Shadows of Athens

by J M Alvey

  ‘Is everyone hereabouts going to the festival?’ I felt uneasy about leaving our little house unprotected.

  Kadous shook his head. ‘Pyrrias’s mother is too feeble this year.’

  ‘Sosistratos’s daughter-in-law is staying home with her new baby,’ Zosime added.

  ‘Good to know.’ Both women would be attended by slaves and most likely would have visitors as well. Plenty of witnesses to raise an alarm if anything untoward happened.

  Even so, when we walked up the main road after breakfast, it seemed as if Alopeke’s whole population was heading for the city. The crowds grew even thicker inside the walls, pungent with sweat and perfume.

  Taking the southern path skirting the Acropolis, I glanced upwards but, even in the daylight, I couldn’t see the building work from this angle. Instead I took a fresh look at the ramshackle houses and workshops thrown up amid the remnants of the Persian destruction.

  Doubtless those first returning Athenians had sworn this was only temporary shelter. They’d soon rebuild their homes, they’d told each other, more elegant, more substantial. I pictured the scene, though I couldn’t see any way to make a comedy out of this. Soon winter had come, and the burden of keeping their families clothed and fed while the city struggled to rise from the ashes took its toll. Not many laughs in that.

  It was easy to see how plans for proper rebuilding had yielded to making running repairs, knocking through walls and adding rooms, piecemeal, as time and money allowed. By now, even the most loyal Athenian had to admit this district was a mess.

  Pericles planned to sort it all out. The theatre wasn’t his only project hereabouts. I’d heard Apollonides and Menekles discussing rumours of a grand new hall for play rehearsals and concerts.

  Disgruntled Ionians would hardly be thrilled to see yet more facilities for Athenian festivals paid for out of public funds. I remembered what Zosime had said earlier. It’s all very well saying that the great celebrations like the Dionysia and the Panathenaia are open to all but there’s no denying those of us in Attica benefit most, having the least distance to travel.

  Though, at the moment, it seemed that every Hellene from Sicily to the Black Sea had come here. We were jostled from every direction, deafened by citizens and visitors alike shouting joyful greetings. I kept my arm around Zosime’s shoulders and Kadous walked on her other side, warding off the crush.

  ‘Can you see Nymenios or Chairephanes?’ I called over Zosime’s head. We had a long-standing agreement to meet at the theatre’s western entrance, but it looked as if half of Athens had made the same arrangement.

  The Phrygian scanned the crowd, shading squinting eyes with a leathery hand. He pointed. ‘Over there.’

  As the flood of humanity threatened to sweep us past my family entirely, Kadous forced a path towards them. I tucked Zosime close behind him and brought up the rear, watchful for any thieves ready to snatch her earrings or my purse from my belt.

  My brothers flanked Melina, Nymenios’s wife, and our married sister, Kleio. Her husband, Kalliphon, was deep in conversation with my brothers’ neighbour Pamphilos, presumably discussing woodwork since they’re both carpenters. I noted that Chairephanes was escorting Pamphilos’s daughter, Glykera, today.

  ‘Philocles!’ Melina waved a gleeful hand. She wore a crisply pleated saffron gown and her hair had been curled with hot irons and swept up with an embroidered ribbon. She was ready to make the most of five days setting aside her daily routine of childcare, cooking, cleaning, laundry, spinning and weaving. Foreigners who believe all those tales about Athenians locking their wives and daughters away should consider all the chores that keep women busy, certainly in families like ours that can’t afford a phalanx of domestic slaves.

  ‘Mother’s not here?’ I looked at Nymenios as Zosime joined the other women to share embraces and admiration for each other’s dresses and jewellery.

  ‘She said she’d rather look after the children.’ Nymenios lowered his voice. ‘That way she can supervise the cooking. You know she won’t believe the girls will do everything right unless someone is watching.’

  ‘She’ll be here to see your play tomorrow,’ Chairephanes assured me.

  Kalliphon interrupted everyone with a brisk clap of his hands. ‘We’d better find some seats. The procession will soon be here.’

  ‘We’ll see you later.’ Zosime gave me a quick hug and kiss.

