In the Rhesus, Hector is convinced that he has the right solution for every problem. He is also eager to impose his views on his peers, like Aeneas, and above all on his subjects or on foreigners, like the watchmen of the chorus and Dolon, or on Rhesus. At the same time, he is ready to change his mind in the course of a debate, and occasionally makes decisions that are in tune with the views of his interlocutors but radically different from his original opinions. One of the cases where he most persistently tries to impose his viewpoint but evidently fails, and must eventually accept the viewpoint of a subordinate, is the guessing game of Rhes. 165–83. The scene's format emphasizes his unsuccessfulness, and may even have been tinged with a comic or farcical effect—in fact, the format of the guessing game is found only here in tragedy, while it is not uncommon in Aristophanes and also reappears, with what seems to be a precise allusion to our Rhesus passage, in Menander's Perikeiromene.Footnote ¹

But the dialogue between Dolon and Hector may not simply, or not exclusively, be a gratuitous ‘extravaganza’ that expands too much upon its Homeric model, Il. 10.321-3.Footnote ² Rather, this exchange between ‘King’ Hector and soldier Dolon comes just after a dialogue with Aeneas, who joins forces with the soldiers of the chorus, persuading Hector to abandon his idea of a nocturnal attack against the Greeks and suggesting instead sending a spy into the enemy camp (87–148). As in the case of the debate between Hector, Aeneas and the watchmen about launching an attack or opting for an intelligence mission,Footnote ³ so also the dialogue between Hector and Dolon on the best reward for the volunteer of this mission should be appreciated as an example of what has been called the ‘political art’Footnote ⁴ of Greek tragedy. Tragedy often problematizes or reflects more or less indirectly on aspects of the political life and debates within the polis, and polis audiences (Athenian or not) could therefore have perceived both debates in the Rhesus as fictional case studies reflecting the reality of discussions on the awards for civic benefactors in Athens or other poleis.Footnote ⁵ In the pages that follow I intend to show that this is especially true of the dialogue between Hector and Dolon. Although it has never been considered in this light, this dialogue may reflect quite closely an issue of political debate that was not uncommon at the end of the fifth century and became very common in the second half of the fourth century: which is the best/right way to reward the benefactors of the city for their εὐεργεσία?

When Hector advertises the spy mission and looks for a volunteer, he only speaks of performing good services for the fatherland, and thus of becoming its ‘benefactor’ (151: τίς ἂν γένοιτο τῆσδε γῆς εὐεργέτης; ‘Who will become the benefactor of this land?’),Footnote ⁶ i.e. a ‘patriot’ (158: φιλόπτολις).Footnote ⁷ The spy raid on the Greek camp is going to be a risky mission that exceeds normal military duties, and Hector therefore encourages the emergence of a volunteer by describing his operation as a special unsolicited benefaction, or εὐεργεσία. Establishing a glory- and honour-centred perspective for this εὐεργεσία, Hector points out the increase in glory that Dolon's family would gain from his mission at 158–60:

