Greece & Rome, Vol. 47, No. 2, October 2000

THE AUDIENCES OF NEW COMEDY

By VINCENT J. ROSIVACH

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.1 This way of thinking assumes that payment for attending theatre performances (the so-called theorikon) was discontinued along with other payments for 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 theorikon payments, is reasonable enough, but the second assumption, that the poor therefore stopped coming to the theatre, is more problematic.

In the first place, it is anachronistic to think of theorikon payments as 'an indemnity for the time which the theatre took from remunerative work'.2 Modern factory workers and the like, whose labour is sold by the hour or the day, lose wages if they take time off to go to the theatre, but pre-industrial labour (paid for by the piece) and farm labour in general is far more flexible: what is not done one day can in most cases be made up by working harder or longer on the next. If, on the other hand, we think of the theorikon as a subsidy to cover the cost of admission to the theatre, the modest fee of two obols3 was hardly a burden for all but the poorest of Athenians, especially when we remember that new plays were performed (and an admission fee paid) on only a few days each year (four or five days during the Greater Dionysia and probably only two during the Lenaia).4

Indeed, it is quite possible that there was no admission fee at all at the Lenaia: our sources speak of theorikon payments only for the Dionysia and the Panathenaia (at the latter there were only musical contests but no dramatic performances).5 There is no mention in our sources of theorikon payments for the Lenaia, a silence which is difficult to explain in view of the expansion of the theorikon, despite its name, to other, 'non-spectator' events6 - unless, that is, no payments were made for the Lenaia because there was no admission fee there to subsidize.

THE AUDIENCES OF NEW COMEDY

Nor is it even certain that the audiences of New Comedy still had to pay two obols at the City Dionysia.7 According to Libanios (Dem. 1 hypoth. 4) the institution of admission fees dates to a time when the auditorium for theatrical performances still consisted of wooden bleachers (evAivwv avp1e1rT7ry1tevcv lKpiwv), before there was a stone

theatre; and, in the same vein, a scholion on Demosthenes 1.1 (lf Dilts, lines 30-1) tells us that the admission fee was paid to the arkhitekton 'because they did not then have a stone theatre' (ou3S yap etXOV TOt O&eapov BSdl Ahwov KarTeaKEvaa(LEvov). The implication of these statements would seem to be that the admission fee was intended to cover the expenses of the contractor (arkhitekton) who maintained the wooden bleachers.8 But if the purpose of the admission fee was to pay for the annual (re)construction of bleachers in the Theatre of Dionysos, then the contrast between wooden bleachers and stone theatres in both the Demosthenic scholion and in Libanios should also mean that admission fees were no longer charged once the permanent stone theatre of Lykurgos was completed, some time before his death in 324.9

There is no reason, then, to doubt that New Comedy remained mass entertainment, with admission either free or at a modest fee of two obols, hardly enough to keep all but the poorest Athenians from attending. Whatever the explanation may be for the more refined manner of New Comedy, it is not because only 'the better sort' could afford to attend its performances.

NOTES

1. Perhaps the most prominent statement of this view is in A. W. Gomme and F. H. Sandbach, Menander: A Commentary (Oxford, 1973), 22, n. 1; see also F. H. Sandbach, The Comic Theatre of Greece and Rome (New York, 1977), 69. The view can be traced back at least as far as W. S. Ferguson, Hellenistic Athens, an Historical Survey (London, 1911), 73-5, and it has more recently appeared in Ch. Habicht's new standard history of Hellenistic Athens, Athen: die Geschichte der Stadt in hellenistischer Zeit (Mtinchen, 1995), 107. A. Blanchard, Essai sur la composition des comedies de Menandre (Paris, 1983), 387-8, 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' (ev royv r votv ofgohotv, 18.28); see also Dem. 13.10. Various sources speak of a theorikon payment of one drachma (Philokh. 328 F 33; Sud. s.v. OEWptKa, Hesykh. s.v. SpaXt7 XaAa4~Jaa, schol. in Aeskhin. 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 arkhitekton and one for sustenance (trophe), which is apparently a misunderstanding of the payment of a full drachma for the two-obol admission (on the arkhitekton see further below). Actual production costs of the theatre perform- ances continued to be paid for by khoregoi (eventually replaced with a single agonothetes, probably in 310 or 309); admission fees seem never to have gone toward defraying the costs of production (cf. Blanchard [n. 1], 388).

170

THE AUDIENCES OF NEW COMEDY 171

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

5. Dionysia and Panathenaia: Hesykh. s.v. 0EwpCKa XpnLaTa; Dionysia: Philinos (Athenian orator = RE s.v. Philinos 4, second half of fourth century) frag. 3 Sauppe in Harp. s.v. OECOpLKa, Sud. s.v. OECWPLKa; 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 theorikon.

6. Els ras copTad, Dem. 1.20; l -r'sE r& a OEas Kat Els ras Ovaoia Kai Els ras copras'; Liban. Dem. 1 hypoth. 5; Harp. s.v. OEpLKad; Sud. s.w. OEWPLKOV, OEOWpKOV Kat OEWptlK7.

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).

8. Cf. Pickard-Cambridge (n. 4), 266, who compares IG 22 1176, which similarly speaks of contractors constructing seating in the theatre in the Peiraieus.

9. An arkhitekton 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 arkhitekton/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.