  I watched them climb up the rocky slope. Kadous followed close behind until Nymenios claimed an empty bench scant moments before some other family reached it. The Phrygian continued on to the very topmost seats where other slaves with permission to enjoy the holiday were already gathering.

  I skirted the stage and its buildings, heading for the rehearsal ground on the theatre’s eastern side. Whatever Pericles might have in mind to replace it, for the moment temporary wooden walls and awnings divided up the space. Officially this was to stop rival choruses distracting one another. This close to the competition, with everyone’s nerves as ragged as a barbarian’s beard, the flimsy barriers mostly stopped actors, dancers and singers coming to blows.

  A lanky youth trod on my foot, recoiling without looking behind him when he realised he was about to walk into the wrong enclosure.

  ‘Watch where you’re going!’ I snapped.

  As he turned, I saw he barely had a bristle on his chin. Too young to be singing in any play’s chorus, he must be here for the youth choir competition between the ten voting tribes. I took pity on him. ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Cecropis,’ he quavered, his accent fresh from the slopes of Hymettos.

  ‘Over that way.’ I took hold of his shoulders and turned him around.

  ‘Philocles!’ a voice trilled. A plump matron in a vivid yellow gown flapped eager hands to attract my attention, blocking the entrance to a sailcloth gateway.

  ‘Is everyone here?’ I tried to swallow my apprehension.

  Lysicrates wagged a disapproving finger. ‘Tell me if you like my new dress,’ he chided in a breathy falsetto.

  He turned and preened, tossing his close-cropped head as though he was already wearing the ludicrously bewigged mask he held in his other hand.

  I grinned. ‘Darling, you look fabulous.’

  ‘Don’t I just?’ he chuckled in his usual tone: resonant and masculine and invariably startling for anyone who’d only ever heard him on the stage.

  Anyone who thinks any actor can play a woman’s role is a fool. There’s so much more to a convincing performance than hiding a man’s beard behind a mask and cloaking his muscles in draperies. An array of subtle hints persuades an audience that they’re watching a woman: the way a character walks; her manner as she stands; how she reacts to the men around her. Onlookers might never notice, or rather, they won’t realise that they’re noticing such details, but without these unobtrusive tricks an audience really has to force themselves to forget that they’re watching a man in a dress.

  Then there’s the voice. Even experienced actors can all too easily sound like they’re mimicking their mother after too many cups of wine. Lysicrates could find the right tones for any woman from a slender, soulful nymph to a bawdy brothel madam with bosom and buttocks so fat with padding she’s as broad as she is tall.

  As soon as I’d had his promise to play his part I knew that Zosime, Melina and Kleio wouldn’t be scorning the women in my play as foolish caricatures.

  ‘Why are you standing sentry?’

  Lysicrates grinned. ‘The other choruses are all trying to see our costumes. No one knows what to make of The Builders as a title for a play.’

  ‘Really?’ So Aristarchos was right. I hoped that was a good omen.

  ‘Not that there’s much to see,’ Lysicrates chuckled.

  I surveyed the assembled men helping each other secure their masks. They all wore the customary body-stockings from the neck down, and Ari
starchos’s coin had paid for tightly woven cloth. No seams or folds sagged or drooped to embarrass this chorus with catcalls from the audience. Over those stage skins, each man wore a plain tunic, some of them smudged with paint, others powdered with plaster and stone dust, a few stained with clay.

  ‘Good day to you!’ Chrysion appeared.

  I glanced meaningfully at his groin. ‘There hasn’t been anything to see, I hope?’

  ‘Everyone knows to be discreet,’ he assured me. ‘No one will suspect a thing until the performance.’

  I could only hope so. ‘Have you seen Euxenos’s costumes?’

  ‘His Butterflies?’ Chrysion snorted. ‘Very gaudy but hardly practical. If that chorus gets through their first dance without treading on each other’s wings, I will eat Lysicrates’s wig.’

  ‘Really?’ My spirits rose. ‘Have you drawn the lots to see who goes first? Where are we in the procession?’

  ‘Third. Now—’ he shooed me away ‘—we’ve got everything in hand. Go and see our patron arrive. Say a prayer to Dionysus Eleutherios.’