These lines almost seem like an epigram memorializing the glory of the εὐεργέτης Dolon. The first one and a half lines point to the man's new glorious identity as the hero of δόλοςFootnote ⁸ —an easy eponym that had, however, not been highlighted in the Iliad. Another one and a half lines focus on the impact of Dolon's mission on the pre-existing renown of his house/family and thus recast in terms of glory what was in the Iliad the venal portrait of the herald Eumedes, Dolon's father (Hector called him ‘rich in gold and rich in bronze’, πολύχρυσος πολύχαλκος, at 10.314-15). Rhes. 158–60 seems, however, to update this Homeric precedent with language borrowed from models that are more recent than Iliad 10. Rhes. 158–60 may in fact presuppose, or be parallel to, Tyrtaeus, fr. 12.23-4 W., αὐτὸς δ’ ἐν προμάχοισι πεσὼν φίλον ὤλεσε θυμόν | ἄστυ τε καὶ λαοὺς καὶ πατέρ’ εὐκλεΐσας …, ‘and if he falls among the front ranks, bringing glory to his city, to his people, and to his father …’.Footnote ⁹ These lines had probably been already reused for the rhetoric of civic celebration in IG I³.1353.3-4 (third quarter of the fifth century), dedicated to Pythion of Megara, who bravely saved many Athenians by guiding them back to Athens from Megara, and thus εἵλετο τὰν ἀρετὰν πατέρα εὐκλείζων ἐνὶ δήμωι ‘achieved excellence, bringing honour to his father among the people’.Footnote ¹⁰ Of course, the prediction that Dolon will make his father's house twice as εὐκλεής as it was before aggravates the tragic irony already adopted at Il. 10.330-1, where Hector states that no one else will enjoy Achilles' horses but that they will be Dolon's pride for ever (σέ ϕημι διαμπερὲς ἀγλαϊεῖσθαι). In both texts irony arises from the fact that he will accomplish nothing at all; we will see that in the Rhesus the adoption of up-to-date language of praise of military bravery further highlights the distance between Hector's ideals of glory and the exceptional cowardice that Dolon will demonstrate before he is killed by Diomedes—this at least is his fate in the Iliadic narrative, apparently presupposed by the Rhesus (the play is silent on Dolon's slaying).

The following stichomythia of the debate between Hector and Dolon is framed by an introductory distich (164–5), where Hector asks Dolon to choose his reward for the spying mission, and a concluding distich (182–3), where Dolon finally states that he wants Achilles' horses. In between these two distichs, which might stand in succession to each other and do not technically need the intervening stichomythia, Hector suggests several alternative prizes, and Dolon rejects them one after the other until Hector apparently runs out of ideas: only at this point does Hector ask an explicit, direct question (181) and thus occasions Dolon's direct answer: he wants the horses of Achilles.Footnote ¹¹ Rhes. 165–83:

Down to 169, Hector evidently emphasizes rewards that are mainly honorific, or provide Dolon with social distinction. Even after Dolon has formulated the request of a μισθός (161–3) and Hector has agreed (164–5), Hector seems not to meet Dolon's wavelength and continues to think in terms of honour—the honour of getting political power (165) or social distinction by marrying a princess (167). He acknowledges that the κέρδος that Dolon requests is of a material kind only at 169; also after exploring briefly the perspective of ‘gold’ in this line, when Dolon refuses it, Hector comes back to suggest that Dolon may be interested in awards of martial but not practical relevance such as being consigned Greek prisoners on whom to take revenge (173–6). In fact, the prizes that Hector offers to Dolon in the Rhesus parallel the list of gifts that the Iliadic Agamemnon is ready to offer Achilles, if Achilles puts aside his anger (after it has been formulated by Agamemnon in Il. 9.121-61, this list is repeated with few modifications by Odysseus in Il. 9.262-98). However, the Iliadic list is restructured in the Rhesus apparently in order to characterize Hector as a hero who favours the noblest ideals of glory. In the Iliad, the two main gifts of political power suggested by Agamemnon come last in the text (9.141-8: marriage with a daughter of Agamemnon; 9.149-57: government of seven cities), and are followed (at least in Agamemnon's version, which Odysseus sensibly censors when reporting it to Achilles) by the final condition for Achilles to submit to Agamemnon's royal power (9.158-61). In the Rhesus, by contrast, the first points of Hector's proposal to Dolon focus on political power in various shapes, and the inviolability of Hector's royal power is the preliminary restriction imposed (165).

