Amid US elections, a look at religion and politics in the birthplace of democracy

Though gods were progressive successful astir each drama, the Greek tragedians nevertheless flagged their relation successful the authorities of the city. These dramatists, portion of the intelligence elite of their times, displayed (and questioned) galore of the opinions and beliefs of the audience. Politics and religion were the leitmotif of galore tragedies. They showed prophets and priests arsenic important successful the affairs of the city, and capable to overturn governmental fortunes. Oedipus, for instance, suspected that Creon and the prophet Tiresias were conspiring to dethrone him. Though the fearfulness proved baseless successful that play, it was a tenable presumption to make.

In 2 well-known instances, the authorities was pitted straight against spiritual beliefs. In Antigone (a favourite with feminists), the King (Creon) refuses burial rites to the traitor Polynices (Antigone’s brother). Religious work drove her to disobey him; authorities argumentation compelled him to condemn her. Female emotion confronted antheral rationality (the king and city). Both mislaid (his lad anticipating her death, commits suicide; his parent stabs herself cursing her husband). The play ends with the chorus saying “the blows of destiny volition thatch america wisdom… the gods indispensable beryllium reverenced”. Religious customized (represented by the burial) could outweigh the law.

The deity Apollo drove Oedipus to his (fated) doom. His storyline begins with a sidesplitting (prompted by a goddess) that leads his household to extinction. In Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Apollo orders Orestes to termination his mother, yet the deity of ritual and prophecy cannot purify him of the consequent humor guilt. The infernal pistillate deities that prosecute Orestes are yet tamed by a judicial process and harnessed arsenic a fearful unit that volition support citizens successful check.

In The Bacchae, Euripides’ past work, the king, again representing civic reason, attempts to suppress Dionysus’ caller cult (the god’s Indian transportation is noted by scholars). His followers are besides women: Day confronts night, and the king is decapitated by his ain parent who, deranged by the god, thinks him a lion they person torn apart. She enters the metropolis brandishing her son’s head. The brutal struggle ends with the deity shrugging disconnected responsibility. He exiles the wretched Agave and her father, who complains: “Your reprisals are excessively severe.” Dionysis responds: “I americium a god, and you person insulted me.” The chorus ends with the homily, “many are the shapes of things divine.”

Throughout Greek tragedy, the gods marque heinous demands. The fleet cannot sail for Troy until a quality sacrifice (a virgin nary less) placates Artemis, inexplicably upset. In Hippolytus, Aphrodite, wagering she tin corrupt Artemis’ virgin devotee, implants successful Phaedra, his stepmother, an unholy lust for him. The younker is appalled by her advances. Fearing exposure, Phaedra kills herself but implicates him. His begetter has him killed. Artemis wins the stake but, being a goddess, can’t shed tears for him. Instead, she vows to get 1 of Aphrodite’s devotees someday. “We are playthings of the gods”, says the poet.

One crushed for the antagonistic depiction of Apollo whitethorn beryllium due to the fact that his cult was rooted astatine Delphi, an oracle politically aligned with Sparta, the bete noir of Athens (surviving melodramatic texts are each Athenian). Oracles could beryllium nasty, dispensing ambiguous prophecies often misinterpreted by those who consulted them. Delphi was besides unfastened to bribery (the Athenians erstwhile bribed the Priestess to person the Spartans to overthrow the aristocrats who ruled Athens).

Politics adjacent past fed connected spiritual sentiments. The full aristocratic clan of the Alcmaeonids was exiled, not for the execution their ancestors committed, but for a usurpation of spiritual sanctuary. Socrates was accused, condemned and executed connected the complaint of worshipping mendacious gods. The tragedians were good alert of the powerfulness of spiritual sentiment. While their plays are work arsenic aiming to incorporated alternatively than defy the irrational powerfulness of the gods, they were wary of the governmental relation religion could play. Religious struggle could overturn, arsenic Luther did, the established order. It should travel arsenic nary astonishment that long-lasting empires (Roman, Persian, Ottoman) were mostly tolerant of antithetic religions, arsenic agelong as, paying taxes, their citizens “gave to Caesar what was Caesar’s.”

The writer taught Philosophy astatine St Stephen’s College, Delhi