Nice feature in Athens News:
ANCIENT Greece is remembered for many things, but one of its greatest legacies is drama. Today, in a technologically developed world where dramatic and comedic performances are easily accessible even on tiny, hand-held electronic devices, the performing arts are promoted incessantly as commercial products and seem to have become as regular a part of our daily bread as bread itself. The age-old pleasure of temporarily losing oneself in theatrical entertainment now appears more popular than ever.
Still, leaving technology aside, is modern society’s love of acting and other forms of artistic performance really so fundamentally different from the appreciation or experience of ancient Greek or Roman audiences?
History, archaeology and philology have shown that the people of ancient Greece, and later of Rome, were similarly enamoured of a whole range of public performances including not only dramatic, comedic and musical presentations, but also athletic contests, gladiatorial showdowns and animal fights.
Sporting events were usually held in stadiums or other facilities specifically designed for athletics, while other kinds of performances were staged in a different, equally distinctive type of structure: the theatre.Recently, an international conference hosted by the Danish Institute at Athens (DIA) on 27-30 January 2012, brought together scholars from as far away as Sydney, Australia, to present the latest results from the study of ancient theatres in Greece, Italy, Albania and Asia Minor. While in Athens, this diverse group of respected specialists provided fascinating new insight and fresh inspiration on a subject that has been central to Greek archaeology since 19th-century antiquarians first began taking note of the intriguing stone steps that erosion was revealing at so many hillsides throughout the ancient Greco-Roman world
From at least the 5th century BC, people flocked to these large communal venues, or to their smaller offspring, the music hall (odeon), in which they would behold religious or secular performances. One of the clearest changes in the audience experience, then, may be that ancient theatregoers appreciated drama collectively and firsthand, while presentday viewers of the dramatic arts often choose to consume performances privately, individually or remotely through secondary means such as television, DVD or internet technology.
A multiplicity of theatres
More than 45 ancient theatres are known on the mainland and throughout the islands of Greece, many of which have been at least partly restored or adapted for use by contemporary performers and audiences.
Archaeologists have also revealed countless other Greek or Roman theatres in Asia Minor, Magna Graecia (southern Italy) and elsewhere throughout the Greco-Roman world. The sheer number alone of stone-built or rock-cut theatres, recorded to-date by specialists, attests to the popularity of the performances they once hosted and to the central role that a public theatre played in ancient society.
Virtually every community that possessed sufficient population and resources seems to have constructed a theatre as part of their ordinary programme of public works. Theatres presenting tragic or comedic performances offered a world within a world, just as they still do today, where groups of people could come together to experience something amazing, delightful, thought-provoking and emotionally stirring.
The first scholarly analysis of the dramatic arts can be traced to Aristotle’s Poetics (ca 335BC), while technical treatises such as that of the Augustan architect Vitruvius (De Architectura, 1st century BC) reveal ancient engineers’ highly sophisticated approach to the construction of theatre buildings (see boxes).
The recent conference at the DIA focused on the architecture of ancient Greek and Roman theatres. Of particular local relevance were talks concerning the theatre of Dionysus in Athens, as well as those of of Corinth, Sikyon, Messene, Aigeira, Dodona and Thracian Maroneia. Additional talks addressed important theatre sites in Cyprus, Asia Minor and Sicily. Occasionally giving the impression of a workshop, the well-organised conference offered numerous lively discussions and demonstrated that the study of theatres is a vital field that continues to yield important new results. Paper topics covered renewed excavations at many sites; impressive computer-based recording and digital reconstruction of the theatres at Maroneia and Apollonia-Illyria in Albania; and the welcome, long-overdue preparation-for-publication of the previously unpublished excavation data at Aigeira.
Other activities reported included the exploration of subterranean conduits and tunnels beneath the theatres of Dodona and Nea Paphos, Cyprus; the more secure dating of the Hellenistic theatre at Corinth (ca 300BC), now thought to be contemporaneous with the South Stoa of the Athens Agora; and the renewed investigation of the theatre at Kastabos, Asia Minor, just north of Rhodes. Among the most remarkable discoveries presented were three long stone tracks located just beside the orchestra of the large theatre at Messene, which allowed the entire scene building to be rolled away into a massive storage shed during the harsh months of winter.
Athens represents an appropriate setting for such a conference on theatres, since the city once was the cradle of drama, perhaps even its birthplace, from which the performance of tragedy evolved into a high art form during the 5th and 4th centuries BC.
Tragic plays, according to Aristotle, evolved from rustic religious rites called dithyrambs and satyrics, which were performed by the followers of Dionysus – the god of grapes, wine, ecstasy (partly achieved through drunkenness) and ritual madness. The worship of Dionysus was a liberating experience that encouraged people to lay aside their daily cares by temporarily abandoning their normal selves and ordinary lives.
