once, at line 1129, but in reference to Menelaus dishonouring the gods by forbidding Ajax’s burial. There is a parallel between the debate over burial in Ajax and the decree scene in Seven Against Thebes: Sophocles’ Menelaus, like the herald of [Aeschylus’] play, announces that Ajax cannot be buried according to Menelaus’ own decree and a decree of the army (Soph. Aj. 1050).

75 Lycurg. Leoc. 114.

76 Plut. X orat. 834a–b.

77 Woram (n. 3).

78 The phrasing resembles the later Oath of the Ephebes found in an inscription from Acharnai: ἀμυνῶ δὲ καὶ ὑπὲρ ἱϵρῶν καὶ ὁσίων (‘I will defend the hiera and hosia’, RO 88.8–9).

79 J. H. Blok, ‘Hosiê and Athenian Law from Solon to Lykourgos,’ in V. Azoulay and P. Ismard (eds.), Clisthène et Lycurgue d’Athènes: autour du politique dans la cité Classique (Paris, 2011), 233–54; J. H. Blok, ‘A “Covenant” between Gods and Men – hiera kai hosia and the Greek Polis’, in C. Rapp and H. A. Drake (eds.), The City in the Classical and Post-Classical World – Changing Contexts of Power and Identity (New York, 2014), 14–37; J. H. Blok, Citizenship in Classical Athens (Cambridge, 2017); J. H. Blok, ‘Retracing Steps: Finding Ways into Archaic Greek Citizenship,’ in A. Duplouy and R. Brock (eds.), Defining Citizenship in Archaic Greece (Oxford, 2018), 79–101. I leave these terms untranslated, because there are numerous ways of rendering them. To summarize Blok’s conception of these words, hosia relates to the actions and possessions of humans that are in accordance with divine will, and hiera refers to the offering of such actions and possessions of the gods. Together the two comprise everything the citizen body does to uphold the covenant with the divine.

80 Xen. Hell. 1.7.22. Treason and temple-robbing are grouped together also in Xen. Ap. 25; Pl. Resp. 443a; Antiph. 5.10; Dem. 23.26.

81 Diod. Sic. 16.25.2.

82 Euripides, in the agōn section of his Phoenician Women (performed 411–409 bce), has Polynices and Eteocles argue over who is being pious and impious. Eteocles calls Polynices an enemy of the city for threatening to destroy its altars while Polynices labels Eteocles anosios for unjustly driving his brother out of the city (Eur. Phoen. 603–10). Both before and after the agōn, Polynices laments that his exile has kept him from the temples and altars of the gods of his fatherland (Eur. Phoen. 357–70, 626–32).

83 Lycurg. Leoc. 1.147.

84 G. Bakewell, ‘Μϵτοικία in the Supplices of Aeschylus’, Classical Antiquity 16 (1997), 209–28.

85 On the passage and the language of Attic decrees, see Z. Petre, ‘Le Decret des Suppliantes d’Eschyle’, Studii Clasice 24 (1986), 25–32; E. M. Harris, ‘Introduction’, in E. M. Harris, D. F. Leão, and P. J. Rhodes (eds.), Law and Drama in Ancient Greece (London, 2010), 9–10; G. Bakewell, Aeschylus’s Suppliant Women: The Tragedy of Immigration (Madison, 2013), 29–32; J. Lougovaya, ‘Inscriptions on the Athenian Stage’, in P. Low and P. Liddel (eds.) Inscriptions and Their Uses in Ancient Literature (Oxford, 2013), 255–70.

86 Aesch. Supp.: proxenoi: lines 239, 491, 919; prostates: lines 963–5.

87 Ibid., 957–61, 971, 1009–11.

88 Ibid., 750–9, 926–7; T. Papadopolou, Aeschylus: Suppliants (London, 2011), 70. In Plato’s Laws, the deity involved in supplication is said to make sure that harm to the successful supplicant will not be unavenged (ἀτιμώρητος), which could also imply atimia (Pl. Leg. 5.730a). For comparison, in Euripides’ Heraclidae, Iolaus begs Demophon, the king of Athens, not to dishonour (atimazō) the sons of Heracles by denying their right to supplication (Eur. Heracl. 227).

89 On decrees in Athenian drama, see Lougovaya (n. 85). The literary decree resembles later, actual decrees for the foundation of communities where the punishment of atimia is merited for those who contravene the oaths of the community: Woram (n. 3), 319–20.

90 The mythical Argos set itself up for a war with the Egyptians by taking in Danaus and his daughters, but the Athenians were proud of having created a new way to allow people to join their community. Aeschylus did, in fact, win first prize for the tetralogy containing this play: Bakewell (n. 84), 226–7. On metics in Athens broadly, see D. Whitehead The Ideology of the Athenian Metic (Cambridge, 1977).

91 Woram (n. 3).

92 Aeschin. In Tim. 1.62–5; N. R. E. Fisher, Against Timarchos (Oxford, 2011), 197–9; F. S. Naiden, Ancient Supplication (New York, 2006), 127.

93 Van’t Wout (n. 1). In the play, Eteocles characterizes his defence of Thebes as a conflict between Greeks and foreigners, even though the attackers are all Greek: Aesch. Sept. 69–85; G. Thomson, Aeschylus and Athens: A Study in the Social Origins of Drama, 2nd edn (New York: 1967), 313–14; Sommerstein (n. 35), 80. Aeschylus may have been casting Eteocles as a defender of all the Greeks against a foreign foe in a positive association with Themistocles: Sommerstein (n. 35), 294–6. Polynices may have served as a reminder of those Athenians who had recently tried to take the city with foreign armies: Isagoras with the Spartan king Cleomenes (Hdt. 5.70–7; [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 20) and Hippias with the Persians at Marathon (Hdt. 6.102, 107–9, 121). See also note 45 for other Athenians charged with conspiring with the Persians.

94 The play was performed some time between 470 and 453 bce, most likely just after 462 when Themistocles was received by Argos and the Athenians were rejected by the Spartans during the helot revolt at Mt. Ithome: A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus’ Supplices: Play and Trilogy, 2nd ed. (Bristol, 2006), 141–62; Sommerstein (n. 35), 289–92; Papadopolou (n. 88) 15–17, 66–8.

95 Mastronarde (n. 25), 12–13, suggests that the political infighting of the play was reminiscent of the division before, during, and after the Four Hundred.

96 S. Ferrario, ‘Political Tragedy: Sophocles and Athenian History’, in A. Markantonatos (ed.), Brill’s Companion to Sophocles (Leiden, 2012), 457–8, suggests that Sophocles was, through the play, telling the Athenians to consider their long history to overcome the chaos at the end of the Peloponnesian War, thereby juxtaposing the old and new.