We now turn to the last of the conditions imposed on Athens by the Macedonians, Cassander’s installation of Demetrios of Phaleron as virtual tyrant of Athens in 317. Demetrios held power until removed in 307/6 by Cassander’s rival, Demetrios Poliorcetes.^[26] Demetrios of Phaleron was an accomplished orator, a student and writer of Peripatetic philosophy, a lawgiver, and a bon vivant.^[27] His authority in Athens during the period was supreme, and we may assume that significant changes in religious institutions were due to or approved by him. They include (1) the elimination of festival chorēgiai; (2) legislation limiting expenditure on funerals and funerary monuments; and (3) the institution of officials (gynaikonomoi) who, among other duties, oversaw some restrictions on the number of participants at private ritual activities. These reforms all alike seem intended to limit major expenditures for religious purposes by the rich, but for what reason and with what results we must examine.

Since their beginnings the choruses that were essential to the tragedies, comedies, and dithyrambs at various Athenian religious festivals had been paid for by wealthy individuals in Athens. The individual sponsoring the chorus was the chorēgos, his service was a chorēgia, and he might erect a “choregic” monument to celebrate a victory.^[28] The chorēgoi for the tragedies and comedies of the City Dionysia were appointed by the archon eponymous, those for the Lenaia by the archon basileus. Dithyrambs were presented as competitions among choruses of each of the ten tribes, and the tribes appointed the chorēgoi. At some time in the fourth century, before ca. 325, the tribes began to appoint also the chorēgoi for the comedies. The expenses were considerable. From Lysias 21.1–5 we hear that one chorēgos spent 3,000 drachmas for his tragic chorus in the City Dionysia and 2,000 for a men’s chorus at the Thargelia in 410; 5,000 for a dithyrambic chorus and victory monument in 409; more than 1,500 for a boy’s chorus, probably in 404; and 1,600 for a comic chorus in 402.

In the mid–fourth century there were at least forty-five such chorēgoi: twenty-eight for the City Dionysia (twenty for the dithyrambic competitions of men and boys, three for tragedy, and five for comedy), seven for the Lenaia (five for comedy, two for tragedy), and ten for the dithyrambic competitions (men and boys) at the Thargelia.^[29] At some time in the course of Demetrios’ tenure all these and other chorēgiai by appointed individuals were eliminated. All the chorēgoi were replaced by a single, elected agōnothetēs (“contest producer”). The last of the long series of choregic inscriptions date to 320/19.^[30] Xenocles of Sphettos (APF 11234), in 307/6, is the first recorded agōnothetēs (IG II² 3073), and there it is said that “the Demos were the chorēgos ” (ὁ δῆμος ἐχορέγει) for this celebration of the Lenaia.

Why the change? It would relieve a relatively small group of rich families from a considerable outlay of money, and some see this to be Demetrios’ purpose.^[31] Aristotle, Demetrios’ teacher, had suggested (Pol. 1309a14–20) that democracies, for the sake of their own stability, spare the rich costly and useless chorēgiai and lampadarchiai (“sponsorships of torch races”). Demetrios himself reportedly questioned the value of the choregic monuments for analogous reasons: “For the victors the tripod is not a dedication of victory, but a ‘last libation’ over the exhausted resources and a ‘cenotaph’ of failed families” (FGrHist 228 F 25).

But henceforth “the Demos” were to be the chorēgos, and the innovation might be seen as a democratization of the festivals. This would be in accord with Demetrios’ extension of citizen rights by reducing the property qualification to 1,000 drachmas from the 2,000 instituted by Antipater. Now the people, by election of the chief official and by financial support, were to take control of their own festivals. In political terms Demetrios may have intended not to save his wealthy rivals money but to limit their opportunities for display and publicity.^[32]

Whether Demetrios was intending to help or restrict the rich is a question for political historians to settle. Why he turned to the chorēgiai is an issue for religious history and can be viewed in the context of the preceding two decades. Lycourgos had brought economies and order to the finances of state cults and to their handling of dedications. The result had been not “economizing” at the expense of religion but a new kosmos for the sanctuaries in terms of buildings and dedications, as well as for the splendor of some of the major festivals. Demetrios may have wished to bring similar economy, order, and kosmos to the very expensive and popular festivals that featured dramatic and choral competitions. If it helped his friends or harmed his enemies, so much the better. The introduction of the agōnothesia would certainly bring order to the somewhat chaotic and arbitrary system by which these choruses had been financed for generations.

