of Sophocles (c.496–406), together with a record of one hundred and twenty-three
titles, and nineteen of Euripides (c. 485–406),together with a record of ninety-two
titles. One satyr play by Euripides survives.
Arrangements for the festival were the responsibility of the eponymous archon
(so called because his year of office was known and identified by his name), who
chose from the wealthiest citizens a number of choregoi, who were required to pay
for the training and equipping of a chorus. Some expenses were borne by the state.
The archon also chose the playwrights (we do not know how); non-Athenians might
and did apply and succeed. The role of a choregoswas largely financial; the actual
direction was left to the playwright, who not only wrote the play but also
choreographed and provided the music. In the early days the playwright, like Thespis,
was also an actor; with the addition of a second and third actor grew a class of
professional actors, an honoured trade in Athens. In 449 prizes were instituted for
actors. From the time of Pericles the state treasury paid for the seats of citizens,
though non-citizens and foreigners were perhaps charged admission. Women may
have been allowed to attend (there is some dispute about this) and even slaves,
presumably if accompanying their masters.
Any modern visitor to the site of an ancient theatre (theatron, a watching place)
will be impressed by its size. The so-called Periclean theatre of the 440s at Athens
held about 14,000 spectators seated upon benches of wood, rising in tiers in a vast
semicircle up the side of the Acropolis. This replaced the first theatre dating from the
early fifth century. The stone theatre associated with the name of Lycurgus was
completed in 330. The present theatre of Dionysus in Athens dates from Roman
times. The vastness of the seating area, physical proof that ancient drama was
community theatre, is complemented by the size of the performing area itself,
dominated by a circle of about 60 feet in diameter in the centre of which was an altar
to the god. The circle, called the orchestra, meaning dancing-place, must have been
largely the preserve of the chorus (ten in number in the plays of Aeschylus, fifteen in
Sophocles and subsequently), who danced and sang to the accompaniment of flutes.
(None of the dance movements or musical accompaniment survives.) The division
of the choral odes into strophe (turn), antistrophe (counterturn) and epode (after song)
probably reflects the movement of the chorus through the orchestra. The complicated
choral metres may be related to particular steps. It is noticeable that in the parodos,
the first utterance of the chorus as they enter the orchestra, the metre is often
anapaestic ( ̆ ̆ — ̆ ̆ — ̆ ̆ —, etc.), giving the rhythm of a march. It seems likely that a
wooden stage beyond the orchestra was introduced at an early date, and in about 460
came the first background building (skene), perhaps containing dressing rooms for
actors and an entrance onto the stage. This area must have been the preserve of the
principal actors. When Clytemnestra tempts Agamemnon into the palace by way of
the purple carpet in the opening play of the Oresteia, produced in 458, it is to be
146 THE GREEKS