Classical Greek Theatre: New Views of an Old Subject

2. The Limits of Evidence II: Physical Remains

THE LIMITS OF EVIDENCE II Physical Remains A host of researchers study the physical remnants of Classic Greek theatre. Four overarching disciplines, archaeology, architecture, art history, and epigraphy, supply the bulk ofinformation that is useful to anyone concerned with how the theatre operated in the fifth century. At times, specialists in such fields as numismatics, micromorphology, papyrology, geoarchaeology, dendrochronology, and others supply further data. Each area ofspecialization has differing interests, concerns, approaches and limitations: the archaeologist is typically engrossed in artifacts uncovered at a particular site; the architect's preoccupation with aesthetics, architectonics, and decoration seldom leads to consideration of such plain, roofless structures as theatres; the art historian's concerns are with aesthetics , composition, subject matter, dating, and attribution, but seldom with how the figures on the vases relate to actual performances; the epigrapher pieces together jigsaw puzzles of stone, clay, and metal, guessing at missing parts where necessary. Each specialty, while seldom immediately concerned with the subject, contributes evidence useful in the piecing-together of theatre history. TH ETH EATRES Roughly 200 Greek theatres have survived to the present day in various states ofpreservation and alteration. They lie scattered east-west from Marseilles to Afghanistan, north-south from the Mediterranean coast ofAfrica FIG U R E 3. Pergamum: sockets for wooden stage supports. to the Balkans.1 While the final stone remains can be dated with some certainty , it is nearly impossible to determine when these sites were first used for performances or what the original shape may have been. Archaeological teams have explored many ofthese theatres, digging down through many layers of habitation, positioning and cataloguing shards, seeds, coins, bones, and anything else brought to light. Eventually, after years of study, a final excavation report is published. Written in a daunting array of languages, these reports appear in an assortment of technical journals and monographs issued by publishers ofvarying size and prominence. At times, these reports seem nearly as difficult to unearth as were the original sites. Unfortunately - at least from a modern perspective - no Greek site has been preserved in the manner ofthe Vesuvius-entombed theatres at Pompeii and Herculaneum; all were modified by later ages. The theatre at Delfi, for example, was rebuilt by Eumenes II, king of Pergamurn, in 159 BCE and was further altered during the Roman occupation. The earlier, airier, wooden skenai known mainly through vase paintings have left no physical traces beyond some stone sockets into which wooden posts or beams were inserted , as at Pergamum (fig. 3). All surviving structures are built of stone, and only two ofthese can be dated earlier than the mid- fourth century BCE: Thorikos and Argos, both straight-rowed theatres from the fifth century, might have been known to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes ; even these had scene houses built of wood. Caution must be exercised when extrapolating backward in time from stone structures to wooden ones; the fifth-century theatres were mainly products of the carpenter, not the stonemason. For the modern reader/ researcher, visualizing original productions in wooden theatres is difficult, given the near-universal tendency to view the Classic Age as occurring in Jeffersonian Greek-Revival architecture. Modern stage settings for tragedies are usually based upon thick, closely spaced stone columns and massive lintels, rather than the thin columns and wooden beams ofthe fifth century. VASES, STATUES, TERRA-COTTAS, WALL PAINTINGS, AND MOSAICS Pictorial evidence from the Classical Age began to receive serious attention with the 1920 publication of Margarete Bieb'er's Die Denkmaler zum Theaterwesen im Altertum.2 Although only a few vases from the fifth century LIM ITS a F EV IDE NeE I I: PH Y SIC A L REM A INS 17 deal even tangentially with actors, many from the fourth century and later provide evidence that wooden scene houses (skenai) were not immediately replaced by stone at the end of the fifth century. While these vases are receiving increasing study, any application is complicated by the painters' greater interest in creating a pleasing design than in recording a particular moment of theatrical history. Not uncommonly, architectural elements are subtracted to avoid cluttering the composition; characters are added, subtracted , and rearranged for effective picturization. As a result, vases frequently depict dramatic moments never seen in the theatre - not unlike present-day publicity photos. Other vases are not theatrical, showing mythological scenes only vaguely influenced by stage representations, while still others may be versions-of-versions...