1 Calame 2009a, 15.
2 Calame 2009a, 16.
3 The construction of ritual time in comedy will be discussed in the next chapter.
4 Seaford 2012, 1.
5 Lowell 1996, 32–33: ‘In the theatre, it is the peculiar relation of instances of discourse to an already given stage space and an already given theatrical fiction that creates the meta-theatrical potential.’
6 Worman 2014, 224–225: ‘On the dramatic stage quite generally any referential or deictic gesture points up a here and now that is first and foremost fictional mimetic of some other time and place, and secondarily resonant with the actual space of the theater—say on the south slope of the Akropolis, in the ritual swing of the spring-time.’
7 Lowe 2006.
8 Worman 2014, 202.
9 The procession at the Great Dionysia and its generic overlap with comedy in particular has been studied by Csapo 2013. Other Dionysiac processions were likely to end in the theatre (as in the case of the theatre in Thorikos argued by Wiles 2003, 64–66).
10 See above, p. 12.
11 See Melfi 2007.
12 Melfi 2007, 324–326.
13 For the apostrophe in tragedy and comedy, see the section on Wealth below, p. 119–121 and Wagener 1931.
14 Before the parodos, there is a scene in which one of Sokrates’ students shows the map of Greece illustrating the advantages of studying geometry and pointing to Athens, Euboia, and Sparta on it (205–215). A similar scene of mapping real places onto some imaginary space in comedy can be found in Lys. 1162–1172, where Greece is visualised as a girl’s body.
15 Poll. 8.121; MacDowell 1971, 184.
16 The Greek text allows for an ambivalent meaning of the phrase. It can also be understood as ‘how stern your aspect is’. Lykos was sometimes portrayed in the form of a wolf (Poll. 8.121).
17 Orfanos 2001; Arnott 1962, 49–50.
18 Theopomp. Penelope, fr. 49; Kratin. Bousiris, fr. 23; Aristoph. adesp. fr. 648; Eup. Demes, fr. 99, 41–48; Aristoph. Banqueters fr. 236; Theopomp. Barmaids fr. 29; Hermipp. adesp. fr. 76; Pherekr. Deserters, frs. 28, 33; Plato, Little Kid, fr. 98 and Phaon, fr. 188.
19 Poe 1989, 137.
20 The centre stones found in several theatre orchestras were surveyors marks, not altar bases. The hole in the orchestra of the theatre of Dionysos belongs to the construction of a Christian basilica of the fifth century CE. The only Attic theatre with archaeological evidence for an altar within the theatrical space is Thorikos, where an altar base is found to the side of the rectangular sixth-century orchestra. Ashby 1999, 42–61, bases his argument on this lack of clear archaeological evidence, arguing for a peripheral position of the altar, most likely in front of the seat of the priest of Dionysos. He does not exclude that the altar could be absent altogether from the theatre with the sacrifices being held in the adjacent sanctuary.
21 MacDowell 1971, 125, 241.
22 Orfanos 2001, 47. He also claims that the altars in these scenes are surrounded and approached by the personages best described as bomolochoi, despite the fact that they are never so called in the plays.
23 Rutherford 2001, 307–308. The pattern of delivering praise upon arrival fits into a larger pattern of ‘wandering’ lyric poets which was central for many figures in ancient Greece such as Orpheus, Thamyris, and Empedokles, and is discussed in Hunter and Rutherford 2009, 1–22.
24 For the discussion of Meton’s geometry and its role in the play structure, see Amati 2010.
25 Rutherford 2010, 43–44.
26 Amati 2010, 217.
27 The word used for Meton’s sundial in Banqueters is also polos.
28 See detailed discussion of this oath and its sacrificial connotations in Fletcher 2012, 220–240 and in Seaford 2017.
29 Dem. 59.78; Fletcher 2012, 224–225 and Fletcher 2014.
30 Seaford 2017, 233.
31 Poll. 8.108.
32 The ritual actions are not typical for an official civic oath made in a public temple (like the oath of the ephebes) or a pre-battle oath sacrifice. Dipping hands or spear into the blood would not be a standard Greek oath sacrifice (attested only once in Xenophon and there in the context of the alliance with the barbarians); see Parker 2004, 137 n. 17.
33 An official oath taken before an altar (lithos) where the tomia are placed is attested in Arist. Ath. Pol. 55.5.
34 Also in Soph. Aj. 576 as an epithet of the shield, σάκος.
35 The same joke about a military/bloodshedding ritual performed for establishing peace can be found in Acharnians and in Peace, see p. 53–54. The shield is a symbol of war in Acharnians 58, 279, 1140, and passim.
36 This is a possible interpretation of touching ‘the sacred things’ by the women (πρὶν ἅπτεσθαι τῶν ἱερῶν) in Demosthenes’ account; Schlesier 2011, 267 n. 10, for taking the sacred things into one’s hand while swearing an oath, see Aeschin. 1.114; Lycurg. Leokr. 20; cf. Dem. 23.68.
