Greek and Roman Actors

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GREEK AND

ROMAN ACTORS Aspects of an Ancient Profession

E D I T E D B Y

PAT EASTERLING

Regius Professor of Greek Emeritus, University of Cambridge

A N D

EDITH HALLLeverhulme Professor of Greek Cultural History, University of Durham


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P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E P R E S S S Y N D I C AT E O F T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F C A M B R I D G E

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vi Contents

PART TWO THE PROFESSIONAL WORLD

Nothing to do with the techntai of Dionysus? Jane L. Lightfoot

Actors and actormanagers at Rome in the timeof Plautus and Terence Peter G. McC. Brown

The masks on the propylon of the Sebasteionat Aphrodisias John Jory

Images of performance: new evidence from Ephesus Charlotte Roueche

Female entertainers in late antiquity Ruth Webb

Acting in the Byzantine theatre: evidence and problems Walter Puchner

PART THREE THE IDEA OF THE ACTOR

Actor as icon Pat Easterling

Scholars versus actors: text and performance in theGreek tragic scholia Thomas Falkner

Orator and/et actor Elaine Fantham

Acting and self-actualisation in imperial Rome:some death scenes Catharine Edwards

The subjectivity of Greek performance Ismene Lada-Richards

The ancient actors presence since the Renaissance Edith Hall

Glossary List of works cited Index of major ancient passages cited General Index


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Illustrations

Cover Bell krater with Dionysiac scene. Apulia, early fourth

century BC, c . BC. Earthenware with slip decoration,. . cm. c The Cleveland Museum of Art, John

L. Severance Fund, . . Thamyras and his mother Argiope: played by Sophocles(?)and Aeschylus son Euaion. Attic hydria, c . BC. Vatican,Museo Etrusco Gregoriano. Photo: J. R. Green. page

The blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba . Apulian vase(Loutrophoros) from the workshop of the Darius Painter, thirdquarter of the fourth century BC. c The BritishMuseum, inv. . . .

The Oslo papyrus showing words and melodies for a recitalof songs about Neoptolemus. P. Oslo . Universitetsbibliotek in Oslo. Photo: Adam B ulow-Jacobsen/AIP Archive.

Mask of singing actor of tragedy. Ivory miniature, Caerleon.By permission of the National Museum of Wales.

Mask of singing actor of tragedy. Glass oinochoe found nearthe Stazione di S. Rossore, Pisa. Soprintendenza Archeologicaper la Toscana Firenze, neg. / .

The famous piper Pronomos of Thebes, seated with his satyrchorusmen. Attic red-gure volute-krater, late fth century BC( ARV , ). Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv.

(H ). Drawing reproduced from FR, III. . Piper with double pipes. Attic red-gure krater, c . BC( ARV , ). Paris, Louvre, inv. CA . Photo: M. andP. Chuzeville.

Potamonof Thebeswith his father Olympichos.Relief carving

from near Phaleron: funerary stele with epigram. Athens,National Archaeological Museum, inv. . c DAI Athens,neg. no. NM .

vii


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viii List of illustrations

Aul et es in performance. Attic red-gure volute-kraterattributed to the Pronomos Painter, late fth century BC

( ARV , ). Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale,inv. (H ). Reproduced from Stephanis( ), g. .

Chorus performing as satyrs with piper and a standing gure. Attic red-gure hydria attributed to the Leningrad Painter,c . BC. c Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. All rightsreserved.)

Chorus performing as satyrs with piper and standing gure(far right) who may be a chor egos . Attic volute-krater, c . BC

( ARV , ). Ferrara, Museo Archeologico Nazionale diSpina, inv. . Photo: Hirmer Verlag.

Contrasts in physical attitudes: actors of the Com edieFran caise in the s and the Greek vase paintings they usedas models. Reproduced from Barba and Saverese ( ), .

Detail from the Pronomos Vase depicting Heracles andother members of the cast of a satyr-play. Attic red-gure volute-krater, late fth century BC ( ARV , ). Naples,Museo Archeologico Nazionale, inv. (H ). Photo: J. R.Green after FR. The Choregos Vase, showing a tragic actor with three comicactors. Tarentine red-gure bell krater, early fourth centuryBC . Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, inv. .AE. (ex coll.Fleischman, F ). Photo: Museum.

Two tragic chorusmen preparing for performance. Atticred-gure pelike attributed to the Phiale Painter, c . BC.Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. . . Photo: Museum.

Tragic actor holding his mask. Tarentine Gnathia bell-kraterfragment attributed to the Konnakis Painter, c . BC.Wurzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum der Universit at, inv.H (L ). Photo: Museum.

Tragic messenger witnessing the death of Hippolytus.Tarentine red-gure volute-krater attributed to the DariusPainter, thirdquarter of thefourthcentury BC . London, BritishMuseum, inv. . . ( F ). Photo: Museum.

Tragic actor in the role of a young man. (Athenian?) terracotta

gurine, perhaps c . BC. Nicosia, Cyprus Museum, inv. CS/ . Photo: Museum. A messenger bringing news. Scene of a tragedy in


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List of illustrations ix

performance: Oedipus Tyrannus ? Sicilian (Syracusan?)red-gure calyx-krater, third quarter of the fourth

century BC

. Syracuse, Museo Archeologico, inv. .Photo: E. W. Handley. Three women responding to a messengers news. Scene of atragedy in performance. Sicilian (Syracusan?) red-gurecalyx-krater, third quarter of the fourth century BC.Caltanissetta, Museo Civico. Reproduced from IGD ,III . , .

Comic performance: naked male pursued by pretendHeracles. Tarentine red-gure bell-krater attributed to the

Lecce Painter, towards the middle of the fourth century BC.Nicholson Museum, Sydney University, inv. . . Photo:Museum.

Comic performance: hetaira, old man, slave carrying chest.Tarentine red-gure bell-krater attributed to the JasonPainter, towards the middle of the fourth century BC.Copenhagen, National Museet, inv. . Photo: Museum.

