The leveling effect of the five-act rule is seen in the modern editions of Plautus and Terence. It is certain that neither four nor any other fixed number of pauses was employed at the premier performances of these dramatists’ works. In some cases they seem to have been given continuous representation with neither choral intermezzi nor pauses at the points where the Greek originals had had entr’actes. From this, however, we must not infer that Plautus and Terence did not know where the acts or the “parts” began and closed. If for no other reason, the recurrence of ΧΟΡΟΥ in at least most of the Greek comedies which they were translating and adapting would not have permitted them to be ignorant on this point, for in my opinion, so far as pauses were inserted in the Roman performances, they coincided with the corresponding points of division in the Greek plays. But by this I do not mean that the Latin divisions were always as numerous as the Greek; in my judgment, owing to contamination and other modifying influences they were uniformly fewer. Moreover, when these comedies were first published for the use of a reading public, it seems that the manuscripts contained no indication of act divisions. Within a century of Terence’s death, however, partisans of the five-act dogma were already attempting to force their Procrustean theory upon his works. A later effort of this sort is preserved to us in the commentary of Donatus (fourth century A.D.) and passed into the printed editions, with some modifications, about 1496 A.D. Likewise, the Renaissance scholars, obsessed by the tradition of what had come to be considered an inviolable law, proceeded to divide each of Plautus’ twenty plays into five acts; cf. Pius’ edition of 1500 A.D. The divisions in both poets rest upon no adequate authority and are easily shown to be incorrect. Yet, unfortunately, it is now impossible to re-establish the acts as known to their Latin authors. If we revert to the Greek terminology, however, somewhat more definite results may be obtained, though, even so, agreement is not possible in every case. Technical criteria now at our disposal would indicate that the original “parts” (μέρη) in these comedies ranged from a minimum of two or three to a maximum of seven or eight.
But Aristophanes was at the same time a dramatist contending for a prize, and had no wish to alienate the greater part of his audience.—T. G. Tucker.
CHAPTER IV
THE INFLUENCE OF FESTIVAL ARRANGEMENTS[291]
We have already seen that the performance of plays at Athens was confined to two festivals of Dionysus, and the time when the various dramatic genres began to be presented at each has been stated (see [pp. 119 f.], above). Since the Lenaea came at the end of January (Gamelion), when navigation was not yet considered entirely safe, few strangers were present; and in consequence this festival became more private and intimate, more like a family gathering of the Athenians by themselves. On the contrary the City Dionysia took place toward the end of March (Elaphebolion), when the allies were accustomed to send their tribute to Athens and the city was crowded with visitors from all parts of the Greek world. As a result this occasion was more cosmopolitan than the other, and every effort was expended to make it as splendid as possible. All this explains an episode in the life of Aristophanes. At the City Dionysia of the year 426 B.C. was produced his Babylonians, in which he represented the Athenian state as a mill where the allies suffered from the tyrannous exactions of Cleon, its manager. Cleon accordingly lodged with the senate an information (εἰσαγγελία) charging lèse majesté, aggravated by being committed in the presence of strangers (παρόντων τῶν ξένων). Therefore, in his next play, the Acharnians, produced at the Lenaea of 425 B.C., Aristophanes prefaced some frank expressions of opinion with the following statement: “And what I shall say will be dreadful but just, for Cleon will not be able now to malign me for defaming the state to alien ears. For we are alone; this is the Lenaea, and the aliens are not yet here, nor the tribute from the federated states, nor our allies; but we are alone now.”[292] Similarly, Demosthenes tried to make Midias’ assault upon him at the City Dionysia of 350 B.C. seem more heinous by pointing out that it was committed “in the presence of many, both strangers and citizens.”[293]
Since we have no exact information as to when the City Dionysia began or ended, we are in doubt as to its duration.[294] But it is probable that it lasted for six days, certainly five. The first day was occupied with the procession, as already described (see [pp. 121 f.], above). The second day, and possibly the third, was devoted to dithyrambs, the literary type from which tragedy had sprung. There were five choruses of boys and five of men, each of the ten tribes annually standing sponsor for one chorus. We happen to know that the contest of men was added to this festival in 508 B.C. Inasmuch as each chorus consisted of fifty amateur performers, it will be seen that no inconsiderable portion of the free population received every year a musical training which could not but enhance their appreciation of the choral and lyrical parts of the dramas and likewise improve the quality of the material from which the dramatic choruses were chosen.
