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Athenian Festival Judges–Seven, Five, or However Many

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Maurice Pope
Maurice Pope
Affiliation:
Oxford
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Extract

No ancient authority has left us a clear account of how the judges at the Athenian dramatic festivals operated. We can therefore never know for certain what happened. But it may be possible to improve the reconstruction normally given, which does not look as if it could ever have yielded acceptable results.

One thing that is very clear (from Isocrates 17.33–4) is that the choice of judges was taken seriously. Not only did it involve the Council, the Prytanies, and the Treasurers, but any tampering with the panel from which the judges were eventually selected seems to have been punishable with death. Even the physical arrangements were quite complicated. Names approved by the Council were deposited in ten jars, one jar for each tribe but each jar containing several names, sealed by the Prytanies, held in safe-keeping on the Acropolis, and eventually brought down to the theatre, where the archon publicly broke the seals and drew out one name from each jar.

At this stage of the process there emerged ten judges, one from each tribe. Their quality had been guaranteed by the Council's prior vetting of the panel, but their actual names were unpredictable because randomly selected from it. All had been done democratically and with equal representation of tribes, in perfect accord with normal Athenian practice.

But now comes the difficulty. The paroemiographers record a proverb (or rather perhaps a joke since it seems to be a kind of parody of a Homeric verse) about judgement being in the lap of five judges — ⋯ν π⋯ντε κριτ⋯ν γούνασι κεῖται; Lysias tells us of a judge whose vote was not counted; and Lucian, who likes to disguise a very careful antiquarianism behind an apparent casualness of style, says that at festival competitions the many know how to clap and hiss but that judgement is in the hands of seven or five or however many.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 36 , Issue 2 , December 1986 , pp. 322 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1986

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References

1 IG ii2 204, 24–42 (a mid-fourth century decree of boule and demos) prescribes a somewhat similar procedure under which hydriae are to be sealed and handed over to the tamiae for safe keeping on the Acropolis.

2 The only direct evidence we have for the tribal basis of nomination is rather late — Plutarch's story (Kimon 8.7–9) of how in 468 B.C. after the battle of the Eurymedon the archon set aside the regular procedure and chose the heroes of the day, Kimon and his fellow generals, to do the judging, justifying his action on the ground that they were one from each tribe. However, this can be supported by inference from contemporary evidence. Isocrates tells us that the Council-approved names were put into hydriae, and this must mean a separate one for each tribe's nominees. Otherwise they would more sensibly have been put into a single hydria and mixed up together in it before being drawn.

3 Zenobius 3.64 cites this as a proverbial phrase, apparently to explain a remark in Epicharmus about five men judging a comedy. Hesychius (s.v. π⋯ντε κριταί) says this happened ‘not only in Athens but also in Sicily’, from which one may infer that as far as Hesychius was concerned the institution (however it operated) and the mock-proverb originated in Athens.

4 Lysias iv 3. ⋯π⋯λαχεν is the word used for the judge not having his vote drawn after he had deposited it in the hydria.

5 Lucian, , Harmonides 2Google Scholar: κα⋯ γ⋯ρ oὖν ⋯ν τοῖς ⋯γ⋯σιν οἱ μ⋯ν πολλο⋯ ἴσασι κροτ⋯σαί τε κα⋯ συρίσαι, κρίνουσι δ᾽ ⋯πτ⋯ ἣ π⋯ντε ἣ ὅσοι δή.

6 ‘At the end of the contest each (sc. of the ten judges) wrote his order of merit on a tablet; the tablets were placed in an urn, from which the archon drew five at random, and on these five tablets the issue of the contest was decided.’ Pickard-Cambridge, , The Dramatic Festivals of Athens 2, 1968, 97Google Scholar.

7 It is not conceivable that the ‘five youngest ⋯ομοɸύλακες’ in Plato, 's Laws xiGoogle Scholar are relevant to such a comparison.

8 Pickard-Cambridge, op. cit. 97 n. 4 ‘the reference in ⋯πτά is inexplicable’.

9 There seem to be no recorded dead heats in Attic musical or dramatic competitions. The gold crown for the citharodic contest at the Panathenaea in 402 was probably unawarded since it was dedicated in the Hecatompedon (IG ii–iii2 1388.36 and see Davison, J. A., JHS 78 [1958], 37Google Scholar), but there is no proof that this was because of a tied vote, and the fact that 402 was such a troubled year in Athens makes other explanations easy to imagine. To find a clear instance of a dead heat it would appear that one must go as far afield as Acraephium in the first century B.C., where the citharodic prize and the prize for comic performance were each deemed ἱερός (IG vii 2727, 21 and 24).

10 The same problem could in theory arise at a festival of five comedies if two judges voted for each one, and the same solution could have been employed.

11 It is worth noting that on the other reconstruction five judges are far from enough to ensure victory. Though a winner might emerge with only three judges out of the original ten voting in his favour, he would need eight to be absolutely safe.

12 The text is in Bruns, , Fontes Iuris Romani 1907Google Scholar. Staveley, , Greek and Roman Voting and Elections (1972), 235Google Scholar, offers the following translation for it: ‘When the voting returns from all the curiae have been brought in, the presiding magistrate shall put the names of the curiae in the lot and shall draw the lots one by one to determine the order in which the several results shall be announced. As soon as any one candidate secures a majority of the curiae he shall take the oath and give security for the public money and shall then be declared duly elected. The procedure shall continue until as many magistrates are declared elected as required.’ It would like to thank Dr L. Holford Strevens for pointing out to me the possible relevance of Roman procedure in this matter.

13 Roman politicians claimed a kind of superiority (of gradus, not of dignitas) if they were the first to have their majority announced, even though this might be due to nothing more meritorious than chance (see Cicero, , Pro Murena 18Google Scholar, In Pisonem 2, and Livy 7.5.9), and one may therefore presume that claims to superiority in a more serious sense would have been customary if it had been the practice to publish the total vote.

14 BCH 98 (1974), 141–2Google Scholar. Piérart leaves open the question whether nominees were put forward one by one and then voted on or whether a complete list was established before any voting began. Rhodes, , GRBS 22 (1981), 130–2Google Scholar, prefers this alternative. If he is right and if the order in which the names were voted on was determined by lot, then there will be a third parallel with the Roman procedure. Hansen, M. H. however (The Athenian Ecclesia, 120–1)Google Scholar envisages the possibility of subsequent challenges, the effect of which would be to secure the election of the most preferred men, not simply of acceptable ones.

15 An anonymous reader suggested that I mention the matters raised in my notes 1, 2, 9 and 14, and I should like to record my thanks to him.