Comic performance: woman, youth, slave in disguise as young woman, old man with stick. Sicilian (Syracusan?) red-gurecalyx-krater attributed to the Manfria Painter, third quarterof the fourth century BC. Museo Regionale, Messina. Photocourtesy Professor Umberto Spigo.

Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracottagurine, early fourth century BC. The State HermitageMuseum, St Petersburg, inv. BB . Photo: Museum.

Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracottagurine, perhaps second quarter of the fourth century BC.Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, inv. . . Photo:Museum.

Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracottagurine, beginning of the fourth century BC. New York,Metropolitan Museum, inv. . . . Photo: J. R. Greenafter Bieber.

Comic actor playing young woman. Terracotta gurine,Corinthian copy of an Athenian original, near the middleof the fourth century BC. London, British Museum, inv.

. . . Photo: J. R. Green. Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracottagurine, near the middle of the fourth century BC. Athens,


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x List of illustrations

National Archaeological Museum, inv. . Photo: J. R. Green.

Comic actor playing young woman. Athenian terracottagurine, third quarter of the fourth century BC. London,British Museum, inv. . . ( C ). Photo: J. R. Green.

Three mime actors performing Mother-in-Law . Athenianterracotta group, probably endof thethirdcentury BC . Athens,National Archaeological Museum, inv. . Photo:B. Kohlen, M. Gladbach.

Two tragic masks and one pantomime mask. Dedication oncinerary urn, Rome, early second century AD. Paris, Louvre,

neg. Ma . Photo: M. and P. Chuzeville. Four masks for performances in tragedy, pantomime andcomedy. Fragment of lid of sarcophagus (?), Rome, secondhalf of third century AD. Vatican Museum, inv. . Photo: J. R. Green. View of Sebasteion at Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Part of Sebasteion frieze. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Mask of youngfemale, perhaps a maenad. Aphrodisias. Photo: J. Jory. Mask of young female and two young males. Aphrodisias.Photo: J. Jory.

Ephesus, Theatre grafto , iiii. Photo: Charlotte Rouech e. Ephesus, Theatre grafto , ivv. Photo: Charlotte Rouech e. Ephesus, Theatre grafto .i. Photo: Stefan Karwiese. Ephesus, Theatre grafto .ii. Photo: Stefan Karwiese. Ephesus: Theatre grafto .iii. Photo: Charlotte Rouech e. Ephesus, Theatre grafto a. Photo: Osterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut. Ephesus, Theatre grafto b. Photo: Denis Feissel. Ephesus, Theatre grafto c. Photo: Osterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut. Ephesus, Theatre grafto d. Drawing courtesy of theOsterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut.

Ephesus, Theatre grafto . Drawing courtesy of theOsterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut.


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List of illustrations xi

Ephesus, Theatre grafto . Drawing courtesy of theOsterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut.

Ephesus, Theatre grafto . Drawing courtesy of theOsterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut. Aphrodisias, Odeion grafto. Photo: Mehmet AliDogen ci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.

Aphrodisias, Odeion grafto. Photo: Mehmet AliDogen ci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.

Aphrodisias, Odeion grafto. Photo: Mehmet AliDogen ci, Aphrodisias Excavations, New York University.

Memorial stele of the mime actress Bassilla. Third

century AD. Trieste, Museo Archeologico di Aquileia,inv. . Reproduced from Scrinari ( ), g. .

Diptych relief of Anastasios, consul in AD , showing sceneswith actors (Delbrueck N ). The State Hermitage Museum,St Petersburg.

Actor in the role of paidag ogos . Gnathia calyx-krater,mid-fourth century BC. New York, private collection.Photo courtesy W. Puhze.

Prize-winning actor in tragic costume dedicating his mask.Wall-painting from Herculaneum. Copy of Greek model,c . BC. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale. Photo(Anderson no. ) courtesy of the Mansell Collection.

Tragic actors in the roles of Orestes and Electra inEuripides Orestes . Wall-painting, Ephesus, Hanghaus ,later second century AD. Reproduced from Strocka ( ),

, no. (ill.), by permission of the Osterreichisches Arch aologisches Institut. Acting and rhetoric: Andronikos and Demosthenes balancedby Roscius and Cicero. Frontispiece of John BulwersChironomia , . By permission of the British Library.

First performance of Thespis . Illustrated London News . Drawing courtesy of the Archive of Performances of Greek and RomanDrama, University of Oxford.


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CHAPT E R ONE

The singing actors of antiquityEdith Hall

I N T R O D U C T I O N

At the turn of the fth century AD Augustine confesses to having some-times neglected the spiritual content of the psalms of David because hehas been distracted even moved to tears by the beauty of the voices hehasheard singing them. Augustine therefore approves of theAlexandrianbishop Athanasius, who attempted to protect his congregations spiritualpurity by instructing the reader of the psalm to sound it forth with suchslight vocal modulation ( flexu vocis ) that it was nearer to speaking thanto singing ( Conf. . ).

Augustines supposedly shameful passion for vocal music had beenfed by his successful participation, as a young pagan, in theatricalsinging competitions ( Conf . . ). He recalls a solo he used to sing entitledThe Flying Medea ( Medea volans , . ). The tragic theme implies that Augustineperformed in costume and with gesturesas a tragoedus or tragicus cantor (a tragic singer). We do not know whether this aria was com-posed in the rst person, requiring the singer to impersonate Medeaas she ew, but it was certainly much performed ( . ). Augustines tes-timony opens a fascinating window on the late Roman theatre, where

famous songs on mythical themes were still being sung by expert singers,more than eight centuries since the rst actor to impersonate EuripidesMedea had own off to Athens in the chariot borrowed from the Sun.In antiquity, when our modern genres of musical theatre, opera and themusical, had not yet been invented, but which relished expert singing to a degree unsurpassed by music lovers today, the relationship of theart of acting to the art of singing was often inextricable. This chap-ter leads into the books reappraisal of the profession of the ancientplayer via an unorthodox but illuminating route, which traces the history

If he could play the cithara Medea volans just might have been a citharoedic performance (Kelly( ) ).


