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The Audiences of New Comedy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Vincent J. Rosivach
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Extract

There is a school of thought which attributes the more refined discourse of New Comedy (compared with that of the Old) at least in part to a change in the composition of Athenian theatre audiences. This way of thinking assumes that payment for attending theatre performances (the so-called theōrikon) was discontinued along with other payments for i public service under the oligarchic regimes Macedonia imposed upon Athens in the late fourth century B.C.; and it further assumes that with the elimination of this subsidy many of the poor could no longer afford to attend the theatre. The first of these assumptions, that the audiences for New Comedy did not receive theōrikon payments, is reasonable enough, but the second assumption, that the poor therefore stopped coming to the theatre, is more problematic.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 47 , Issue 2 , October 2000 , pp. 169 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

Notes

1. Perhaps the most prominent statement of this view is in Gomme, A. W. and Sandbach, F. H., Menander:A Commentary (Oxford, 1973), 22, n. 1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Sandbach, F. H., The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome (New York, 1977), 69Google Scholar. The view can be traced back at least as far as Ferguson, W. S., Hellenistic Athens, an Historical Survey (London, 1911), 73–5Google Scholar, and it has more recently appeared in Ch. Habicht's new standard history of Athens, Hellenistic, Athen: die Geschichte der Stadt in hellenistischer Zeit (München, 1995), 107Google Scholar. Blanchard, A., Essai sur la composition des cornédies de Ménandre (Paris, 1983), 387–8Google Scholar, argues briefly against Ferguson (see below, n. 2).

2. Ferguson (n. 1), 73.

3. Two obols fee: Demosthenes claims that if he had not secured seats of honour for Macedonian ambassadors in 346 they would have sat ‘in the two obols’ (⋯ν τοῖν δυοῖν⋯βολο⋯ν, 18.28); see also Dem. 13.10. Various sources speak of a theōrikon payment of one drachma (Philokh. 328 F 33; Sud. s.v. θεωρικ⋯, Hesykh. s.v. δραϰμ⋯ ϰαλαξ⋯σα, schol. in Aeskhtn. 3 65 Dilts); one would assume that recipients paid two obols for admission and pocketed the difference. A scholion on Dem. 1.1 (If Dilts, lines 29–30) says that one of the two obols was for the arkhitektōn and one for sustenance (trophé), which is apparently a misunderstanding of the payment of a full drachma for the two-obol admission (on the arkhitektōn see further below). Actual production costs of the theatre performances continued to be paid for by khorēgoi (eventually replaced with a single agōnothetēs, probably in 310 or 309); admission fees seem never to have gone toward defraying the costs of production (cf. Blanchard [n. 1], 388).

4. City Dionysia: Pickard-Cambridge, A., The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed. rev. Gould, J. and Lewis, D. M. (Oxford, 1968), 66Google Scholar; Lenaia: ibid. 41.

5. Dionysia and Panathenaia: Hesykh. s.v. θεωρικ⋯ ϰρ⋯ματα; Dionysia: Philinos (Athenian orator = RE s.v. Philinos 4, second half of fourth century) frag. 3 Sauppe in Harp. s.v. θεωρικ⋯, Sud. s.v. θεωρικ⋯; Panathenaia: Dem. 44.37. The mention of both the Panathenaia and the Dionysia (and of no other festival) at Dem. 4.35 may well be a veiled allusion to the theōrikon.

6. εἰς τ⋯ς ⋯ορτ⋯ς, Dem. 1.20; εἴς τε τ⋯ς θ⋯ας κα⋯ εἰς τ⋯ς ⋯ορτ⋯ς; Liban, . Dem. 1 hypoth. 5Google Scholar; Harp. s.v. θεωρικ⋯ Sud. s.vv. θεωρικ⋯ν, θεωρικ⋯ν κα⋯ θεωρικ⋯.

7. Paid theatre admissions are mentioned in Theophrast. Char. 9.5 and implied at 30.6, but we have no way of dating the composition of these (and most other) individual character sketches (Regenbogen, , RE suppl. 7 [1940], 1510–11)Google Scholar.

8. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge (n. 4), 266, who compares IG 2 2 1176, which similarly speaks of contractors constructing seating in the theatre in the Peiraieus.

9. An arkhitektōn for a theatre (presumably that of Dionysos) is also mentioned in three Athenian inscriptions from the late fourth century (IG 22 466 [307/6], 500 [302/1], 512 [end of fourth century]), after the construction of the Lykurgan theatre, where he seems to serve as something of a house manager, providing special seats for individuals honoured by the Athenians. This would suggest that the arkhitektōn/contractor of the wooden theatres had also served as a house manager (cf. Dem. 18.28), and that his title was retained by the house manager even when he no longer had anything to do with construction. It does not mean, however, that he continued collecting admissions.