CHAPTER I

THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGIOUS ORIGIN[223]

If a modern theatergoer could be suddenly set down in ancient Athens, perhaps one of the first things to surprise him would be the discovery that he could not have recourse to his favorite recreation any day that he might choose. Of course, this situation resulted from the fact that ancient drama was connected with religion, was part of some god’s worship, and as such could be presented only at the time of his festivals. This patron deity was uniformly Dionysus (Bacchus), god of wine, for the reason that tragedy and satyric drama were offshoots of the Dionysiac dithyramb (see pp. 2-4 and 6 f., above) and that the _comus_ (κῶμος), from which comedy had developed (see p. 36, above) had a meaning and function similar to those of certain rites of Dionysus and in the course of time was brought into connection with his worship. At Athens, Dionysus had several festivals, but only two at which plays were performed, viz., the City Dionysia and the Lenaea. Thanks to the labors of many scholars and the finding of additional inscriptional evidence our information concerning these occasions, though still far from complete, is somewhat less scanty than it has been.[224] At the City Dionysia tragedy dated from 534 B.C., while comedy was not given official recognition there until 486 B.C. Though the Lenaea was the older festival, its dramatic features were later, comedy being added about 442 B.C. and tragedy about 433 B.C. It ought to be stated, however, that at both festivals there had been volunteer, unofficial performances of primitive comedy (κῶμοι) prior to the dates just given, when the state took them under its formal protection. The comus was introduced into the Lenaean festival between 580 B.C. and 560 B.C., and into the program of the City Dionysia about 501 B.C. (see p. 24).

Now if our imaginary modern visitor to ancient Athens chanced to be somewhat acquainted with the history of mediaeval drama, he would probably surmise that the close connection between Greek drama and religious festivals would result in the plays being performed in temples, just as mysteries and miracle plays were originally presented in the churches. But in this he would be much mistaken. There is a fundamental difference in function between a Greek temple and a Christian church. The latter is primarily intended as a place for congregational worship, and its size and interior arrangements are chosen accordingly. On the other hand, the temple was pre-eminently thought of as the earthly abode of some divinity; it was, therefore, uniformly too small to accommodate any considerable crowd, neither was its interior well adapted for that purpose. In the second place, the worshipers at an ancient shrine were not more or less rigidly restricted to a list of members with their more intimate relatives, neighbors, and friends, as is the case with a Protestant church today. In most cases, any free-born citizen would feel as free to worship at any particular temple or to take part in its festivals as could any other citizen, and on no infrequent occasions practically the whole body of citizens was present. In fact, so important was it deemed that everyone should attend the dramatic festivals that toward the end of the fifth century it was provided that whoever felt unable to pay the daily admission fee of two obols[225] should, upon application, receive a grant for this purpose from the state. “The whole city kept holiday, and gave itself up to pleasure, and to the worship of the wine-god. Business was abandoned; the law-courts were closed; distraints for debt were forbidden during the continuance of the festival; even prisoners were released from jail, to enable them to share in the common festivities.”[226] Boys and slaves were admitted, if their fathers or their masters were willing to pay their way. It seems, though the evidence is inconclusive,[227] that despite the oriental-like seclusion of Greek households even women and girls might attend. They certainly participated in the ceremonies of the first day. Plato and Aristotle favored restricting the attendance, but their views seem to have had no effect. Thus, children and respectable women who would have invited divorce by being present at real scenes of that character were allowed to witness the indecencies of satyric drama and Old Comedy and to listen to the broadest of jokes. Such is the power of religious conservatism.

[Illustration: FIG. 65

A “WAGON-SHIP” OF DIONYSUS AND PROCESSIONAL UPON AN ATTIC SKYPHOS IN BOLOGNA OF ABOUT 500 B.C.

