Chapter VII — The Audience
§ 1 Composition of the Audience
The theatre of Dionysus at Athens, during the period of the Lenaea and the City Dionysia, presented a spectacle which for interest and significance has few parallels in the ancient or the modern world. The city kept universal holiday. The various proceedings were in reality so many religious celebrations. But there was nothing of an austere character about the worship of Dionysus. To give freedom from care was his special attribute, and the sincerest mode of paying homage to his power was by a genial enjoyment of the various pleasures of life. At this time of universal merriment the dramatic performances formed the principal attraction. Each day soon after sunrise the great majority of the citizens made their way to the southern slopes of the Acropolis, where the theatre of Dionysus was situated. The tiers of seats rising up the side of the hill were speedily filled with a crowd of nearly twenty thousand persons. The sight of such a vast multitude of people, gathered together at daybreak in the huge open amphitheatre, and dressed for the most part in white, or in red, brown, yellow, and other rich colours, must have been exceedingly striking and picturesque. The performances which brought them together were not unworthy of the occasion. The plays exhibited at the festivals of Dionysus rank among the very noblest achievements of Greek genius. For beauty of form, depth of meaning, and poetical inspiration they have never been surpassed. It would be difficult to point to any similar example of the whole population of a city meeting together each year to enjoy works of the highest artistic beauty. It is seldom that art and poetry have penetrated so deeply into the life of the ordinary citizens. Our curiosity is naturally excited in regard to the tone and composition of the audiences before which a drama of such an exceptional character was exhibited. The object of the following chapter will be to bring together and present in one view all the available information upon this subject.
At the Lenaea, which was held in the winter, when travelling was difficult, the audience consisted almost exclusively of natives of Athens. The City Dionysia came about two months later, at the commencement of the spring, and attracted great crowds of strangers from various parts of Greece. Representatives from the allied states came to pay the annual tribute at this season of the year. It was also a favourite time for the arrival of ambassadors from foreign cities; and it was considered a mere matter of politeness to provide them with front seats in the theatre, if they happened to be in Athens during the celebration of the City Dionysia.980 In addition to these visitors of a representative character, there were also great numbers of private individuals, attracted to Athens from all parts of Greece by the magnificence of the festival, and the fame of the dramatic exhibitions. Altogether the visitors formed a considerable portion of the audience at the City Dionysia. One of the great aggravations of the offence of Meidias was that his assault upon Demosthenes was committed in the presence of ‘large multitudes of strangers’.981 Apparently the natives of foreign states were not allowed to purchase tickets for the theatre in their own name, but had to get them through an Athenian citizen.982
The composition of the purely Athenian part of the audience is a subject upon which a great deal has been written, the principal difficulty being the question as to the admittance of boys and women to the dramatic performances. In the treatment of this matter scholars appear to have been unduly biassed by a preconceived opinion as to what was right and proper. Undoubtedly Athenian women were kept in a state of almost Oriental seclusion. And the old Attic comedy was pervaded by a coarseness which seems to make it utterly unfit for boys and women. For these reasons some writers have gone so far as to assert that they were never present at any dramatic performances whatsoever.983 Others, while not excluding them from tragedy, have declared that it was an impossibility that they should have been present at the performances of comedy.984 But the attempt to draw a distinction between tragedy and comedy, in regard to the admission of boys and women to the theatre, will not bear examination. If they were present at one, they must have been present at both. The tragic and the comic competitions frequently took place upon the same days, and succeeded one another without any interval; and it is difficult to suppose that, after the tragedies were over, a large part of the audience had to be turned out before the comedies could begin. Moreover, if women and boys had been present at the tragedies, they would of necessity have been spectators of the satyric dramas, which were nearly as coarse as the comedies. It is useless therefore to endeavour to separate tragedy from comedy in the consideration of this question.
As a matter of fact the evidence upon the subject, if considered without prejudice, makes it practically certain that there were no restrictions of the kind suggested. The audience at the dramatic performances, whether tragic or comic, was drawn from every class of the population. Men, women, boys, and slaves were all allowed to be present. The evidence from ancient authors is too copious to be accounted for on any other supposition. There are three passages in Plato which in themselves are almost enough to decide the question. In one place, speaking of poetry in general, and more especially of tragedy, Plato says it is a kind of rhetoric addressed to ‘boys, women, and men, slaves, and free citizens without distinction’. In another place, where he is treating of the management of his ideal republic, he says there will be no great readiness to allow the tragic poets to ‘erect their stages in the market-place, and perform before women and children, and the general public’. A passage of this kind would have very little point, unless it was intended as a condemnation of the prevailing practice. In a third place he declares that if there was a general exhibition of all kinds of public amusements, and the audience were called upon to state what they were most pleased with, the little children would vote for the conjuror, the boys for the comic poet, the young men and the more refined sort of women for the tragic poet.985 These three passages of Plato are hardly consistent with the supposition that the drama was a spectacle which boys and women were never allowed to witness.
