We must now say a few words about the external details of the performance, the public, and the reception of the pieces. Originally, admission to theatrical representations was free, as to a religious festival in which the whole population were to take part. But when the crowd of spectators became greater this had its disadvantages, and very often quarrels for places ensued between citizens and strangers. We know little of the conditions in other places; but at Athens, when in 500 B.C. the old wooden theatre fell down during a performance, and the new stone theatre of Dionysus was erected, they took advantage of the occasion to levy an entrance fee, the amount of which is uncertain. Even at the beginning of the fifth century the income from this source seems to have belonged to a theatrical lessee, whose duty it was in consequence to keep the building in proper condition. He paid a fixed sum to the State, and in return received the entrance money. It is well known that Pericles, partly with a benevolent desire of making the theatre accessible for the poorer class of citizens, and partly also in order to increase his popularity by this democratic measure, introduced a law by which every citizen received the price of admission from the State. This was the “show-money” (θεωρικόυ), an institution which seems to have lasted for centuries, but the arrangements connected with it are by no means clear. In the first place, it was probably calculated for the poor people only; but the rich, too, made use of it, if only to escape from possible reproach of pride or haughtiness by some of the numerous informers who at that time existed at Athens. There was a special board entrusted with the distribution; the show-money was allotted to the citizens according to tribes by cashiers appointed by lot, whose duty it was to see that none received it without proper claim. It was therefore distributed in the separate tribes according to the registers of citizens in the demes. The statements of the ancients do not agree about the amount of the money; but the most probable of the newer hypotheses is that for one day it amounted to two obols, for the three days of the great Dionysia one drachma. The money was paid, on admission into the theatre, to the lessee, who either received it in person, or levied it by means of his controllers or cashiers; the same people took the fees from those who had not received the show-money, such as the resident foreigners, strangers, etc. It is very difficult to decide whether this was paid in coin or not; one hypothesis is that, instead of money, the citizens received tickets, which had the value of money, and simplified the paying out as well as the paying back; many such counters bearing theatrical emblems, have come down to us, and are supposed to have been admission passes. Still, weighty objections have been made to this hypothesis; and it is more probable that the citizens really received the actual money, with which they could do what they pleased; they either bought a ticket for the theatre—and very likely these counters were really entrance tickets—or spent it in any other way they pleased. It was not possible to control this; and herein, no doubt, lay the disadvantage of the institution, which has often been spoken of as injurious to the Attic democracy, since it was followed by similar institutions at other times, and consequently the unproductive expenses of the Attic budget extended more and more. A number of places in the theatre were given free, or were places of honour: thus, for instance, those reserved by the State for foreign envoys, the places for the priests and others who had a right to special seats; naturally, the expenses of these places had to be paid by the State to the theatrical lessee.

The question whether women and children might visit the theatre is often asked. Undoubtedly women were allowed to be present at the tragedies, since there are sufficient passages to prove this. Now, tragedy was followed by the satyric drama, which was often exceedingly coarse both in language and gesture; obviously then the women must have sat this out, and this need not appear so very strange to us, since there does not seem to have been much prudery among the Greek women. Moreover, the satyric drama was only indecent now and then, and the jokes were vulgar according to our ideas, but not exactly frivolous, and no worse than modern operettas to which ladies are in the habit of going. The comedies were different, especially the older comedies, for the whole contents are often coarse, and situations occur in them which make it impossible for us to imagine that women or boys should have been present. Still, all indications seem to prove that they were seen by women, with this limitation, that respectable women who had regard for their reputation did not go to comedies; hetaerae, who are often alluded to as eager theatre-goers, probably constituted the greater part of the feminine public. It also seems that boys were present. Slaves were allowed to visit the theatre; some even earned money, and could therefore pay their own admission, others may have gone in attendance on their masters, or have received the money for their entrance in some other way; but it is unlikely that they sat among the citizens; probably there were special places allotted them; indeed it has been suggested that there were distinct seats for every class. The only places about which this is certain are the lowest rows, which were seats of honour for officials, priests, etc. Moreover, it is probable, but not quite certain, that the highest places were reserved for strangers. It has also been assumed that the women sat in the more distant places, or, at any rate, not in the front rows, and this seems probable; otherwise, there is no passage which proves for certain that the seats for the men at Athens were distinct from those of the women.

Another question is the manner in which the non-reserved places were allotted. It seems certain that they were not numbered, and, indeed, this would have been scarcely possible among so many thousands; but there may have been a general division of the theatre according to the wedges, and the separate divisions of each wedge, and these may have been indicated on the entrance counters. Benndorf has suggested that at Athens each wedge may have been assigned to the members of a particular tribe, and that on the counter given to each citizen the tribe in question was marked by some symbol. But this hypothesis is only probable if we assume, with Benndorf, that the citizens received not money but counters; if the spectators bought their theatre tickets from the lessee with the show-money, or at their own expense, it was impossible for there to be any division of places according to tribes, for this would have necessitated a fresh and very troublesome control of the registers of citizens. We must therefore assume that the counters bought of the theatrical lessee were marked according to wedges and division, and the spectators had to take their places accordingly but that, with the exception of a few classes of spectators, there was no compulsion to take a place in any special division.

