Cosmology and the Polis
The Social Construction of Space and Time in the Tragedies of Aeschylus

In the earliest drama the clash between the old world of ritual and the new world of money is revealed.

Richard Seaford (Author)

9781107009271, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 12 January 2012

380 pages, 1 map
23.5 x 16 x 2.3 cm, 0.74 kg

'The five parts of this ambitious book examine the chronotopes in Homer and archaic Athenian society, money and ritual in the Dionysiac festival, the chronotopes in Aeschylus's plays … the unity of opposites in Aeschylus's theology and Heraclitus's cosmology, and the sociocultural implications of the Pythagorean way of life and Pythagorean opposites in Aeschylus's Oresteia. This brilliant study opens up new vistas on old problems.' J. Bussanich, Choice Review

This book further develops Professor Seaford's innovative work on the study of ritual and money in the developing Greek polis. It employs the concept of the chronotope, which refers to the phenomenon whereby the spatial and temporal frameworks explicit or implicit in a text have the same structure, and uncovers various such chronotopes in Homer, the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Presocratic philosophy and in particular the tragedies of Aeschylus. Mikhail Bakhtin's pioneering use of the chronotope was in literary analysis. This study by contrast derives the variety of chronotopes manifest in Greek texts from the variety of socially integrative practices in the developing polis - notably reciprocity, collective ritual and monetised exchange. In particular, the Oresteia of Aeschylus embodies the reassuring absorption of the new and threatening monetised chronotope into the traditional chronotope that arises from collective ritual with its aetiological myth. This argument includes the first ever demonstration of the profound affinities between Aeschylus and the (Presocratic) philosophy of his time.

Introduction
Part I. The Social Construction of Space, Time and Cosmology: 1. Homer: the reciprocal chronotope
2. Demeter Hymn: the aetiological chronotope
3. From reciprocity to money
Part II. Dionysiac Festivals: 4. Royal household and public festival
5. Aetiological chronotope and dramatic mimesis
6. Monetisation and tragedy
Part III. Limit and the Unlimited in Confrontational Space: 7. Telos and the unlimitedness of money
8. Suppliants
9. Septem
10. Confrontational space in Oresteia
11. The unlimited in Oresteia
12. Persians
Part IV. The Unity of Opposites: 13. Form-parallelism and the unity of opposites
14. Aeschylus and Herakleitos
15. From the unity of opposites to their differentiation
Part V. Cosmology of the Integrated Polis: 16. Metaphysics and the polis in Pythagoreanism
17. Pythagoreanism in Aeschylus
18. Household, cosmos and polis
Appendix: was there a sk?n? for all the extant plays of Aeschylus?

Subject Areas: Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]