The Greek Play has been a Cambridge institution since 1882; its history is well documented, but not much of the relevant material is easily available in published form. So it makes sense to begin with a note on the archive and other sources, before attempting an outline sketch of the period between 1882 and 1912 (the date of the last production before the First World War). This is the earliest of the three1 phases into which the story so far seems to fall.

The main collection of material is the records of the Greek Play Committee, which are housed in the University Library under the care of John Hall, the Committee’s Hon. Librarian.

The Tennessee Centennial Exposition of 1897 celebrated the centennial of Tennessee’s admission to the United States. This chapter argues that the use of Greek and Grecian architecture at Nashville was connected to Nashville’s reputation as a city of learning and culture. During the nineteenth century, Nashville was known as the Athens of the South and of the West. A life-sized replica of the Parthenon was the fair’s premier building. Archaeological accuracy and color were also essential to creating the fair’s Parthenon. Other buildings incorporated classical motifs from different periods, demonstrating the flexibility and fluidity of ancient architecture and embodying the neo-antique. This classical architecture embodied Nashville’s arrival as a city, but it also celebrated the New South and reflected the codification of the racist Jim Crow laws. Thus, the appropriation of classical architecture to justify institutional racism is examined. Egyptian architecture played a prominent role here. Shelby County erected a pyramid for its pavilion, which was an exceptional use of Egyptian architecture at United States fairs. The chapter concludes with a consideration of the enduring importance of the rebuilt Nashville Parthenon (and its Athena statue) as a symbol of culture and democracy for the city.

Writing a commentary on Oedipus at Colonus has made me think about how to do justice to the extraordinary poise and power of Sophoclean language, despite its seeming simplicity in this late play. Hence the ‘plain words’ of my title, but plain in the spirit of Shakespeare’s Lear.

If asked why I chose this topic I should have to admit that it was partly for my own pleasure, for the privilege of talking about a great play set in Athens in the city of its origin. I was also influenced by the fact that the πόλις has been attracting a good deal of attention recently, and this has raised methodological questions which relate interestingly to Oedipus at Colonus. Here after all is a play set in Attica, with Theseus as a major character fulfilling the traditional Athenian role of receiver of suppliants: we can safely assume that it had something relevant to say about the πόλις to the πολῖται who watched the first performance.1 My main concern, though, is with the ways in which Sophocles causes contemporary meaning to be apprehended, rather than with exactly what that meaning (or those meanings) may have been.

The question of whether tragedy was performed in late antiquity and, if so, in what form, has provoked considerable scholarly debate. Much of this work has been influenced by the Gibbonesque model of decline and fall. Culture as an articulation of society mirrors the political decline of the Empire. Even scholars who attempt to distance themselves from such a model find it hard not to portray theatre in the middle and late Empire as a pale reflection of the dramatic glories of the past.1 Tragedy becomes a stagnant elite literary exercise which even the educated classes approached in a half-hearted manner, whilst the rest of the populace indulged in the intellectually vacuous pleasures of the pantomime and mime.2 Scholarship has made a careful distinction between the activities of the tragic pantomimes and tragedy, between late antiquity and the ‘Classical world’, and ultimately between text and performance.

Long ago, when I first began research, I was set to work by Denys Page on manuscripts of Sophocles. A big question of the time was Alexander Turyn’s claim, on the basis of a large-scale study of the surviving manuscripts of the triad – Ajax, Electra and Oedipus Tyrannus – to have identified recensions of the text by Manuel Moschopoulos and Thomas Magistros as well as by Demetrios Triklinios, who already had a secure place in scholarly history.1 Stemmatics was more popular then than it is now, and intense arguments revolved around the relationships between manuscripts, and particularly the evidence for conjecture, in the large numbers of recentiores copied around or after the time of the Palaeologan Renaissance. There was relatively little interest in the Byzantine commentaries and their content, except insofar as they helped to link particular manuscripts with particular scholars.

This chapter delves into female influence on money and wealth from an individual perspective, using the concept of matronage as a framework. Cicero, who was often burdened by financial concerns, had two women as intermediaries: his wife Terentia and Teucris, possibly to be identified with Mucia Tertia. Mucia, by leveraging her personal and familial wealth, showcased remarkable agency in strategically deploying capital during her marriages to Pompey and Scaurus. Her career and influence highlight the power of matronage, particularly in times of crisis, when Scaurus relied on her network. The chapter calls for a re-evaluation of sources, which often take an androcentric perspective and neglect the significant role of women in power structures and their impact on political and economic events. Mucia epitomizes many elite women who exercised decisive influence through their networks and resources.

