Fig. 74.—The Athenian Theater of About 460 B.C., Showing the Earlier Type of Eccyclema.
Thus, Aeschylus’ Eumenides, which belongs to this period (458 B.C.), opens with a monologue of the Pythian priestess (see [p. 305], below). At vs. 33 she enters the temple, but immediately returns, so shaken by the sight within that she cannot walk, but crawls. She has seen a blood-stained man (Orestes) at the omphalus and before him a sleeping band of hideous Furies (vss. 34-63). At vs. 64 we must suppose that the eccyclema revolves with Apollo, Hermes, and Orestes mounted upon it. The first named bids the matricide to leave Delphi and speed to Athens and Hermes to guard him on his journey. Whereupon the two step from the platform and flee through one of the parodi, and the eccyclema, with Apollo still upon it, is revolved back into its original position (vs. 93). Here we may note a curious incongruity; the platform of the eccyclema is actually out of doors; nominally it is indoors. If the latter fact were kept steadfastly in mind, a character could not step directly from the eccyclema into the orchestra (as Orestes does here) but could only pass out through one of the doors after the eccyclema had been closed again. It is of a piece with this that the characters are not only spoken of as being indoors but sometimes as being out of doors. At vs. 94 the ghost of Clytemnestra appears in the orchestra (or perhaps is merely heard from within the scene-building) calling upon the Furies to waken and pursue their escaping prey. Beginning at vs. 117 their cries and ejaculations are heard at intervals, and at vs. 143 they burst into the orchestra for their entrance song (the parodus). At its conclusion (vs. 178) Apollo comes out and drives them from his precinct.
Sometimes the opening and shutting of the back scene is distinctly referred to. Thus in Sophocles’ Ajax,[357] vs. 344, the coryphaeus cries to the attendants: “Open there; perhaps even by looking upon me he may acquire a more sober mood”; and as Tecmessa replies “Lo! I open,” the door of the hero’s tent is opened and Ajax is seen amid the slaughtered cattle, the victims of his misdirected vengeance. After playing a prominent lyrical and speaking part in the scene which follows, Ajax orders the door to be closed with all speed and disappears from view (vs. 593).
But the eccyclema was also described as a low, trundle platform,[358] large enough to accommodate several persons and narrow enough to be pushed through the doors of the scene-building, and this type would be more suitable for the conditions which obtained in the Athenian theater from about 430 B.C. (see [pp. 235] and [292]). At this period the scene-building was raised to a second story and embellished with wooden proscenium and parascenia, a crane came into use, etc. Under these conditions the earlier type of eccyclema could no longer be so large nor so easily seen, being hampered in both particulars by the proscenium. On the other hand the new type could be made as long as the scene-building was deep and could be pushed forward as far as might be necessary.[359] Thus in Aristophanes’ Acharnians (425 B.C.), Dicaeopolis appears before the house of Euripides, who is lounging within doors. In response to the former’s knock and summons “to be wheeled out” Euripides says “I will be wheeled out,” and is pushed upon the stage (ἐκκυκλήθητι ... ἐκκυκλήσομαι, vs. 408). The conversation which ensues between Dicaeopolis outdoors and Euripides supposedly indoors does not conclude until vs. 479, when the latter exclaims: “The fellow is insolent; shut the doors.” Perhaps in this instance, for parodic effect, a trundle couch itself is shoved through the door instead of a stationary couch upon a trundle platform.[360] Very similar is the scene in Aristophanes’ Women at the Thesmophoria (about 411 B.C.), where Agathon is wheeled out before Euripides and Mnesilochus. Here again the verbs ἐκκυκλούμενος in vs. 96 and εἰσκυκλησάτω at the conclusion of the scene in vs. 265 do not permit me to doubt that the eccyclema, or a comic substitute, was employed. It is probably no accident that Euripides figures in both of these scenes. He is “hoist with his own petar” as having invented, or been a frequent user of, this mechanism.
The passage of tragedy in which most authorities concede the employment of the eccyclema is Euripides’ The Madness of Heracles (vss. 1029-1402). Chronologically this play falls somewhere between the Acharnians and the Women at the Thesmophoria. In his madness Heracles has slain his wife and three children within the palace and at last has fallen into a dazed torpor; whereupon his friends have bound him to a broken column. As the chorus chant “Alas! Behold the doors of the stately palace fall asunder” (vss. 1029 f.), the hero bound to a pillar amid the slain is pushed forward on the eccyclema. At vs. 1089 he recovers consciousness and begins to speak; at vs. 1123 Amphitryon loosens him; and at vs. 1163 Theseus enters and finally (vs. 1402) persuades him to descend into the orchestra.
Still another theatrical contrivance was called the μηχανή (“machine”), which about 430 B.C. came to be used to bring divinities before the ancient audiences. This was a crane and pulley arrangement, mounted in one of the side wings (parascenia), whereby persons or objects could be brought from behind the second story (the episcenium) and held suspended in the air or let down upon the roof of the scene-building or into the orchestra, or could be lifted in an opposite direction. This development is of interest also from the structural standpoint as indicating that whatever the situation may have been earlier, at least from this time on the scene-building was provided with an episcenium (see [pp. 67 f.], above).
Before considering the use of the machina further, it will be worth while to trace briefly how gods played their parts in the Greek theater. Prior to the erection of a scene-building, about 465 B.C., the scene was perforce laid in the open countryside (see [p. 226], above) and the playwrights had no option but to place divinities and mortals in immediate juxtaposition, after the Homeric fashion, in the orchestra. For the same reason, however these characters might be thought of as traveling before they entered the theater, they rested under the prosaic necessity, as soon as they were seen by the spectators, of moving upon the solid earth. Thus in Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, Oceanus enters at vs. 284 with the words:
From my distant caves cerulean
This fleet-pinioned bird hath borne me;