Actor in Costume as a Fury
The audience follows all the philosophic reasoning of the tragedies, the often subtle wit of the comedies, with that same shrewd alertness displayed at the jury courts of the Pnyx. “Authis! Authis!” (again! again!) is the frequent shout, if approving. Date stones and pebbles as well as hootings are the reward of silly lines or bad acting. At noon there is an interlude to snatch a hasty luncheon (perhaps without leaving one’s seat). Only when the evening shadows are falling does the chorus of the last play approach the altar in the center of the orchestra for the final sacrifice. A whole round of tragedies have been given.[*] The five public judges announce their decision: an ivy wreath to the victorious poet; to his choregus (the rich man who has provided his chorus and who shares his glory) the right to set up a monument in honor of the victory. Home goes the multitude,—to quarrel over the result, to praise or blame the acting, to analyze the remarkable acuteness the poet’s handling of religious, ethical, or social questions.
[*] Comedies, although given at this Dionysia, were more especially favored at the Lenæa, an earlier winter festival.
The theater, like the dicasteries and the Pnyx, is one of the great public schools of Athens.
205. The Great Panathenaic Procession.—Then for the last time let us visit Athens, at the fête which in its major form comes only once in four years. It is the 28th of Metageitniön (August), and the eighth day of the Greater Panathenæa, the most notable of all Athenian festivals. By it is celebrated the union of all Attica by Theseus, as one happy united country under the benign sway of mighty Athena,—an ever fortunate union, which saved the land from the sorrowful feuds of hostile hamlets such as have plagued so many Hellenic countries. On the earlier days of the feast there have been musical contests and gymnastic games much after the manner of the Olympic games, although the contestants have been drawn from Attica only. There has been a public recital of Homer. Before a great audience probably at the Pnyx or the Theater a rhapsodist of noble presence—clad in purple and with a golden crown—has made the Trojan War live again, as with his well-trained voice he held the multitude spellbound by the music of the stately hexameters.
Now we are at the eighth day. All Athens will march in its glory to the Acropolis, to bear to the shrine of Athena the sacred “peplos”—a robe specially woven by the noble women of Athens to adorn the image of the guardian goddess.[*] The houses have opened; the wives, maids, and mothers of gentle family have come forth to march in the procession, all elegantly wreathed and clad in their best, bearing the sacred vessels and other proper offerings. The daughters of the “metics,” the resident foreigners, go as attendants of honor with them. The young men and the old, the priests, the civil magistrates, the generals, all have their places. Proudest of all are the wealthy and high-born youths of the cavalry, who now dash to and fro in their clattering pride. The procession is formed in the outer Ceramicus. Amid cheers, chants, chorals, and incense smoke it sweeps through the Agora, and slowly mounts the Acropolis. Center of all the marchers is the glittering peplos, raised like a sail upon a wheeled barge of state—“the ship of Athena.” Upon the Acropolis, while the old peplos is piously withdrawn from the image and the new one substituted, there is a prodigious sacrifice. A mighty flame roars heavenward from the “great altar”; while enough bullocks[+] and kine[&] have been slaughtered to enable every citizen—however poor—to bear away a goodly mess of roasted meat that night.
[*] Note that this robe was for the revered ancient and wooden image of Athena Polias, not for the far less venerable statue of Athena Parthenos.
206. The View from the Temple of Wingless Victory.—We will not wait for the feasting but rather will take our way to the Temple of Wingless Victory, looking forth to the west of the Acropolis Rock. So many things we see which we would fain print on the memory. Behind us we have just left the glittering Parthenon, and the less august but hardly less beautiful Erechtheum, with its “Porch of the Maidens.” To our right is the wide expanse of the roofs of the city and beyond the dark olive groves of Colonus, and the slopes of Ægaleos. In the near foreground, are the red crags of Areopagus and the gray hill of the Pnyx. But the eye will wander farther. It is led away across the plainland to the bay of Phaleron, the castellated hill of Munychia, the thin stretch of blue water and the brown island seen across it—Salamis and its strait of the victory. Across the sparkling vista of the sea rise the headlands of Ægina and of lesser isles; farther yet rise the lordly peaks of Argolis. Or we can look to the southward. Our gaze rounds down the mountainous Attic coast full thirty miles to where Sunium thrusts out its haughty cape into the Ægean and points the way across the island-studded sea.
Evening is creeping on. Behind us sounds the great pæan, the solemn chant to Athena, bestower of good to men. As the sun goes down over the distant Argolic hills his rays spread a clear pathway of gold across the waters. Islands, seas, mountains far and near, are touched now with shifting hues,—saffron, violet, and rose,—beryl, topaz, sapphire, amethyst. There will never be another landscape like unto this in all the world. Gladly we sum up our thoughts in the cry of a son of Athens, Aristophanes, master of song, who loved her with that love which the land of Athena can ever inspire in all its children, whether its own by adoption or by birth:—