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This concluding chapter presents a synthesis of the discussions in the preceding chapters. It argues that issues of familial interaction, causation, human action, and moral responsibility in Attic tragedy are by no means settled; and that interpreters of these endlessly absorbing and undeniably intoxicating texts ignore them at their peril.

Nietzsche’s 1886 Foreword to his first book aims to make up for what that book ruined: the stupendous Greek problem of truth and culture. His book focused on Attic tragedy because there the ideal of the knower-maker took on historic reality. On the annual four-day Dionysian Festival, the Athenian male population re-experienced its foundational cultural myths and rededicated itself to its norms of belief and action. The works of Aeschylus and Sophocles in particular provide Nietzsche with examples of the culture-making power of the thinker/maker, with Prometheus being the paradigm figure: his heroic knowing brought the gifts of knowing and making that transformed humanity. Most importantly, Attic tragedy, while dependent on myth, conveyed the truth, the tragic truth that would be soul-destroying and culture-destroying but for its artistic representation, the myth-making that made it livable. For Nietzsche, the shared experience of Attic tragedy that was foundational to the Greek achievement could serve moderns as an example of what it too could achieve: Wagner is our Aeschylus, his music-drama could transform the modern German population, gathering it into a cultural purpose that could overcome the modern dispersal into the trivial to which all modern peoples were subject.

Herodotus articulates the continuing presence and relevance of myth in the world of the fifth century. This chapter begins by examining an episode near the end of the Histories, where Herodotus appropriates local, oral mythological traditions in the form of a story about Helen of Troy (9.73). Herodotus' presentation reveals the role of mythic discourse in shaping fifth-century events as well as drawing out wider points about historical processes. The chapter then goes on to address the more sustained and complex example of Mardonius' self-mythicising image, where reference to the mythic past is inflected through the Panhellenic poetic genres of epic and tragedy, and the questions it raises about the purposes and effects of mythic discourse on the twin levels of history and the historian's presentation.

This chapter explores the ostensible contradiction between Herodotus' allegedly true story of the Persian king Cyrus' rise to power (1.95–130) and the mythical features of the logos itself. Unlike sources that falsely exaggerate Cyrus' status or achievement, Herodotus asserts that he overthrew his maternal grandfather, the Median king Astyages, at the urging of Astyages' vengeful vizier Harpagus. In order to make his account of the historical origins of the Persian empire intelligible, credible, and emotionally engaging for his Hellenic audience, Herodotus uses narrative techniques familiar from Greek myth, especially as inflected by Greek tragedy. Moreover, Herodotus makes truth-telling a distinctive characteristic of the young Cyrus, which enhances the effect of tragic reversal in his final military defeat at the hands of the Massagetae — an episode that Herodotus, lacking unimpeachable sources, conscientiously presents not as the truth, but merely in the ‘most persuasive’ (1.214.5) version known to him.

This chapter focuses on the position of women in Athens. It is the accepted view that the Athenian woman lived in an almost Oriental seclusion, regarded with indifference, even contempt. The evidence is partly the direct evidence of literature, partly the inferior legal status of women. Literature shows us a wholly masculine society: domestic life plays no part. It is orthodox to compare the repression of women in Athens with the freedom and respect that they enjoyed in Homeric society – and in historical Sparta. The evidence also includes a large number of painted vases (fifth century) that portray domestic scenes, including some funerary-urns representing a dead wife as living, and taking farewell of her husband, children and slaves. There are also sculptured tombstones – quite ordinary ones – showing similar scenes. Then there is Attic tragedy. One of its notable features is its splendid succession of tragic heroines: three Clytemnestras, four Electras, Tecmessa, Antigone, Ismene, Deianeira, Iocasta, Medea, Phaedra, Andromache, Hecuba, and Helen.