The chorus had other duties during the episodes. As a body they normally showed themselves interested spectators; thus the chorus of Orestes enter in order to inquire of Electra concerning her sick brother. Not infrequently they do more, taking an actual share in events. At the close of Agamemnon the Argive elders are at point to do battle with Ægisthus and his henchmen; in Alcestis they join the funeral procession; at other times they aid the persons of the play, not only by misleading enemies (Choephorœ) or directing friends (Œdipus Tyrannus) but by keeping watch (Orestes). Further, the coryphæus almost always delivers two or three lines at the end of every long speech, save when it ends a scene. These little interpolations are invariably obvious and feeble. After Hermione’s tirade against women the coryphæus comments thus: “Too freely hast thou indulged thy tongue against thy sex. It is pardonable in thee, but still women should gloss over the weaknesses of women.” Anyone who has listened to the delivery of some splendid passage in Shakespeare, an outburst of Lear or Mercutio’s Queen Mab speech, will remember how the applause which follows it drowns the next speaker’s opening lines. Some pause is needed. This is provided in Greek tragedy by the insertion of a line or two which will not be missed if inaudible.

The satyric chorus diverged little from the tragic in the points discussed under this section. It had, however, a special type of dance called the “Sikinnis”. “One of the postures used ... was called the owl, and is variously explained by the old grammarians as having consisted in shading the eyes with the hands, or in turning the head to and fro like an owl.”[198]

VI. The Audience

The time of the Dionysiac festivals, especially the great Dionysia, was a holiday for all Athens, and the centre of enjoyment was the show of tragedies and comedies. At sunrise the theatre was filled with a huge throng prepared to sit packed together for hours facing the sun with no interval for a meal or for exercise. It is important to remember that in Athens that incalculable play-goer, “the average man,” did really enjoy and appreciate first-class dramatic work.

There were a few rows of special seats for officials and persons otherwise honoured by the State. All the rest of the space, save for the separation of men and women, and the possibility that each cercis was allotted to a distinct tribe, was open to all without distinction of rank or means. The official seats were in the front rows, and the first row of all consisted of sixty-seven marble thrones, most of which are still preserved in situ. Of these sixty-seven, fifty belonged—as the inscriptions show—to ecclesiastics, and the famous middle throne—the best and most conspicuous[199] place in the theatre—was occupied by the priest of Dionysus of Eleutheræ. Besides priests, the archons, the generals, and the ten judges had special places, also benefactors of the State or their descendants, and the sons of men who had fallen in battle. Ambassadors from abroad, too, received this compliment of προεδρία (“foremost seat”).

Behind the dignified front circle of thrones rose tier after tier of stone benches, all alike and not marked off into separate seats, so that the audience must usually have been crowded. They were also cramped, for the height of each seat was but fifteen inches.[200] Spectators brought with them any cushions they needed. Admission to the theatre was allowed in the first instance to any Athenian citizen. In spite of the indecency which was a normal[201] feature of the Old Comedy, there is no doubt that women and boys were present at the shows both of tragedy and comedy. Slaves and foreigners also were admitted, obtaining admission, like the boys and women, through citizens. Foreigners, except the distinguished persons to whom proedria was granted, seem to have been confined to the extreme right and left cercides, next to the parodoi. All the seating which has been described dates from the time of the orator Lycurgus[202] in the fourth century; during the fifth Athens was content with wooden benches, called icria (ἴκρια, “planks”).

Admission was at first free, but the drama was so popular that the rush for seats caused much confusion; it is said that the more sedulous would secure places the night before. In the fifth century the custom arose of charging for admission, and making every one book in advance, save those dignitaries whose places were reserved. The price for one day was two obols (about threepence in weight, but of much greater purchasing power). At the end of that century this sum was paid by the State to any citizen who claimed it. The money allotted for this purpose was called the “theoric” fund (τὸ θεωρικόν, “money for the shows”), of which we hear so much in the speeches of Demosthenes. By his time the system had grown to a serious danger. Payments were made, not only for the original purpose, but for all the numerous festivals, and a law was actually passed that anyone who proposed to apply the fund in any other way should be put to death. Demosthenes represents the theoric fund and the Athenian affection for it as preventing Athens from supplying sufficient forces to check the growing menace from Philip of Macedonia. On paying in his two obols the spectator received a ticket of lead. The sums taken were appropriated by the lessee or architecton who in consideration thereof kept the theatre in repair.

As the auditorium was filled with many thousands of lively Southerners, who had to sit crammed together from sunrise till late in the day with no intermission, the question of good order might seem to have been a hopeless difficulty. It was not so. For, first, the occasion was religious, and to use blows in the theatre was a capital crime. Next, stewards (ῥαβδοφόροι, “rod-bearers”) were at hand to keep order among the choristers, who were numerous, seeing that each dithyrambic chorus consisted of fifty men. Finally, a good deal of exuberant behaviour was allowed. Serious disturbance occasionally happened: the high-spirited Alcibiades once had a bout at fisticuffs with a rival choregus, and the occasion of Demosthenes’ speech against Meidias was the blow which Meidias dealt the orator when the latter was choregus.

Though an Athenian audience had no objection, when comedy was played, to scenes which we should have supposed likely to strike them as blasphemous, they bitterly objected to any breach of orthodoxy in tragic drama. Æschylus once narrowly escaped death because it was thought that a passage in his play constituted a revelation of the mysteries. Euripides,[203] too, incurred great trouble owing to the opening lines of Melanippe the Wise. Approval and dislike were freely expressed. If the spectators admired a passage, shouts and clapping showed it: at times they would “encore” a speech or song with the exclamation αὖθις (“again”). Still more often do we hear of their proneness to “damn” a bad play. Hissing[204] was common, and there was a special custom at Athens of kicking with the heels upon the benches to express disapproval—a method which must have been effective in the time of wooden seats. Playwrights were known to take vigorous means to win favour. That distinguished writer of New Comedy, Philemon, is said to have defeated Menander himself by securing a large attendance of supporters to applaud his work, and it is certain that writers of the Old Comedy frequently directed their actors to throw nuts and similar offerings among the audience. In the Peace of Aristophanes barley was thus distributed. The spectators sometimes replied in kind. Bad performers were pelted with fruit, at any rate in the country, and even stones were used in extreme cases. The celebrated Æschines, during his career as a strolling tritagonist, was nearly stoned to death by his public.[205] But the fruit was generally used in the city itself for another purpose. Aristotle illustrates a detail of psychology by pointing to the fact that “in the theatre people who eat dessert do so with most abandon when the performers are bad”.[206]