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The Festival and Theatre of Dionysus
Preparations for the Festival
The Festival itself
The Theatre of Dionysus at Athens
The Festival and Theatre of Dionysus
Arts festivals flourish in our own day - Edinburgh, Salzburg, Radio
1 Roadshows etc. The Festival is often instrumental in bringing
new drama to the people: in our own times it is not the only way,
but in Classical Athens it was. Some modern festivals are competitive
in nature, but in Athens all drama festivals were. Most aspects
of Greek life were influenced by competition - not for gain, but
for glory, a concept which goes back to Homeric times and is also
prominent in the various athletic contests such as the Olympic or
Isthmian Games. At the Festival of Dionysus there were competitions
for rhapsodes (reciters of Homer), choruses of both men and boys
singing dithyrambs (hymns to Dionysus) and drama, where prizes were
awarded for best actor, best play, and best author - much in the
style of the modern Oscars.
One great difference between Greek and modern drama festivals was
the religious element: drama was only performed at certain religious
festivals of Athens. The Homeric competitions took place at the
summer festival of Athene, and the drama competition at the Lenaia
(comedy) and City Dionysia (tragedy).
Dionysus was the god of fertility, wine, growth and ecstatic states
of mind. He is portrayed on vases as a handsome youth with long
curled hair, dressed in a long robe and leopard-skin, his hair bound
by a fillet of ivy, a staff called a thyrsus bound about with ivy
in his hand. He sometimes carries a wine-cup. He is accompanied
by maenads, or ecstatically frenzied women, their hair unbound,
clad in animal skins and holding small animals, dancing wildly in
his honour. There may also be satyrs, half-man, half-goat in attendance.
At first sight it may appear that the timing of the festivals was
rather odd: the Lenaia was in January, the City Dionysia in late
March: would one not have expected them in the summer? No, because
they formed part of the ordinary life of the city's year. From late
Spring to early Autumn the average Athenian would, at least in peacetime,
be busy on his farm. Spring was the best time for travel - the roads
were neither deep in mud nor baked into ruts. It was the opening
of the sailing season, so the foreign ambasadors who were invited
to the festival were just beginning to arrive in the city. The campaigning
season had not yet begun - warfare, like sailing, was a summer-only
activity.Thus winter and early spring were the best times to celebrate
the worship of Dionysus, while the seed lay dormant in the ground.
There was also, more practically, plenty of time for rehearsal during
the winter when nothing much else was happening.
Of the two festivals the Lenaia was by far the less important. It
was originally intended as a festival of both tragedy and comedy,
and was held in a precinct called the Lenaion. It was known to have
been running drama competitions by 440 BC with the emphasis firmly
on comedy. Top trasgic poets such as Euripides or Sophocles did
not compete. Two minor authors put on two plays each as opposed
to the full trilogy. The atmosphere was quite domestic - the comedies
have a distinctly Athenian flavour (consider the plays of Aristophanes,
which usually have a very Athenian theme). There would be few foreign
visitors because the sailing season was not yet open in January.
This was not the case with the City Dionysia, a civic showpiece
about which far more is known from contemporary literary sources.
PREPARATIONS FOR THE FESTIVAL
The Eponymous Archon - the official after whom the year was named
- (Athenians did have a system of numbering their years, but it
was rather cumbersome, being based on the number of Olympic Games
which had been held since 776BC) - was responsible for the festival
and its organisation. Poets wishing to compete applied to
him for a chorus and he selected three tragic poets to
whom he would allocate one. Each poet offered a trilogy plus satyr
play, a kind of comic tailpiece.It is not known how the Archon made
his choice: perhaps he read the plays, or poets read extracts from
their work, or he chose his favourite playwrights (one year a complete
unknown, Gnesippus, was chosen instead of Sophocles). The plays
had to be financed, and no-one expected them to make a profit. The
plays were financed by a backer, chosen by the Archon, called a
choregos. This choregos would be a very wealthy
man for whom financing a trilogy was a way of paying his taxes:
this tax-paying was known as a leitourgia or liturgy.
There were three kinds of liturgy: you could finance a trilogy,
build and equip a warship, or finance a foreign embassy. Backing
a play was very popular as this was the most high-profile and most
likely to lead to personal advancement for the individual. If no-one
volunteered for the post, the Archon could nominate people. The
only way to get out of it then was to prove that someone else was
richer than you, and the only way to prove this was by exchanging
properties with the other person, thus 'proving' that your property
was worth less than his. The allocation of choregos to poet was
probably made by drawing lots. There was a legal minimum outlay,
but no upper limit to what you were allowed to spend on your trilogy:
the more you spent, and the more lavish your production, the better
your chance of a prize. On several inscriptions commemorating such
victories, the name of the choregos comes before the name of the
playwright, showing where the priorities lay! This could, however,
make a mediocre play look better than it really was. A certain Nicias,
well-known for his lavish productions, always won the prize for
the plays of which he was choregos.