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of the singing actor from democratic Athens to beyond Augustinesday.

This story is co-extensive with ancient theatrical activity, which canstill be documented at Epidauros and Athens in the late fourth century AD, and at Aphrodisias as late as the seventh. Theatrical singers areattested from tragedies of Thespis in the sixth century BC to theByzantinetheatres in which Theodora performed in the sixth century AD, whenthe word tragedy gave rise to what is still the word for song in theGreek language ( tragoudi , see Puchner, this volume). Vocal performancesthrilled audiences not only across many centuries but also across a hugegeographical area, for the Roman empire saw theatres built from Britain

and western Portugal to North Africa and the far east of modern Turkey.Even some small citieshad anOdeion inaddition to one or more theatres(on the fascinating grafti depicting performers drawn on the Odeionat Aphrodisias see further Rouech e, this volume). It is revealing that inthe second century AD Pausanias says that one reason Panopeus scarcelydeserves to be called a city is because it had no theatre at all ( . . );two centuries later, when Eunapius wants to illustrate the primitivism of some Spanish barbarians, he portrays their astonishment at the singing of a travelling tragic actor (see below, Conclusion).

Although it is fashionable to stress that the ancient Greek and Latinwords for a theatrical audience ( theatai , spectatores ) prioritised the act of watching, many ancient authors acknowledge the importance of theaural impact of drama on the spectator. The discussion of tragedyin Aristophanes Frogs focuses extensively on music and rhythm, Platodisapprovingly refers to spectators sympathy with heroes delivering long speeches or singing ( aidontas ) and beating themselves ( Rep. . c e ), Aristotle regards songwriting ( melopoiia ) as a more signicant source of tragic pleasure than the visual dimension ( Poet . b , see Sifakis,this volume), and Plutarch describes the experience of watching tragedyas a wonderful aural and visual experience.

The solo singing voice was particularly associated with Greek tragedy. Early tragic actors roles may have consisted almost entirelyof singing; by Hellenistic times the Athenian guild of actors worshippedDionysus under the title Melpomenos (see Lightfoot, this volume), and

See Green ( a) . ( On the Renown of the Athenians = Mor. C ). By the end of the

fourth century AD, when tragic songs had become dissociated from staged production, it is naturalto Jerome to referin his commentary on Ezechiel to the pleasure of people who listen toeither tragicor comic actors ( vel tragoedos audiunt vel comoedos , . , , Migne, PL vol. ( ) col. ).In the earliest extant tragedy, Aeschylus Persians , King Xerxes entire role is in song or recitative(Hall ( a) ), and it is just possible that some truth lies behind the statement in Philostratus


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boys competed. The Athenians knew many songs by heart hymns,songs to congratulate athletes and military victors, processional songs,

drinking songs, work songs, lullabies, medical and magical incantations,and songs to markcourtship, marriage, birth, and death. Theysang themmore often than modern individuals whose personal repertoire scarcelyextends beyond Happy Birthday and Auld Lang Syne can possibly imagine.Many songs in tragedy (and comedy, see below) are derived from one of these pre-existing genres of ritual or activity song and are in the lyricmetres appropriate to them. But tragedys material was mostly drawnfrom the world of myth, inherited, rather, from epics and from chorallyrics, especially those of Stesichorus.

Tragic poetry is adorned with various rhythms and includes a wealthof metres, observed the Byzantine scholar Psellus. Tragedys innova-tion was to integrate genres into a complicated artistic pattern: spoken verse alternated with various types of sung poetry, performed to the ac-companiment of auloi by both a chorus and individual actors. The tragicactor made use of a metre long associated with marching armies, therecitative anapaest, whosebasic unit is repeated pairs of . Anapaestspredominate at times of physical movement, especially entrances and ex-its such as the airborne departure of Euripides Medea. The anapaesticmetre there indicates that Medea and Jason performed their interchangeto aulos accompaniment in a rhythmical, semi-musical type of vocal de-livery, in antiquity designated by the verb katalegein, and perhaps compa-rable with the intermediate form of enunciation later recommended toChristian psalmodists by Bishop Athanasius. Like rhapsodes and cithar-odes, the tragic actor also needed mastery over the dactylic hexameter,at least when impersonating mythical bards such as Thamyras or Am-phion (see further Wilson, thisvolume).But inadditionhehad to performnew sung metres, especially the excited dochmiac (based on

).

Dochmiacs make no appearance prior to tragedy and virtually disappearafter it, but often characterise the genres most emotionally lacerating moments.

The actor of fth-century tragedy had to sing in a variety of metresin rapid succession, and to negotiate the delicate transitions between

A thousand citizens will have performed every year at the City Dionysia in dithyrambic chorusesalone, even before the tragic and comic choruses are taken into account (West ( a) ).

(Dyck

( ) ).West ( a) .See e.g. Soph. Philoctetes and the comments of West ( a) . This skill would havebeen considered remarkable by Aristoxenus day, when the emphasis on rhythmical intricacyhad been superseded by a love of melody ([Plut.] On Music B C ).


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The singing actors of antiquity

them: the shift between recitative and lyrics was regarded as particu-larly emotive ([Arist.] Probl . . ). Anapaestic and lyric verses repeatedly

alternated with iambic trimeters, and these were spoken. Besides someimportant external evidence, tragic poetry offers internal clues to theway in which the voice was being used; in iambics people constantly usesuch verbs as legein and phrazein in reference to their own speech andthat of their interlocutors, whereas the semantic range referring to lyricutterance, which includes melpein and aidein, is quite different.

