§ 11 Contests Between Actors
In addition to the rewards just mentioned, prizes for acting were instituted in later times. At first the principal competitors in the dramatic contests were the choregus and the poet. Upon their efforts the success of a play mainly depended. It was to them that the rewards of victory were assigned, and it was their names which were recorded in the public monuments. But as time went on the profession of the actor gradually increased in importance. Eventually the success of a play came to depend principally upon the actors. The competition was extended to them. A prize was offered for the most successful actor as well as for the most successful poet. The name of the victorious actors began to be recorded in the official lists. As regards the date of these innovations the following facts may be gathered from existing monuments. At the City Dionysia contests between tragic actors were established for the first time about the year 446 B.C.164 Contests between comic actors at this festival are not mentioned in the inscriptional records of performances during the fifth and fourth centuries.165 In the second century they seem to have become a regular institution, but nothing certain can be ascertained concerning the intervening period.166 At the Lenaea, contests between tragic actors can be traced back as far as 420 B.C.,167 and contests between comic actors as far as about 289 with certainty,168 and considerably earlier with fair probability.169
These contests were limited to the principal actors or protagonists in each play. The subordinate actors, the deuteragonist and tritagonist, had nothing to do with them. The principal actor in a Greek play was a much more important personage than even the ‘star’ in a modern company. The actors in a Greek play were limited to three in number, and each of them had to play several parts in succession, by means of changes in dress and mask. Hence the protagonist had to perform not only the principal part, but also several of the subordinate ones. Besides this, the composition of most Greek tragedies was designed with the express purpose of bringing out into strong relief the character of the principal personage. The incidents were intended to draw forth his different emotions: the subordinate characters were so many foils to him. As a consequence, the success of a Greek play depended almost wholly upon the protagonist. In the ordinary language of the times he was said to ‘act the play’, as if the other performers were of no importance. To take an example from existing inscriptions, it is recorded that in 340 ‘Astydamas was victorious with the Parthenopaeus, acted by Thessalus, and the Lycaon, acted by Neoptolemus’.170 This is the regular form of the old records both in tragedy and comedy. Demosthenes uses similar language. Referring to the Phoenix of Euripides, he says that ‘Theodorus and Aristodemus never acted this play’. The form of the language is proof of the overwhelming importance of the protagonist.171 The only other point to be noticed is that the success of the actor was quite independent of the success of the play in which he was performing. Thus in one of the comic contests of the second century the prize for acting was won by Onesimus. But the play in which he acted, the Shipwrecked Mariner, only won the second place. The successful comedy, the Ephesians, was acted by Sophilus. Similarly in the tragic contests of the year 418 the prize for acting was won by Callippides; but the poet Callistratus, whose three tragedies he performed, was only second. The tragedies of the successful poet were acted by Lysicrates.172
The actors’ contests which we have hitherto been describing took place at the performance of new tragedies and comedies, and existed side by side with contests between poets and choregi. But there were other occasions in which actors met in competition. The reproduction of old plays generally took the form of contests between actors. These contests were of two kinds. In the first kind each actor performed a different play. At the same time the victory was decided, not by the merits of the play, but by the skill of the actor. There are several references to competitions of this sort. For instance, before the battle of Arginusae, Thrasyllus is said to have dreamt that he was engaged in a contest in the theatre at Athens, and that he and his fellow generals were acting the Phoenissae of Euripides, while their opponents were acting the Supplices.173 The most frequent occasion for reproductions of old plays in this manner must have been afforded by the Rural Dionysia in the different townships of Attica. The dramatic performances at these festivals were mostly confined, as we have already seen, to the exhibition of old tragedies and comedies. The town offered a prize for acting, and the leading Athenian actors came down with their companies and took part in the contest, each performing a different play. But at the great Athenian festivals, the Lenaea and the City Dionysia, there are no traces of such competitions to be found in the records. They may have been introduced in late times; but during the more flourishing period of the drama, when the older poets were reproduced at these festivals, one play seems to have been considered sufficient.174
The second kind of competition with old plays differed from the first in this respect, that each actor performed the same play. For instance, Licymnius, the tragic actor, is said to have defeated Critias and Hippasus in the Propompi of Aeschylus. Andronicus, another tragic actor, was successful in the Epigoni on one occasion; and it is implied that his opponents acted the same play.175 In contests of this description it is not probable that the whole play was acted by each of the competitors, but only special portions of it. The contest would be useful for purposes of selection. When the custom arose of prefacing the performances of new tragedies and new comedies by the reproduction of an ancient drama, it would be necessary for the state to choose the actor who was to manage the reproduction. Very probably the selection was made by a competition of the kind we are describing, in which a portion of an old play was performed by each of the candidates. The contests between comic actors at the Chytri have already been referred to.176 Most likely they were of the same description.