Hector's idealistic concern with honour and social distinction in the Rhesus will have appeared all the more evident in comparison with the Homeric Hector. When Hector advertises the spy mission in Iliad 10, he announces that the volunteer can expect a ‘big gift’ and an ‘adequate reward’: (… δώρωι ἔπι μεγάλωι; μισθὸς δέ οἱ ἄρκιος ἔσται, 10.303-4). In the same episode of Iliad 10, but on the Greek side, Nestor expresses the volunteer's motivation for the corresponding spy mission in terms of pure courage: ‘My friends, couldn't someone with enough daring and confidence (οὐκ ἂν δή τις ἀνὴρ πεπίθοιθ᾿ ἑῶι αὐτοῦ | θυμῶι τολμήεντι) pay these arrogant Trojans a visit …? He might even overhear some talk about their intentions …’ (10.204-7). Nestor concludes his speech with a promise of glory, to which the prospect of a concrete reward is in a way supplementary: ‘Then he would win great glory among all men under the heavens, and honourable gifts (δόσις … ἐσθλή) will be his, …’ (10.212-17). Here, the δόσις remains generic, and it may seem simply to consist of the prestige of the feast.Footnote ¹² The preliminary presentation of the mission as ‘mercenary’ by the Homeric Hector attested to a practical point of view, which might sound especially unheroic when contrasted with the more elevated tone of Nestor's summons, as acknowledged by Σ exeg. Il. 10.303-8: ‘the Greeks offer a gift (δῶρον); Hector, dishonourably, offers wages (μισθός). Furthermore, Hector placed the wages first.’ In reality, material value and honorific value are not so easy to distinguish in the Homeric world, and the material value of a γέρας is an essential aspect of its honorific relevance. Besides, the emphasis on the pecuniary aspect of Hector's speech by the exegetical scholium may be explained as an unfair consequence of Homer's usual anti-Trojan bias (especially strong in Book 10), unless it is mainly an interpretative construction of Homer's commentators, who often emphasize this anti-Trojan bias. In any case, the scholium proves that some Hellenistic or post-Hellenistic readers of Homer—but why not also earlier ones?—could see Iliadic Hector's proposition of the reward for the spy suitable food for thought on venality vs noble idealism of rewards.

I suggest that the long discussion between Hector and Dolon may presuppose, and evoke to the theatre audience, the public debates on the honours that poleis of the fifth and fourth centuries granted to citizens or foreigners who deserved to be called ‘benefactors’ of the city. In particular, evidence stemming from the orators and inscriptions attests to the frequency with which similar discussions were conducted about the adequate size and convenient nature of such rewards in the second half of the fourth century.

The term εὐεργέτης, attested already in fifth-century historiansFootnote ¹³ and inscriptional epigramsFootnote ¹⁴ (especially from Athens), is also not rare in inscriptions of the fourth, third and early second centuries and in the orators. But the idea of euergetism, and the practice of rewarding it, underwent a complex evolution. Especially in Athens (our evidence is scantier about other cities) egalitarian democracy seems to have had a strong tendency to hinder the emergence of an institutionalized class of civic benefactors. As a consequence, one of the most important aspects of the history of Athenian euergetism is the negotiation of the rewards for external benefactors and the definition of a role for the citizens-benefactors. In this evolution there were different historical stages: a stage in which rewards for civic benefactors were exceptional (fifth century), a stage in which rewards for civic benefactors expanded (first half of the fourth century) and a stage in which the operation of the citizens-benefactors was integrated into the system of the polis (second half of the fourth century).Footnote ¹⁵