Tragedy thus offered the dramatist a palette of vocal techniques withwhich to paint his sound pictures, and certain patterns can be discernedin the way that he handled them. Gods and slaves, for example, rarely

sing lyrics in tragedy, but they do recite anapaests. Sophoclean leads allsing at moments of great emotion, female characters frequently sing,but middle-aged men in Aeschylus and Euripides (with the exception of distressed barbarians) prefer spoken rhetoric to extended lyrics. Thiscomplex metrical and vocal prosopography was unprecedented. Athensinvented tragedy at a time when it was staking claim to be the culturalleader of the Greek world, and it is possible, from a sociological angle,to view tragedys appropriation of metres associated with other placesas Athenian cultural imperialism manifested on the level of form. Butit is equally important to stress the aesthetic achievement represented bytragedys elaborate design.

Expert singers, rhapsodes and citharodes, had been singing Greek myths long before the emergence of the specialist trag oidos : the Iliad ,after all, opens Muse, sing ( aeide ) of the wrath of Achilles. But the termaeidein demonstrates how close an afnity was perceived between theperformances of the epic and the tragic singer, for together with itscognates aeidein provided many of the basic words for singing bothepic and drama in Greek literature, and formed the second half of thecompounds denoting almost all specialist singers, including kithar oidos ,trag oidos and k omoidos . Etymologically related to aeidein are both aud e (thehuman voice, endowed with speech), and a ed on, nightingale, a birdwhose plaintive song brought it into association with lachrymose womenfrom Penelope of the Odysseyonwards ( . ). But it was with female

Two important passages in Aristotle associate the iambic metre with speech ( Poet. a , Rhet . . b ); in Lucians caricatures of trag oidoi , he complains that the performers

contemporary with him even sing their iambics, implying that this practice is a decadentmodern development (see below).

Although Barner ( ) collects some of the Greek tragic terms designating song, muchwork remains to be done on the numerous different words used in tragedy to describe vocalperformance, and on how they might illuminate actors techniques of singing and speaking.See Hall ( a) and Csapo, this volume.Hall ( a) , ; Hall ( a) .


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singing in tragedy that the nightingale, formerly Procne, the infanticidalmother, became most closely connected.

The story of Procnes murder of her son Itys was staged in Sophoclesfamous Tereus (the music of which seems to have been memorable, seebelow) and by the Roman tragedians Livius Andronicus and Accius.Elsewhere tragedy alludes to this myth when describing womens singing.In Aeschylus Agamemnon, for example, Cassandras dochmiac singing islikened by the chorus (also using dochmiacs) to the songof the nightingale( ):

C H O R U S You are crazed, possessed by a god, and singing a tuneless tune about your own fate, like some shrill nightingale, insatiable in lament alas! who in the misery of her heart mourns Itys, Itys, whose death was full of evil for both his parents.

C A S S A N D R A Ah, ah, for the life of the clear-voiced nightingale! Thegods clothedher in winged form, and gave her a sweet life with nothing to cry about,whereas for me there awaits the blow of a two-edged weapon.

The comparison was presumably reinforced by the lost melody, and cer-tainly by the twittering effect produced by the high proportion of shortsyllables in the resolved dochmiacs of this particular interchange; thechorus description of Cassandras melody as a tuneless tune ( nomonanomon ) itself scans as ve short syllables consecutively. Cassandra, how-ever, shifts the focus from the birds voice to her winged body, reminding us that the singing actor playing her is engaged in an emphatically phys-ical activity.

The actor playing Cassandra needed skill in antiphonal singing, whichrequires a solo voice with a timbre distinct from that of the choral groupbut minutely adjusted to its tonality and pace of delivery. Cassandrassung dialogue with the chorus consists of serial pairs of metrical unitsof similar length, which respond strophically. The structured rhythmi-cal character of Aeschylus music is suggested by Dionysus descriptionin Frogs of his melodies as appropriate for someone drawing waterfrom a well ( ). But tragic music evolved alongside that of cithar-ody and dithyrambic choruses, which had already been composed with-out strophic responsion by the middle of the fth century (Arist. Rhet .

. b).In Euripides dateable plays actors songs increasingly replace

strophic responsion with asymmetric, freeform metrical structures,

Segal ( ) . See Valakas, this volume. See also Aeschylus Danaids, who compare their ownsinging with the voice of the nightingale, the wife of Tereus ( Supp. ), and the commentsbelow on Sophocles Electra .


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characterised by repetition of individual words. Euripides astrophicmonodists are mostly self-absorbed women, who use song to express in-

timate andpassionate emotions. Astrophicsong is muchharder to learnthan song in a repeated metre, which is one reason why it was associatedwith the solo voice rather than with choruses ([Arist.] Probl. . ). But italso increased the ornamentation and mimetic element (see Csapo, this volume) and affected the vocal timbre. Timotheus, the citharode mostclosely associated with the New Music inuencing Euripides, differen-tiated his own relaxed, beguiling sound from that of older, out-of-datesingers, the maulers of songs who strain and yell with the far-ringing voices of heralds ( , Persians

PMG , ). A plausible tradition held that the earliest tragedians were star actorsand took the principal roles in their own plays. Sophocles is said tohave played the lead in his own Thamyras , in which this mythical bardperformed hexameters and played the cithara ( Life ; fr. TrGF , seealso Wilson, this volume). Sophocles Thamyras is probably illustrated ona hydria from the middle of the century (g. ). It has the words Euaionis beautiful inscribed over the gure of an agitated woman, probablyThamyras mother Argiope, dancing under the inuence of his music.Since we know that Aeschylus son Euaion was a tragic actor, we may belooking at a picture of characters played in the original production by asinging, strumming Sophocles and by Aeschylus dancing son.