See p. 121, n. 2]

From these considerations it follows that the attendance upon the dramatic performances was enormous, and that the use of temples to accommodate the spectators was entirely out of the question. Therefore it became necessary to provide a separate structure, which in fourth-century Athens could seat as many as seventeen thousand. From this fact arose the further necessity for an annual procession, in order to escort the statue of Dionysus from his temple to his theater. Since the two buildings were situated in the same precinct on the south slope of the Acropolis and within a few feet of each other (Figs. 29 and 32), there was no need of the processional ceremony being other than a very simple one. As a matter of fact, from the spectacular standpoint this was one of the most splendid features of the festival and consumed the whole first day. It has been claimed that several Attic vases, dating from the close of the sixth century B.C. and depicting the “wagon-ship” of Dionysus, give a hint as to the character of this part of the City Dionysia (Fig. 65).[228] The car is drawn by two men representing attendant sprites of Dionysus. The tip of the long equine tail of one of them is clearly indicated. In the car are two other sprites, whether sileni or satyrs, playing on flutes, and the god himself is seated between them. Alongside of the sacrificial bull are two citizens standing. Farther forward are two youths with branches (θαλλοφόροι), then a youth with a censer, another with a basket (κανηφόρος), and finally, at the head of the procession, a boy who is perhaps to be regarded as a trumpeter. Whatever relationship may subsist between such vase paintings and contemporaneous drama (see p. 20, above) the entire free population, from the chief magistrate of the city (the archon eponymus) down, participated in the procession at the City Dionysia and took the god’s statue by stages from his temple to a point near the Academy on the road to Eleutherae (Fig. 2). This direction was chosen because, as the Athenian god’s cognomen of Eleuthereus shows, this image and its cult were supposed to have been introduced from this town on Attica’s northern border (see p. 21 and n. 3, above) and because the return of the processional was intended to imitate the final portion of the original entry. After the remainder of the day had been spent in rites and festivities the procession escorted the sacred relic back to its precinct by torchlight and placed it near the orchestra in the theater, where it remained during the rest of the festival. Thus the god was supposed to have witnessed every play presented at the City Dionysia from 534 B.C. on, and it is as a connoisseur and critic of wide experience that he is appointed to judge between the rival claims of Aeschylus and Euripides in Aristophanes’ _Frogs_, vss. 810 f. Our English and Protestant ideas concerning the nature of a religious ceremony are only too likely to give us a misleading conception of the whole festival and especially of its first day. The _festa_ of some popular saint in Southern Europe, who demands the veneration of his people and yet is broad-minded enough to enter into the spirit of the occasion and is not offended even by being made the subject of rollicking jests, would afford a far better parallel, and even this falls short. Drunkenness combined with the darkness at the close of the day’s proceedings to intensify the license natural on such an occasion. Children born as the result of chance meetings at these annually recurring processions are frequently mentioned in New Comedy and often motivate the action.[229]

Nevertheless, the religious character of these festivals and of the dramatic exhibitions connected with them was a very real thing to the Greeks, and everyone in attendance would fully realize that he was present at no secular proceeding. To a mediaeval spectator of miracle plays and mysteries this feeling would seem perfectly natural, but it would be another occasion of surprise to a modern visitor. Already in Elizabethan times Shakespeare could assure his audience: “Our true intent is all for your delight.” So exclusively is this now the motive of theatrical performances that we seldom think of the theater as a place for the inculcation of religious truths or for teaching the facts of religious history. It follows that the subject-matter of Greek drama was drawn from their mythology as inevitably and uniformly as the text of a modern sermon is drawn from the Bible. In fact, freedom of choice was originally still more restricted. Whether tragedy was derived from satyric drama and satyric drama from the dithyramb or whether, as I believe, both tragedy and satyric drama were independent offshoots of the dithyramb (see pp. 2-4), this remains true—the early dithyramb was exclusively devoted to the exaltation of Dionysus, and in consequence the themes of tragedy and of satyric drama were likewise, at the beginning, entirely Dionysiac. By the time of Thespis or soon thereafter (see pp. 20 f., above) tragedy broadened out so as to treat any mythological theme. Of the thirty-two extant Greek tragedies Dionysus appears in only one, Euripides’ _Bacchanals_, and even in that he is disguised during most of the play. But the playwrights were not content to stop at this point. Phrynichus, who was a pupil of Thespis and won his first victory in 511 B.C., introduced the innovation of dramatizing contemporaneous history. In 494 B.C. the Persians captured and destroyed the Ionic city of Miletus. Shortly thereafter Phrynichus treated this subject in a tragedy. Though it moved the Athenians to tears, they were so indignant at being reminded of the misfortunes of their kinsmen that they fined the poet one thousand drachmae. Undeterred by this rebuff, however, in 476 B.C. Phrynichus brought out his _Phoenician Women_, dealing with the Persian invasion of Greece in 480-479 B.C. This play served as a model for Aeschylus’ _Persians_ (472 B.C.) on the same subject. But by laying the scenes of these plays in Asia Minor or Persia the dramatists gained remoteness of place instead of the usual remoteness of time. As Racine[230] wrote on a similar occasion: “The general public makes hardly any distinction between that which is removed from them by a thousand years or by a thousand leagues.” A still further innovation was made toward the close of the fifth century by Agathon, in whose _Antheus_ both incidents and character names were entirely fictitious. A very similar development can be traced in mediaeval times. Originally the gospel story was the theme, then subordinate incidents of Scripture, then the lives of saints since Bible times, then allegorical tales, etc.