The kind of expenses were different from those in a modern production.
There were no sound systems or lighting engineers, no expensive
scenery, few props, and fewer 'experts' to pay because the poet
was expected not only to write the dialogue, but also to direct
the play, compose the music for the songs, and choreograph the movements
of the chorus, then train them to perform them. The choregos, however,
had to hire the chorus and pay its 15 members. He also
had to pay the professional flute-player who provided
the sole musical accompaniment for the chorus. Sometimes there was
a second chorus. There were also costumes and masks
(though these could be hired) and a last-night party
for the whole cast. In the latter part of the fifth century it was
normal practice to hire (and pay) a professional chorus-trainer.
Many productions called for crowds of non-speaking 'extras'
(who also had to be paid!) and the more famous the actor, the more
spectacular his retinue would be.
By the mid fifth century, the Archon also chose, and allocated by
lot to the three playwrights, three star actors. These were called
the protagonists and were paid by the state. As
most plays called for three speaking actors, the protagonists probably
chose their own second and third players - the deuteragonist
and tritagonist. It is not known how these were
paid. An actor who was chosen, but who failed to appear, was fined
by the State.
Because of the element of competition, judges were
needed. These were chosen from each of the ten voting tribes of
Attica (the idea being to avoid corruption and bribery). The names
of several leading citizens from each were placed, with the utmost
secrecy, into urns which were deposited in the Public Treasury on
the Acropolis until the actual day of the competition. Tampering
with these urns was a capital offence! On the day itself, ten names
were drawn - one for each tribe - but we do not know whether the
same judges judged all the competitions, or different panels of
judges were chosen for each one.
A day or two before the festival the Proagon was
held, a kind of preview, which took place in the Odeion. Poets,
choregoi, actors and chorus appeared, splendidly dressed, garlanded,
but unmasked and uncostumed. The poets may have given summarised
their plots, or the actors played extracts, to give the public a
taste of the joys to come.
THE FESTIVAL ITSELF
The festival was held during the month Elaphebolion - the ninth
month of the Attic year - named after Artemis the Deer-hunter. The
Attic year, like ours, was divided into twelve months, each named
for some religious festival; surprisingly there are no months named
for Athene, but several for Artemis and her twin Apollo. The months
were alternately 29 and 30 days long. Unfortunately this resulted
in a 'year' of 354 days. When it became too obvious that the calendar
year had got out of step with the solar year of 365 days, the last
month was simply repeated. The same religious festivals were always
held on the same days of the same months every year - there were
no 'movable feasts' such as Easter (which occurs on the Sunday a
fortnight after the first full moon following the Spring equinox
- simple!) The year always began with the month Hecatombaion, of
which the first day fell on the day of the new moon before the summer
solstice (some time between June 10th and 23rd).
The City Dionysia always began on the night of the 8th day of Elaphebolion.
The cult of Dionysus was introduced to Athens from the village of
Eleutherai on the outskirts of Attica. Dionysus was known as 'Eleuthereus'
(='man of Eleutherai' - but 'eleutheros' in Greek also means 'free'
and this was one of Dionysus' titles). He was represented there
by a wooden cult statue. This may have been brought to Athens from
Eleutherai at a time when Athens was at war with neighbouring Boeotia
- 6th century - and Eleutherai declared for the Athenians. The earliest
remains of a temple of Dionysus in Athens date from this time. There
is also a 'myth' of the arrival of the worship of Dionysus in Athens.
The god came to the city: as at Thebes, he was not recognised: he
sent a plague which attacked men's genitalia, and this convinced
the Athenians of his power (it would, wouldn't it?). This accounts
for the phallus becoming part of his ritual. The Athenians, appealing
to Delphi, were told to organise a procession featuring this organ.
They did, and the plague left them.
A few days before the festival, the cult statue was taken from Athens
to the Academy, a 'university' where Plato taught, just outside
Athens on the way to Eleutherae. It was placed in a shrine there,
and was the object of sacrifices and offerings. On the evening of
the 8th day of Elaphebolion it was brought home to Athens by a torchlight
procession.