Sophocles is supposed to have given up performing in his own playsbecause of his weak voice ( Life ), a tradition which functioned as anaetiological narrative for the emergence of the specialist tragic singer.Sophocles is also said to have taken the talents of his actors into accountwhen composing their roles ( Life ), and the vocal skills of the availablelead actors (for example, the Tlepolemos who often acted for Sophocles(schol. on Ar. Clouds )) must have inuenced all the tragedians; anycompetent singer, for example, knew the exact range of his own voice and

E.g. IA , / , on which England ( ) comments:probably it was the music which was mainly responsible for this double repetition. On this kindof diction and repetition in Euripidean monodies see Barlow ( b). But Euripides was not theonly tragedian to experiment with the new, freer form of actors song. Io in the Aeschylean PV ( ) is an interesting early example of an astrophic monodist.Damen ( ) . In Electras monody at Orestes , for example, Euripides moves hisactor from strophic to astrophic form at the point where Electras grief moves beyond control tohysteria ( , see Collard ( ) vol. II , ).Rome, Vatican ( IGD , no. III . . ). On the vase and on Euaion see further Green, this volume and Kaimio ( ) .Owen ( ) , .


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Fig. Thamyras and his mother Argiope: played by Sophocles(?) and Aeschylus sonEuaion (Photo: J. R. Green)

needed to have his singing pitched accordingly. Actors who performedalongside star protagonists also had to be able to sing. In Euripides Orestes the deuteragonist who originally played Electra and Helens Phrygianservant, in support of the protagonist Hegelochos Orestes, must havepossessed a remarkable singing voice with a high tessitura. Aeschineshad to sing an antiphonal lament as Sophocles Creon in Antigone (prob-ably a tritagonists role, see Easterling, this volume), but also a striking monody as the blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba (Dem. . ,see g. ).

Callicratidas in Thesleff ( ) . .See further Falkner, this volume. Information from several sources tells us more than usual aboutthe music to Euripides Orestes , an exceptionally popular play on the ancient stage. An importantpapyrus of the third or second century BC (Vienna G , see Pohlmann ( ) ) preservesthe sung melody and accompaniment to seven lines delivered by the chorus ( ), and thereis no reason to suppose that this music was not composed by Euripides himself. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, writing in the Augustan era about the relationship of words to music, seems tohave been able to make a detailed consultation of a score of Euripides Orestes ( On Composition

of Words . . , see Pohlmann ( ) ). And a scholiast happens to have recorded theinformation that the actor playing Electra sang at a very high pitch ( oxeiai ph onei ), appropriate toa dirge, when asking the entering chorus to be quiet (schol. on Or . ). See also Damen ( )

.Stephanis ( ) no. . a.


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Fig. The blinded Polymestor in Euripides Hecuba ( c The


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V I RT U O S O TRA G OID OI

Actors were becoming famous for their virtuoso specialisms by the fourthcentury Nikostratosforhisrecitalof tetrameters to the auloi andhismes-senger speeches, and Theodoros for his natural delivery and femaleroles, which included several with important lyrics, such as SophoclesElectra and Antigone. But it is in the third century that inscriptionsrecording the constitution of theatrical companies at festivals such asthe Delphic Soteria, combined with the Hellenistic Problems attributed to Aristotle, begin to present a clear picture of a new kind of travelling professional actor whose special expertise was in singing. He was to

remain a feature of cultural life in the Mediterranean region for eighthundred years.Travelling professional trag oidoi , if successful in competitions, could en-

joy huge earnings and fame, and be honoured by statues and civic rightsin the cities where they performed. Their only rivals were rhapsodes,and, later, star dancers of pantomime (see below). It is not surprising that a skilled singer might participate in several different types of eventat festivals, for example the Athenian Xenophantos of the rst centuryBC, a rhapsode, tragic actor, and singer of paeans and choruses. The

Xen. Symp. . ; it was proverbial to tell everything like Nikostratos ( Paroemiogr. . ). See alsoCsapo, this volume.Plut. Sympotic Questions - Moralia B, Dem. . (Stephanis ( ) no. ). Theodoros wasalso famous for his performances of female roles in Euripidean tragedy (see Lada-Richards,this volume). On the enormous importance of the public opinion of an actors vocal skills,see Easterling ( ). On actors specialisms see also Green, this volume, Dihle ( ) ,Ghiron-Bistagne ( ) . Other actors may have specialised in male roles: see, for example,the enterprising third-century boxer/actor whose documented (all male) winning roles includedheroes renowned for the physical prowess, such as Heracles and Antaeus (Stephanis ( ) no.

). This impressive person may have been an Arcadian named Apollogenes (see Stephanis

( ) no. ).Gentili ( ) ; Sifakis ( ) .By the late Roman period the theatres came to be dominated by pantomimes and mimes, buta certain diversity of entertainment was maintained, and there are still references to tragicactors in the fourth century ( John Chrysostom, Homily on the Acts of the Apostles , PG . )and even as late as the sixth (Choricius Syn. Mim. , where they are listed with conjurors): seeTheocharidis ( ) . At Byzantium, at any rate, excerpts from old tragedies continued tobe sung by actors who wore high shoes and elaborate costumes, and took both female and maleroles (Theocharidis ( ) ).See e.g. Stephanis ( ) nos. , .Stephanis ( ) no. , see also nos. , . Outside the context of competitive festivals,the distinctions between performers of tragedy and performers of epic must in practice often

have been blurred. See, for example, the travelling professional actor in Achilles Tatius Leucippe and Cleitophon ( . ), of the second century AD. He gave vocal displays of passages from Homer( . . . ). But the performances weretheatrical enough to require props ( ), which the context implies consisted of armour and


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singing profession was often practised by more than one member of thesame family, for example the third-century brothers Ouliades and Aris-

tippos of Miletus, or the Theban rhapsode Kraton and his son Kleon,a trag oidos . Such singers may have begun as infant prodigies, perhapsspecialising in sung childrens roles such as that of Alcestis son in herEuripidean name-play: a boy actor from Cyzicus in the third century AD( pais trag oidos ) was honoured by the citizens of Ephesus.