But in practice Greek tragedians did not avail themselves of their liberty. Agathon’s innovation was not followed up; and though the Greeks did not sharply differentiate mythology and history,[231] they did not take kindly to the treatment of contemporary events in tragedy. The three plays above mentioned exhaust the instances at Athens. Even in mythological subjects experimentation soon led them to confine themselves to the stories of a few houses—to the misfortunes of Oedipus, Orestes, Meleager, Thyestes, etc. This tendency is illustrated by the fact that three of the extant tragedies, Aeschylus’ _Libation-Bearers_, Sophocles’ _Electra_, and Euripides’ play of the same name, ring the changes upon the same topic. Since almost every playwright of consequence would turn his hand to these oft-tried themes, the only chance of success necessarily lay in improving upon the dramatic technique and the elaboration of character and plot already displayed by one’s rivals. As Aristotle wrote,[232] each poet was expected “to surpass that which was the strong point of each of his predecessors.” We are therefore not surprised to learn from the same source that in his day the finest tragedies were based upon these hackneyed subjects. Furthermore, the practice is commended by so high a modern authority as Goethe: “If I were to begin my artistic life over again, I should never deal with a new story. I should always invest the old stories with new and more vital meanings.”

The poets’ choice of tragic themes from traditional mythology does not mean that their material was rigid and intractable. They enjoyed entire freedom to revamp the old tales, by invention, alteration, or suppression, in order to suit their own purposes. Here again the practice of the mediaeval playwrights, though more restricted to minor matters, affords the best clue. On the other hand, the fact that most spectators knew at least the general outline of his plot in advance allowed the ancient dramatist to introduce numerous subtleties that are quite beyond the reach of modern playwrights (see pp. 315 f., below). It is true, as Aristotle[233] warns us, that “even the known stories were known only to a few.” Nevertheless, the more intelligent in the audience would always be well informed, and of the oft-repeated tragic themes even the most stupid could hardly remain in ignorance.

