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Description of  Theatre and Autocracy in the Ancient World

Why did ancient autocrats patronise theatre? How could ancient theatre rightly supposed to be an artform that developed and flourished under democracy serve their needs? Plato claimed that poets of tragic drama "drag states into tyranny and democracy". The word order is very deliberate: he goes on to say that tragic poets are honoured "especially by the tyrants, and secondly by the democracies" (Republic 568c). Read more