The performances of trag oidoi , although masked and costumed, mustoften have resembled what we call concerts or recitals rather than the-atrical productions. The nineteenth Aristotelian Problem implies that thegrowing popularity of the trag oidos as entertainer, and the increasing

ascendancy of his solos over choral lyric, resulted from the greater ex-pressive and mimetic possibilities of the solo aria. Hellenistic trag oidoi concentrated the pleasure their performances offered by excerpting themost delicious solo lyric highlights from tragedies. Solo recitals wererst to rival and, together with pantomime, eventually to supersede theperformance of whole tragic texts.

A papyrus of the third century BC shows a programme, for example,which not only consists of excerpted lyrical highlights from Iphigenia in Aulis , but rearranges their order. Another possibility was to extractseveral scenes from different tragedies on the same mythical gure, suchas the excerpts apparently linked by Achilles son Neoptolemus in theOslo papyrus, a beautiful document from which some ancient trag oidos learned the words and melodies for a recital (g. ). A star Samianauletenamed Satyros, after his victory at a Pythian festival (probably in BC ), demonstrated his versatility by offering his audience one song with achorus called Dionysus , and another on a presumably similar theme, fromEuripides Bacchae , which he accompanied on the cithara. A trag oidos ,Kanopos, appears on a papyrus from Oxyrhynchus alongside the auleteEpagathos, who is named as the accompanist to forty odes from six

weapons. They certainly included, for stage murders ( ), a trick dagger with a retractable blade, which saves the heroines life.Stephanis ( ) nos. , (see also nos. ), , .Stephanis ( ) no. . A practice for which there is no rm evidence after the early third century AD (Barnes ( )

, Easterling and Miles ( ) ).Leiden papyrus inv. . Thanks to Martin West for helpful advice on the musical papyri.Gentili ( ) , rst edited byEitrem, Amundsen and Winnington-Ingram ( ). The text,

which contains more than one version of some phrases, may have been written by the musicscomposer (West a) . For further discussion of the possible links between the excerpts inthis papyrus see P ohlmann ( ) .Stephanis ( ) no. .


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Fig. The Oslo papyrus showing words and melodies for a recital of songsabout Neoptolemus (Photo: Adam B ulow-Jacobsen/AIP Archive)

dramas. These seem to have been excerpts from (mostly Euripidean)plays, including Hypsipyle , Medea and Antiope.Tragic singers appear at signicant moments in the literature of the

Second Sophistic. Anecdotes concerning trag oidoi (usually singing thesongs of Euripidean heroines) demonstrate the charisma, status and au-thority these actors could acquire (see further Easterling, this volume).Plutarchs account of the display of the dead Crassus head at a feastin Armenia is enlivened by a sung performance of part of Euripides Bacchae , thus inviting the reader to draw a comparison between the

See Cockle ( ) with plate xv. Cockle notes that one Claudius Epagathus was a member of theembassy of Dionysiac artists to the emperor Claudius in AD ( p. , with references).


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slaughter of Crassus and the murder of Pentheus (the actor was Jason of Tralles, Plut. Life of Crassus . ); another trag oidos anecdote functions

to underline the cultural aspirations of Juba II, a Mauretanian client king of the Roman empire in the early rst century AD (Leonteus of Argossang from Euripides Hypsipyle , Athenaeus . ef).

Despite the ancients voracious appetite for tragic singing, the mostdetailed description of a trag oidos performance is an unattering carica-ture. It is placed by Lucian in the mouth of Lykinos, an advocate of thedanced versions of tragedy offered by pantomime ( On Dancing ):

What a repulsive and at the same time frightful spectacle is a man tricked outto disproportionate stature, mounted upon high clogs, wearing a mask thatreaches above his head, with a mouth that is set in a vast yawn as if he meant toswallow up the spectators! . . . The man himself bawls out ( ), bending backward and forward, sometimes singing even his iambic lines (

) and (what is surely the height of unseemliness) melodising ( ) his calamities, holding himself answerable for nothing but his voice,as everything else has been attended to by the poets, who lived at some time inthe distant past.

However exaggerated, some of these colourful details are illuminating.

The singing actor provided a striking spectacle, wearing a mask witha distortedly gaping mouth, a view the dialogue elaborates by saying that the pantomime dancers masks, with their closed mouths, are muchmore beautiful ( ). This important difference between tragedy and pan-tomime is indeed supported by the depictions of masks on artefacts (seegs. and and Jory, this volume). The information that both wordsand music have been provided by the poets of long ago also accords withother evidence from Lucians period, which implies that melodies werestill in circulation which were by (or at least believed to be by) Euripides

and Sophocles.In the rst half of the second century AD the Milesians dedicated

an inscription to their fellow countryman G. Ailios Themison. Theycommemorated his victories at the Isthmian and other games, adding that he was the rst and only individual to set Euripides, Sophoclesand Timotheus to music of his own. Ailios might simply have usedthemes from these famous poets in original new vocal works, but Lattewas probably correct in arguing that he provided his own music to old,

Translation adapted from Harmon ( ). . The inscription

was published by Broneer ( ) = Stephanis ( ) no. . See also Wilson, this volume.


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And the most of what they give us comes from ancient times ( ), andfrom much wiser men than those of the present. In the case of comedyeverything is kept; in the case of tragedy only the strong parts ( ),it would seem, remain I mean the iambics and portions of these that they stillgive ( ) in our theatres but the more delicate parts ( )have fallen away, that is, the lyric parts.

Dios context in this dialogue is Cyzicus, a Milesian colony in whichG. Ailios Themison himself may have performed a few decades later. Diostates that only selected iambic portions of tragedy were being given.The context of the dialogue, which is comparing music to oratory and isinspired by the visit of a citharode to Cyzicus, suggests that these iambic

parts are being sung , and sung, moreover, to music believed to be thework of the original poets.

