Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens Part 2

puts in aeschylus.

He begins again with the opening lines of another

"Cadmus, Agenor's offspring, setting sail From Sidon's city--"

"Lost a little flask."

Then he tries with the first lines of a third

"Great Bacchus, who with wand and fawn-skin decked, In pine-groves of Parna.s.sus, plies the dance, And leads the revel--"

"Lost a little flask."

The reader may have had enough. It will suffice to give the result of the contest. All the tests have been applied. Euripides, as a last resource, reminds the judge that he has sworn to take him back with him.

Bacchus replies:

"My tongue hath sworn; yet aeschylus I choose."

A cruel cut, for it is an adaptation of one of the poet's own lines (from the Hippolytus) when the hero, taunted with the oath that he had taken and is about to violate, replies:

"My tongue hath sworn it, but my mind's unsworn."

When the curtain rose from the floor and hid the last scene, it was manifest that the "Frogs" of Aristophanes, son of Philippus, of the tribe Pandionis, and the township Cydathenaea, was a success. Of course there were malcontents among the audience. Euripides had a good many partisans in young Athens. They admired his ingenuity, his rhetoric, and the artistic quality of his verse, in which beauty for beauty's sake, quite apart from any moral purpose, seemed to be aimed at. They were captivated by the boldness and novelty of his treatment of things moral and religious. aeschylus they considered to be old-fashioned and bigoted.

Hence among the seats allotted to the young men there had been some murmurs of dissent while the performance was going on, and now there was a good deal of adverse criticism. And there were some among the older men who were scarcely satisfied. The fact was that Comedy was undergoing a change, the change which before twenty more years had pa.s.sed was to turn the Old Comedy into the Middle and the New, or to put the matter briefly, to change the Comedy of Politics into the Comedy of Manners.

"This is poor stuff," said an old aristocrat of this school, "poor stuff indeed, after what I remember in my younger days. Why can't the man leave Euripides alone, especially now he is dead, and won't bother us with any more of his plays? There are plenty of scoundrel politicians who might to much more purpose come in for a few strokes of the lash.

But he daren't touch the fellows. Ah! it was not always so. I remember the play he brought out eighteen years ago. The 'Knights' he called it.

That was something like a Comedy! Cleon was at the very height of his power, for he had just made that lucky stroke at Pylos[6]. But Aristophanes did not spare him one bit for that. He could not get any one to take the part; he could not even get a mask made to imitate the great man's face. So he took the part himself, and smeared his face with the lees of wine. Cleon was there in the Magistrates' seats. I think we all looked at him as much as we looked at the stage. Whenever there was a hard hit--and, by Bacchus, how hard the hits were!--all the theatre turned to see how he bore it. He laughed at first. Then we saw him turn red and pale--I was close by him and I heard him grind his teeth. Good heavens! what a rage he was in! Well, that is the sort of a play I like to see, not this splitting words, and picking verses to pieces, just as some schoolmaster might do."

But, in spite of these criticisms, the greater part of the audience were highly delighted with what they had seen and heard. The comic business, with its broad and laughable effects, pleased them, and they were flattered by being treated as judges of literary questions. And the curious thing was that they were not unfit to be judges of such matters.

There never was such a well-educated and keen-witted audience in the world. They knew it, and they dearly liked to be treated accordingly.

The judges only echoed the popular voice when at the end of the festival they bestowed the first prize upon Aristophanes.

One criticism, strange to say, no one ever thought of making--and yet, to us, it seems the first, the most obvious of all criticisms, and that is that the play was horribly profane. This cowardly, drunken, sensual Bacchus--and he is ten times worse in the original than I have ventured to make him here--this despicable wretch was one of the G.o.ds whom every one in the audience was supposed to worship. The festival which was the occasion of the theatrical exhibition was held in his honor, his altar was the centre round which the whole action of every piece revolved. And yet he was caricatured in this audacious manner, and it did not occur to anyone to object! Verily the religion of the Greeks sat very lightly on their consciences, and we cannot wonder if it had but small effect on their lives.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] According to our reckoning B. C. 406.

[2] It was not actually finished till twenty-three years later.

[3] Euripides had died a few months before.

[4] The Athenians used to inflict the penalty of death by a draught of hemlock.

[5] For the "Crows" in the original. "Going to the crows" was the first equivalent for our "Going to the dogs." The "Isle of Dogs" is a wellknown spot near London.

[6] When he captured the Spartan garrison of the Island of Sphacteria, B. C. 425.

CHAPTER II.

NEWS FROM THE FLEET.