There had also been criticisms, public and private, of the institution of the chorēgia in the past twenty years. Lycourgos, as we have seen, preferred that individuals contribute to the building of walls and the support of the navy. To him chorēgiai were only for the glory of the family of the chorēgos, a conspicuous display of wealth (Leoc. 139–40). Aristotle goes so far as to call such services “not useful” (Pol. 1309a18).^[33] And Demetrios’ own criticism, given above, has meaning only if some chorēgoi had endured genuine financial hardships. The chorēgia was thus an institution in need of reform, and reformed it was. The results of a reform may differ, however, from its purposes, and we now look at these results.

The first attested agōnothetēs was Xenocles of Sphettos, whom we met earlier as a supporter of Lycourgos’ religious program (chapter 1, pp. 34–36). After Demetrios’ overthrow, in the restored democracy, Xenocles took up his old interests. Forty years before he had twice served as a liturgist for the Panathenaia. Now, as elected agōnothetēs, he was to manage all the choruses of the festivals. Clearly not all liturgists had wanted to be relieved of such duties.^[34] Some former chorēgoi emerge now as agōnothetai.^[35] Eleven or fourteen years earlier, as epimelētēs of the Mysteries, Xenocles had used his own money to build a bridge over the Cephisos. Did he, as agōnothetēs, contribute to the costs of the festivals? Was the agōnothetēs expected to help finance the festivals he superintended? If so, this would be a major development in the nature and in the public perception of the festivals. No longer would the success of the competitions and the glory therefrom be owed to several individuals; attention instead would focus on one man, the agōnothetēs. And also, since the office was elected, the candidates were presumably volunteers actively seeking the position. The state probably would provide the base expenses, and hence the festival would be more democratic, but the agōnothetēs might, at his own expense, provide the extras that would make it truly memorable.

There is no evidence that Xenocles contributed his own money, but he certainly had the necessary fortune and, years earlier, the inclination to do so. We know that the agōnothetēs of 284/3 did contribute and was honored for it. When Philippides of Kephale (APF 14356), the rich Athenian poet of New Comedy, was elected agōnothetēs in the year of the archonship of Isaios, “he heeded the Demos, a volunteer, at his own expense, he sacrificed the ancestral sacrifices for the Demos…, and he gave to the Athenians all their contests” (IG II² 657.38–50). The authority remained with the people, but the financial contributions of the agōnothetēs were acknowledged, welcomed, and honored. And these contributions could be enormous. The prominent statesman Eurycleides of Kephisia (PA 5966) as agōnothetēs in the last third of the third century B.C. spent 63,000 drachmas (IG II² 834).^[36] From the status of the office in 284/3, when the contributions are not treated as an innovation, we might expect that the agōnothesia from its inception involved an outlay of personal funds.

In 309/8 Demetrios served as archon eponymous. Duris of Samos, a contemporary historian, after describing the profligacy, debauchery, and personal vanity of Demetrios, continues: “in the procession of the Dionysia which Demetrios as archon held, the chorus sang for him poems of Seiron of Soli, poems in which Demetrios was addressed as ‘sun-formed.’” The relevant line is then quoted: “The exceptionally noble, sun-formed (ἡλιόμορφος) archon honors you (viz., Dionysos) with divine honors” (FGrHist 76 F 10). If Demetrios limited himself to the traditional duties of the archon eponymous as detailed in the Constitution of the Athenians (56.4) of about fifteen years earlier, the procession was that of the City Dionysia.^[37]

But it is the song that deserves attention. If we are to take seriously the malicious Duris here,^[38] we must place the song at the end of the procession, just prior to the sacrifices to Dionysos. It was composed by a foreigner, not an Athenian. “Noble” (εὐγενέτας) is a reasonable adjective for the now-distinguished Demetrios, but “sun-formed” is not. A rare word, it could as easily be taken as “rotund” as suggesting any solar theology. And Demetrios was, according to the same passage of Duris, a notorious glutton.^[39] Given the quality of the source and the uncertainty of the meaning of the line, we should not, I think, take it as evidence of a movement toward the divinization of Demetrios. And there is no other evidence, apart from a large number of honorific statues,^[40] pointing in this direction.