So where did singers (other than the innovative Ailios) get the musicfor their iambics from? Ancient tunes were repetitive and conformed totraditional melodic patterns. In the current state of our evidence wemust imagine that singers performing passages from old tragedy usedoriginal (or at least plausibly old-sounding) and recognisable scales andcadences from the lyrics and recitative, somehow transferring them tothe different rhythm of the iambics; Roman connoisseurs, at any rate,could tell fromthe notes producedby the rst breathof the accompanying pipe whether a tragedy was Antiope or Andromache .

T H E A RT O F T H E TRAG O IDOS

Papyrus discoveries allow us to sketch in outline the technical demandsmade on tragic singers. A fragment of a scene from a post-classicaltragedy on the fall of Troy implies that trag oidoi could be competentat musical improvisation. Cassandra deliriously describes Hectors lastbattle against Achilles, but the papyrus includes the word song ( )on seven occasions before verses probably delivered by her. These seemalmost certain to be musical directions to the actor playing Cassandrato improvise sung preludes to the words he had to memorise.

Comotti ( b) . The papyri of Euripidean music show repeated playing up and down withinthe cluster of notes close together in pitch.Cicero, Acad. . = fr. in Jocelyn ( ), who believes, however, that Cicero is referring to theatrical displays at, for example, funerals, rather than fully staged performances of entiretragedies (pp. ).TrGF fr. adesp. = P Oxy. , rst edited by Coles ( ). Perhaps the improvised singing consisted of the type of exclamations Cassandra delivers in Aeschylus seminal Agamemnon


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However outlandish the lyric snatches improvised byHellenistic actorsplaying Cassandra, most of the original music of fth-century tragedy

had used the manly enharmonic scale. This means that the tragicsingerwill havesungmelodies based around the tonic and the fth, whichrepeatedly contrasted tiny steps in pitch with a larger one of approxi-mately a major third. Euripides and Agathon began using the chromaticscale, which somewhat evened out the gaps between the notes and wasregarded as more effeminate than the enharmonic. Both these scalesgradually gave way to the diatonic, which dominated in the Romanperiod, and which, since its notes were at more equal distances apart,more closely resembled the modern western scale. But the tragedians

old enharmonic remained in use to accompany their works, even thoughonly the most outstanding musicians could attempt it, since the tinyintervals it entailed demanded strict precision.

The melodies sungby tragic actors generally rose and then fell again inpitch, rather than beginning with a descent. While singing the same noterepeatedly was rare, most tunes predominantly moved stepwise in thescale to an adjacent note, and thus would now seem to be continuously inmotion (which perhaps illuminates the comparison with the nightingale),sinuous and writhing. In the tragic melodies preserved on papyri theoccasional leaps or dives of up to a ninth, on the other hand, seemdesigned to create an emphatic special effect. An important musicalpapyrus at Yale contains a dramatic Greek lyric song performed bya highly skilled baritone of the imperial era, quite possibly a trag oidos ;

(e.g. , ; see Gentili ( ) ). Coles ( ) , suggests the possibility that the musicaldirection is not contemporary with the composition of the play but a later interpolation whichreects later methods of production. However, at Cyclops , the Laurentian manuscripts stagedirection to the actor playing Polyphemus to sing from within ( ) may go back as faras Euripides (Seaford ( ) ).It was seen as a paradox that martial peoples like the Aetolians, who used the diatonic scale,were more manly and courageous than singers in tragedy, who have [always] been accustomedto singing in the enharmonic (so the classical polemic on music preserved in the third-centuryBC Hibeh papyrus . , edited by Grenfell and Hunt ( ), pt. no. , pp. , col. ii,translated by Barker ( ) vol. I, ). The enharmonic divided the octave into two tetrachords(in modern terms, say, e to a and b to e ), but within the tetrachords bunched the other availablenotes just above the bottom at tiny intervals of only about a quarter-tone, leaving a big gap abovethem: getting from e to f took two steps, but from f to a only one. Aristid. Quint., On Music . , translated in Barker ( ) vol. II , . The difcult melodiesof tragic songs were made easier to perform by the supporting auloi : it was believed that too manyinstruments obscured a voice, but auloi or a lyre could dene a sung melody ([Arist.] Probl. . ,

. , see also Euripides Electra ). In the fragment of the musical score from Euripides Orestes (see above n. ), the instrumental notes suggest that the two pipes for the most part played thesame note, but occasionally diverged to play at an interval of a fourth (West ( a) ).West ( a) , .


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the melody involved a sudden leap down no less than an octave and athird. The editor of the papyrus argues that the sudden descent in pitch

was designed to represent the voice change caused by spirit possession,and that it marked the beginning of the rst-person representation of a prophet or prophetess utterances. This orid song is most unusualin requiring its performer to cover two octaves; most melodies seem tohave been composed within the compass of little more than one. Somerecently published papyrus fragments, which may record the vocal musicto a tragedy on Achilles by Sophocles or his homonymous grandson,reveal a striking tendency for the melody to oscillate between two notesseparated by an interval ranging between a semitone and a fth. It

is possible that such oscillation suggested the use of the verb elelizesthai (trill or quiver) used in sung descriptions of the nightingales song inboth Aristophanes Birds ( , see further below) and Euripides Helen( ).

The songs sung in these scales were in one of the musical modes,which entailed recognisable ways of selecting notes (probably with dis-tinctive melodic formulae and cadences), and a particular tessitura. Theexciting Phrygian mode, which Sophocles is supposed to have introducedto tragedy, required high-pitched singing. The dignied Dorian wasoften used in tragic laments, the emotive Mixolydian was used for manychoruses, and the soft Ionian, compared in Aeschylus Supplices with thenightingales song ( ), is associated by Aristophanes with the seductivesongs of prostitutes ( Eccl . ). The active Hypophrygian and the mag-nicent Hypodorian, introduced by the innovative tragedian Agathon,were not used by choruses, but only by actors playing heroic roles; virtuoso trag oidoi thus needed to be able to sing in special (and perhapsspecially difcult) modes which distinguished their solo singing from thecollective choral voice.

