Off-Stage Groups in Athenian Drama

Abstract This book discusses off-stage assemblies, populations, armies, and other groups in fifth-century Athenian drama, which often depicts these groups as holding considerable power over events and characters on stage. Off-stage groups can only be depicted through on-stage characters’ viewpoints, and refracted through these characters’ perspectives and allegiances; this allows plays to depict groups from multiple different viewpoints, portraying their activity and decision-making in highly nuanced fashion and confronting the audience with the inherent difficulty of interpreting them. This book sets these off-stage groups in comparison with the groups depicted in fifth- and fourth-century Athenian prose texts: the fictive and mythical worlds imagined in drama explore collective activity in radical, unusual ways. Consequently, plays often undercut and complicate the stereotypes used to portray groups in prose texts.