Of the three musical contests celebrated at the greater Dionysia, each kind, namely, the tragedies with the satyric dramas, the comedies, and the cyclic choruses had their special judges. At the appointment of the choragi, which took place a long while before the festival, the Council of the Five Hundred, probably under the presidency of the Archon, in the presence of the elected choragi, elected these by ballot, and the lot once more decided which of them was to pronounce judgment. We know for certain that five judges were appointed for comedy, probably the same number was required for tragedy, although an exceptional case is mentioned, during a contest between Aeschylus and Sophocles, in which there were ten judges, a departure from the ordinary custom, which was required by the great excitement in the public and the fear that the judges might be influenced in their decision by it. The judges had to pronounce on three points: the work of the poet, the performance of chorus and choragus, and the acting. The reward for the victorious poet was a wreath of ivy; the choragus received permission to set up a public monument in token of his victory, and, as already mentioned, the choragi in the tragic choruses usually dedicated tripods, those of the comic choruses fillets, thyrsus wands, and other festive apparatus; their decisions were also commemorated by inscriptions. The prize of the actors probably consisted in additional gifts of money besides the fees that were legally due to them.

CHAPTER XIII.
WAR AND SEAFARING.

The Heroic Period—Tribal Wars—The Chariot—Characteristics of Greek Warriors—The Spartans—The Athenian Array—Greek Arms—Cavalry—Greek Sieges—Greek Ships—The Trireme.

Scarcely any changes seem to have taken place in the character of the offensive and defensive arms of the Greeks from the most ancient period until the Roman time, though the conduct of warfare made enormous advances in the thousand years between the Trojan War and the age of Alexander the Great and his successors. Our authorities for the earliest period are but few, but the wars of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. have been carefully described by historians, some of whom themselves possessed military knowledge. We must therefore be content to obtain our knowledge of warfare in early times from the descriptions of poets, who naturally aimed at a very different result from the historian. The Homeric Epics are not authorities which we can follow absolutely in every respect, but still they enable us to form a picture of the warfare of that period, and gain some general notion of the mode in which it was conducted.

The military conditions of that time bore the same patriarchal character which characterised the government of the heroic age. Greece, which even in the historic age was broken up into a number of separate nationalities, was in the heroic period merely a collection of tribes living in constant feud with one another, and undertaking continual predatory expeditions on their neighbours’ territory; the nobles placing themselves at the head of a number of enterprising men, and regarding these proceedings as in no way dishonourable to them. Sometimes a great common undertaking combined several tribes under one head, but even then the power of this chief was by no means an unlimited one; the separate tribes who took part in the expedition under their own princes and nobles stood under their immediate command, and it depended on the goodwill of these little kings whether they submitted to the ordinances of the chief commander or not. Consequently there could be no question of a common arrangement of the army, or of a subdivision of the people according to the nature of the arms they used; the battle order was drawn up according to tribes.

Nor were they acquainted with any definite plan of battle. The main brunt of the fight was borne by the nobles, who fought from their chariots, and whose single combat with renowned leaders on the other side excited such universal interest that very often the battle stopped meantime. Moreover, these duels were often decisive for the victory or defeat of the whole army. The nobles appeared in full armour, accompanied by their charioteers, on their war chariots, usually drawn by two horses. On the vase painting depicted in Fig. [166] the painter has represented four horses drawing the chariot, but in so doing he was not following an old tradition, since in his time the custom of fighting with chariots had long ceased, but rather the universal practice of ancient vase painting, which always represented war chariots with four horses, following the example of the Quadrigae used in races. The warrior stands holding the reins in his left hand, and his spear in the right, and has not yet mounted his chariot; he is in full armour, and so is the warrior standing in front of the chariot, and consequently we are justified in supposing that this really represents a war chariot. The Greeks, when they fought from their chariots, dashed at full speed from their own ranks against the foe, and often challenged an enemy to single combat with words of bitter mockery; this was begun with lances, and afterwards, when the combatants had got close together and possibly left their chariots, with the sword; even stones were not despised in the heat of combat. Cavalry was unknown in the time of Homer; the masses of infantry seldom fought hand to hand, but usually from a distance with bows and javelins. But when they came to close quarters they closed their ranks and locked their shields together; for the principle of the closed phalanx, which became so important for Greek warfare, was indicated even in the heroic age. Their mode of warfare shows the uncivilised condition of the Greeks at that time. Cunning and ambush were regarded as permissible, and cruelty and harshness to the fallen enemy were universal. The captives taken in war became slaves if they were not ransomed, and were sometimes even mercilessly sacrificed. It was considered a glorious deed to rob the fallen enemy of his armour in the midst of the fight, nor was it ignoble to leave his corpse unburied, to be consumed by the wild beasts. Still, there were traces of noble self-sacrifice and comradeship in their conduct towards their own fellow-countrymen.

In the following centuries, after many revolutions and internal contests, the tribes were combined