In the case of satyric drama the situation was naturally somewhat different. Whatever the relationship between the dithyramb, satyr-play, and tragedy, the fact remains that the satyr-play was placed in the program of the City Dionysia largely as a concession to the Dionysiac element. Consequently, Bacchic themes were retained in the satyric drama long after they had been abandoned by tragedy. Even so, it did not take long to develop a secondary stage in which the Dionysiac element is practically restricted to the appearance of Bacchus’ attendant sprites, the chorus of satyrs, who are harshly superimposed upon some non-Dionysiac subject. Until recently our direct information concerning the satyr-play was derived solely from Euripides’ _Cyclops_, the only extant representative of this genre, but now the major portion of another, _The Trackers (Ichneutae)_ by Sophocles, has been revealed to us.[234] Both in the _Cyclops_ and now in the _Trackers_ the Bacchic element is restricted to Silenus and the chorus of satyrs, and Dionysus himself figures only as he is appealed to or mentioned in the choral odes or episodes. How generally Bacchus was omitted from his own special brand of play we have no means of knowing, but it was inevitable that this should not be a rare occurrence. The myths in which the wine-god could appropriately appear in person must soon have been exhausted; and the playwrights, more concerned in producing an interesting performance than in maintaining an outworn custom, would yearn to exercise in this field the same freedom that they had already won for themselves in the composition of tragedies. Even in the two plays now before us the new wine is fairly bursting the seams of the old wineskins. In the _Cyclops_, Silenus and his children are joined to the story of Odysseus’ adventures in Polyphemus’ cave, in which neither earlier mythology nor rhyme or adequate reason had vouchsafed them a place. Their presence is explained by the statement that they had set sail in search of Dionysus, after learning that he had been seized by pirates, were shipwrecked near Mt. Aetna, and enslaved by the Cyclops (vss. 11 ff.). The situation in the _Trackers_ is still more forced. The play deals with the theft of Apollo’s cattle by the infant Hermes. Upon the offer of a reward, the satyrs turn detectives in order to track down the stolen beasts. Thus it will be seen that in both plays the Dionysiac element is a mechanical, extraneous feature in the plot. It is not surprising that the dramatic poets should chafe under the limitations of so clumsy a compromise.[235]

Yet again, in the case of comedy the situation was still different. The embryonic form of comedy, the comus, was originally intended by a sort of sympathetic magic to superinduce friendly powers and to expel malign spirits, and involved neither plot, unity of theme, nor fiction. When these features were introduced, they were influenced by mature tragedy and by the Sicilian mime, which had already reached a high stage of development (see pp. 36 f. and 46-52, above). As a result, though comedy had become as much a part of Dionysiac worship as was tragedy or satyric drama, it did not go through a stage of Bacchic or semi-Bacchic themes, but passed at once to fictitious subjects. The difference between tragedy and comedy in this regard is clearly indicated by Antiphanes, a poet of Middle Comedy:[236]

Tragedy is a happy creation in every respect, since the audience knows the plot before ever a word has been spoken. The tragic poet needs only to awaken their memories. If I barely mention Oedipus, they know all the rest: that his father is Laius, his mother Jocaste, who are his sons and daughters, what he has done, and what will befall him.... This is not possible for us, but we must invent everything: new names, preceding events, the present circumstances, the catastrophe, and the exposition.

Furthermore, the Sicilian mime seems to have been unassociated with religious worship, and perhaps this fact has a share in explaining the irreverent, almost atheistic, tendency which Attic comedy manifested. Though it was part of divine worship, it treated the divinities with the utmost disrespect. Even Dionysus himself, the patron deity of the festivals, is represented in Aristophanes’ _Frogs_ as cowardly, lecherous, and foolish, beaten with many stripes before the eyes of his worshipers.

The Greek theater suffered no scene of bloodshed to be enacted before its audience. When the plot of the play, as was not infrequently the case, required such an incident, the harrowing details were narrated by a messenger who had witnessed the event. In Aeschylus’ _Persians_ the combats between Greeks and Asiatics are all narrated. In Aeschylus’ _Seven against Thebes_ and Euripides’ _Phoenician Maids_ the fatal duel between the brothers occurs off-stage. Similarly, in Euripides’ _Bacchanals_ the report is brought to Thebes that Pentheus has been torn to pieces on Mt. Cithaeron. In these and numerous other cases the incidents related took place at some distance from the imaginary scene. When it is remembered that the action of Greek plays is usually laid before a palace or temple, it will at once occur to everyone how conveniently located such a structure was for violence nearer the scene of action. Thus, in Aeschylus’ _Libation-Bearers_ (vs. 904) Orestes drives his mother indoors to dispatch her, and in Sophocles’ _Electra_ he is lucky enough to enter the palace and find her there alone and off her guard. This situation recurred again and again, and a further refinement lay close at hand. The hearts of the spectators were often thrilled with tragic fear or pity by hearing from behind the scenes the screams of the dying, their cries for help, even their death rattle. So Agamemnon dies in Aeschylus’ play of that name (vss. 1343-45); so Clytemnestra in Sophocles’ _Electra_ (vss. 1404 ff.) and Euripides’ play of the same title (vss. 1165-67); so Lycus in Euripides’ _Madness of Heracles_ (vss. 749 and 754); and so many another. The murder of Duncan in _Macbeth_ shows that such scenes must have been far more effective than any attempt at a realistic representation could possibly have been. An additional effect is sometimes secured by flinging open the back scene and disclosing the dead forms within; cf. the slaughtered children of Heracles (Euripides’ _Madness of Heracles_, vss. 1029 ff.), Eurydice (Sophocles’ _Antigone_, vs. 1293), etc. Sometimes death-cries and the opened scene are combined, as in Aeschylus’ _Agamemnon_, vss. 1343-45, 1372 ff. Still another artifice for avoiding seen violence is found in Euripides’ _Children of Heracles_, which ends by Alcmene and her attendants dragging Eurystheus off to his doom.