I antic.i.p.ated the course of my story when I spoke of the first prize being adjudged to the comedy exhibited by Aristophanes. There were various competing plays--how many we do not know, but the t.i.tles and authors of two that won the second and third prizes have been preserved--and all those had of course to be performed before a decision could be made. Two or three days at least must have pa.s.sed before the exhibition was at an end.

The next compet.i.tor had certainly reason to complain of his ill-luck.

Just before the curtain fell for the opening scene of his comedy an incident occurred which made the people little disposed to listen to anything more that day. The spectators had just settled themselves in their places, when a young officer hastily made his way up to the bench where the magistrates were seated, and handed a roll to the president.

The occurrence was very unusual. It was reckoned almost an impiety to disturb the festival of Bacchus with anything of business; only matters of the very gravest importance could be allowed to do it. The entrance of the young man, happening as it did, just in the pause of expectation before the new play began, had been generally observed. Every one could see from his dress that he was a naval officer, and many knew him as one of the most promising young men in Athens. "News from the fleet,"

was the whisper that ran through the theatre, and there were few among the thousands there a.s.sembled to whom news from the fleet did not mean the life or death of father, brother, or son. The president glanced at the doc.u.ment put into his hands, and whispering a few words to the messenger, pointed to a seat by his side. All eyes were fastened upon him. (The magistrates, it may be explained, occupied one of the front or lowest rows of seats, and were therefore more or less in view of the whole theater, which was arranged in the form of a semicircle, with tier upon tier of benches rising upon the slope of the hill on the side of which the building was constructed.) When a moment afterwards, the curtain was withdrawn, scarcely a glance was directed to the stage. The action and the dialogue of the new piece were absolutely lost upon what should have been an audience, but was a crowd of anxious citizens, suddenly recalled from the shows of the stage to the realities of life.

The president now carefully read the doc.u.ment and pa.s.sed it on to his colleagues. Some whispered consultations pa.s.sed between them. When at the end of the first act a change of scenery caused a longer pause than usual the president quietly left the theatre, taking the bearer of the despatch with him. Some of the other magistrates followed him, the rest remaining behind because it would have been unseemly to leave the official seats wholly untenanted while the festival was still going on.

This proceeding increased the agitation of the people, because it emphasized the importance of the news that had arrived. Some slipped away, unable to sit quietly in their places and endure the suspense, and vaguely hoping to hear something more outside. Among those that remained the buzz of conversation grew louder and louder. Only a few very determined play-goers even pretended to listen to what was going on upon the stage. Meanwhile the unfortunate author, to whom, after all, the fate of his play was not less urgent a matter than the fate of the city, sat upon his prompter's stool--the author not uncomonly did the duty of prompter--and heartily cursed the bad luck which had distracted in so disastrous a way the attention of his audience.

When at last, to the great relief of everyone concerned, the performance was brought to a conclusion, the young officer told his story, supplementing the meagre contents of the despatch which he had brought, to a full conclave of magistrates, a.s.sembled in one of the senate-rooms of the Prytaneum or Town-hall of Athens. I may introduce him to my readers as Callias, the hero of my story.

Many of the details that follow had already been given by Callias, but as he had to repeat them for the benefit of the magistrates who had stopped behind in the theatre, I may as well put them all together.

"We know," said the president, "that Conon was beaten in a battle in the harbor of Mitylene. So much we heard from Hippocles, a very patriotic person by the way, though he is an alien. He has a very swift yacht that can outstrip any war-ship in Greece, and often gives us very valuable intelligence. Do you know him?"

"Yes," said Callias, flushing with pleasure, for indeed he knew and respected Hippocles greatly, "I know him very well."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE THEATER OF DIONYSUS AT THE PRESENT DAY.]

"Well, to go on," resumed the president. "So much we know, but no more.

Tell us exactly how Conon fared in the battle."

"Sir," answered the young man, "he lost thirty ships."

"And the crews," asked the president.

"They escaped; happily they were able to get to land."

"Thank Athene for that;" and a murmur of relief ran round the meeting.

"And the other forty--he had seventy, I think, in all?" Callias nodded a.s.sent.

"What happened to the forty?"

"They were hauled up under the walls when the day went against us."

"Now tell us exactly what has been going on since."

"The Spartans blockaded the harbor, having some of their ships within, and some without. Our general saw that it was only a matter of time when he should have to surrender. The Spartans had four times as many ships, the ships not, perhaps, quite as good as his, but the crews, I am afraid, somewhat better."

"Shade of Themistocles," murmured one of the magistrates, "that it should come to this--the Spartan crews 'somewhat better' than ours. But I am afraid that it is only too true."