In addition to the above evidence there are also several places in Aristophanes where boys and women are referred to as forming part of the audience. For instance, in the Clouds Aristophanes prides himself on having refrained from introducing the phallus ‘to make the boys laugh’. In the Peace he says that ‘both the boys and the men’ ought to wish for his victory in the contest, because of his boldness in attacking Cleon. In another part of the Peace, when some barley is thrown among the male part of the spectators, Trygaeus remarks that the women have not got any.986 Other passages of the same kind might be quoted. That women were present at the New Comedy is proved conclusively by a letter of Alciphron, in which Menander is supposed to be writing to his mistress Glycera. In this letter he says that nothing is dearer to him than to be crowned with the ivy of Dionysus, as victor in the comic contest, ‘while Glycera is sitting in the theatre and looking on.’987 Other pieces of evidence are as follows. In Lucian’s dialogue Solon tells Anacharsis that the Athenians educate their sons by taking them to tragedies and comedies, and showing them examples of virtue and vice, so as to teach them what to imitate and what to avoid.988 In the Frogs there is the well-known passage in which Aeschylus taunts Euripides with the immorality of his plays, which have caused women of refinement to commit suicide from very shame. If women were never present at the performance of the tragedies of Euripides, there would be very little meaning in the reproach.989 Then again we are told that when Alcibiades was choregus, and ‘entered the theatre’ dressed in a splendid purple robe, he was admired ‘not only by the men, but also by the women’.990 The shameless person in Theophrastus smuggles his sons into the theatre with a ticket which belongs to some one else. The miser never takes his sons to the theatre except when the entrance is free.991 The regulation of Sphyromachus, providing that men, women, and courtesans should sit apart from one another, can hardly have referred to any place but the theatre.992 The cumulative effect of all these passages is difficult to resist. It is impossible to explain them all away by far-fetched interpretations. Even the story of the effect produced by the Eumenides of Aeschylus upon the audience—of the boys dying of fright and the women having miscarriages—such a story, though in itself a foolish invention, could hardly have originated unless women and boys had been regularly present at the theatre.993 That they were admitted at a later period is proved by the direct evidence of inscriptions in the theatre of Dionysus, which show that in Hadrian’s time seats were specially reserved for priestesses and other women.994 This fact would not of course be conclusive evidence as to the custom which prevailed in the classical period of Athenian history. But, as far as it goes, it tends to confirm the conclusions based upon the evidence of ancient authors.
No doubt at first sight it appears a very startling fact that women and boys should have been spectators of the Old Comedy. But it should always be remembered that the comedies performed at the festivals of Dionysus were a portion of a religious celebration, which it was a pious duty to take part in. Ribaldry and coarseness were a traditional element in the worship of Dionysus, handed down from rude and primitive times, and were not lightly to be dispensed with. The Greeks in such matters were thoroughly conservative. It was a feeling of this kind which caused the satyric drama to be developed side by side with tragedy, in order that the old licentious merriment of the satyrs might not be utterly forgotten. The coarseness of the Old Comedy, being a regular part of the celebrations in honour of Dionysus, might be witnessed by boys and women without degradation, though their presence at similar scenes in real life would have been regarded in a very different manner. Where the worship of the gods was concerned, the practice of keeping women in strict seclusion was allowed to drop into abeyance. Women and even girls were present at the phallic processions in honour of Dionysus.995 Their appearance on such occasions was regarded as a mere matter of course. It need not therefore surprise us that women and boys should have been present in the theatre at the performances of the Old Comedy.
Whether they were ever present in large numbers is a further question. Even those writers who admit that their presence was not prohibited by law, generally add that the more respectable women would in all probability keep away.996 But the only authority for such a notion is to be found in a couple of passages in Aristophanes, which represent the husband as present in the theatre, while the wife was at home.997 There is nothing so unusual in an occurrence of this kind as to warrant any sweeping conclusions. Some people must necessarily have remained at home, from the mere fact that the theatre would not have been large enough to contain the whole population of Athens, if men, women, and children had all been present. But it is hardly probable, for the reasons already stated, that there was anything disreputable in a woman visiting the theatre. Reformers like Aristotle were in advance of ordinary public opinion in their feelings about such matters. Aristotle expresses a strong opinion that boys should be prevented from seeing or hearing any piece of coarseness or indecency.998 Even if such ribaldry is an essential feature in the worship of any particular deity, he says that only men should be allowed to be present. The men should pay the proper homage to gods of this character on behalf of themselves, their wives, and their children; but boys should not be permitted to be witnesses of comedies and similar spectacles. This passage, in which Aristotle is combating the prevailing practice of the times, is an additional proof that boys were present at the performance of comedies, and shows clearly that when the worship of the gods was concerned ordinary public opinion did not consider such spectacles improper.999
Besides women and children it appears that slaves were occasionally present at the theatre. Plato in the Gorgias mentions slaves as one of the classes before which the tragic poets will not be allowed to perform in his ideal commonwealth.1000 The shameless man described by Theophrastus takes the ‘paedagogus’ to the theatre, along with his sons, and crowds them all into seats which did not really belong to him.1001 It is not, however, probable that the number of slaves among the audience was ever very great. Their presence would depend upon the kindness of their masters. But the two passages just quoted prove that there was no law to prevent their attendance.