At this first komos of the Great Dionysia all the wilder young men of the city with their less-inhibited womenfolk partied amid this fantasy of lights. Serving staff and young slaves dispensed roasted meats, breads, and wine plentifully as a pleasing haze of scorched flesh and burning pine needles drifted across the crowd.
For the Dionysia the city's merrymakers searched out arranged assignations or enticed newfound intimacies from among the surging throng. Facemasks in gaudy designs of Dionysus, Pan, or satyrs, with elaborately painted faces and ingenious hairstyles blurred the identities of the roisterers. In many cases the elaborate costumes blurred their gender as well. At the annual revel of Dionysus anonymity combined with drunkenness was the approved ceremonial praise for the randy god, coupled with sexual ambiguity.
This opening festival of the new season gives Athenians and foreigners alike the opportunity to rage with Dionysian folly after the torpid months of winter. The city's citizens mix together regardless of status, wealth, or nationality. Social limits are put aside for a night.
Instead, a radical democracy of lust rules the streets. Consequently only very adventurous Athenians attend the public komos of the Great Dionysia. For five hundred years its wild, orgiastic frenzy has been legend across the Aegean, and not always approved.
Brazier flames sparked-and-gutted above the steeply ramped Sacred Way leading to the Acropolis precinct. The high fluted pillars supporting the massive pediment of the Parthenon glowed warmly above the firelight into the night sky. Pericles' ancient temple to Athena Parthenos and to the city of Athens itself shone magnificently in the evening's deepening dark.
Of the seventeen thousand spectators at the Theater performance most had retired to their family hearths by nightfall. Those remaining, mainly young unmarried adventurers or demimonde wastrels, wandered the peripatos road from the Theater to the entrance ramp of the citadel or the Areopagus ridge. There they found opportunities to party and more.
Hadrian, as President of the Dionysia, endowed the night's festivities from his own purse. Yet because he was engaged in the obligations of diplomacy with mature-age city councilors, ambassadors, and other notables, he was separated from his young companions for the evening.
He delegated the younger Herodes Atticus to entertain the two young Bithynians until his imperial duties were completed. This may have suited Herodes well, considering he had had his eye cast over the strapping physique and modest manner of Antinous's schoolchum, Lysias. Herodes, Antinous, and Lysias meandered together among the revelers to enjoy the rowdy display of Athenians letting their hair down.
The two visitors had never before enjoyed so cheerful a public riot of such opulence. Revelers milled around in tipsy chit-chat groups, or prowled shady nooks-and-crannies with salacious intent, while bands of musicians strolled the paths winding between the shrines and chapels straddling the ridge.
Bursts of laughter, shrieks of delight, cries of profanity, and merry banter echoed across the crowd. Flute girls and young dancer boys garbed in spring foliage tripped, pranced, and skylarked between the wanderers to earn an occasional coin for their antics.
Groups of friends who had been cheered by Dionysus's gift to humanity, the season's first pressing of the vine, were forming merry dance circles to sway, leap, and step in mutual unison to the drums, cymbals, and pipes of wandering musicians. Occasional women of carefree manners, or vivacious hetaerae in high spirits and spectacularly distinctive attire, along with common sex-workers in shamelessly revealing gauzes to invite custom, dared to join an exuberant men's dance circle and cavort to the lilting rhythms.
Others withdrew into the shadows with newfound companions for sessions of raunchy sport amid gales of laughter or the delectable moans of sensual delight. Flesh met flesh, kisses hungered for new mouths, hands searched over willing limbs, and pleasures were shared.
Antinous, Lysias, and Herodes hunkered together upon a low rocky slab to imbibe in the seductive atmosphere and gaze up to the ramparts of the ancient citadel looming skywards before them. Swigs from a corralled skin of wine and gnaws at legs of game intruded intermittently on their rambling conversation.
The Bithynians' faces were elegantly veiled by silver stripes painted across their eye lines by Thais at their Melite villa when they had retired to replace their torn tunics and freshen up. She had also dusted any exposed skin and limbs with splashes of silver glitter highlighting the animal grace of their physiques, while their shag-cut manes of hair were studded with shreds of glittering silver foil. These glitzy touches transformed each of the boys into an elysian Apollo Incarnate in festive party mode.
Herodes, already a bearded adult with the lean body and bearing of a militia commander, wore a molded leather actor's mask bearing the features of Ares, the god of war who protects young soldiers. It was slanted rakishly across his head. Despite being a senator of Rome he didn't affect a formal toga but wore a simple Greek tunic and polished leather cuirass slung with an embroidered himation mantle. His garb was simple if military, but Lysias considered it very striking.
The three took deep draughts from the shared wineskin's nozzle.
'So this is the famous city of Socrates, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and many other thinkers of fame," Antinous mused tipsily to his companions while waving a half-chewed chicken leg at the skyline laid before them. Between downing gulps of wine he added, "This is the birthplace of all our better ideals.'
Herodes smiled knowingly at the young man's rosy view of the city.
'Ah, not only thinkers, Antinous. Don't forget Athens is also a city of punishers-and-straighteners. Remember the severe law-makers Solon, Dracon, Peisistratos, Pericles, and so on," Herodes contributed. "Perhaps they had a greater impact on Athens and the Greeks than the philosophers ever had?'
'But what about of your renowned lovebirds?' Lysias added in a wine-cheery vein. 'Remember Aristogiton and his eromenos Harmodius, your famously-smitten tyrant killers? Or Socrates and his young beauty Alcibiades; or Pausanius and Agathon; Cratinus and Aristodemus, and others whose names I forget?'
Antinous had to add his drachma's worth.
'Even Great Alexander and his companion Prince Hephaestion were here at one point. Arrian's recent book reminds us so. But only HHades knows how many playwrights, poets, athletes, soldiers, and whoever, found love in this place,' he muttered as yet another swig from the shared bladder dribbled russet drops down his chin.
Herodes took up the theme.
'But don't forget the Romans, you narrow-minded Hellenes. Julius Caesar, Caesar Augustus, Caesar Nero, and many others. Several of the emperors have loved this city, and found love too in this city in their time,' the sturdy officer- amp;-gentleman reminded his companions. His eyes settled lazily upon the darker of the two youths.
'And it seems even today it can be so, as we saw this afternoon,' he added as he drew his gaze back to Antinous. The fair-haired member of the trio blushed briefly.
Herodes continued.
'I'd say this city has a well-deserved reputation as a City of Love.'
Herodes' focus returned to the beefier of the two lads who was casually chewing at a hare's haunch. His gaze lay upon Lysias a few moments too long.
Lysias at last perceived Herodes' attention for what it was, and swiftly averted his eyes from the man's direct view. He was not used to being a centre of attention when in the company of his imposing school pal. Meanwhile Antinous's imagination had taken flight elsewhere.