Though after seeing Strata’s Thracians yesterday, I’d been wondering if Aristarchos had picked up some hint from their play’s patron. Had Lamachos said something indiscreet over a fourth or fifth serving of some choice vintage at an aristocratic banquet? If so, I was grateful Aristarchos had been there to hear it.
Even before a few cups of wine, a festival audience wouldn’t have seen much difference between a chorus of red-headed barbarians from Thrace and my Achaeans meeting copper-topped characters in Taurica. When a play offers the upper benches something they’ve already seen, a shower of nuts, or worse, is pretty much guaranteed. The competition’s judges aren’t overly impressed either, to many a hapless playwright’s discredit.
As the chorus’s first song drew to a close, with everyone note-perfect and precisely in step, I knotted my hands together. Now for Lysicrates’s entrance.
Here she came. Egeria, sensuous, seductive and, as far as Thersites was concerned, completely terrifying. He stood there quaking as she greeted the astonished Achaeans in the name of all Etruscans. Then she explained, in precise and provocative detail, exactly what bedroom talents the local women expected from these prospective husbands who had just washed up on their shore.
Not that I believe for a moment the overblown tales you hear about the western barbarians. Their women train in gymnasiums alongside their men, all of them unashamedly naked? Husbands and wives alike see nothing wrong in taking lovers to their beds in full view of anyone passing by?
But such nonsense makes for a good bawdy story and that’s what a Dionysia audience likes. Even the ones who pretend to prefer Pindar and mourn the loss of his high-flown odes. Everyone was laughing now, from highest seats to lowest, and even though I knew every punchline, I found myself grinning.
As Egeria chased Thersites off stage, Meriones turned to his loyal crew, aghast. ‘We had better decide for ourselves how our new city is to be ruled, and quickly, if we don’t want to find ourselves under the thumb of a woman like that!’
‘They sound as scary as the Spartans,’ Chrysion said with a shudder.
‘Perhaps we should fall into step with the Spartans!’ Inspired, Meriones brandished his spear. ‘Let’s conquer these tribes and make serfs of them all! What do you say to that, lads?’
But the chorus was all standing still with their arms folded, emphatically shaking their heads.
‘Lads?’ he pleaded.
‘You want to start more fighting? When we’ve finally arrived in a place where we can enjoy some peace and quiet?’
Chrysion led the chorus in loud disapproval of all Meriones’s arguments in favour of returning to war, not to mention scorning the Spartans’ unrelenting regime of discipline and drill with precious little sex.
‘Then I must rule you myself.’ Admitting defeat for his initial proposal, Meriones struck a heroic pose that could have come off any pot in Menkaure’s workshop. He stood with his spear drawn back for throwing and his other arm outstretched. ‘Thereafter my sons will rule over your sons, and their sons will govern after them, down through the endless generations!’
Thersites scurried back on stage. ‘What about my sons?’
‘What about them?’ Meriones demanded, affronted.
‘Who’s to say they won’t be brighter than yours?’ Thersites challenged him.
‘I don’t think there’s much danger of that.’ Meriones looked in the direction Egeria had gone. ‘Not if I find them a mother like that one.’
‘Oh, you think you could handle a wife like that?’ Thersites mocked.
‘After ten years sitting in a tent outside Troy with Achilles sulking because he didn’t get all the pretty girls for himself? I’d like to handle her often as possible.’ Meriones cupped his hands lewdly in front of his chest. ‘I like a strong-willed woman.’
‘So did Agamemnon,’ Thersites pointed out. ‘That didn’t turn out so well for him. I hear Clytemnestra cut him down to size with an axe.’
The audience laughed as the actors bickered for a while about the merits and drawbacks of hereditary leadership. I hadn’t intended to make this a particular theme, but Aristarchos had encouraged me to draw out this scene for longer and longer until, once again, Meriones found all his arguments had been undermined.
‘Never mind that,’ he said testily. ‘If we’re debating who’s best suited to rule here, then who’s led this expedition from the very first? Who slew Phereclos, son of Tecton, with this very spear on the plains of Troy?’
‘Not with that very spear,’ Thersites countered. ‘You left your first one sticking in Deiphobus’s shield and had to go back to your tent for another one.’
‘Never mind that,’ Meriones said testily. ‘I still killed Phereclos.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And Adamas, son of Asios.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And Harpalion, son of Pylaemenes.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘And Laogonos, son of Onetor.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Who won the archery competition at Patroclos’s funeral games?’ Meriones preened.
‘Yes, but how good are you at keeping men alive?’ Thersites squared up to him, truculent.
‘A very good question while we’re stranded here on this barren shore,’ Chrysion confided to the audience before turning to his fellow Achaeans. ‘Here’s another one for you. How soon will we see these noble heroes come to blows if one or both of them assume some divine right to lead us? No city can stand, divided against itself. We need unity, not tyranny!’
Now Hyanthidas’s glorious music drew on the marching songs that every hoplite knows, while the chorus remembered how fighting in a phalanx had saved them in the battles for Troy.
They decided to stick with that winning strategy now that they had found peace. They all wanted votes in a People’s Assembly and equality for all men under the law. As their song concluded with a triumphant shout, the chorus all wheeled round to look up at Meriones and Thersites, every stance expectant.
Those heroes looked at each other and made a show of counting up the heads of the chorus men, before adding the audience beyond. Turn by turn, they picked well-known faces out of the throng, or at least they pretended to, since I’d had no way of knowing who would actually be
