Protomakhos laughed. “Anyone would know you’ve gone to a few plays in your time, most noble one, even if you’ve never come to the theater at Athens before.”
“Are they going to put on revivals the first day?” Sostratos asked. “That’s how they did it when I was a student here.”
The proxenos dipped his head. “Yes, that’s right; that custom hasn’t changed. They’re reaching back a long way this year, too. This is Aiskhylos’ series of Theban plays-Semele, Xantriai, Pentheus, and the satyr play, Dionysos’ Nurses.”
Sostratos whistled. “Those must go back more than a hundred fifty years-before Perikles’ day. The Pentheus treats the same episode as Euripides’ Bakkhai, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.” Protomakhos dipped his head again. “Euripides’ play has put all the others about Dionysos in the shade. But Demetrios of Phaleron is khoregos for these. Not only is he rich enough to do a first-class job, he’s also an antiquarian, so it’s no surprise that he’d put on something nobody’s seen for a long time.”
“This should be interesting.” Sostratos leaned forward on the bench.
So did Menedemos. For a moment, that surprised Sostratos. But his cousin, after all, was the one who didn’t have modern tastes. And Aiskhylos, with un-Hellenic modesty, had called his own work crumbs from the banquet of Homer.
Out came the first actor, to set the scene: a messenger, talking about the report that Kadmos’ daughter Semele was with child-the child who would be Dionysos. A townsman of Thebes answered him. They went back and forth. “Only two actors,” Menedemos whispered to Sostratos.
“Yes, that’s right,” Sostratos whispered back. “Sophokles introduced the third speaking part.”
“Aiskhylos, they say, introduced the second,” Protomakhos put in. “Before his time, it was just one man going back and forth with the chorus.” Sostratos dipped his head; hypokrites, the word that meant actor, came from the verb meaning to answer.
A chorus of the women who would wash the newborn child after its birth danced out into the orkhestra, singing. The performers were, of course, male, as was the actor who portrayed Semele; women did not take part in plays. With masks and the actors’ remarkable control over their voices, Sostratos did not feel or even notice the lack.
He did notice how stiff and formal and old-fashioned the chorus’ steps and gestures were. Sure enough, Demetrios of Phaleron was an antiquarian, and was doing his best to stage the play as it might have appeared in Aiskhylos’ day. Even the musical accompaniment seemed unusually slow and spare. That fascinated Sostratos, and made him feel as if he’d been swept back in time. Aiskhylos’ splendid poetry didn’t hurt there, either. But not all the audience reacted the same way.
A shout rang out from the back of the theater: “Come on, you stupid geezers! Shake a leg!”
Protomakhos laughed. “Everyone’s a critic, or thinks he is.”
The second choral interlude brought more catcalls. Apparently a good many people, used to things as they were, didn’t care about-or for- things as they had been. Everything stays in the present in their minds, Sostratos thought sadly. No wonder it took so long before Herodotos came up with the idea of investigating the past in any systematic way.
Semele ended with the death of Dionysos’ mother under the thunderbolt of Zeus -and with the apparent death of the god, too. Xantriai, which followed, took its name from the chorus of wool-carding women who defended Semele’s name against the gossip and slander about her union with Zeus. Hera, Zeus’ consort, appeared to stir up the Thebans against Zeus’ newest offspring and the infant god’s mother.
“Here’s something out of the ordinary,” Sostratos murmured to Menedemos: “an outraged wife.” His cousin made a face at him.
Aiskhylos’ Pentheus did cover the same ground as Euripides’ Bakkhai: the return of the full-grown god to Thebes, King Pentheus’ attempt to suppress and arrest him, and Pentheus’ horrible death-his rending-at the hands of Dionysos’ maenads, who included Agaue, the king’s own mother. Sostratos thought Euripides’ play, which he knew well, did more interesting and thought-provoking things with the old familiar story; the Bakkhai hadn’t become famous for nothing. But Aiskhylos was a magnificent poet in his own right, too.
Like any satyr play, Dionysos’ Nurses let the audience recover from the full force of the tragedies they had just watched. It was loud and lewd and foolish, with satyrs with jutting phalloi in pursuit of the women who had reared the infant Dionysos. Comedy had sprung from the same roots, but grown in a different direction. Satyr plays, indeed, had grown very little, changing hardly at all from the days when drama was something new in Hellas.
After the satyrs capered off the stage for the last time, the actors in the company and in the chorus came out to take their bows. The applause was loud and generous; they’d delivered their lines and danced and sung as well as anyone could want. Then Demetrios of Phaleron stood up; the production had been his. He looked up and out at the vast crowd and bowed as the performers had done.
He also drew cheers from those who had liked the plays-and louder ones here and there, cheers Sostratos suspected of coming from members of his claque. But, unlike the actors and chorus members, he didn’t come off unscathed. “Don’t serve us stale fish the next time!” shouted someone not far from the Rhodians.
“Your plays were even more boring than you are on the stump!” another man yelled from far up in the theater. He had lungs like a smith’s goatskin bellows, for Sostratos heard him plainly.
Some of the jeers that rained down on Demetrios had nothing to do with the plays he’d just presented. “How does it feel being Kassandros’ catamite, you wide-arsed effeminate?” an Athenian shouted.
“He won’t answer-it’s like farting at a deaf man,” somebody else said. That jerked a startled laugh out of Sostratos; the usual phrase, of course, was shouting at a deaf man. Somehow, though, the theater precinct seemed to give license to everyone, not just the performers.
“To the crows with Kassandros!” another man cried. “Athens should be free!” Those words brought shouts of agreement from the crowd. Here and there, men shook their fists at Demetrios.
“He has nerve,” Menedemos murmured.
Sostratos dipped his head. Despite the insults raining down on him, the lord of Athens stood there smiling and waving and bowing to the crowd, as if they were nothing but praise. “Of course, he also has the Macedonian garrison behind him,” Sostratos observed.
“Yes, you’re right,” Protomakhos said. “We’ve already spent too many lives and too much treasure. If we rose against Demetrios of Phaleron, Kassandros’ men would slaughter us. And the truth is, the Macedonian could have a much nastier puppet. So… We yell, but that’s all we’re likely to do.”
The Rhodian proxenos was right. After getting the abuse out of their systems, the Athenians filed from the theater peaceably enough. The sun had traveled across the sky, and was low in the west. Menedemos said, “My rear end is as petrified as that lump of wood turned to rock you bought in Mytilene, Sostratos.” He rubbed at his haunches, and he was far from the only man doing so.
“Sitting on a stone bench will make you feel it,” Sostratos agreed. He turned to Protomakhos. “Meaning no disrespect to your stock-in-trade, O best one.”
“My bottom’s sore, too,” Protomakhos said. “No such thing as soft stone.”