by Gary Corby
Basileus
The archon in charge of religious affairs for Athens.
The Romans copied much from Athens, and the role of Basileus is a good example. To do the same job the Romans built an administration center that in Latin they called a Basilica. There are no prizes for guessing what happened next. Thus a Basilica in the Christian Church is a direct descendant of the Basileus of classical and very pagan Athens.
Choregos
We’d call him the producer. The man who provides the chorus and funds the play. The choregos of the oldest known play, The Persians, was none other than Pericles.
Chorus
The small group of boys and men who sing the narration of a play. The first plays were nothing but a chorus. They were musicals! Then Thespis added an actor. Then Aeschylus added a second actor. Then Sophocles added a third. That arrangement proved stable for a thousand or so years. Throughout it all, the chorus sang the action.
Deme
Like a modern suburb, with the added rule that to live in a deme you had to belong to the tribe that owned it. Every citizen belonged to one of the ten tribes. By classical times the tribes were purely administrative units for running the city.
Deuteragonist
The second actor in a play. All plays had only three actors. They covered every role between them.
Dionysos
Greek God of wine and serious partying. A rather rustic fellow, since most parties happen at harvest time, the Great Dionysia was held in his honor. The statue of Dionysos was taken from its temple and placed on stage for the duration of the plays, so that the God could watch the action.
Eponymous Archon
The closest thing Athens had to a mayor. The Eponymous Archon was responsible for all civic affairs to do with citizens.
Most importantly for our story, he was also in charge of the calendar. The Eponymous Archon had the power to add or subtract days, or even declare an extra month in the year. This was no idle power, since the Athenians had to make their lunar months fit into their solar years. He’s called the Eponymous Archon because the year is named after him (they didn’t number their years). This story takes place in the Year of Habron.
Euripides
The third of the three great tragic playwrights. At the time of this story, he’s three years away from putting on his first play.
Great Dionysia
Also known as the City Dionysia, because it was born from a country version. The Great Dionysia was the arts festival of the classical world. There were three parts to it: the choral competition, the comedies, and lastly, the three tragedies. In Death ex Machina I’ve concentrated on just one event, because if I tried to cover everything that went on during a Dionysia you’d be reading this book in twelve volumes.
Mekhane
Machine! Specifically, the god machine used in the Theater of Dionysos. Our English word machine comes directly from classical Greek.
Metics
Resident aliens with permission to live and work in Athens.
Phallus
Yes, we all know what a phallus is. What you probably don’t know is that to the Greeks, they were symbols of good fortune. Lots of amulets of erect phalluses have been recovered from the ancient world, but for some reason you don’t tend to see them on open display in modern museums. If, however, you go to the Great Dionysia in 458BC you’ll find boys walking around with large wooden ones that they use to hit people. It’s a way of wishing good fortune.
On the sacred isle of Delos there is a marble statue of a huge phallus, raised by a proud man to commemorate his victory in the Great Dionysia.
Polemarch
The archon in charge of everything to do with metics.
Protagonist
The lead actor in a play. Our word protagonist comes directly from ancient Greek.
Orchestra
The stage! This one’s confusing. To us the orchestra is the people who play the music. The original orchestra was the place where the chorus stood. In other words, the stage. The orchestra was a semicircular space that was the lowest point of the theater. The seats rose up so everyone could look down to see the action.
Rhamnus
A minor city in the top right hand corner of Attica. The ruins of Rhamnus remain to this day.
Sabazios
The Phrygian god of the harvest and of beer. His opposite number in the Greek pantheon is Dionysos. It’s known for sure that there were a small number of followers of Sabazios in Athens.
Scythian Guard
The peacekeeping force of classical Athens. Don’t mess with these guys. They might be slaves, but they’re slaves with permission to beat you senseless if you’re a troublemaker. Classical Athens had a reputation for relatively little street crime. The Scythians are the reason why.
Skene
In ancient Greek it means tent. Early plays used a regular army tent for a background. The actor ducked into the tent for his quick changes. Later the tent became a back wall, but they still called it a skene.
Sophocles
Second of the three great tragic playwrights. Of the three he’s probably the best known to modern readers, because Sophocles wrote Oedipus Rex.
Thanatos
The god of death. His brother Hypnos is the god of sleep.
Theologeion
A balcony at the back of the stage. Gods and goddesses play their parts while standing on the theologeion, so that deities stand above ordinary mortals. This means the stage crew who control the god machine need to be pretty accurate about where they deposit their actor.
Thespis
The world’s first professional actor. We call actors thespians in his honor. Many of the decisions that Thespis made about how to run a play remain with us to this day. Thespis lived right on the cusp between history and prehistory, which is a pity because he was obviously an amazing man, yet we know so little about him.
Tragedy
Goat Song. No, I’m not making this up. Tragos is goat, ode is song. Tragode is goat song: a song about goats, which totally gives away the farm life origins of our plays. This is the tradition that 2,000 years later would lead to Hamlet. It’s amazing what a few talented writers and actors can do with such an inauspicious beginning.
Trierarch
The commander of a naval vessel. Every year, wealthy men volunteered to pay the upkeep of a trireme. In return they got to call themselves trierarch for the year. Men like Kordax loved it so much that they made it their career. They and their opposite numbers among the Phoenicians were probably the first professional naval officers.
Trireme
The standard navy ship of the Greek world. Triremes are long, low, sleek, incredibly fast machines with a battering ram at the front. Triremes are the first ships in the world designed to sink other ships. In modern terms they would be classed as destroyers. Athens had overwhelmingly the largest fleet around, with 300 triremes. Naval technology has improved a lot in two 2,500 years, but it’s worth noting that Athens had as many ships of the line as the modern US Navy.
Tritagonist
The third actor in a play. The other two are the protagonist and the deuteragonist.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THANKS OVERWHELMINGLY TO my family. My daughters, Megan and Catriona, were five and eight when I started writing these books. Now they’re thirteen and sixteen. They’ve grown up with Nico and Diotima. (And they know far more ancient history than your average teenager.)
My wife, Helen, is not only my first and best reader, but also your first line of defense against my errors. These books are as much hers as mine.
You’re reading this book because the lovely people at Soho Press made it. It’s incredibly hard to name names without doing injustice to some poor soul, but I want to thank my editor and Soho’s Associate Publisher Juliet Grames; Director of Marketing and beer guru Paul Oliver; publicist Abby Koski who does a terrific job; managing editor Rachel Kowal; art director Janine Agro; Meredith Barnes, who read the manuscript when s
he was working for my agent, and then read it again when she was working for my publisher; and Bronwen Hruska for leading such a great company.
Janet Reid is the world’s best literary agent. I suspected as much when I signed with her as a new writer, eight years ago, and now I know it for sure.