In almost all of its occurrences in fifth-century or fourth-century Athenian inscriptions the praise of εὐεργεσία/εὐεργέτης/εὐεργετήματα focusses on non-Athenians who were awarded the rank of Athenian πρόξενοι (or, more rarely, citizenship) and other distinguished honours for their benefactions to the city and its people.Footnote ¹⁶ Only one inscription appears to be known from the fifth century about Athenian εὐεργέται of Athens, SEG XXVIII.46 of 403-2 b.c.—a peculiar text that does not feature any of the usual rewards, but decrees financial support to the children of the fallen in the civic war that restored democracy in Athens in 410 b.c. Warriors who died in victorious battles were also declared εὐεργέται in the ‘Simonidean’ epigrams FGE 12.6 and 40.c.2, which implies that a most honourable burial constituted their award (‘Simonides’ 12.3-6 is probably a late addition,Footnote ¹⁷ but ‘Simonides’ 40.c.1-2, quoted by Aeschines, is explicit that the memorial of the fallen at Eion of 475 b.c. was the μισθός for their generals: ἡγεμόνεσσι δὲ μισθὸν Ἀθηναῖοι τάδ’ ἔδωκαν | ἀντ᾽ εὐεργεσίης καὶ μεγάλης ἀρετῆς). It seems that, until the mid fourth century, only military commanders who had been successful in war (such as Cleon, Conon, Evagoras, Chabrias, Iphicrates, Timotheus and others)Footnote ¹⁸ or had fallen in war became ‘benefactors’ of Athens and were awarded a series of honours different from but parallel to the ones of the foreign εὐεργέται. The Athenian dēmos appears to have begun inscribing honorary decrees for Athenians who had endorsed voluntary liturgies or fulfilled duties or state offices mainly from the 340s onwards,Footnote ¹⁹ and φιλοτιμία and εὔνοια for the dēmos became the qualities/titles most often quoted in the case of Athenian citizens.Footnote ²⁰ By contrast, εὐεργέτης was, as we have seen above, the usual term for foreign benefactors in various fields.

The term could occasionally refer to the tyrannicides Harmodius and Aristogeiton (Aeschin. 1.132, 1.140), politicians such as Solon or Aristeides (Aeschin. 3.257-8) and Epicrates (Dem. 19.280), victorious Athenian generals (see at least Dem. 20.85-6), or the Athenians who won the battle at Eion in 475 (n. 14), although it appears to have not been ascribed in state decrees to Athenian citizens.Footnote ²¹ Defining the military merit of the Trojan Dolon for Troy as εὐεργεσία would thus square in Rhes. 151 with the military specialization of the title of ‘benefactor’ for citizens at Athens.

The rewards which fifth-century or fourth-century benefactors of the cities were entitled to ask for (or for which at least Cleon and Conon asked),Footnote ²² or received at the city's own instigation, were a series of variously combined honorific (= non-monetary) privileges that usually also extended to other members of the family and/or were hereditary: προξενία sometimes without other honours; the titles πρόξενος and εὐεργέτης either alone or with other distinctions; the title εὐεργέτης accompanied by other privileges but not by προξενία; the title of πρόξενος associated with other privileges but not with εὐεργεσία. Honours other than προξενία and εὐεργεσία consisted mainly of public praise, or the privileges of front-row seating in the theatre and at the festivals (προεδρία), immunity from some or all taxes and liturgies (ἀτέλεια), safety to the person (ἀσυλία), right of landownership (ἔγκτησις), access to the boulē and the ekklēsia, free meals at the prytaneum (σίτησις), direct access to the law-court of the polemarchos (normally without paying), a promise of compensation if the honoree was injured (ἐπιμέλεια), publication of the honorific decree and, in particular, erection of a stele financed by the polis.Footnote ²³

The ps.-Euripidean Hector's advertising of the spy mission as an act of εὐεργεσία and his initial focus on honours or social distinctions perfectly matches the practice of praising and compensating civic benefactors. Hector was also in good company with Aristotle. For Aristotle, being benefactor of the city and gaining honour were two faces of the same coin: cf. Eth. Nic. 8.1163b ‘honour is the reward of virtue and benefaction (τῆς μὲν γὰρ ἀρετῆς καὶ τῆς εὐεργεσίας ἡ τιμὴ γέρας) … the same principle is seen to obtain in the life of the cities. A citizen who contributes nothing of value to the community is not held in honour (οὐ γὰρ τιμᾶται ὁ μηδὲν ἀγαθὸν τῶι κοινῶι πορίζων), for the common property is given to the benefactor of the community (τῶι τὸ κοινὸν εὐεργετοῦντι), and honour belongs to the community (ἡ τιμὴ δὲ κοινόν)’; Rh. 1.1361a ‘honour is a sign of reputation for being a benefactor (τιμὴ δ᾽ ἐστὶν μὲν σημεῖον εὐεργετικῆς εὐδοξίας), and benefactors are the people most honoured, rightly, although one with the potentiality of being a benefactor is also honoured’ (a list of the ‘components of honour’ [μέρη τιμῆς] follows and includes precisely most of the rewards for the civic benefactors that I have listed above).

