Chapter II — The Preparation for the Contests
§ 1 The Poets
Dramatic performances at Athens, as was pointed out, were entirely in the hands of the state. They were sacred institutions in honour of Dionysus, and their regulation was as much the duty of the government as the management of any other religious ceremonial. Of the two festivals to which they were confined, the City Dionysia was superintended by the archon eponymus, the Lenaea by the archon basileus. These two archons were therefore responsible for the dramatic exhibitions at their respective festivals.193 They had not much to do with the details of preparation. Their function was rather one of general supervision. They had to select the proper persons, set them to work, and see that they performed their work efficiently. At Athens this was a complex matter, and required a good deal of arrangement. The requisite number of poets had to be chosen and their plays approved. Choregi had to be appointed to pay the expenses of the different choruses. Actors had then to be engaged and distributed among the poets. It was the duty of the archon to make all these selections, and to bring poets, actors, and choregi together. In the present chapter we shall explain in detail the manner in which these various arrangements were carried out.
When a poet wished to compete at one of the festivals, he sent in his application to the archon, together with copies of the plays he proposed to exhibit. As it was a great honour to be allowed to take part in the competitions, there was usually no lack of applicants. The archon then read through the plays submitted to him, and proceeded to select, from among the various candidates, the number of poets required by the particular festival. If it was tragedy at the City Dionysia which he was providing for, he would choose three poets; if it was tragedy at the Lenaea, he would choose two. In comedy the number of poets was originally three, and in later times five. When the archon accepted a poet’s application, and placed him on the official list of competitors, he was said to ‘grant him a chorus’, because the next step was to provide him with a choregus, who paid the expenses of his chorus. In the same way, when a poet applied for permission to exhibit, he was said to ‘ask for a chorus’.194 The task imposed upon the archon of deciding between the rival claims of the dramatic poets must have been a very difficult and a very invidious one. Even if he acted with the best intentions, he could hardly avoid giving offence. Sometimes there were manifest cases of jobbery and favouritism. One archon refused a chorus to the great comic poet Cratinus; another gave a chorus to a certain Cleomachus in preference to Sophocles.195 But it is unlikely that instances of this kind were very common. Probably in most years the poets of the highest reputation were chosen. In a city like Athens, where the magistrates were entirely at the mercy of the people, it would be impossible for them to disregard popular opinion in a very flagrant manner.
Some of the old scholiasts say that a poet was not allowed to exhibit till he had reached the age of thirty or forty.196 But this is clearly a mistake. The only limit of age in any of these Bacchic contests was that which prohibited a man under forty from serving as choregus to a chorus of boys. As for the dramatic poets, they were free to compete as soon as they had reached twenty, passed their dokimasia, and been enrolled as full citizens. Most of the great poets seem to have begun their career at a very early age. Aeschylus was only twenty-five when he made his first appearance. Sophocles began to exhibit at twenty-eight, Euripides at twenty-six,197 while Aristophanes must have been even younger when he brought out the Knights.198
It was not uncommon at Athens for a poet to have his plays produced by a friend, instead of coming forward in his own person. Various motives might lead him to do so. A young poet, feeling diffident about his powers, might wish to make his first experiments anonymously. This was apparently the reason why the first three plays of Aristophanes—the Banqueters, Babylonians, and Acharnians—were brought out by Callistratus.199 It was not till 424, when the Knights was exhibited, that Aristophanes applied for a chorus in his own name. In the parabasis to this play he explains that the reasons which made him keep in the background at first were caution and timidity, and a feeling that one ought to proceed warily in the business of comic writing, and advance by slow degrees, just as a steersman begins by serving as a rower.200 Sometimes, again, a poet wrote a play for his son, and allowed him to bring it out and get the credit of the authorship, so as to give him a successful start in his dramatic career. Aristophanes for this reason entrusted his two last comedies to his son Araros; and Sophocles is said to have entrusted his son Iophon with tragedies.201 It occasionally happened also that a wealthy citizen, with literary ambitions, bought a play from a clever but needy author and exhibited it as his own. Plato, the poet of the Old Comedy, is said to have made an income by sales of this kind.202 Probably, however, the commonest reason for vicarious production was the mere desire to escape trouble and responsibility. The older poets had superintended in person everything connected with the bringing out of a play. In later times, as play-writing became more and more a purely literary pursuit, it was natural for authors occasionally to transfer the theatrical part of the business to other shoulders. They hired stage-managers to look after the rehearsals, and they got theatrical friends to make the necessary arrangements with the archon. Aristophanes, in the middle of his career, entrusted many of his comedies to Philonides and Callistratus.203 The Autolycus of Eupolis was brought out by Demostratus; Philippus, son of Aristophanes, is said to have competed frequently with plays of Eubulus.204 Aphareus, the rhetorician and tragic poet of the fourth century, though he exhibited in eight contests, never brought out a play in his own name.205 In these and similar cases it is difficult to suggest any other motive than love of ease.
As regards the relationship between the poet and the friend who produced his plays for him, there are one or two points which deserve notice. It was the nominal poet who applied to the archon, received the chorus, and undertook the whole responsibility. At the same time the name of the real poet was often quite well known. Of course, if secrecy was an object, this would not be so. When a father wrote plays for his son, or a needy author sold plays to a literary aspirant, the real authorship must have been concealed, at any rate for a time. But in other cases it seems to have been an open secret from the first. Aristophanes, in the Knights, says that many people had been asking him why he gave his plays to Callistratus instead of applying for a chorus in person.206 In the Wasps, which is generally supposed not to have been brought out by himself, he refers to the author of the play in terms only applicable to himself.207 Here, then, there was no attempt at concealment. At the same time the nominal author must have been the one officially recognized by the state. It must have been he who received the rewards of victory, and whose name was stated as victor in the public records. It is true that in the records which have been preserved the practice is to give the name of the real author, and to add as a note that the play was actually brought out by such and such a person. But this can hardly have been the original form of the entry. It must be due to the corrections of the grammarians who collected and edited the notices.