Contest in Western Drama

REFLECTIONS ON "AGON" THE
CENTRAL ELEMENT OF "CONTEST" IN

WESTERN DRAMA
Aien Aristeuein (Ever to Excel): During a battle between the Greeks and
Trojans, Diomedes is impressed by the bravery of a mysterious young
man and demands to know his identity. Glaucus replies: "Hippolocus
begat me. I claim to be his son, and he sent me to Troy with strict
instructions: Ever to excel, to do better than others, and to bring glory to
your forebears, who indeed were very great ... This is my ancestry; this is
the blood I am proud to inherit." (Iliad 6. 208)
Aien Aristeuein: The World of the Hawk
The Homeric heroic world, as it comes across in the Iliad and the
Odyssey, is a predominantly aristocratic, warrior-culture whose
mentality is largely governed by power in its naked, immediate form.
Aretē, a key word in understanding the Homeric hero's behavior,
points to the ethical ideals of the aristoi (noblemen, aristocrats) --
significantly, the two words seem to have a common etymological root
-- and it emphasizes the agonistic nature of their values. Although it is
usually translated as "virtue" or "excellence," aretē in Homer can more
accurately be rendered as "prowess in battle" and is geared toward
those qualities that are most needed in a warlike society, such as
physical strength, valor, endurance, and so on. Homeric aretē also has
a second meaning, describing intellectual rather than physical
abilities, but again in a competitive context: for example, Odysseus is
praised as being aristos in counsel, that is, because of his ability to
bring about, through skillful manipulation or cunning (mētis), his own
party's success in war or peace. In the Homeric world, therefore,
power presents itself as agon or competitive play. This means not only
that contest has an important function in Homeric society, but also
that the hero sees his relationship to other humans and to the
divinities, as well as to existence at large, in terms of a universal game
of power. Hippolochus' valedictory words to his son Glaukos, "Aien
aristeuein kai hupeirochon emmenai allon" ("always be best and excel
others," Il. 6.208), repeated by Nestor, who this time puts them in the
mouth of Peleus as the latter sends his son Achilles off to the Trojan
War (Il. 11.784), aptly express the Hellenic aristocratic ideal of life,
based on play as contest.
Before examining the various forms of agonistic play in the Homeric

epic, it would be useful to recall briefly the semantic history of words
such as agōn and aethlos. In Homer, agōn designates "an assembly
with games or contests," "the place where the games are held," and
the "competitors or the potential competitors" themselves (any
member of the assembly may join in the competition). Some
dictionaries list "place of assembly" as the original meaning of agōn
and "assembly to witness games" as a secondary meaning. A closer
look at the Iliad and the Odyssey, however, shows that the agōn
semantic group is almost always used in connection with games or
contests. Out of the twenty-three lines where agōn appears in the
Iliad, sixteen relate to the funeral games held in Patroclus' honor (book
23), whereas in the Odyssey all six lines where the word appears are in
some way associated with games. G. G. P. Autenrieth lists the Homeric
meanings of agōn in the correct order: (1) assembly, especially to
witness games; contest, games; (2) assemblage or place of
assemblage of the ships; (3) place of combat, arena, including the
space occupied by the spectators. At the outset, therefore, the word
agōn clearly holds a central position in the Hellenic vocabulary of play.
In post Homeric times, agōn becomes increasingly abstract,
designating only the game or the contest itself. It gradually transcends
the sphere of athletic games, extending to such abstract contexts as
law, politics, warfare, eros, rhetoric, history, philosophy, and literary
criticism; even in these contexts, however, its connection with the
notion of play remains firm.
In turn, Homeric aethlos (Att. athlos) specifically signifies "prize-

contest," but it can also mean "combat in war" as well as "toil" and
"hardship," such as Euristheus imposes on Heracles (Il. 8.363). Like
agōn, athlos turns increasingly abstract and in the classical period the
two terms become interchangeable: both of them can denote "athletic
contest," such as the great Panhellenic festivals. At the same time
agōn undergoes an ethical polarization, acquiring negative meanings;
like athlos, it can signify "hardship" or "toil," for example, in agōnia.
This polarization appears approximately at the moment when, in
certain Sophists and in Plato, paidia comes to denote not only
"children's play" but also "play" in general. It is the moment when
philosophy separates play from agōn, that is, from violent contest and
power -- a separation that took place especially in the context of the
Platonic theory of education (paideia) and that was adopted and
perpetuated by subsequent classical scholarship. It can be concluded,
then, that the semantic development of agōn and aethlos equally
reflects the shift in emphasis from an archaic to a median mentality in
Hellenic thought, where the aristocratic notion of contest undergoes a
process of ethical polarization, acquiring an increasingly ambivalent
emotional value.
In the Homeric epic, play as agōn governs the transactions among

heroes, among gods, between men and gods, and between mortals
and Moira. Heroes relate to other heroes in terms of a competitive
game, the goal of which is to establish a relative hierarchy (primus
inter pares) within the aristocratic group. This hierarchy, however,
remains highly unstable. The hero ceaselessly worries about his order
of rank in relation to his peers and about "what people will say,"
because success is labile by nature. He constantly has to prove his
aretē in battle and in the assembly, constantly has to remain in the
public eye. For instance, after his quarrel with Agamemnon, Achilles
cannot afford to stay away from the battlefield for too long lest he
should be forgotten, a fate worse than death for the Homeric hero. He
has no moral scruples in enlisting the help of his mother, Thetis (even if
this means bringing almost total disaster upon the Greek camp), in
order to make sure that his comrades need his services. Moral
scruples (in the modern sense, arising from the notion of ethical
responsibility toward fellow humans at large) are irrelevant in a heroic
society, where intentions count less than performance, and where
performance is judged largely in terms of success and failure. Achilles
is less concerned with the common good than with his own timē (fame,
reputation, but also sphere of influence), which depends only
indirectly upon this common good. (Actually, the welfare of the Greek
camp can only be, and should have been, Agamemnon's concern,
being part of his timē as the commander-in-chief of the army.)
From, "God of Many Names: Play, Poetry, and Power in Hellenic

Thought from Homer to Aristotle" Book by Mihai I. Spariosu; Duke
University Press, 1991
So, what does all of this mean and what relevance does it hold for working
with actors? Movies (Fiction and Non-Fiction), plays, "reality shows," and
certainly Game Shows, as well as most all forms of 'Western'
entertainment, growing as it does out of the soil of a compulsively
competitive Greek culture, inherits agōn/contest/conflict, as a given; to
the point, whereby, “no agōn, no entertainment” to the 'Western' viewer,
for the better or for the worse.
And so, one might approach all drama today from the standpoint that ALL
characters' "super-super-objective" is to WIN (something).
What do you think?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---"The play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king."

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REFLECTIONS ON "AGON" THE

CENTRAL ELEMENT OF "CONTEST" IN

Aien Aristeuein: The World of the Hawk

Before examining the various forms of agonistic play in the Homeric

In turn, Homeric aethlos (Att. athlos) specifically signifies "prize-

In the Homeric epic, play as agōn governs the transactions among

From, "God of Many Names: Play, Poetry, and Power in Hellenic

What do you think?

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