The last three days of the festival seem to have been given over to the dramatic performances, but just what the arrangements were is not known. In Aristophanes’ Birds, vss. 786 ff., the chorus, praising the use of wings, remarks that “if one of you spectators were so provided and became wearied with the tragic choruses, he might fly away home and dine and then fly back again to us.” From this passage it has been plausibly concluded that the comedies came later in the day than the tragedies. It would seem as if the three tragic playwrights must have produced their plays on as many successive mornings, the comedies following later each day in similar rotation.
It is well known that at the City Dionysia each of three tragic poets brought out four plays in a series, three tragedies and one satyric drama (see [pp. 23 f.], above). Such a group was termed a didascalia (“teaching”). It was Aeschylus’ frequent practice to have all four plays treat different aspects of the same general theme, the levity of the concluding piece counterbalancing somewhat the seriousness of the three tragedies. In that case the set of four was called a tetralogy; but if the satyric drama dealt with a different topic than the tragedies, the latter were said to form a trilogy. No tetralogy or didascalia is extant and only one trilogy, the Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, and Eumenides, which Aeschylus brought out in 458 B.C. The satyric drama in this series is not preserved but was entitled Proteus. It may have dealt with the shipwreck of Menelaus, Agamemnon’s brother, on his return from Troy. After Aeschylus the four pieces in a didascalia were usually unrelated in subject.
According to canonical doctrine satyric drama was the intermediate stage in the development of tragedy from the dithyramb and was retained in the festival program as a survival. Within recent years, as this hypothesis has been subjected to searching criticism, its supports have slowly crumbled away. My own opinion is that tragedy and the satyr-play are independent offshoots of the dithyramb (see [pp. 1-35], above). In either case, since the dramatic performances were part of a Bacchic festival and since the Bacchic element had long since been discarded by tragedy (see [p. 123], above), it is no doubt true that the satyric drama was in the program partly in order to keep up the religious associations, as revealing its connection with Dionysus more plainly than did mature tragedy. Nevertheless the same tendencies which had broken down the exclusively Dionysiac themes in tragedy were at work here also and would not be denied. We have already seen (see [pp. 126 f.], above) how the writers of satyr-plays arbitrarily superimposed Silenus and a chorus of satyrs upon some non-Dionysiac subject. Both in Euripides’ Cyclops and in Sophocles’ Trackers, the sole extant representatives of the genre, the Bacchic element is restricted to these followers of his, and Dionysus himself figures only as he is apostrophized or mentioned by them. In 438 B.C. Euripides introduced a further innovation by bringing out the Alcestis as the last play in his didascalia. Neither Silenus nor the chorus of satyrs appears in this piece, the theme being entirely non-Dionysiac; but the drunkenness of Heracles and the brutal frankness in the quarrel between Admetus and his father suggest the spirit of the old satyric drama, while the happy ending and the humor remind us of a comedy. These incongruities and the exceptionable circumstances under which the play was produced have occasioned the controversy, which began in antiquity and still continues, as to how the Alcestis is to be classified as a literary type. Is it a tragedy, comedy, satyr-play, tragi-comedy, melodrama, Schauspiel, Tendenz-Schrift, or what?[295] How far Euripides’ innovation in substituting such a play for the usual satyric drama may have met with the approval and emulation of his fellow-playwrights we have no means of knowing; but an extant inscription of a century later shows that the satyr-play had then been degraded still further ([Fig. 76]). At the City Dionysia of 341, 340, and 339 B.C. the poets were no longer compelled each to conclude his group of pieces in the old way, but a single satyric drama was performed, before the tragedies began at all, as ample recognition of the Dionysiac element which had once been all-pervasive in the festivals.
During the latter part of its history five comic poets competed each year at the City Dionysia, and each presented but a single play; there is some reason for believing that the number was five also at the beginning, but possibly there were then only three competitors. At any rate there were certainly not more than three for a while during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.).[296] When the comedies were restricted to three they were naturally performed one on each of the last three days, after that day’s tragedies and satyr-play, as we have just seen. But what the arrangement was when the larger number was presented is not so obvious. Was a second comedy crowded into the program on two of the days? Or were comedies produced also on the second and third days of the festival, after the dithyrambic choruses? The latter alternative would be my choice, and this would explain why in the inscriptional records the comedies preceded the tragedies, though in the chronological sequence of the last three days they followed them. When Aristophanes brought out his Women in Council he was so unfortunate in the drawing of lots as to be forced to perform his play first in the series of comedies. Therefore he had his chorus say (vss. 1158 ff.):