On the first day of the festival there was a general holiday,
during which even prisoners were allowed out on bail. There was
a procession, not unlike that held at the Great
Panathenaia, including dancing and singing of 'satirical' (=rude?)
songs. High-born Athenian girls carried baskets of offerings. Citizens
(male, over 30, citizen father and Athenian mother) wore white and
carried leather bottles of wine called askoi, metics (resident non-Athenians)
wore red. and carried trays of offerings called skaphia. Huge phalluses
carried in the procession symbolised fertility, as did the bulls
led to be sacrificed when the procession arrived at the theatre
precinct. One high-born maiden - the kanephoros - carried a basket
pil;ed high with first-fruits. Men carried loaves shaped like roasting-spits
and named obeliai after them on their shoulders. As the procession
- its precise route is unknown - passed the various shrines there
were ritual dances. The climax of the procession was when it arrived
at the altar at the theatre of Dionysus and the slaughter of the
victims - often over 200 of them. Beef all round that night! There
was plenty of wine - the final event of the night was a komos
or revel in which the men went out into the streets with torches,
flutes and harps to sing and dance until dawn. This is a popular
decoration for wine-cups.
It was from this komos that the drama festivals probably originated
in the C6 with choral singing and dancing as their main elements.
These were common to other festivals, but it was only with the procession
of the statue of Dionysus from Eleutherai to Athens that this singing
and dancing developed into formal plays. Tradition has it that the
first drama was enacted by a man called Thespis
in 534 BC. This would fit in with historical events - the tyrant
Peisistratus was trying to encourage 'local' festivals to transfer
to Athens so that gradually Athens could take over the localities
and rule them centrally without their feeling that they were being
ruled by foreigners who did not understand their culture. A stroke
of diplomatic genius! Peisistratus may have welcomed the cult of
Dionysus - a popular god whose rites involved everyone, not just
the social and military elite. Thespis is traditionally believed
to have been the first man to step outside the chorus and involve
it in a dialogue. He is said to have worn a costume and different
masks so that he could play several parts. Thus the play as dialogue
between actor and chorus was born.
By Aeschylus' time - the 2nd quarter of the C5 - there were two
actors speaking 'solo' lines on the stage at any one time (though
this does not mean that there were only two parts, as actors could
and did play several roles. In Prometheus Bound, for example, the
protagonist will play Prometheus himself, who is on stage for the
entire play, and the deuteragonist will play Oceanus, Io and Hermes.)A
quarter of a century later - in the time of Sophocles - there were
three actors on stage at a time: but this number was never increased
to four. (In Oedipus the King we see Oedipus, Creon and Jocasta
all on stage at a time: in Antigone Creon, Haemon and Antigone.)
By the end of the 6th century tragedies were presented in groups
of three (trilogies). These were followed by a satyr play. By 509
BC the singing of dithyrambs (hymns to Dionysus) was included, with
men's and boys' choruses competing. This was an expensive business
for the choregos, who was responsible for kitting out all 50 chorus
members with a costume: one Demosthenes is said to have had a golden
crown made for each member of his chorus, and himself worn a gown
made of cloth-of-gold. He expected high political dividends from
this! Finally, by 486 BC, comedies were also performed at the City
Dionysia.
In the City Dionysia plays were always newly-written for each festival,
but they might be 'revived' for the less sophisticated country Dionysia
and other lesser festivals. However, during the C4 earlier tragedies
were allowed to be performed at the City Dionysia too, and in the
end some days of the festival were devoted to the performance of
the 'old tragedies', specifically Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.
It was perhaps no longer the new plays themselves that were of interest
by this time, but their performance by star actors.
There were other events than the plays: the City Dionysia took place
at the start of the summer sailing season, and this was when the
tribute from Athens' allies fell due each year. This was counted
out into 'talents' and carried in sacks into the orchestra. However
Athens had not acquired so much tribute without the loss in battle
of some of her sons: the orphans of dead soldiers were each given
a full suit of hoplite armour in which they paraded while a herald
read their names aloud, then they were given front seats for the
drama.
Two rather strange practices:
1) the voting of a golden crown to a politician or benefactor of
the state, announced through the heralds:
2) the freeing of slaves, also announced through the heralds. A
slave had to have witnesses to his manumission: what better time
than when most of the population of Athens was gathered together!
During the performances, despite the religious nature of the drama,
people did not behave as if they were in church. They were allowed
to applaud and cheer. The Greeks did not clap their hands: this
was a Roman invention. However they did call out, boo, hiss and
drum their heels to show approval (this is still done at orchestral
concerts).
After the festival was over there was always a public inquest: a
crown could be awarded to the archon who had organised it, but any
member of the public could lodge a complaint if he felt the festival
had not come up to scratch!
THE THEATRE OF DIONYSUS AT ATHENS
The remains of the theatre are limited and confusing.. Very little
is actually left of the C5 theatre in which the plays of Aeschylus,
Sophocles or Euripides were premiered. There is, however, a theatre
on site, apparently ancient. What you see is rows
of curved benches: a semi-circular row of stone thrones: and a level,
flat D-shaped space with a diamond-shaped pattern of tiles.. Beyond
this lies a flight of five marble steps, with a wall a few feet
high leading to the right, decorated with statues, mostly headless.
apparently propping it up. Beyond lie stone foundations, rectangular
in shape: and upon this rests our entire knowledge of how and where
the plays were performed!