The dithyrambs were performed by circular choirs, while the satyrics involved dancers costumed as goats (tragoi). These open-air rites accompanied by music originally may have taken place on conveniently flat, circular grain-threshing floors that later inspired the use of circular orchestras in permanent Greek theatres. Through time, dithyrambs and satyrics developed into a more complex choral performance interspersed with dramatic characterisations and storytelling known as a tragodia – a tragedy, but literally a “goat song”.
The cult of Dionysos
The cult of Dionysus may have entered Attica and Athens through the northwestern border town of Eleutherae. Traces of the Dionysiac cult at Eleutherae are preserved in the low, roadside foundations of a temple, from which, according to the 2nd century AD Roman traveller Pausanias, the god’s old wooden image “was carried off to Athens”.
An alternative ancient tradition credits the spread of Dionysiac rites to the small community of Icaria, an Attic deme (municipality) located on the north side of Mt Penteli near the modern town of Dionysos. Icarian tradition, as recorded by ancient authors, told of a native son named Icarius, whom Dionysus befriended and presented with a grape vine.
Dionysus also taught Icarius the art of winemaking, which he then passed on to his neighbours. Subsequently, having consumed too much of their own product, these inexperienced vintners became inebriated, assumed Icarius had poisoned them and killed him. Every autumn the people of Icaria celebrated Dionysus, and probably their tragic hero Icarius, by drinking, feasting, singing and dancing in a country festival that some specialists suggest may have led to similar rural Dionysia elsewhere and eventually to the establishment of the City Dionysia in Athens.
A further ancient tradition names Thespis, an Icarian, as the first performer to have played a character in a story. The Roman poet Horace wrote in the late 1st century BC that Thespis travelled throughout Attica with a troupe of his fellow performers in a wagon. Thespis was said to have been awarded the first prize ever bestowed on an actor for the performance of a tragedy, at the City Dionysia in 534 BC. Thespis and his troupe, then, would already have been entertaining Athenians in the Agora – the city’s marketplace and original theatrical area – long before the permanent Theatre of Dionysus was established on the south side of the Acropolis in the second half of the 5th century BC.
After a collapse of wooden grandstands in the Athenian Agora in the early 5th century BC, the Sanctuary of Dionysus on the South Slope and the later theatre built there became the home of Athenian drama. With 68 rows of seats, the theatre’s auditorium (cavea) was able to accommodate about 19,000 people. Although outside Athens even more spacious theatres were founded, including those at Dodona (17,000), Argos (20,000) and especially Megalopolis (21,000), the Theatre of Dionysus remained the celebrated centre of ancient Greek drama where the greatest tragic and comic playwrights, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, had all competed and likely left their audiences calling for more.
Several scenic elements commonly used in Greek theatre
Mechane, a crane that gave the impression of a flying actor (the Roman deus ex machina)
Ekkyklema, a wheeled wagon used to bring dead characters into view for the audience
Trap doors to lift people onto the stage
Phallic props were used for satyr plays, symbolising fertility in honour of DionysusVitruvius on designing a theatre with proper acoustics
The curved cross-aisles should be constructed in proportionate relation, it is thought, to the height of the theatre, but not higher than the footway of the passage [diazoma] is broad. If they are loftier, they will throw back the voice and drive it away from the upper portion, thus preventing the case-endings of words from reaching with distinct meaning the ears of those who are in the uppermost seats above the cross-aisles. In short, it should be so contrived that a line drawn from the lowest to the highest seat will touch the top edges and angles of all the seats. Thus the voice will meet with no obstruction.
(De Architectura 5.3.4)
Vitruvius defers to Greek expertise in introducing harmonics
Harmonics is an obscure and difficult branch of musical science, especially for those who do not know Greek. If we desire to explain it, we must use Greek words, because some of them have no Latin equivalents. Hence, I will explain it as clearly as I can from the writings of Aristoxenus, append his scheme, and define the boundaries of the notes, so that with somewhat careful attention anybody may be able to understand it pretty easily.
(De Architectura 5.4.1)
Vitruvius on choosing the site to build a theatre
After the forum has been arranged, next, for the purpose of seeing plays or festivals of the immortal gods, a site as healthy as possible should be selected for the theatre, in accordance with what has been written in the first book, on the principles of healthfulness in the sites of cities. For when plays are given, the spectators, with their wives and children, sit through them spellbound, and their bodies, motionless from enjoyment, have the pores open, into which blowing winds find their way. If these winds come from marshy districts or from other unwholesome quarters, they will introduce noxious exhalations into the system. Hence, such faults will be avoided if the site of the theatre is somewhat carefully selected.
(De Architectura 5.3.1)
via: From goat songs to high art (Athens News)