37 See Berti 2006, n. 143, on the importance of physical contact with the victim or the altar. The bowl that the women touch in comedy is also called a boar, which is an euphemism for the penis (Seaford 2017, 234–234). It is possible that the ‘sacred things’ which women had to touch after an oath in the Athenian ritual of the Anthesteria were not the sacrificial victims but some other sacred objects, among which there were some symbolizing the genitals, male or female. These are one of the items, as Clement of Alexandria reports, which the initiates had to touch and manipulate during the Eleusinian Mysteries (Protr. 2. 22). The parody thus might be not so far from the truth.
38 Ἀγάμεμνον, οὐδ’ εἰ πέλεκυν ἐν χεροῖν ἔχων
μέλλοι τις εἰς τράχηλον ἐμβαλεῖν ἐμίν,
σιγήσομαι δίκαιά γ’ ἀντειπεῖν ἔχων.
‘Agamemnon, I will not keep silent even if someone with an axe in his hands were going to strike my neck for I have just things to respond with.’
39 1277–1288, βῶμοῦ πατρῴου δ’ ἀντ’ ἐπίξενον μένει,
θερμῷ κοπείσης φοίνον προσφάγματι.
‘Instead of my father’s altar a butcher’s block is awaiting me, warm with the bloody sacrifice of the slaughters.’
40 Clinton 1996, 120–124.
41 Broneer 1942, 258–259. As Broneer argues, the festival was one of the oldest and most well known, while the Pnyx was a relatively new area of the city.
42 Broneer 1942.
43 Hill 1953, 94; Judeich 1931, 398–399.
44 Clinton 1996, 125.
45 See Martin 1987.
46 Judeich 1931, 285–286.
47 I follow the text of the manuscripts accepted by Henderson.
48 See Henderson 1987, xxxviii–xxxix. Henderson has also suggested that Myrrhine’s name hinted at a priestess of Athena Nike.
49 ἀλλ’ εὐξάμενος τοῖσιν θεοῖς διδάξομαι
αὐτὸς βαδίζων εἰς τὸ φροντιστήριον.
‘with a prayer to the gods I am going myself to study and go to the Thinkery.’
50 Kratinos’ Trophonios featured intellectuals as one of the main themes of the play (fr. 239 says something about ‘coiners of the speeches’, ἀργυροκοπιστῆρας λόγων).
51 Without an article πόλις usually mean the Akropolis in classical Attic; cf. Nub. 69.
52 IG II2 1294; SEG 21.541 col. 5.60–62.
53 Travlos 1971, 100.
54 As the possible starting point of the Pythais, this temple is discussed in Rutherford 2013, 177; cf. Travlos 1971, 91, and Thuc. 6.54.
55 See Dontas 1983, 62 n. 42.
56 Storey 2003, 177.
57 Judeich 1931, 441.
58 The fragment reflects the theme of utopia (see below, p. 150–155 on Seasons) and reflects the ambitions of the Athenian leaders. The luxurious baths to be constructed for the pleasure of the Athenian people feature in Ps. Xen. 2.9–10; see Ceccarelli 1996, 148.
59 Travlos 1971, 274.
60 The fragment refers to a ritual dance that Lydian girls perform in the temple of Artemis of Ephesos. It does not necessarily imply that the action was set in that place and could be just a reference, as in Nub. 598, where a Lydian dance in the Ephesian temple is also mentioned.
61 Lowe 2006; see also Bakola 2010, 246–248.
62 Bakola 2010, 239.
63 On the ‘Wegmotiv’ in comedies, see Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1995, 135–148.
64 Russo 1994, 210.
65 Bakola 2010, 235–246. In fr. 143, characters speak to one another about an approaching storm with cues to the ship present in the scene.
66 2004.
67 Rutherford 2013, 341–345. Outside the chronological frame of Old Comedy, several titles of Sicilian and Athenian comic plays also point to theoriai and their participants: Epicharmos’ Spectators/Sacred Envoys and Sophron’s Women Viewing the Isthmian Games imply that the khoros might have consisted of the delegates of state pilgrimages. A poet of Middle Comedy, Platon, produced a play about returning from a ritual journey: Women on Their Way from Sacrifice.
68 Quaglia 2000, 461–462. A good parallel is Nub. 356. It is likely that this address preceded the descent to the cave which was the practice of travellers to the oracle of Trophonios. Quaglia suggests this based on the assumed parallel with the scene of entering the Thinkery in Clouds 506–508, Quaglia 2000, 459. We know about the practice of descending into the cave from Paus. 9.39.5.