The rule of Greek dramaturgy which has just been described is liable to one notable exception—the dramatic characters may not commit murder before the eyes of the spectators but they may commit suicide there. Not, of course, that all suicides must take place within the audience’s vision; most of them, like all cases of manslaughter, are reported. But the important fact remains that at least in some instances suicide is enacted before the spectators’ very eyes. So, in Sophocles’ _Ajax_ that hero falls upon his sword (vs. 865), and in Euripides’ _Suppliants_ (vs. 1071) Evadne flings herself from the rocks upon her husband’s funeral pyre. It thus appears that it is neither the bare fact of death nor yet its mere hideousness which was obnoxious to ancient taste. The first conclusion is confirmed by the fact that the life-strength of Alcestis is allowed to ebb away upon the stage (Euripides’ _Alcestis_, vs. 391), and the second by the sight of Heracles racked by agonizing tortures in Sophocles’ _Maidens of Trachis_, vss. 983 ff. The distinction between what is permissible and what is forbidden seems to hinge upon a trivial matter, viz., whether only one character is involved or several.

Passing now to the _raison d’être_ of this practice I will first mention some minor considerations. The paucity of actors in Greek drama (see p. 182, below) made any representation of mass effects, such as a battle, quite impossible. The lack of complicated stage machinery prevented the melodramatic actualism that modern audiences love so well. Being thus unaccustomed to the more difficult feats of realism, the ancients had not learned to demand it in lesser matters. Without a sigh they dispensed with that which everyone knew to be incapable of actual enactment before their eyes. Furthermore, in the absence of a drop curtain (see pp. 243 f., below) it would have been necessary for characters slain upon the stage either to rise and walk casually off, as in the Chinese theaters of today, or to be carried off. The first alternative is unthinkable in ancient Greece and the second would have been too monotonous.

It has also been claimed[237] that the use of masks, each with its own unchanging features, would have been an insuperable obstacle to scenes of violence, as normally presupposing great and rapid changes in the facial expressions of the characters. But in connection with other scenes the Greeks frequently ignored and frequently evaded the difficulties caused by the immobility of their masks (see pp. 222 f., below); so there is no reason to believe that the use of masks would by itself have driven incidents of this nature from the Greek stage.

Ludovico Castelvetro (1570) alleged that the high and narrow stage of the Greek theater was too cramped for the dignified representation of violence. Whatever plausibility this suggestion may previously have enjoyed has been lost since Dörpfeld has shown that the fifth-century theater at Athens had no raised platform for the exclusive use of actors and that actors and chorus stood alike in the broad expanse of the orchestra (see pp. 79 and 117, above) (Figs. 22 f.).

