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The Scenery of the Greek Stage

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The Scenery of the Greek Stage THE SCENERY OF THE GREEK STAGE. WHILE most of the dispositions of the ancient Greek theatre have been submitted in recent years to a searching examination, the question as to the scenery used as a background to plays has been somewhat neglected. It seems to me that a fresh enquiry on this particular point may be of service. I must preface this enquiry by a statement of the view which I adopt as to the presence or absence of a raised stage in the Greek theatre, since it is obvious that any theory as to scenery must depend in a great degree upon the solution of the stage question which is adopted. It is quite impossible on this occasion to discuss fully the question whether the place of the actors in Greece was the orchestra or the Xoyelov. I can only say that I assume the latter view to be correct. I think that from the time of Aeschylus onwards the stage, which had at first been a low platform of varying size, grew steadily in height as the part of the actors in the performance grew more important, and their independence of the chorus more complete. And as the stage grew higher it also grew narrower by an obvious necessity, until we have the long narrow stone stage of the Hellenistic age, which exactly corresponds with the assertions of Vitruvius and other ancient authorities. * In the last few months a fresh piece of evidence, which tends strongly to confirm this view, has been brought forward. Mr. Fossum,1 who was engaged in 1891 on behalf of the American School of Athens in excavating the theatre at Eretria, has now declared his conviction that he discovered there remains of the elcricvic\r)/ji,a, a pair of parallel lines of slabs of bluish marble on which the eicicv/c\7)/Aa ran backwards and forwards between the skene' and the proscenium. If he is right, he has found strong evidence that the ekky- klema ran on wheels on the level, not of the orchestra, but of the top of the proscenium, in fact of the stage or Xoyecov ; and this would seem to show that all the acting in tragedies took place at this level, and so would be inconsistent with the Dorpfeldian theory of the stage. Dr. Dorpfeld in a letter to Mr. Fossum,2 allows that some contrivance ran backwards and forwards on his rails, but he thinks that this contrivance was not the ekky- klema but a crane, to bear aloft deities and their chariots. This view seems somewhat forced, and that of Mr. Fossum indefinitely more probable. Any readers of this paper, however, who think that there was no raised stage in the Greek theatre, will find that opinion no fatal objection to the acceptance of the main views which I have to advocate; these views would require only some little modification. 1 Amer. Journal of Archaeology, 1898, p. 187. 2 JMd. p. 193. THE SCENERY OF THE GREEK STAGE. 253 The introduction of a painted scene or background in the Greek theatre is ascribed by Vitruvius to Aeschylus and by Aristotle to Sophocles. We will begin with the statement of Vitruvius :x ' Primum Agatharchus Athenis Aeschylo docente tragoediam scaenam fecit, et de ea re commentarium reliquit.' Vitruvius goes on to say that Democritus and Anaxagoras wrote on the same subject, and all tried to work out a theory of perspective mathematically. With regard to Agatharchus, we have it on good authority that he was enticed by the young Alcibiades into his house, and not released until he had painted its interior. This would have happened soon after the death of Pericles, B.C. 429. There is thus no reason in chronology why Agatharchus should not have painted scenes for the latest plays of Aeschylus about B.C. 458. And the tradition that he did work for Aeschylus has a good deal of external support. The later plays of that poet seem, as we shall more clearly see presently, in comparison with the earlier, to have required more scenery. Agatharchus painted the interiors of houses and studied perspective. A tale makes him discuss painting with Zeuxis, and contrasts his quick work with the slow perfection of Zeuxis : and although an actual meeting of the two masters is chronologically almost impossible, yet the existence of the story shows the reputation borne by the painters respectively. Thus Agath- archus was precisely the kind of painter for a stage. If, however, we prefer the authority of Aristotle to that of Vitruvius, and regard Sophocles rather than Aeschylus as the tragedian who introduced scene-painting, we may still consider it likely that Agatharchus would be the artist employed. It may thus be considered as tolerably certain that stage-scenery came in, at Athens in connection with the wooden stage-buildings of the Theatre of Dionysus about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and that the first painted scene was by Agatharchus. When, however, we speak of painting a scene for the stage, modern associations crowd about us, and tend to mislead the imagination. We at once begin to think of painted backgrounds representing landscapes and natural scenes, such as frequently occupy the back of the modern stage. But it is well known to all who have studied the course of ancient painting that there could not have been any attempt to render in perspective a natural scene so early as the fifth century. I propose briefly to set forth this fact, and then to enquire of what kind the scene of Agatharchus must in reality have been. We have considerable materials for the solution of this question in passages of ancient writers and in inscriptions, especially the Delian inscriptions published by M. Homolle, as well as in a few monuments of Greek painting and sculpture. An essential factor of the question is the condition of the art of painting in the fifth century and later. It is, of course, quite unnecessary to instruct archaeologists in this matter. But for the benefit of those scholars who are not familiar with the remains of ancient art, I may say a few words on the 1 vii. Praef. 11. 254 PERCY GARDNER. subject. Our main evidence comes from vases. It is well known how admirable are the designs and how masterly the drawing shown by a great many fifth century vases. But in spite of their skill, the vase-painters move within narrow limits. They seldom foreshorten ; their idea of perspective is very simple and primitive, and they make no attempt at illusion, or at rendering natural objects in a naturalistic way. The features of a landscape are only hinted at; a few stones represent a rocky soil, a rock represents a mountain, a dolphin stands for the sea, an altar or a tripod for a sacred shrine, a pillar for a house or temple, and so forth. It may perhaps be thought that this is the case with vases only, and did not hold in paintings of great masters. But this view is scarcely maintainable. We have Pausanias' description of the paintings of Polygnotus at Delphi, executed about B.C. 470. From it we can judge almost with certainty that the composition and drawing were closely like those of vases of the middle of the fifth century: the same conventions of perspective and the same brief and symbolical way of depicting the background seem to have prevailed in the paintings of Polygnotus as in such vases as the well-known kraters of Orvieto and Bologna.1 A single tree represents the grove of Persephone. The sacrifice of Odysseus is combined with Charon and his boat, though the two have no local connection. All the groups are simple, and their interest lies not in the nature of the scenery or the background, but in the human figures, to which the background is the merest setting. The Polygnotan scheme of perspective, which is best realised by the comparison of such vases as the krater of Orvieto, appears to have consisted merely in running irregular horizontal lines across the picture, to represent a greater distance from the spectator. But the distant figures seem to have been depicted on the same scale as the nearer. Each figure or pair of figures stood detached and complete in itself. We find very similar phenomena in the case of a great picture of a later age. The mosaic representing the battle of Issus at Pompeii is of all ancient pictures which have come down to us perhaps the finest. The vigour of the action and the mastery of the figures is most notable. The original of this great work probably belongs to the time shortly after Alexander the Great. It is very noteworthy how in this picture also all the attention of artist and of spectator is concentrated on the human figures. There is no clear indica- tion of locality. One or two stones in the foreground, a ruined tree and a rock in the background alone mark the landscape : the sky is not repre- sented at all. Even in Pompeian paintings, which represent painting in its most advanced stage in antiquity, sky and sea are represented very simply. Rocks and rivers are depicted without any sense of their true forms. Aerial effects, and such objects as distant hills, waves of the sea, or clouds, are seldom attempted. The reason of all this scarcely needs to be explained to any one at all conversant with the Greek spirit. If Greek painters had given their best 1 M.D.I, xi.
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