of this he recounts with tense excitement in a long lyrical passage which is interrupted only by an occasional brief remark or query of the chorus. It begins (vs. 1369): ̓Αργεῖον ξίφος ἐκ θανάτου πέφευγα βαρβάροις εὐμάρισιν, κεδρωτὰ παστάδων ὑπὲρ τέραμνα Δωρικάς τε τριγλύφους, φροῦδα, φροῦδα, γᾶ, γᾶ, βαρβάροισι δρασμοῖς. From the death by the Argive swords have I filed! In my shoon barbaric I sped; O'er the colonnade's rafters of cedar I clomb; O Earth, O Earth away and away.138 Pausing merely to note the sensational character of this unusual entrance, which may be compared with that in the Eumenides (vss. 33 ff.), where the priestess, stricken with terror, crawls on all fours from the temple (Tрéxw dè xepoív), let us inquire precisely how the Phrygian accomplished his escape. The words in the text (παστάδων τριγλύφους) strictly interpreted mean "over the beams of the vestibule and over the Dorian triglyphs" and seem to imply a gable roof. Through an opening in the pediment the Phrygian slips or leaps over the frieze to the ground. This is the interpretation favored by Reisch albeit with misgivings. 139 Others however, are content with the less accurate rendering: “over the beams and between the triglyphs." 140 A third group of commentators believe that the Phrygian is describing his escape from Helen's apartments into the inner court and that he makes his entrance before the audience in the usual manner through the door of the palace. Support for this view is found. in three lines which in the manuscripts immediately precede the 138 Translation of Way. 139 Das griechische Theater, p. 205: "von einem solchen ist wohl im 'Orestes' der Sklave herabgesprungen.' See also p. 204, and note 145 below. 140 So Decharme, Euripides and the Spirit of his Dramas; translated by Loeb, p. 252: "He has slipped out between the Doric triglyphs, or in modern terms, has jumped out of the window." Phrygian's appearance (vss. 1366-68),141 The leader of the chorus remarks: ἀλλὰ κτυπεῖ γὰρ κλῇθρα βασιλικῶν δόμων, οὗ πευσόμεσθα τὰν δόμοις ὅπως ἔχει. But lo, the bars clash of the royal halls! Hush ye: there comes forth of her Phrygians one Of whom we shall learn what befell within.142 The majority of editors, however, justly hold these verses to be spurious, as did one of the ancient commentators, who declared them to be an interpolation inserted by the actors. These, he says, preferred to make their entrance through the door lest in leaping from above they should suffer injury.143 But whichever interpretation be adopted, it is clear, I think, that the evidence of these three dramas, the Hypsipyle, the Ion, and the Orestes, is too meager and uncertain to warrant a conclusive judgment. There appears, however, to be no good reason for denying at least the occasional erection of a small gable roof to meet the playwright's needs. Dörpfeld, relying in part upon these passages, in part upon the supposed evidence of the late vase-paintings mentioned above (p. 55), reconstructed the scene-building of the fifth century with a gable over the central portion (Fig. 23, p. 95, below). He finds additional support for this reconstruction in the presence of certain holes (Dübellöcher) above the cornice of the proskenion at Priene, which he 141 Compare also a scholium found in the Codex Guelferbytanus: ¿Nov μèv οἰκήματος ὑπερπηδήσας τὰ στέγη, ἐν ἄλλῳ δὲ ἐλθὼν καὶ ἠσφαλισμένας εὑρὼν τὰς τούτων πύλας, τὰ τούτων κλεῖθρα συντρίψας ἐξῆλθεν. 142 Translation of Way. 143 τούτους τοὺς τρεῖς στίχους οὐκ ἄν τις ἐξ ἑτοίμου συγχωρήσειεν Εὐριπίδου εἶναι, ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον τῶν ὑποκριτῶν, οἵτινες, ἵνα μὴ κακοπαθῶσιν ἀπὸ τῶν βασιλείων δόμων καθαλλόμενοι, παρανοίξαντες ἐκπορεύονται, κτλ. The apparent stupidity of the reason assigned for the interpolation may perhaps be explained away by supposing that in the late Hellenistic or GraecoRoman theater the distance from pediment to ground was greater than in the time of Euripides. Furthermore in late times the scene-building was of stone and perhaps afforded no convenient opening through a pediment for the escape of the slave. supposes may have served to hold such a pediment in place. 