Duris’ description also does not make Demetrios’ archonship a terminus post quem for the establishment of the agōnothesia. The agōnothetēs may have been initially responsible only for the agōnes (“contests”) of the festivals, with the archons retaining their traditional responsibility for the processions.^[41] Then Demetrios need not, as archon, have been the first, prototypical agōnothetēs. As eponymous archon he had a constitutional role to play in the City Dionysia, but it need not have been that of agōnothetēs. It seems likely that the establishment of the agōnothesia, like similar reforms of Lycourgos, would have occurred relatively early in Demetrios’ reign.

One further significant innovation in the financing of festivals occurred just prior to Demetrios’ reign. Cassander had placed his general Nicanor in Menyllos’ place as commander of the Macedonian garrison in Mounichia in 319.^[42] In the turmoil after Antipater’s death Nicanor took control of the whole Piraeus and harbors. At this time the Athenian general and statesman Phocion persuaded Nicanor to try to win Athenian favor by becoming an agōnothetēs (Plut. Phoc. 31.2). Plutarch’s use of the term here is probably anachronistic, but we have, for the first time, a complete foreigner contributing to the expenses of Athenian festivals,^[43] for the purpose, ultimately unsuccessful, of winning the goodwill of the populace. Hitherto on occasion resident foreigners had served as chorēgoi,^[44] but it is a considerable step from that to having a foreign general contributing to the festivals. The former, often wealthy, might be naturally contributing to the kosmos of the city in which they resided, often permanently. The latter can have had only political motives. This event serves as a harbinger of the later politicization of the festivals by foreigners.

In a general description of Athenian attempts to restrict extravagance at funerals, Cicero summarizes Demetrios’ own account of his efforts in this regard (Leg. 2.63–66 FGrHist 228 F 9): “Demetrios says that the magnificence of funerals and tombs grew to be almost what it is now at Rome. This practice he himself reduced by legislation.…He reduced expenditure not only by a punishment but also by time. He ordered that the procession to the tomb be before dawn. He also put a limit on new tombs, for he did not want anything to be set up over the mound of earth except a column not higher than three cubits or a table or a basin,^[45] and he placed a certain magistracy in charge of this.”

The requirement that the processions be held before dawn indicates that more than economy was intended. Like the sixth-century B.C. funerary legislation of Solon, the purpose must have been to prevent ostentation, whether in practice or in monuments, and this is commonly viewed as a limitation on the aristocratic and wealthy.^[46] In this regard Demetrios’ law would be analogous to Lycourgos’ law that women not ride on wagons in the procession to Eleusis for the Mysteries, lest “ordinary women be made to feel inferior to the rich” (chapter 1, p. 23).

The behavior of women at funerals was always a concern of Greek funerary legislation, and it may be that the magistrates Demetrios had superintend this legislation were the gynaikonomoi (“regulators of women”) whom he had also introduced.^[47] Their authority evidently extended beyond women, at least to the point of regulating religious activities at which women might be present. The gynaikonomoi also enforced Demetrios’ legislation limiting the number of guests at weddings and private sacrifices to thirty (FGrHist 328 F 65; Ath. 6.245A–C). Funerals, weddings, and sacrifices were the major occasions for the gatherings of extended families, and it must have been the size, ostentation, and expense of these which Demetrios sought to limit by law.

All of the innovations and legislation described thus far would have saved the wealthy money, but it may well have been money they would have preferred to spend to sustain or raise their families’ reputations in the social and political arenas. The financial burdens of the chorēgiai now fall upon far fewer, but these fewer probably paid far more, and they seem to have done so willingly. It is unlikely that the wealthy welcomed limitations on their weddings, funerals, and private sacrifices, and state officials were needed to enforce these new provisions. At least one result, if not purpose, of Demetrios’ religious legislation was to reduce the great disparity between the religious obligations and ceremonies of the very wealthy and the rest of the citizens. The private religious activities of the rich became less grand, less ostentatious. The dramatic festivals were now more directly under the control of the state, but, paradoxically, they also would be more associated each year with the generosity of one individual.