R S Redefning deity in Athenian tragedy 1. Presocratic philosophy The relation between the two momentous Greek inventions of presocratic philosophy and Athenian tragedy has, relative to its importance, inspired surprisingly li tle scholarship. The theme of this paper, the redefnition of deity in Athenian tragedy, must be understood in the context of its earlier radical redefnition in presocratic philosophy. Fundamental to presocratic philosophy is a cosmos that does not require personal gods. Such a radical and unprecedented revolution in thought does not happen by itself, and I have ar- gued in detail 1 that an important factor was the unprecedented monetisation that exactly accompanied it. This conclusion will be important for our discussion of tragedy, and so I will here briefy recapitulate the argument for it. The argument was based on three considerations that are in- dependent of each other. Firstly, central instruments of social in- tegration tend, at least in pre-modern societies, to be consciously or unconsciously projected onto the cosmos (cosmized) 2 . In the absence of experimentation, telescopes, microscopes etc., the un- known can be envisaged only as the known. The trans-individu- al comprehensiveness of social power is reifed as transcendent. This is obvious with the patriarchal monarchy of Zeus, and it would be surprising if it did not occur with the new instrument of social integration, impersonal but seemingly all-pervasive and all-powerful, coined money, that began to pervade the polis from the early sixth century BCE. 1 S 2004. 2 For the phenomenon of cosmization see B 1967. «Dioniso» 9, 2019, 15-30