  Menekles snapped urgent fingers from the far side of the chorus to attract my attention. ‘Go and find out who the judges will be!’

  ‘Of course.’ I hurried to the eastern side of the stage. Every head in the crowd was turning westwards, hearing the dulcet song of the double flutes. The patrons’ procession was approaching.

  Chapter Eight

  Today’s rites had none of last night’s ribaldry. The Dionysia’s patrons were to be honoured for pouring out their silver like wine in tribute to the gods, bringing glory to our city. Ten of Athens’ wealthiest men had financed the men’s choirs from each voting tribe and ten more had financed the boys’. Comedy was picking the pockets of five others, one for each play, while Tragedy gravely accepted tribute from a further three.

  Now all those well-born men could breathe easier knowing this public service meant their fortunes were safe from the Archons for this year and the next. Better yet, they wouldn’t be called on to finance a trireme; a public honour incurring considerably greater cost than staging a play, and winning far less widespread acclaim.

  Well-born youths and girls carried offerings of oil and wine. Others held baskets of bread and grain. They led the procession across the dancing floor to Dionysos’s statue. The masked effigy stood there, inscrutable.

  Aristarchos and the other noble patrons were entering the theatre. He walked with calm composure, as though having thousands of citizens stare at him was of no particular consequence.

  His white tunic of pristine, pleated linen was sumptuously embroidered with tiny flowers and leaves in vivid blues and greens. I wondered if that was his wife’s or daughters’ work, to show the city their pride and devotion. More likely, I suspected, some talented slave had spent her last few months bent over that cloth with needle and thread. Gold plaques adorned his broad leather belt, doubtless embossed with mythological scenes to impress those who got close enough to see. The tunic’s hem brushed his equally expensive shoes, the sunlight catching their bronze-tipped laces. A formal cloak with generous folds was elegantly draped around his broad shoulders, deep-dyed the colour of a dusky sea. Phytalids need never skimp on fabric out of consideration for the cost. Crowned with the golden diadem that a festival patron’s generosity earns from the grateful city, Aristarchos carried his finery with enviable poise. I suspect he’d practised. Some of those other influential men had doubtless looked very fine standing before their admiring households, but after processing across the city they mostly arrived at the theatre looking like an unmade bed, clutching at slipping swathes.

  What would such an untidy display do for their standing, the next time jurors of modest means listened to them prosecute a case in the law courts? What would traders and craftsmen remember, when these men argued for some new law proposed in the People’s Assembly? This chance to impress Athens’ citizens, to convince us that men of substance should be heeded and obeyed, was the unspoken repayment for their coin.

  For the moment, these patrons were courteously ushered to their marble seats of honour, already softened with cushions. Now everyone heard the clacking hooves and sedate murmurs of the cattle brought for sacrifice before Dionysos’s shrine. The consecrated beasts, their horns decorated with spring flowers and trailing ribbons, were carefully guided through the theatre and past the god’s statue. The audience nudged each other, eyes bright as they anticipated the feasting to come. These were fine, plump beasts, reared in peace and plenty now the strife of recent years with Euboea, Boeotia and the Spartans was over.

  Eagle-eyed theatre hands darted out with shovels and brushes to remove unseemly traces left by the cattle as the Archon for Religious Affairs rose from his own seat of honour and climbed the steps at the side of the stage. ‘We will now select the judges for this year’s competition!’ His words were lost in cheers from the audience, all the way up to the slaves on the topmost benches.

  Down in the front few rows, I could see some individuals acknowledging applause around them with nods and smiles. These must be the candidates put forward by each voting tribe. Not as richly dressed as Aristarchos and his fellow patrons, they were still men with well-filled strongboxes, and clearly flattered at being the centre of attention.

  A voting tribe’s officials always listen whenever a play’s patron suggests they propose a particular man as a potential judge. That’s why the final choice rests with the lottery guided by the gods and goddesses. Even then, only five of the ten judges’ votes will count towards winning a victory, making any attempt at swaying the competitions’ results futile. Mortal men must work hard to secure divine favour.

