Then there’s the voice. Even experienced actors can all too easily sound like they’re mimicking their mother after too many cups of wine. Lysicrates could find the right tones for any woman from a slender, soulful nymph to a bawdy brothel madam with bosom and buttocks so fat with padding she’s as broad as she is tall.
As soon as I’d had his promise to play his part, I knew that Zosime, Melina and Kleio wouldn’t be scorning the women in my play as foolish caricatures.
‘Why are you standing sentry?’
Lysicrates grinned. ‘The other choruses are all trying to see our costumes. No one knows what to make of The Builders as a title for a play.’
‘Really?’ So Aristarchos was right. I hoped that was a good omen.
‘Not that there’s much to see,’ Lysicrates chuckled.
I surveyed the assembled men helping each other secure their masks. They all wore the customary body-stockings from the neck down, and Aristarchos’s coin had paid for tightly woven cloth. No seams or folds sagged or drooped to embarrass this chorus with catcalls from the audience. Over those stage skins, each man wore a plain tunic, some of them smudged with paint, others powdered with plaster and stone dust, a few stained with clay.
‘Good day to you!’ Chrysion appeared.
I glanced meaningfully at his groin. ‘There hasn’t been anything to see, I hope?’
‘Everyone knows to be discreet,’ he assured me. ‘No one will suspect a thing until the performance.’
I could only hope so. ‘Have you seen Euxenos’s costumes?’
‘His Butterflies?’ Chrysion snorted. ‘Very gaudy but hardly practical. If that chorus gets through their first dance without treading on each other’s wings, I will eat Lysicrates’s wig.’
‘Really?’ My spirits rose. ‘Have you drawn the lots to see who goes first? Where are we in the procession?’
‘Third. Now—’ he shooed me away ‘—we’ve got everything in hand. Go and see our patron arrive. Say a prayer to Dionysus Eleutherios.’
Menekles snapped urgent fingers from the far side of the chorus to attract my attention. ‘Go and find out who the judges will be!’
‘Of course.’ I hurried to the eastern side of the stage. Every head in the crowd was turning westwards, hearing the dulcet song of the double flutes. The patrons’ procession was approaching.
Chapter Eight
Today’s rites had none of last night’s ribaldry. The Dionysia’s patrons were to be honoured for pouring out their silver like wine in tribute to the gods, bringing glory to our city. Ten of Athens’ wealthiest men had financed the men’s choirs from each voting tribe and ten more had financed the boys’. Comedy was picking the pockets of five others, one for each play, while Tragedy gravely accepted tribute from a further three.
Now all those well-born men could breathe easier knowing this public service meant their fortunes were safe from the Archons for this year and the next. Better yet, they wouldn’t be called on to finance a trireme; a public honour incurring considerably greater cost than staging a play, and winning far less widespread acclaim.
Well-born youths and girls carried offerings of oil and wine. Others held baskets of bread and grain. They led the procession across the dancing floor to Dionysos’s statue. The masked effigy stood there, inscrutable.
Aristarchos and the other noble patrons were entering the theatre. He walked with calm composure, as though having thousands of citizens stare at him was of no particular consequence.
His white tunic of pristine, pleated linen was sumptuously embroidered with tiny flowers and leaves in vivid blues and greens. I wondered if that was his wife’s or daughters’ work, to show the city their pride and devotion. More likely, I suspected, some talented slave had spent her last few months bent over that cloth with needle and thread. Gold plaques adorned his broad leather belt, doubtless embossed with mythological scenes to impress those who got close enough to see. The tunic’s hem brushed his equally expensive shoes, the sunlight catching their bronze-tipped laces. A formal cloak with generous folds was elegantly draped around his broad shoulders, deep-dyed the colour of a dusky sea. Phytalids need never skimp on fabric out of consideration for the cost. Crowned with the golden diadem that a festival patron’s generosity earns from the grateful city, Aristarchos carried his finery with enviable poise. I suspect he’d practised. Some of those other influential men had doubtless looked very fine standing before their admiring households, but after processing across the city they mostly arrived at the theatre looking like an unmade bed, clutching at slipping swathes.
What would such an untidy display do for their standing, the next time jurors of modest means listened to them prosecute a case in the law courts? What would traders and craftsmen remember, when these men argued for some new law proposed in the People’s Assembly? This chance to impress Athens’ citizens, to convince us that men of substance should be heeded and obeyed, was the unspoken repayment for their coin.
For the moment, these patrons were courteously ushered to their marble seats of honour, already softened with cushions. Now everyone heard the clacking hooves and sedate murmurs of the cattle brought for sacrifice before Dionysos’s shrine. The consecrated beasts, their horns decorated with spring flowers and trailing ribbons, were carefully guided through the theatre and past the god’s statue. The audience nudged each other, eyes bright as they anticipated the feasting to come. These were fine, plump beasts, reared in peace and plenty now the strife of recent years with Euboea, Boeotia and the Spartans was over.
Eagle-eyed theatre hands darted out with shovels and brushes to remove unseemly traces left by the cattle as the Archon for Religious Affairs rose