69 Rutherford 2013, 343.
70 Additionally, fr. 53 refers to Kerkyon, ruler of Eleusis, who was killed by Theseus.
71 Cf. Thuc. 1.128.1, Soph. Satyrs at Tainaron frs. 198a–e, Aristoph. Ach. 510, Schol. Ar. Eq. 1225. The prefix para- probably means some abnormal way of celebrating.
72 Hymn. Hom. Ap. 151–164. On their professional virtuosity, see Peponi 2009.
73 Eur. HF 687–690, Hec. 464. See Henrichs 1996.
74 The performances of Deliades in Hellenistic times were even funded by visiting theoroi. See Rutherford 2013, 148, 238.
75 We know of at least 12 religious songs performed on Delos in the fifth century BCE. The majority of those songs were of the genres of paian, processional paian, or processional song (prosodion). See Kowalzig 2007a, 57, and Calame 1997, 104–110.
76 Plut. Nic. 3.5. See Rutherford 2013, 221–223.
77 Rutherford 2004.
78 IDélos 1.43 (426/5 BCE) lists five magistrates—arkhitheoroi.
79 Rutherford 2013, 345.
80 See, for example, Thiercy 2000, 21; Russo 1994, 209.
81 Worman 2014, 201–202: ‘Such orchestrations of place and space engage a mapping of schemes, within topographies that are usually quite well known, that are imbued with intellectual and political significance, and that constitute a unique intermingling of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the spatial. […] Frogs traces the route to the literary judgement as passing through a landscape that is grounded in local topographies and rituals of aesthetic and religious import.’
82 Purportedly, he starts at the temple of Herakles at Kynosarges or of Herakles Alexikakos, proceeds to the sanctuary in the marshes close to Ilissos, moves to the meadows associated with rituals of the Lesser Mysteries, and finally arrives at the door of Hades, which corresponds to Agrai where the temple of Demeter and Kore was situated, the place of the celebration of the Lesser Mysteries. Both Ilissos and Agrai could be seen from the seats in the theatre of Dionysos; see Worman 2014, 224–225.
83 The comic grotesque seems to combine elements of several different ritual chronotopes including celebration of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Anthesteria, perhaps, the Lenaia festival, and the Lesser Mysteries; see Segal 1961. The scenes with the khoroi of Frogs and Initiates and their relation to the Athenian festivals in Frogs has been analysed in the following works: Bowie 1993, 228–240, Lada-Richards 1999, 87–88, 100, 223–226, 279–280, Furley and Bremer 2001, II, 361–371, Biles 2011, 211–256, Tierney 1934, Dover 1993a, 53–69, Dover 1993b. The opinio communis is that elements of the Eleusinian Mysteries are interwoven in the scene. Further bibliography in Biles 2011, 219 n. 32.
84 Dover 1993a, 57.
85 Hdt. 8. 65.1–4; Plut. Phoc. 28.2, Alc. 34.4; IG II2 1078.19. The statue of Iakchos was presumably carried in the procession from the sanctuary in Athens to Eleusis. See Dover 1993a, 61, and Richardson 1974, 214.
86 As Russo 1994, 209–210 notes, ‘the progressive representation of a voyage, and of the landscape through which it passes, is unique in the extant corpus of ancient drama’.
87 Cf. Lada-Richards 1999, 86–88, who suggests that the pilgrimage from Athens to Eleusis was a cultic analogue to Dionysos’ quest.
88 Kavoulaki 2010.
89 2002, 134. Also Russo 1994, 45–47. Bakola 2010, 248, recognises here the difficulty which cannot be solved. At 719 and 729, his house is again in Athens.
90 Thiercy 2000, 18–19.
91 Lys. 389, 395. On the stage representation of the roof in comedy, see Mastronarde 1990, 258–262.
92 See Olson 2002, 147: ‘Here the idea is that the imaginary crowd lining the street (cf. 257–258) is so large that Dik.’s Wife must get on the roof to have a good view of the procession, as at Call. h. 6. 4-5.’
93 Lowe 2006, 51.
94 By Fraenkel 1950, 257. Cf. Ag. 503–509: ‘All hail, soil of Argos, land of my fathers! On this happy day in the tenth year I have come to you. Many hopes have shattered, one only have I seen fulfilled; for I never dared to dream that here in this land of Argos I should die and have due portion of burial most dear to me. Now blessings on the land, blessings on the light of the sun, and blessed be Zeus, the land’s Most High, and the Pythian lord’ (transl. Smyth 1930).
95 The address to one’s homeland is typical of tragic apostrophe of this kind, as Wagener 1931, 86–87.
96 An example of this is Xen. An. 3.2.13. Also in Hdt. 1.119, 8.118, 3.86. In tragedy, this verb is used to express the idea of honouring the Earth together with other gods: Soph. OC 1654, El. 1374, Aesch. Pers. 499, as well as Eq. 155–156.
97 Bowie 1993, 290; see also Dem. 45.74, Plut. Mor. 753d.