144 But this explanation is by many held to be unsound, while his restoration of the scene-building at Athens has met with but little favor. As regards the architectural and other adornment of the scenebuilding, Aeschylus and Sophocles are silent, while Aristophanes is provokingly chary of information. It is to Euripides alone that we must turn for enlightenment, but his descriptions, as of the sculptures in the Ion (p. 44), are sometimes so lavish as to arouse suspicion. His frequent references however, to columns (Iphigenia among the Taurians, vs. 128, Ion, vs. 185, Bacchae, vs. 591, The Mad Heracles, vs. 1038); the triglyph-frieze (Orestes, vs. 1372, Iphigenia among the Taurians, vs. 113,145 Bacchae, vs. 1214); and the cornice (Iphigenia among the Taurians, vs. 129, Ion, vss. 156, 172, Orestes, vss. 1569, 1570, 1620) possess a verisimilitude that challenges belief. And that color also was used in the adornment of the scene-building in conformity with the prevailing taste is not to be doubted. A hint of this is found in the Iphigenia among the Taurians, vs. 128, where the chorus speak of "the gilded cornice of thy pillared temple," and in the Ion, vss. 156, 157, where the shrine is spoken of as golden. One is reminded that as early as about the year 460, while Aeschylus was still producing plays, the artist Agatharchus had been employed to paint the skene (note 178, p. 82); while inscriptions of the third century 144 Jahrb. d. arch. Inst. XVI (1901), 32; ibid., Anzeiger, XXVIII (1913), 40. This interpretation is scornfully rejected by Fiechter (op. cit., pp. 32, 33, Anm. 3). 145 ὅρα δέ γ' εἴσω τριγλύφων ὅποι κενὸν | δέμας καθεῖναι, “ Ah, see ; far up, between each pair of beams | A hollow one might creep through" (Murray`s translation). This is the traditional interpretation, but both text and interpretation are in doubt. Tpyλúpwv I think, means here the triglyph-frieze, as it does also in Bacchae, vs. 1214. My colleague, Professor O. M. Washburn, believes that elow here means "within" in the sense of "beyond" or " 'behind," i.e., behind the frieze is an opening in the ceiling of the vestibule, by means of which one may make his way to the attic and so let himself down into the cella. See his paper "Iphigenia Taurica 113 as a Document in the History of Architecture,” Amer. Jour. Arch. XXII (1918), 434 ff.; also "The Origin of the Triglyph Frieze," ibid., XXIII (1919), 33 ff. : pertaining to the theater at Delos more than once mention the use of painting (note 26, p. 15). At this point we may conclude this portion of our survey of the dramas. No attempt has been made to cite every passage bearing upon the character of the scene-building and of the settings that were in use; and in the nature of the case what evidence there is, is fragmentary and much of it negative, or at least inconclusive. That which seems to possess a positive significance needs to be supplemented by a study of the changes of scene or locality in Greek dramas, particularly of those which may contribute to our understanding of the scene-building. To this. subject we may now address ourselves. V CHANGES OF THE SETTING 146 That the Greek playwright did not regard unity of time and unity of place as coercive principles of dramatic technique has long been recognized. He observed them rather merely as natural and prevailing, albeit violable, traditions of his art. They were not submitted to as a strait-jacket of convention arbitrarily prescribed by an inscrutable authority; but they were accepted as an appropriate and dignified vesture to be worn with an easy grace or laid aside at will. And had Castelvetro and Sidney and Boileau been more observant of the facts, it is scarcely conceivable that the bastard "unities" would ever have been fathered upon Aristotle or erected into a dogma of dramatic art.147 For the facts are that in Greek drama there occur with conspicuous frequency not only changes of scene or locality, but intervals of time as well. From the point of view of technique both are pertinent. Neglect of either would be a serious oversight. But in a study of scenic arrangement disunity of time is 146 Selected bibliography: Müller, Griechische Bühnenalterthümer (1886). See note 79. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, "Die Bühne des Aischylos," Hermes, XXI (1886), 597 ff. Dörpfeld und Reisch, Das griechische Theater (1896). Haigh, The Attic Theatre (see note 11). Felsch, Quibus Artificiis Adhibitis Poetae Tragici Graeci Unitates Illas et Temporis et Loci Observaverint (1906). Schübl, Die Landschaft auf der Bühne des 5. vorchristlichen Jahrhunderts (1912). Fensterbusch, Die Bühne des Aristophanes (1912). Flickinger, The Greek Theater and its Drama (1918). For other references see the following footnotes. 147 For an admirable discussion of this subject see Butcher, Aristotle's Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, chap. 7. |