Songs seem to have been sung at a speed similar to that at which theywould havebeen intuitively spoken: whena Greek poet wanted his poetryto be delivered at a slower or faster pace, he used more long or shortsyllables respectively. These two types of syllable provided the two basicnote values of Greek vocal music as they did Greek speech, one twiceas long as another in modern terms, a crotchet and a quaver. Most

Johnson ( ) .West ( ) . These musical fragments are inscribed on the other side of cartonnage scraps

containing tragic lyrics.[Arist.] Probl. . . See also the Byzantine treatise on tragedy edited by Browning ( ) par. .West ( a) , .


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Greek music did not stretch out individual words by spreading theirsyllables over more than one note. Euripides, however, experimented

with this kind of ornamentation, a development parodied in Frogs wherethe verb heiliss o(twirl) becomes heieieieieiliss o( , ). This ornamentbecame popular for proper names, where a syllable is sometimes spreadover several notes. In a papyrus scrap of a dramatic lament for Ajax, hisname is sung Ai-ai-i-an rather than Ai-an.

Although Aeschylean tragedy provides occasional internal musicaldirections, the early trag oidos learned his tunes by hearing other men in theatrical families (see above) a father, brother, or uncle sing them.But as traditional melodic forms were replaced by more modern music

after the fth century BC, it became important to record the music totragedy. From at least as early as the fourth century Greek singers had asystem of musical notation based on a modication of the Attic alphabet.Signicantly, the papyri containing literary texts with musical notationsare almost all copies of texts of drama , presumably designed for use bytrag oidoi and associated performers instrumentalists, a chorus, or atheatrical company.

Tragedy sometimes makes bodily demands on its singing actors; theactor playing Hecuba, for example, had to sing some of her lamentsfrom a prone position on the ground (see Valakas, this volume). Yet inancient visual art singersstand erect, with their heads thrownback, as if toopen up the throat and windpipe. Theophrastus says that when peoplesing high notes they draw in the ribs and stretch out the windpipe,narrowing them by force. The mouth was also opened wide: in anekphrasis the citharode Amphion shows his teeth a little, just enoughfor a singer. The tragic actors mask had a gaping mouth to allow thesound to emerge, and the actors own mouth to be visible (see Green, this volume). The convention of the mask may have survived partly because itconcealed the facial distortion necessary to the production of a voice big

West ( a) , .Supplices , for example, suggests the use of the Ionian mode. On the musical modes see alsoWilson, this volume. Aural lessons in both song and instrumental playing appear on fth-century vases, such as thefamous kylix by Douris in Berlin (Berlin , see Comotti ( b) ). Henderson ( ) n. ,observes that a singer reads from a scroll on a vase of about BC, but points out that there isno evidence that the scroll contains any notation other than words.Comotti ( b) (see e.g. this chapter, g. ).

He adds that when singing low notes they widen the windpipe to shorten the throat (Porphyry,Commentary on Ptolemys Harmonics , translated in Barker ( ) vol. II , ).Philostratus, Imagines . . I owe this reference to Peter Wilson.


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enough to ll outdoor theatres, although a good actor could exploit themask to intensify theawesome impression hemade: Prudentius compares

the mendacious but potent orator with a tragic singer ( tragicus cantor )who conceals his face beneath a hollow wooden mask, but breathessome great crime through its gaping hole ( hiatus ), ( Contra Symmachum

. ).The sound produced by singers was admired for its loudness, res-

onance, clarity, precision, and security of hold on notes (Plato, Rep.. c ; Arist. De aud. a ). Voices are admired for being sweet

or honey-like; the nightingale in Aristophanes Birds is said to sing aliquid melody in a clean voice ( ); the most common epithet of

praise is ligus or liguros , which refers to a clear sound, free from roughness,and is also used to describe the sound made by cicadas, birds, orators,auloi , lyres and panpipes. According to Isidore of Seville in the seventhcentury, who drew on earlier authors, the perfect voice is male andhigh, to be adequate to the sublime; loud, to ll the ear; sweet, to soothethe minds of the hearers.

Isidore says that women, like children and the sick, have thin voices,which lack sufcient breath and sound like stringed rather than windinstruments. Such a perception of female vocal weakness may partlyexplain the dearth of women dramatic singers, despite the extensiveevidence for ancient female instrumentalists and dancers. The bestcandidate for a female trag oidos is the diva Athenion, celebrated in anepigram by Dioscorides for her stunning performance of a work entitledthe Horse ( AP V. ). This just might have been the Greek prototypeof Livius Andronicus tragedy Equus Trojanus , in which case Athenionmight have sung the role of Cassandra. But other evidence impliesthat Athenions Horse was more likely a concert aria. The heroine of thesecond-century novel Leucippe and Cleitophon is able to perform, in privateat least, both epic and lyric songs. A unique musical papyrus fragment

Hunningher ( ) .West ( a) .Etymologiarum sive originum libri xx . . Isidore proposes that there are ten categories of singing voice: the sweet (ne, full, loud and high), penetrating (those which can sustain a note evenly anunusually long time and continuously ll a place, like trumpets), thin, fat, sharp, hard, harsh,blind, prettily exible ( vinnola from vinnus , a softly curling lock of hair), and perfect.See Webb, this volume, and e.g. the elder Senecas report of women dancing on private pan-tomime stages all over Rome ( Q Nat . . ). The Kleopatra listed with tragic and comic actorsat Delos in BC was not an actress but a specialist trick dancer (Webster ( ) ).Rostagni ( ) vols. . , and . , .

. ; she sings part of the sixteenth book of the Iliad and a lyric in praise of the rose. See alsoTarsias autobiographical monody in The Story of Apollonius King of Tyre ( ).

Documents

Greek and Roman Actors