It is customary to explain the Greek avoidance of violence upon aesthetic grounds; to assert that the susceptibilities of the Greeks were so refined as to have been offended by scenes of bloodshed. That which would be disagreeable or painful to see in real life should never be presented to an audience. This is the French position. In the first place the French took over the Greek practice on faith. It was only when they were called upon to explain it that they proceeded to evolve this justification. Then the logic of their argument carried them beyond their models. “A character in <French> tragedy could be permitted to kill himself, whether he did it by poison or steel: what he was not suffered to do was to kill someone else. And while nothing was to be shown on the stage which could offend the feelings through the medium of the eyes, _equally was nothing to be narrated with the accompaniment of any adjuncts that could possibly arouse disagreeable sensations in the mind_.”[238] They were therefore under the necessity of attempting to paint the lily—“they took exception to the way in which Philoctetes speaks of the plasters and rags which he applied to his sores; and equally so to the description which Tiresias gives in the _Antigone_ of the filth of the ill-omened birds which had fed on the carcass of Polynices.”[239] I would not be understood as altogether rejecting this aesthetic explanation; doubtless the practice of the Greek playwrights created, if it did not find ready made, such taste concerning these matters. It certainly applies to cases of blinding, which, whether self-imposed (Sophocles’ _Oedipus the King_) or wrought by others (Euripides’ _Hecabe_), always take place off-scene—the later sight of the bloody masks and ghastly eyes is harrowing enough and to spare. Nevertheless, however strong a case may be made out for it, the aesthetic interpretation cannot, because of one cogent objection, provide the real, ultimate reason for the convention. Is suicide so much less revolting than homicide that the same taste can consistently shrink from the sight of one but tolerate the other?

The same objection lies against another suggestion, viz., that the theater precinct was sacred ground which would be polluted by murder, though done in mimicry. To those who remember the taint which the Greeks thought to be brought upon a land by manslaughter, this theory will not, at first, seem lacking in plausibility. But unfortunately, accidental homicide and suicide were thought to involve pollution no less than did murder. Even a natural death, in the Greeks’ opinion, brought a taint. Consequently, this suggestion fails to explain how suicides and natural deaths could occur on the Greek stage.

My own interpretation of the phenomena under consideration is somewhat similar to that just mentioned. Not only was the theater sacred ground but all who were connected with the dramatic performances—those who bore the expenses (the choregi; see p. 270, below), poets, actors, and chorus—“were looked upon as ministers of religion, and their persons were sacred and inviolable.”[240] Even the audience shared in this immunity. Any outrage at such a time and in such a place was not viewed in its usual light but was visited with severe penalties as an act of desecration. Thus, when Demosthenes acted as choregus for a dithyrambic chorus in 350 B.C. and was assaulted by Midias, he wished the latter to be punished, not merely for assault (ὕβρις) but for sacrilege (ἀσέβεια).[241] In the speech which he prepared for this suit Demosthenes cited some of the precedents (§§ 178-80). He reminded his auditors how Ctesicles had been put to death for striking a personal enemy with a whip during the procession and how in 363 B.C. the archon’s own father had only by a natural death avoided punishment for having violently ejected a spectator from a seat which he had unwarrantably occupied. In like manner the person of an actor was for the time being sacrosanct. Of course, the Greeks were not fools; they knew that a single blow in genuine anger was a greater outrage than murder itself in make-believe. Convention allowed the audience to express their disapproval of actors or of their performances by pelting them with figs, olives, or even stones. Custom had dulled their sanctity to this extent. Nevertheless, the taboo which had been derived from ancient ritual prevented one actor from murdering another upon the stage. But this taboo did not protect an actor against himself or against the assaults of nature or of the gods. Hence suicides and natural deaths were permissible within the audience’s sight, though homicides were not.

In comedy the influences which tended to prevent the enacting of scenes of violence were partly nullified by the fact that one of the purposes of the comus and other fertility rites had been the expulsion of malign powers by violence, not only of language but also of conduct (see p. 37, above). Of course the comic playwrights rarely had occasion to treat of death or murder. But scenes of physical violence and horseplay, such as the lashes administered to Xanthias and Dionysus (at his own festival!) in Aristophanes’ _Frogs_, vss. 644 ff., are common.

That most wonderful of Greek dramatic instruments, the chorus.—GILBERT MURRAY.

A really great artist can always transform the limitations of his art into valuable qualities.—OSCAR WILDE.

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