Wealthy and public-spirited men, like Pericles with The Persians, were appointed as choregoi (literally chorus leaders) by the Chief Archon. Each would finance and produce a tragic trilogy and satyr play, or a comedy or a choral concert and dance. They vied with one another for the most lavish productions and some said that Athens spent more on theater than on its fleet (an exaggeration, but an understandable one).
A choregos was allocated a playwright and up to three actors. He hired a professional trainer for the chorus, paid for the actors’ costumes and those of the chorus, and commissioned the decor and props. The state picked up the bill for the actors’ wages. Star performers became increasingly professionalized and acted in arts festivals throughout the Greek world. They commanded high fees and were men of status; being well traveled, they were sometimes employed as state ambassadors. The crafts of theater—writing, production, and acting—often ran in families.
Theater had an important community dimension as well. It has been estimated that as many as 1,500 persons were involved one way or another in the production and presentation of plays in a single year’s Great Dionysia.
To be a choregos was no passing honor. If he won a prize, he was crowned with a garland and given a bronze tripod. He would set this up on a column or in a miniature circular temple in the long Street of the Tripods, which led from the theater eastwards around the Acropolis. A surviving inscription has recorded the name of one proud prizewinner and those of his creative team.
Lysicrates, son of Lysitheides of the Kikynna deme, was the sponsor. The tribe of Akameantis won the boys’ chorus. Theon played the flute. Lysiades the Athenian directed. Euaenetus was Chief Archon.
In this way, the generosity and artistic taste of a choregos were placed on permanent display. His memory would live forever.
Large numbers of citizens—perhaps as many as twenty thousand—attended performances at the Great Dionysia. Originally plays were presented in the agora, but at some stage during the fifth century they were transferred to a space just north of the temple of Dionysus. Here the slope leading down from the Acropolis formed a natural, semicircular, open-air auditorium (a theatron, or seeing space). It was centered on a circular area, called the orchestra, which resembled a traditional threshing floor. This was where the chorus chanted and danced.
In the early years there may have been wooden benches at the front for dignitaries, but most spectators sat on the ground. Later, it appears, fixed wooden seating was installed. The first fully stone theater was not built until the fourth century. The entrance fee was good value at two obols, the equivalent of a worker’s daily wage. As a rule, audiences were male, although women seem to have been allowed to attend in the fourth century. Wine and confectionery were on sale and audiences ate and drank during performances. They consumed most when bored.
Beyond the orchestra was a raised stage and at its back a skene (whence our scene: literally, a booth), a timber framework on which painted scenery could be hung. Usually, a building or buildings were depicted, with two or three doors through which actors could enter or exit. They could also appear on the roof. A crane was installed that brought gods down from on high and carried them off again (we still use the phrase deus ex machina, Latin for “the god from the machine,” for an abrupt and surprising conclusion to a narrative). This was quite an elaborate piece of equipment: in Euripides’ Medea, the eponymous heroine brought the play to a spectacular close by flying away in a chariot, probably drawn by winged serpents and accompanied by the corpses of her dead children.
Violent death was never shown onstage. So, for example, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra meet their respective fates inside their palace; then the skene was opened wide and a platform, the eccyclema, on which their corpses were displayed was wheeled out.
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We are told that Aeschylus called his plays “slices from the great banquet of Homer.” His masterpiece, The Oresteia, was based on the legendary story of the House of Atreus, but retold in a way to catch the attention of the contemporary theatergoer.
The family lives under a curse and terrible crimes have been committed in each generation. King Agamemnon is the latest to live out a doomed, repetitive pattern of sin and retribution. The Greek fleet gathers under his command at Aulis, a port in Boeotia, but storms prevent it from setting sail to Troy.
…ships and ropes rotted, cables parted,
Men wandered off.
The Greek seer Calchas tells the king that he has offended the goddess Artemis and must sacrifice his daughter, Iphigenia, if he wants a favorable wind. Frightened for the fate of the expedition, he puts on the “harness of necessity.” At the altar Agamemnon calls for someone to bring a gag to stop his daughter from shouting anything that might cast blame on the House of Atreus. The girl has her throat slit, the goddess forgives, the storm subsides, and the ships sail.
Despite the passage of ten years Clytemnestra has neither forgotten nor forgiven her darling daughter’s terrible fate at her father’s hands. Several days pass after the news was brought by the beacon and Agamemnon returns to the palace in his pomp. Clytemnestra has made all the necessary arrangements: he that’s coming must be provided for, in the words of a later chilling lady.
Her husband takes a bath and his queen volunteers to help him. Like a fisherman with a net, she envelops him in a splendid and voluminous robe and then, having caught him up in it, stabs him again, again, and again. Iphigenia has been avenged.
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Clytemnestra has a lover, Aegisthus, a cousin of Agamemnon with a grudge against him. After Agamemnon’s murder, the couple live together and reign in Argos. So ends the first part of the trilogy; the second is entitled The Libation Bearers.
Seven years have passed. Agamemnon’s two children are grown up. Electra, who adored her father, lives on miserably at Argos. Her brother Orestes, the legitimate heir, is a threat to the usurpers but after Agamemnon’s death was smuggled out of the country to safety.
He faces the most painful of moral dilemmas. As a son he is obliged to avenge his father by killing his murderer. But that is his mother, Clytemnestra, and matricide breaks the gravest of taboos. Whatever he does, then, he sins. This impossible choice is an example of how fate trips up and entraps human beings, even those who have the best of intentions.
Orestes is ordered by the god Apollo at Delphi to put his mother and her paramour to death in retribution for Agamemnon’s assassination. He is horrified by what confronts him, but dutifully returns to Argos accompanied by his friend Pylades. He meets his sister and they plan what is to be done.
The two young men present themselves at the palace, disguised as foreign traders and speaking with a Delphian accent. Obeying the usual etiquette of offering hospitality to strangers, the queen comes out and welcomes them. “As our guest, call this your home,” says Clytemnestra, with unknowing irony. Orestes informs her of his own (supposed) death in Phocis. “Oh misery!” keens the queen in conventional mourning, unconsciously prophetic. “Your story spells our total destruction.”
Her defenses down, she ushers her guests into the house. Orestes first puts Aegisthus to death. Clytemnestra, hearing noise, comes out of the women’s quarters to find out what is happening. She begs her son for her life. Hard-pressed, Orestes asks desperately: “How shall I escape my father’s curse, if I relent?” She yields to her fate. “You are right. I waste my breath.”