The conclusion summarizes the book’s core arguments – specifically, that studying the reception of ancient architecture at the world’s fairs at Chicago, Nashville, Omaha, St. Louis, and San Francisco furthers our understanding of the complex and possibly conflicting and contradictory ways in which the ancient world and its architecture were understood in the United States between 1893 and 1915. The appropriation of classical architecture for museums and fine art galleries emerges as a major theme. While classical architecture could be used to justify empire and institutional racism, it could also symbolize democracy and cultural sophistication. The fluidity and flexibility of ancient architecture underscore why it was so widely and creatively adapted in the United States. The physical legacy of these fairs – the buildings that survived and the parks – is also considered. In addition, the conclusion discusses the decline of ancient architecture as one of the most potent ways in which fair organizers expressed their cultural, political, and economic goals; the rejection of historical forms was vital to the birth of architectural Modernism. In sum, neo-antique architecture at American world’s fairs helped the nation and various cities to forge imagined ties to a glorious past, frame the present, and envisage the future.

The inspiration for this paper is a piece published by Richard Green in 1999: ‘Tragedy and the Spectacle of the Mind: Messenger Speeches, Actors, Narrative, and Audience Imagination in Fourth-Century bce Vase-Painting’,1 which elegantly illustrates the productive interconnections that his work has often traced between artefacts and texts. Green discusses the presence, on many South Italian (mainly Tarentine) vases which deal with tragic subjects, of a figure usually to be identified as a family retainer, who is typically elderly and bent, carries a staff, and ‘makes the speaking gesture with his right hand’.2 This is his regular pose: he is telling the awful story of the events represented on the vase.

Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, or White City, marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s “discovery” of the “New World” and showcased Chicago’s ambition to be a modern metropolis. While Chicago’s architecture is often labeled as Beaux-Arts or Roman, this chapter argues that the architecture of its key buildings and central spaces embodied the bricolage of the neo-antique. The White City established neo-antique architecture as the preferred architectural idiom for American world’s fairs. This architecture also demonstrated that the United States was now a cultural, economic, and political powerhouse. The lasting impact of the White City’s architecture is evident in urban planning, especially in the City Beautiful movement and in civil buildings built after the fair. Other buildings at the fair, such as Haiti’s pavilion, also utilized classicizing architecture. For Haiti, the ideals of democracy and the cultural cachet of classical culture informed the choice of classical architecture here. Ancient Egyptian architecture also appeared in the form of a replica of the Temple of Luxor, located in the Midway Plaisance, the fair’s entertainment zone, aiming to educate and entertain visitors. The reception of ancient architecture at the White City reflects the complex and sometimes contradictory relationship between nineteenth-century America and the ancient world.

Scholars writing about Euripides in the theatre1 have been particularly interested in his innovations, made notorious by texts like Aristophanes’ Frogs: ‘modern’ music with lyric solos in operatic style, homely images of the heroes, gods ‘from the machine’, a new ironic, highly sophisticated, sometimes irreverent, tone. All these features are worth studying closely, but we should remember, too, that from the fourth century b.c. onwards, as Euripides became the acknowledged theatrical master and the model for other dramatists to follow, what had been specifically new about his drama became classic in its turn. From our point of view it is just as important to ask what gives his plays lasting significance in the theatre as to study what was innovative about them in their own time.

Octavia, sister of the later Augustus, often stands in the shadows of great matronae, such as Fulvia and Livia Drusilla, in modern scholarship. Yet she played a vital part in the triumviral political programme and exercised significant influence on state and triumviral politics in the years 39–32 BCE. This chapter argues for Octavia’s political influence on M. Antonius and Young Caesar being instrumental in maintaining peace between the two colleagues from the aftermath of the Bellum Perusinum to the eventual final collapse of relations between the two triumvirs in 32. This chapter further argues that the historical Octavia built on traditional modes of influence originating from the socio-political elite milieu of the Late Republic but that the Octavia constructed in the historical narratives looked ahead to the creation of the ideal matrona of the Imperial domus all while paying tribute to her vital role in preserving concordia in the res publica.