Natalia Tsoumpra
Freie Universität Berlin, Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie, Humbodlt Senior Research Fellow
I hold a BA (Hons) in Greek and Latin Languages and Literature from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and an MPhil (2009) and DPhil (2014) from the University of Oxford. I am currently a Humboldt Senior Research Fellow at the Freie Universität, Berlin. Previously, I was a Lecturer in Classics at the Open University (2023-4), I held a series of fixed-term, teaching-focused lectureships in Classics at Glasgow University (2014-2020, 2022-23), and I did sessional teaching in the Classics subject area of the Lifelong Learning and Widening Participation Department in Glasgow University, and the Edinburgh University’s Classics department (2020-2022). I also worked as an adjunct lecturer in the Open University of Cyprus (2017), as an Adjunct Instructor in Classics at the University of Oxford (2008-2014), and as an Assistant Dean for postgraduate students at St. Anne’s College, Oxford (2013-4).
My main research interests lie in Greek drama (especially Aristophanic comedy), but I also work in the areas of politics, theories of humour, gender and sexuality, performance studies, and ancient medicine. I have an ongoing interest in performance and theatre practice, and have worked closely with the Glasgow University Classics society for the production of several classically-themed plays.
My main research interests lie in Greek drama (especially Aristophanic comedy), but I also work in the areas of politics, theories of humour, gender and sexuality, performance studies, and ancient medicine. I have an ongoing interest in performance and theatre practice, and have worked closely with the Glasgow University Classics society for the production of several classically-themed plays.
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The Funeral Oration presents one of the very few instances in Thucydides where hope is imbued with positive nuances. In this speech Pericles presents a hopeful democracy, in which the citizens of the polis have reasons to fight because they have invested their hopes in the city. Hope takes on a positive angle because it is grounded in in the endurance of the demos as a whole and the empirical reality of the polis. And yet the advent of the plague which fails all hopes shows once more that the constructive side of hope always manifests itself together with its destructive twin.
In this paper, I wish to examine these observations against the political background of Aristophanes’ Knights. The “great idea” typical of the comic genre is conceived in Knights as an antidote to a hopeless political model, after all ideas have been exhausted (prayers, escape, death, libations), with the aim of its rectification. Yet, in the one instance where the word “hope” appears it is only a slender one (1245 λεπτή τις ἐλπίς) right at the turn of the Old to the New World, that is when the Sausage-seller manifests his true nature and emerges as the successor of Paphlagon. I, therefore, wish to put forward a pessimistic interpretation of the politics of the play which very much resembles the overarching tone of pessimistic realism in Thucydides. I shall argue that the new political model in this play inspires no hope for change in the community, but, on the contrary, has damaging effects for it. Demos employs a delusional positive thinking which sustains false visions of having his desires met indefinitely in the future through a never-ending alteration of political advisors. Notwithstanding the festive mood at the end of the play, it becomes obvious that disillusionment is always destined to follow hope and that Demos, despite his attempts at rationalization of his political incentives (l. 1121-30), is unable to break free from this vicious circle. According to this interpretation, Athenian politics will never recover inasmuch as the demos abandons its power to doubtful politicians. This is a far cry from the aforementioned hopeful democracy of Pericles, while it evokes Thucydides’ statement on men’s tendency to use reason only to push away what they dislike, but taint what they like with feelings of thoughtless hope (4.108.4).
Through this syncretic reading of Thucydides’ and Aristophanes’ respective models of hope I aim to show that a pessimistic political message emerges regarding the predominance of blind illusion over reality in contemporary politics and the limited ability of the people to predict and control the future.
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The Funeral Oration presents one of the very few instances in Thucydides where hope is imbued with positive nuances. In this speech Pericles presents a hopeful democracy, in which the citizens of the polis have reasons to fight because they have invested their hopes in the city. Hope takes on a positive angle because it is grounded in in the endurance of the demos as a whole and the empirical reality of the polis. And yet the advent of the plague which fails all hopes shows once more that the constructive side of hope always manifests itself together with its destructive twin.
In this paper, I wish to examine these observations against the political background of Aristophanes’ Knights. The “great idea” typical of the comic genre is conceived in Knights as an antidote to a hopeless political model, after all ideas have been exhausted (prayers, escape, death, libations), with the aim of its rectification. Yet, in the one instance where the word “hope” appears it is only a slender one (1245 λεπτή τις ἐλπίς) right at the turn of the Old to the New World, that is when the Sausage-seller manifests his true nature and emerges as the successor of Paphlagon. I, therefore, wish to put forward a pessimistic interpretation of the politics of the play which very much resembles the overarching tone of pessimistic realism in Thucydides. I shall argue that the new political model in this play inspires no hope for change in the community, but, on the contrary, has damaging effects for it. Demos employs a delusional positive thinking which sustains false visions of having his desires met indefinitely in the future through a never-ending alteration of political advisors. Notwithstanding the festive mood at the end of the play, it becomes obvious that disillusionment is always destined to follow hope and that Demos, despite his attempts at rationalization of his political incentives (l. 1121-30), is unable to break free from this vicious circle. According to this interpretation, Athenian politics will never recover inasmuch as the demos abandons its power to doubtful politicians. This is a far cry from the aforementioned hopeful democracy of Pericles, while it evokes Thucydides’ statement on men’s tendency to use reason only to push away what they dislike, but taint what they like with feelings of thoughtless hope (4.108.4).
Through this syncretic reading of Thucydides’ and Aristophanes’ respective models of hope I aim to show that a pessimistic political message emerges regarding the predominance of blind illusion over reality in contemporary politics and the limited ability of the people to predict and control the future.