The Discourse of Kingship in Classical Athenian Thought

Abstract

Athenian foundation myth includes stories of kings, retold in different genres to pursue distinct political agendas and to reshape the Athenian political imaginary. This article explores the transition from drama to history as a vehicle for these stories, and the exploitation of this transition in Isocrates’ political rhetoric, conflating myth and history. While Euripides’ democratic king Theseus represented an idealized active citizen, Isocrates retold Athenian myth to show that the good qualities of Athenian democracy depend on their origins in the city’s political foundation by Theseus, and that citizens should achieve the good life through imitating virtuous monarchs.