ABSTRACT
The figure of the ‘democratic king’ in tragedy confirms the importance of the mythical founder in the political imaginary, filling the democratic void. But how a king should do this is debatable, as seen in the different performances of kingship in Aeschylus’ Persians. Kings represent the city on stage, offer sanctuary to refugees and resolve conflicts, as in Aeschylus’ Suppliants, Euripides’ Suppliant Women and Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. Through autochthony myth the king connects land and people (Euripides’ Erechtheus), while the comic citizen’s self-identification as a cosmic king (Aristophanes’ Wasps) equivalent to Zeus represents a line of Athenian thought distinct from the later equation of the demos with tyranny, while the Birds materialises the cosmic structures of rule. The relationship between individual and collective is a structural feature of Athenian drama with its individual actors and group choruses. Drama uses the mythical past to explore problems of the contemporary polis.
