Reasoning: The Iconography of Greek Theater #9, Oliver Taplin

Oliver Taplin was a fascinating character. He looked very much like a typical British professor, but in precisely the opposite fashion to Alan Shapiro. While Alan looked like the prim British professor, Oliver was not disheveled, but certainly looked like he had taken more care of his work than himself. However, his appearance only added to the genuine British charm that he had. He had a wonderful exuberance that was contagious and filled the whole room.

He is a professor emeritus at Magdalen College, University of Oxford and he has written a plethora of incredible books and articles, including The Stagecraft of Aeschylus which I read about half of for my class on the Agamemnon and was fortunate enough to receive as a birthday gift this year. Two books he edited which I would love to read are The Pronomos Vase and its Context and Pots & Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-painting of the Fourth Century B.C..

Taplin opened his talk by explaining that he would be considering three questions.

1. What was the importance of traveling players in Ancient Greece?
2. How did those traveling players influence art?
3. Did traveling players manage to reach a non-Greek audience [1]?

Taplin started with the first question. He explained that scholarship has, for centuries, analyzed the unique Athenianness of theater. According to Taplin, this ignores a portion of the extant evidence that we have for theater. According to Taplin, the earliest evidence that we have for re-performance of plays comes from Herodotus, who explained that one of the penalties on Phrynikos for his play The Sack of Miletus [2] was that it was banned from re-performance.

Beside this, Aeschylus spent time a Heiron's court in Syracuse, both before he wrote the Oresteia [3] and during the end of his life (in fact, he died there [4]). Hieron, the tyrant of Syracuse at the time, commissioned a play at the founding of Aetna, The Women of Aetna [5]. Euripides died in Macedonia and may have written the Bacchae there [6].

Furthermore, vases containing theatrical imagery have been found in burials at Phanagoria, Cyrene, Korinth, Olbia, and Ruvo. In the non-Greek areas, scholars often dismiss the pots and assume that people just liked the pictures. Taplin, and especially Carpenter, seek to challenge this assumption.

According to Taplin, between Hieron and Alexander the Great, there was an increase in the theater outside of the festival of Dionysus at Athens. First, there were rural Dionysias in the outer demes [7]. These were serious cult events in the 5th century. In Republic 475d, Socrates disparages those theater-goers who do not miss any Dionysian in the cities or villages. Demosthenes, according to Taplin, also criticizes Aischenes for going to the lesser theater competitions. Furthermore, actors came from all over the Mediterranean, not just from Athens. Taplin cites Aristedemus from Metapontion as an example [8]. By 440, there were at least five regular theatrical festivals, and there is some evidence for 14 all together, although many of these were not held in traditional stone theaters.

Furthermore, Plato provides evidence of dramatic competition in outside of Athens. In Laws 659b-c, Plato disparages the demos-centric way that the judges decide competitions in Italy and Sicily (i.e. judges were swayed by public opinion). This provides evidence that there was some kind of theatrical competition that took place in these areas. Taplin argues that the actors in these competitions were probably from traveling troupes, and that these performers would respond to invitations to various festivals. He hypothesizes that there would be three actors, with a possible fourth actors playing the chorus. In the third century, according to Taplin, choruses would travel with the bands, but probably not before that. He notes, in reference to Kowalzig, that the Dithyramb was part of Hellenic culture, and it makes sense that choruses of all types would be part of civic coherence not just in Athens, but also Magna Graeca.

Taplin claims that the vases from Syracuse, Lukania, and other places in the Greek world serve as material evidence of traveling troupes [9]. Tombs in around Magna Graeca contain vases with theatrical imagery that appear to be made outside of Athens.

At the end, Taplin addressed Carpenter's case for Greek plays in the Italic areas of Apulia. Taplin agreed with Carpenter, saying that 10% of the dramatically related vases in Italy come from Ruvo. However, Taplin believed that the Pronomos Vase must have been bought on the secondhand market and brought back to Ruvo, possibly by someone who got to see the theatrical competition in Athens and bought it as a keepsake.