  A stagehand carried the first tall, narrow-necked urn onto the stage. He knelt before the Archon and offered it up.

  ‘The judge from Acamantis will be . . .’ The magistrate reached in, ostentatiously looking away even though the urn’s mouth was barely wide enough for his clenched fist to withdraw a potsherd. He opened his fingers and looked at the name scratched on the broken pottery. ‘Agathokles Apollodorou.’

  The man made his way to the end of the row where he’d been sitting and was escorted to the very front seats. He was trying to look suitably modest at being selected by Dionysos but he couldn’t restrain his smile of delight once his backside hit the cushioned marble.

  I waited, tense, for the name to be drawn from the next urn. Would the judge for Hippothontis be one of the men who’d so openly sneered at my play for the Lenaia? What if it was someone with political reasons to vote against any victory honouring Aristarchos?

  ‘Timon Pamphilou.’

  No, I didn’t know him either. That was a relief. By the time the last seat was filled, only one of the men now enjoying the best view of the stage gave me any concern.

  Apollonides insisted that Dracontides, son of Euathlos, held a grudge against him. The influential landowner from Aiantis had been mercilessly mocked in Morsimos’s last play, The Ploughmen. Apollonides had played the lead role of the country farmer whose savagely cutting lines had been directed at a thinly disguised caricature of Dracontides. Naturally the audience had greeted such ridicule with howls of laughter, even the ones who hadn’t set foot outside the city since the walls to Piraeus were built.

  It was hard to believe a judge would punish a completely different performance because of words another playwright once put in a hired actor’s mouth. Well, there was nothing we could do if he was so petty. We’d just have to pray that tainted vote wasn’t one of the five that counted. I glanced at Dionysos’s masked effigy with a silent appeal.

  As the stagehand retreated with the last of the urns, the religious Archon raised his hands high, first to the crowd and then turning to the god’s ancient statue. ‘The city of Athens dedicates this festival to Dionysos!’

  As the magistrate left the stage, the crowd shuffled and murmured, eager to get their first look at the choruses
and actors who’d be entertaining them for the next few days.

  My time had come. The moment was finally here. I was about to take the stage in front of the largest audience I had ever known. My stomach felt so hollow, I might not have eaten for days. Not that I could have swallowed anything. My throat had a lump in it like the stone that tricked Kronos, out to devour the infant Zeus.

  This was a hundred times worse than the Lenaia. There were thousands more people out there. If they didn’t like my play, I’d be humiliated to the end of my days. My legs were as stiff as carved marble. I couldn’t take a single step.

  ‘Mind your back, Philodemos!’ Euxenos shoved me aside as he led his Butterflies out. The chorus scurried after him, flapping wings of painted cloth sewn to the side seams of their costumes and tied to wrist and ankle. His actors were a trio of men dressed for travel, escorted by Diagoras. Their musician raised his double pipes with a flourish of familiar notes that won a ripple of happy recognition from the crowd.

  Bastard. Anger burned through my nausea. If I could have reached Euxenos, I’d have punched him for calling me Philodemos. He knew what my name was and as Zeus was my witness, he’d better fear it. Now this competition really was underway.

  As I clenched my fists, Pittalos walked past, alongside a suave man about town, a frivolous nymph and a stooped old countryman. His chorus of Sheep trailed after their leader, whose mask was complete with leather collar and bell. Their pipe player was making an excellent job of mimicking plaintive bleating, already prompting laughter from the upper benches.

  ‘Ready?’ Lysicrates appeared at my side, masked and wigged. ‘Any disasters among the judges?’

  ‘I don’t think so. All right, let’s go.’ Discreetly wiping my sweating palms on the sides of my tunic, I walked out onto the circular dancing floor with Lysicrates on my arm throwing flirtatious nods and gestures in all directions.

  Apollonides and Menekles marched on either side of us, bold heroes in breastplates and helmets. Chrysion followed, leading our gang of workmen who could have strolled off any building site in Athens. Almost as plainly dressed, in contrast to the other musicians’ fancy tunics, Hyanthidas brought up the rear. He was playing a jaunty medley of the tunes such labourers favoured. We’d agreed he’d keep his original compositions for the performance itself.