To my knowledge, εὐεργέτης-inscriptions in fact hardly ever decreed a monetary compensation. Laws were passed that promised tyrannicides a monetary subsidy for liberating a city from despotism (a fifth-century law from Athens,Footnote ²⁴ a law from Miletus from the mid fifth century,Footnote ²⁵ and a law from Ilion from the beginning of the third centuryFootnote ²⁶ ) and in at least one case (Ilion) these tyrannicides were also awarded the same kind of honorific rewards assigned to benefactors; but we have no evidence that they were also awarded the title of εὐεργέτης.Footnote ²⁷ The only strictly monetary rewards for benefactors in fifth-century or fourth-century Athens concern athletes, and are not recorded on stone, but are known to us only through secondary sources: Plutarch, Life of Solon 23.3 and Diogenes Laertius 1.55.

Every decree for benefactors made its own specific selection from among these honours, a fact that clearly presupposes a substantial concern for this selection and will have been preceded by a preliminary public debate about the choice. Besides, in a couple of instances from the fifth century, and very frequently from the second half of the fourth century onwards, Athenian inscriptions included, between the list of benefactions and the list of rewards, the so-called ‘hortatory clauses’.Footnote ²⁸ These are brief statements addressing the proper reciprocation of χάρις and the appropriateness of the rewards. The presence of these clauses highlights not only that the choice of rewards was exemplary, but also that it must have been the result of serious pondering of alternative rewards (‘in order that all may know that the Athenian dēmos knows how to reciprocate …’; ‘in order that it is evident that the Athenian dēmos knows how to reciprocate …’; ‘in order that a reminder remains of the dēmos’ benevolence’, vel sim.).Footnote ²⁹ At Rhes. 161–3 Dolon elaborately covers up his request for material compensation under a kind of theory of what constitutes the ideal reciprocal χάρις between city and benefactor:

Dolon's words appear to reflect, but also to exploit for his convenience, the obsession for correct reciprocity that we find in these Athenian decreesFootnote ³⁰ or in Dem. Lept. 64: ‘it is fitting to let these honorific columns be valid forever, so that […] these columns will be monuments to the city's moral character and examples for those who want to do you [the Athenian dēmos] good, because the city has benefited her benefactors in return’ (trans. C. Kremmydas).

