Symbolic competition in fifth-century Athens was predominately competition for acclaim. In the Mediterranean world, symbolic competition after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE through the early centuries of the Roman Empire was predominately competition for attention. Early in the nineteenth century, Percy Bysshe Shelley contrasted the emotional effects of fifth-century Athenian tragedy and Hellenistic poetry. More recently, scholars have found distinctive mental dispositions to be associated with Hellenism.
An important analysis of art in the Hellenistic period associates five mental dispositions with the Hellenism. The Hellenistic period means here from 323 BCE to the end of the Roman republic late in the first century BCE. The five characteristics of the Hellenistic zeitgeist are “an obsession with fortune, a theatrical mentality, a scholarly mentality, individualism, and a cosmopolitan outlook.”^ Compared to that characterization, competition for attention is a narrower, more objective description of historical circumstances of symbolic competition. Mental dispositions in part are shaped through historical circumstances of symbolic competition. Obsession with fortune correlates with widely different extents of success in attracting attention (fame). A theatrical mentality is associated with the value of sensational publicity. Individualism and a cosmopolitan outlook existed within a socially, culturally, and geographically expansive field of competition for attention.
Competition for attention doesn’t exclude concern about social status. Romans were acutely concerned about social status. Moreover, spectators at Roman festivals were organized according to social status, Roman festivals often held theatrical prize competitions, and Roman festivals were an important means for propagating imperial ideology.^ Nonetheless, the macrostructure of symbolic competition in Hellenistic and early imperial Roman, compared to fifth-century Athens, was much more oriented toward competition for attention than competition for acclaim. Pantomime dancing, a highly popular type of theatrical performance, became part of sacred festival competitions in the Roman East beginning about 180 CE.^ In these new circumstances, the poet-teachers of fifth-century Athens are re-figured as leeches in Horace’s Ars Poetica:
his morose public recitations frighten off the educated and the ignorant alike; once he gets his hands on a person, he doesn’t let go until he kills him with his reading–a leech who will not release the skin unless gorged with blood.^
In fifth-century Athens, the public for a public work was institutionally constituted within relatively small bounds. The size of publics varied enormously in the Hellenistic period. That has important implications for the emotional tone of public works and their significance to public policy.