Tragedy Offstage: Suffering and Sympathy in Ancient Athens

Three. Bystander Intervention

three Bystander Intervention Chorus: Listen, let me tell you what I think is best to do. Let the herald call all citizens to rally here. No, better to burst in upon them now, at once, and take them with the blood still running from their blades. — aeschylus Agamemnon 1348–1351 (trans. Lattimore) In the Agamemnon, the old men of the chorus hear the terrible cries of their king as he is being stabbed to death by Clytemnestra. Speaking one after another, expressing contradictory views, they form the very pictureofindecisionandconfusion .Shouldtheyrallythecitizens,orshouldthey rush inside the palace and catch the murderer with “fresh-flowing sword”? Should they put their own lives at risk? For what purpose? Can they prevent tyranny? It seems the king must already be dead, but is it possible that he still breathes and could be rescued? If we set aside the political dimensions of the crime in progress, this moment in tragedy captures the quandary of bystanders who perceive a crime in progress and feel that they should act but don’t know how. How true to life in ancient Athens is it? How does it compare to scenes from historiography and oratory? We have a fair amount of evidence, direct and indirect, for street life and street crime in Athens. Two passages from historiography and twelve from oratory explicitly refer to the role of bystanders in scenes where certain men, for whatever reason, have laid or are in the process of laying violent hands on someone.1 These are arranged in rough chronological order in Table 3. bystander intervention 77 table 3. bystander response in oratory and historiography Source Date Description Hdt. 3.137 6th century Bystanders help Democedes resist arrest by Persians at agora in Croton Antiph. 2.3.2 hypothetical Bystanders would question the survivor of a mugging c. 440–420 about the identity of the criminals Antiph. 2.4.5 hypothetical A bystander stumbling across dying men late at night would run away rather than risk his life investigating Xen. Hell. 404 Under rule of the Thirty, intimidated council members 2.3.52–55 watch the Eleven wrongfully drag Theramenes from the altar Lys. 3.6–7 after 394 Bystanders halt a night-time house-breaking in a neighborhood of Athens Lys. 3.15–18 after 394 Brawl that started over a desirable youth draws in 200 bystanders and spills down Athens street for four stades, about 800 yards Lys. 23.9–11 c. 387 Friends of Pancleon, apparently a runaway slave, keep him from being apprehended on the streets of Athens two days in a row Dem. 53.17 366 Bystanders keep Nicostratus and his brother from throwing Apollodorus into a quarry late one night along the road from Piraeus Dem. 47.36–40 after 356 Speaker summons bystanders in a neighborhood of Athens, who then see Theophemus punch him in the mouth Dem. 47.52–61 after 356 Neighbors and bystanders in farm outside Athens witness seizure of flock, slaves, household goods by Theophemus and Evergus, who fatally beat a freedwoman and start to drag off the speaker’s son Dem. 54.5 355 or 341 Military commanders and other soldiers at Panactum garrison intervene when sons of Conon strike Ariston, verbally abuse his tentmates, and create an uproar one night Dem. 54.7–9, 32 355 or 341 Bystanders see sons and friends of Conon beat up Ariston one evening in the Athenian agora Dem. 24.208 hypothetical In a jail-break, civic-minded jurors would rally to the from c. 535 rescue and summarily execute the ringleader Aeschin. 1.60–61 345 Bystanders rush to the spot when Pittalacus, a public slave or ex-slave who had been savagely beaten, sits upon the altar of the Mother of the Gods Dem. 9.60–61 344 Bystanders fail to defend Euphraeus as he is dragged off to prison by agents of Philip II 8 78 tragedy offstage Scenes from wartime are omitted, since my purpose is to gauge bystander response in peacetime, even the uneasy peace imposed by the Thirty (Xen. Hell. 2.3.52–55) and the ominous years that witnessed the rise of Philip II of Macedon (Dem. 9.60–61). Some of the scenes are hypothetical cases (Antiph. 2.3.2, 2.4.5, and Dem. 24.208); the rest are purportedly real, even though we have no way to check the so-called facts, most...