The question of which rewards were to be assigned to the civic benefactors must have been discussed in public as early as the fifth century, but it certifiably became a hot topic for discussion in Athens only around the mid fourth century. In the fourth century the number of recompenses awarded to benefactors increased, and the correct functioning of the system of exchange between benefaction and compensation from the city seems—from the evidence we have—to have acquired a renewed relevance.Footnote ³¹ In fact, a ‘system of competitive honouring’,Footnote ³² while unattested for the fifth century, became central to the fourth century's political debates. Demosthenes’ Against Leptines, an oration from 355/4 opposing a law that abolished ἀτέλειαι (exemptions from all or some liturgies) awarded to benefactors, displays a spirited defence of the ‘benefactors’, focussing in particular on their relevance to the city's life and the importance of reciprocation of civic gratitude. A short time after that, Xenophon's Poroi (3.11), a practical discussion of how to raise state revenues, considered individual subscriptions by citizens essential to covering large expenses such as fleet expeditions. Xenophon concludes that such civic patronage might be extended to non-citizens as well: ‘I think, too, that, if their names were to be recorded (ἀναγραφήσεσθαι) as benefactors (εὐεργέται) for all time, many foreigners also would subscribe, and a certain number of states would also be attracted by the prospect of being recorded.’ Shortly before 351, in Against Aristocrates (196), Demosthenes again invited his fellow citizens to ponder whether their gratitude for the merits of contemporary generals was not a bit excessive in comparison with the relative anonymity of the celebrations victorious generals received in the past: ‘it is also opportune, men of Athens, to inquire how our forefathers bestowed distinctions and rewards (τὰς τιμάς … καὶ τὰς δωρεάς: honours and concrete rewards) upon genuine benefactors, whether they were citizens or strangers. Take first Themistocles […] and Miltiades […]. Our ancestors did not put up bronze statues of these men, …’ (implying of course that statues vel sim. were awarded to inferior military leaders of his own time). In general, it seems that Athenian politicians of the second half of the fourth century often attacked their rivals for passing allegedly unconstitutional decrees conferring honours on allegedly meritorious individuals, and more than half of the graphai paranomōn (‘indictments against illegal proposals’) concern precisely this kind of decree.Footnote ³³

If public debates on the proper rewards for εὐεργέται really did form the historical background that triggered the Rhesus’ guessing game between Hector and Dolon, as they became especially frequent from the second half of the fourth century onwards, we might consider this background a piece of evidence relevant to the dating of the Rhesus. But we can also prefer to suppose that discussions on the correct rewards for the ‘benefactors’ antedate our fourth-century evidence; then this political discussion can still at least inform the characterizations of Hector and Dolon, and help us make sense of their all-too-long stichomythia. Dolon, with his practical materialism, would represent the foil to Hector's concern for glory and the kind of social distinction that civic benefactors pursued and cities conferred on them. In any case, the two characters would enact two different types of stances concerning the right compensation of civic benefactors. In their debate, the audience probably recognized an echo of a political debate that certainly was very much alive in the fourth century and may have been operative in the fifth as well. Far from being an ‘extravaganza’, the dialogue about the right reward for Dolon was going to be appreciated by a polis audience in the frame of the ideological code of ‘ritualized’ reciprocation between εὐεργέτης and city, and could well have intrigued spectators accustomed to discuss and decree or find fault with honours for civic benefactors.

We know from inscriptions and from Aeschines’ Against Ctesiphon (152–3)Footnote ³⁴ that the conferral of crowns to the benefactors of the city used to take place in the theatre just before the beginning of the tragic agōn. In Aeschines himself, the issue concerning the impropriety of the crowning of Demosthenes for his benefactions (despite the fact that he guided Athens into the defeat at Chaeronea, with its many brave fallen) also paves the way to a substantial episode of readjustment of the borders between tragic theatre and politics (3.152-5):

The space of theatre and the emotions theatrical audiences experience in response to the pains of the tragic heroes are thus the foils through which Aeschines invites his listeners to reconsider the great difference between the herald's proclamations of the bravery of the war-dead and the proclamation of cowardice that the herald would need to utter apropos of the make-believe εὐεργέτης Demosthenes. Practically, Aeschines asks the members of the popular court to compare the intense sympathetic emotions for tragic or civic heroes they experience during dramatic performances or during the proclamations of glory for real benefactors with the feelings—unavoidably less sublime—that the crowning of Demosthenes can call forth.

In conclusion, the ‘anachronism’ of the Rhesus reflecting debates on awards for civic benefactors is also justifiable in terms of fifth-century ‘political tragedy’. But the Rhesus would be in especially good company if it dated from an age not far from Against Ctesiphon (330 b.c.). Apart from being aligned to a climaxing number of εὐεργέτης-decrees, it would also find an intriguing parallel in this oration, where the same issue of euergetic awards triggers forensic oratory and contemporary political debate to an opposite foray in the field of theatre—tragic theater in particular.Footnote ³⁵