From Royal Dionysism to Political Theatrics: A Social History of the Pergamene Theater

Abstract

This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of the politics of theatrical culture at Pergamon during and after the Attalid dynasty. Hellenistic theater survives only in fragments and is underrepresented in research on ancient performance; I seek to fill this gap with a comprehensive history of the performing arts at Pergamon. The questions driving this work are threefold. First, I aim to chronicle what performance was like at Pergamon, its role in society, and how theater at Pergamon compared to other places, or to our amalgamated understanding of Hellenistic theater as a general phenomenon. Next, because theater emerged in the context of democratic Athens but flourished across the Mediterranean, and because Pergamon was not a democracy but a royal capital, we must ask how its status as a monarchial stronghold affected the civic experience of drama for its subjects. Third, I seek to understand the role of Dionysos in the Attalids’ dynastic ideology and to disentangle the web of political and religious relationships among the royal family, the performers, and the worshippers of both Dionysos and the kings. In the royal capital, the theatrical institution and its participants were all subject to the watchful oversight of the dynasts. Likewise, performers at Pergamon served not a generic Dionysos, but the specific aspect of him tied to the Attalid royal family: Dionysos Kathegemon, the ‘leader.’ Literary, epigraphic, material, and archival evidence illuminates the relationships among performers, local government, and the dynasts, which shaped not only performance practices and royal benefactions, but also the cult of Dionysos as the god of performance and of disseminating royal ideology, participation in ruler cult, and, later, political stunts using over-the-top theatrics. I argue that the monarchy promoted theater as a key component of an ideological program of royal Dionysism which served to legitimize and maintain its authority. In the first three chapters, after an overview of the development of Hellenistic theater, I identify features specific to Pergamon, using as evidence the archaeology of Pergamon’s theater, inscriptions concerning actors and festivals, and the monarchy’s ties to the cult of Dionysos in the second to first centuries BCE. Next, an excursion to nearby Teos assesses the relationship between the monarchy and the actors’ association under its patronage. The final chapter extends the narrative to the post-Attalid period. While Pergamon continued to maintain its own theatrical tradition for centuries, increasingly theatrical political displays refracted through the Pergamene tradition by Mithridates VI and Roman politicians created an independent concept of an exportable, Anatolian-tinged theatricality most visible in Pompey’s third triumph and his construction of the first permanent theater in Rome.