Endnotes

1. This is the same subject, on a larger scale, as Carpenter's talk. Near the end, Taplin directly responded to Carpenter, and he agreed with everything except Carpenter's discussion of the Pronomos Vase.
2. See this in Herodotus' Histories section 6.21. However, I think it's important to note that there is no indication in this that the plays would be re-performed outside of Athens, but also no indication that they would only be reprised in Athens. For context, Phrynikos' play, the Sack of Miletus (not extant), was the last play that depicted an real, current, tragic event (with the possible exception of the Persians because I am not sure of the comparative dates and also because the Persians was slightly different in tone and perspective). It was a play about the devastating Sack of Miletus and, according to Herodotus, the entire audience burst into tears. For causing such a disturbance, Phryikos was fined and the play was banned from ever being performed again.
3. There are some fascinating similarities in the description of fire/gold in Pindar's Olympian I and the opening speech of the Agamemnon, but I will save this discussion for another time.
4. The story of Aeschylus' death has functioned somewhat as an urban myth and has even invaded modern popular culture. I have heard two versions of the story. Both are premised on Aeschylus being bald. The first version says that as Aeschylus was walking along the beach in Sicily, an eagle mistook his bald head for a tortoise and dropped a rock on it to break it open. The second version, which I believe is at some point retold by Dr. Donald "Ducky" Mallard on NCIS, is that an eagle, carrying a turtle, mistakes Aeschylus' head for a rock and drops the turtle on it to crack open the shell. Whether he died in one of these ways or not, it makes for a great story.
5. All that remains is a fragment.
6. There is a wonderful moment about this in Nietzsche's Birth of Tragedy, but I cannot seem to find it. If anyone knows where it is, comment or email me.
7. A deme is much like a village that is part of the polis.
8. I am not sure about the spelling on either of these names.
9. A vase depicting the Medea shows the version of the story in which Medea slaughters her children. According to Taplin (citing Mastronarde), this was not a version of the myth in popular culture until Euripides' version.

Reasoning: The Iconography of Greek Theater #4, Francois Lissarrague

The second speaker was the charming and wonderful Francois Lissarrague (apologies for my inability to make a cedilla. Could someone tell to make one in unicode script?). I believe that I have read some of his work before because knew his name and that he worked on Greek art, but I am not entirely sure what I read. Francois, according to the brochure from the conference, is the director of the Centre Louis Gernet. He writes about the layering of images for increasingly complex narrative effects.

Francois started his talk by providing a brief note on the history of the satyr. He explained that satyrs are an Attic invention of the early sixth century, which are depicted as a cross between man and horse. There are other human animal hybrids and even human-horse hybrids (like centaurs) that are depicted, but satyr imagery only begins to show up int he 6th century. I found this to be fascinating because I assumed that the depiction of satyrs came long before the invention of the satyr play.

He then moved on to discuss the Pronomos Vase (pictured below) which is a depiction of a celebration after a victory in the Athenian tragic competition. The actors, having finished their satyr play are still in costumes and holding masks as they celebrate. Francois Lissarague actually used this particular photo of the famous Pronomos Vase. He explained that the vase was put in storage following an earthquake in Naples. Francois and a few other scholars were allowed to take it up to the roof of the museum to photograph it (which is why it sit here on a roof on a piece of newspaper).

I got this from a Google Image Search that lead me to this website [1].

Here is a slightly clearer picture so that some of the detail is discernible.

This lovely and clear image comes from this website, which also includes other wonderful theatrically-related images.

This final image flattens the vase in order to show the full range of characters depicted on the front of the vase. The back shows another scene.

A flattened version of the Pronomos vase from this website.

Francois' theme, which began with the Pronomos Vase and employed a number of other spectacular vases from Athens and South Italy seemed to be to show the variety of instances of the satyr, and especially the satyr in theater, portrayed on vases as well as the way in which theater is bound up with Dionysus on these vases. He also demonstrated the use of "metatheatricality" or the interplay between "real" mythological beings and theatrical portrays of those in the same scenes.

The front portion of the Pronomos Vase depicts Dionysus and his consort, presumably Ariadne, lying on a bed which looks suspiciously like a matrimonial bed rather than a symposium couch, according to Francois, amongst the victorious actors, choregos, and playwright after their performance. The victory is indicated by victory tripods, although these would not be the traditional indication of victory for a theatrical performance. All of the saytrs, save one who is still dancing, have taken off their masks and most hold them in various positions. The chorus, which is all uniformly dressed in costume, still has a large degree of variety to it and the citizen names of each individual are etched above the depiction.

Although there is a back panel and a front panel, the panels are continuous to some degree. The back panel depicts a group of "real" stayrs, not from a theatrical performance, with maenads and Dionysus and Ariadne, emphasizing the Dionysiac nature of theater.

A drawing of the back panel of the Pronomos Vase from Perseus.

The other eight vases that he showed demonstrated a variety of similar themes as well as depicting some fascinating images such as female satyrs, possible scenes from specific satyr plays such as Euripides' Cyclops, satyrs and Eros (which Lissarrague referred to as a "late improvement"), and a possible image of Dionysiac epiphany (which is one of my favorite Greek vases of all time [3]).

Although Francois Lissarrague did not voice much of a strong argument, he provided detailed instruction on the depiction of satyrs. Furthermore, his charming air and his excitement about his work prompted a number of the guests, my mom and me included, to immediately run up to see the Pronomos Vase after he finished speaking. He was quite fabulous.

Endnotes

1. I have tried to link the "this website" under each photo to the website from which it came.
2. Another version, possibly more easily accessible, of this image can be found here in Perseus's archives.
3.  This pot is number 12 out of 17 in the Getty Slideshow. It is called "Mixing Vessel with Dionysus and Comic Actors."