“This should do pretty well,” Protomakhos said, and stepped off the aisle to sit down on a stone bench. Sostratos and Menedemos followed. The benches were all the same, with a raised portion for spectators’ backsides and a lower part behind it where the people in the next row back could rest their feet.
Women had their own section in the theater, off to the left by the Odeion. That area had been added on after the Odeion was built, for it fit around the corner of Perikles’ great structure. Looking toward the women seemed to make Menedemos recover better than wine or fresh air had done, even though many of them wore veils against the prying eyes of men.
Protomakhos looked that way, too. “In my great-grandfather’s day, this was a place for men only,” he remarked.
“I like it better this way.” Yes, Menedemos was coming back to life.
Sostratos asked, “Do you know, best one, just when they did begin to admit women to the theater? “
The proxenos tossed his head. “They’ve been coming as long as I can remember. That’s all I can say for certain.”
“Someone ought to know something like that.” Sostratos clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I wonder who.”
Pointing to a stone chair in the center of the very first row, Protomakhos said, “That’s where the priest of Dionysos Eleutherios sits. If anyone could tell you when the custom changed, he’s probably the man.”
Sostratos started to get up and go down to him then and there, but Menedemos took hold of his arm, saying, “He has other things to worry about right now, my dear.”
“I suppose so,” Sostratos admitted. “But I’m liable to forget if I don’t ask when something first occurs to me.”
“You?” Menedemos laughed. “You don’t forget anything. If you ever found out the name of Perikles’ dog, you’d remember it till the end of time.”
He was right. But when Sostratos said, “That’s different,” he knew he too was right, though he would have been hard pressed to explain the difference between the two kinds of memory.
But Menedemos was also right in saying the priest had other things on his mind. The gray-bearded gentleman kept bouncing out of his chair to talk with one or another of the magistrates sitting in the first row, and with the high-ranking Macedonian officers who also got some of those prime seats-a sure sign of how much, or rather how little, Athenian freedom and autonomy were worth these days.
Protomakhos said, “If you’re interested, there’s Demetrios of Phaleron.” He pointed to one of the dignitaries in the front row. The Athenian who served as Kassandros’ governor was younger than Sostratos had thought him on his previous stay in Athens-about forty-five. He was also strikingly handsome; that Sostratos had recalled accurately.
With a chuckle, Menedemos said, “Even if we’re not interested, he’s still Demetrios of Phaleron.” Protomakhos blinked. Sostratos groaned. Yes, his cousin was starting to feel better, and he half wished Menedemos weren’t.
In came the chorus of boys, singing the same hymns they had during the procession the day before. Following them, this time on a small cart instead of the wheeled boat in which it had ridden down the Street of the Panathenaia, was the ancient wooden statue of Dionysos.
As he did every year, the god would watch the plays put on in his honor.
A couple of dozen youths coming of age this year marched out into the orkhestra behind the chorus. A magistrate presented each of them with a suit of hoplite’s armor. They were the sons of Athenians who’d died in battle for their polis. That custom went back a long way. The youths got loud applause as they took their seats at the front of the theater. Most of their fathers would have fallen fighting the Macedonians who dominated the polis now. Cheering them was one way to show what people felt about the occupiers.
“Look!” This time, Protomakhos pointed up at the great buildings of the akropolis behind them. “The sun has risen. Won’t be long before its rays get down here, too.”
“One more argument the world is round,” Sostratos said to Menedemos. “If it were flat, the sun would rise at the same time everywhere. But naturally a high spot on the sphere catches the light coming around the edge of the curve before a lower one can.”
“I’m sorry, best one, but that’s much too much like thought for so early in the morning,” Menedemos replied. Sostratos sniffed.
Menedemos waved to a wineseller. The fellow waited in the aisle till Menedemos drained the little earthenware cup, then refilled it from the jar he carried at his side like a sword. Other hucksters went up and down the aisles with raisins and dried figs and little honey cakes and sausages and onions and chunks of cheese. Sostratos said, “The worse the play is, the better the business the men with the food will do.”
“Seems only fair.” Menedemos peered down toward the raised skene behind the orkhestra. “We’re close enough to the stage to hit the actors with onions if they’re very bad.” Then he looked over his shoulder at all the thousands of people sitting behind him. “And we’re close enough to the skene for all of them back there to hit us with onions if the actors are very bad.”
Protomakhos laughed. “Anyone would know you’ve gone to a few plays in your time, most noble one, even if you’ve never come to the theater at Athens before.”
“Are they going to put on revivals the first day?” Sostratos asked. “That’s how they did it when I was a student here.”
The proxenos dipped his head. “Yes, that’s right; that custom hasn’t changed. They’re reaching back a long way this year, too. This is Aiskhylos’ series of Theban plays-Semele, Xantriai, Pentheus, and the satyr play, Dionysos’ Nurses.”
Sostratos whistled. “Those must go back more than a hundred fifty years-before Perikles’ day. The Pentheus treats the same episode as Euripides’ Bakkhai, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Protomakhos dipped his head again. “Euripides’ play has put all the others about Dionysos in the shade. But Demetrios of Phaleron is khoregos for these. Not only is he rich enough to do a first-class job, he’s also an antiquarian, so it’s no surprise that he’d put on something nobody’s seen for a long time.”
“This should be interesting.” Sostratos leaned forward on the bench.
So did Menedemos. For a moment, that surprised Sostratos. But his cousin, after all, was the one who didn’t have modern tastes. And Aiskhylos, with un-Hellenic modesty, had called his own work crumbs from the banquet of Homer.
Out came the first actor, to set the scene: a messenger, talking about the report that Kadmos’ daughter Semele was with child-the child who would be Dionysos. A townsman of Thebes answered him. They went back and forth. “Only two actors,” Menedemos whispered to Sostratos.
“Yes, that’s right,” Sostratos whispered back. “Sophokles introduced the third speaking part.”
“Aiskhylos, they say, introduced the second,” Protomakhos put in. “Before his time, it was just one man going back and forth with the chorus.” Sostratos dipped his head; hypokrites, the word that meant actor, came from the verb meaning to answer.
A chorus of the women who would wash the newborn child after its birth danced out into the orkhestra, singing. The performers were, of course, male, as was the actor who portrayed Semele; women did not take part in plays. With masks and the actors’ remarkable control over their voices, Sostratos did not feel or even notice the lack.
He did notice how stiff and formal and old-fashioned the chorus’ steps and gestures were. Sure enough, Demetrios of Phaleron was an antiquarian, and was doing his best to stage the play as it might have appeared in Aiskhylos’ day. Even the musical accompaniment seemed unusually slow and spare. That fascinated Sostratos, and made him feel as if he’d been swept back in time. Aiskhylos’ splendid poetry didn’t hurt there, either. But not all the audience reacted the same way.