When we think of a Greek theatre we usually bring to mind the theatre
at Epidauros, the one we all drew diagrams of for
our GCSE coursework copied out of a little blue and black paperback
book. Perhaps we have actually visited the Greek theatre. However,
you must bear in mind that this theatre was architect-designed as
a single unity, a late fourth-century entity, whereas the theatre
of Dionysus in Athens was never planned like this: it developed
and changed over the years and what we see today is largely Roman:
they had probably adapted the existing theatre for gladiators and
sea-fights, these being far more to the Roman taste.
However, archaeology can show us how the site developed. The earliest
remains are of a small temple, and of a curved
wall which must have supported a flat terrace at the foot of the
Acropolis. (see your notes for a diagram). These remains are C6.
(see above). They are all that remains of the first precinct of
the god and of the 'orchestra' or level space where
the chorus performed their ritual dances for the god. (The origin
of the circular orchestra is in the threshing floor: every village
had such an area where at harvest time the grain was threshed out
of the chaff. It was usually situated in the windiest area of the
village - to blow away the chaff - and was circular because a donkey
or ox was tethered in the centre and walked round to trample the
ears of grain.)
Somewhere - although no trace remains - there was probably a tent
or hut where the Chorus changed their masks and costumes. The Greek
word for 'tent' was - and still is - skene. The
spectators presumably stood on the slope above where, in the course
of time, wooden benches were installed for them. This area was called
the 'watching-area' or theatron. By the time the
Oresteia - Aeschylus' great trilogy - was performed in 458 BC, the
changing-room was a far more substantial structure. The theatron
had been made steeper, and the orchestra moved some yards nearer
the Acropolis. A second temple had been built to house a new gold-and-ivory
statue of Dionysus. It is possible that Pericles was responsible
for much of this reconstruction (rebuilt Acropolis, showing-off
to foreigners etc) and it was in this new, improved theatre that
the plays of Aeschylus (Prometheus Bound and Agamemnon) were performed.
There was, of course, no proscenium arch, no curtain, no division
between lighted stage and darkened auditorium: all was open to the
sky and performed in daylight. (See your notes for a diagram here).
There is no longer any trace of the theatre as it appeared in the
early C5. Later versions have superimposed upon it and almost completely
obliterated it. We do not even know exactly where it was. We can
be sure, however, that the orchestra was circular and about 60 feet
(17m) across. It was probably only beaten earth, not paved in any
way, with a little stone altar in the middle. Between this orchestra
and the front row of seats there must have been a drainage ditch
for the rainwater sluicing down the slopes of the theatron, but
nothing else separated the spectators from the performers. The audience
filed in through the parodoi, the entrance-ways
at the side of the orchestra, and so did the performers. Conventionally,
the two parodoi represented what the audience knew to be true. If
an actor entered from the audience's right, he must be coming from
the harbour (because the Piraeus, the harbour of Athens, was really
in that direction) or from the Agora or market-place: if he came
from their left, he must be coming from the country. However in
tragedy each actor usually explains exactly where he has come from,
or some other character will helpfully tell us.
Example: as Agamemnon enters (Agamemnon) - "First, Argos, and
her native gods, receive from me the conqueror's greeting on my
safe return: for which, as for the just revenge I wrought on Priam's
Troy..."
Archaeological evidence suggests that the actors performed on a
long, narrow platform perhaps 30m long by 3.5m wide. This was a
temporary structure - perhaps made afresh for each festival, which
implies that all the plays in any one festival used the same stage.
The same is presumably also true of the skene.
The wooden facade acted as a sounding-board for the actors' voices.
It was also effectively part of the scenery: it was usually painted
to represent a palace wall, though in some plays it has to be a
mountain (P.Bound) a temple (Ion) or a seashore (Iphigeneia in Tauris).
Perhaps the audience simply had to use their imagination and disregard
what their eyes told them. Characters could 'live' in it. People
could come and go into and out of it through the central doors.
In the extant tragedies, only one door is implied: for later productions,
and for comedy, two or three doors are implied (as in French farce,
characters are required to dodge about without other characters
seeing them). Some of the plays (Hippolytus is a good example) imply
a theologion or god-place above the skene. This
may simply be explained by the flat roof of the skene, perhaps reached
by a ladder from inside it through a trap-door. It was conventionally
the home of the gods, but could also be the roof of the palace (the
watchman at the beginning of Agamemnon is on watch high up).
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Theatre of Dionysus
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