The Civic Role of Entertainment

In the summer of 400 bc, a band of Greek mercenaries that had fought its way free of a seemingly impossible trap in the heart of the Persia empire reached the Black Sea. They celebrated their arrival by holding games (Xen. Anab. 4.8.25). Some decades earlier the historian Herodotus had stressed exercise in the nude as a defining feature of Greek, as opposed to barbarian, culture. It is not known when Greeks began to exercise this way - the practice is certainly post-Homeric, though prior to the end of the sixth century (McDonnell 1991) - but the ideological significance attached to athletic training and competition by the end of the fifth century is undeniable. The fact that the Spartans, dominant in Greece by the end of the fifth century, had instituted state-supported athletic training for all citizens centuries earlier, inspired other states to do likewise for their young men. Well before Alexander of Macedon transformed the geopolitical balance of power between Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean at the end of the fourth century, exercise in the nude in state-supported gymnasia had become a fundamental feature of urban life for all Greeks. As Alexander and his successors spread Greek-style urbanism throughout the former territory of the Persian empire (not without moments of opposition, most notably among the Jews of Palestine during the second century), athletic contests achieved new significance. Festivals were created throughout the new Greek kingdoms, and the sponsors of these festivals competed to have the best athletes from around the world compete at them. These new celebrations only served to elevate the status of the traditional festivals of the mainland as cities offered their own versions of “Olympic”- or “Pythian”-style competition (Robert 1982: 37). At the same time, the fact that Alexander, and his father, Philip II, had enjoyed the theater gave new impetus to the spread of dramatic entertainment. To be a Greek city was to be equipped with a theater and a gymnasium (often more than one). The further consequence of the spread of Greek culture in the East, and cultural unification of the cities of western Asia with those of the mainland, was an upsurge in demand for dramatic performers. Good actors could receive significant civic honors from cities to which they traveled to perform, and, perhaps in response to the demand, actors began to organize into

Professional associations or synods before the end of the fourth century bc. These synods, of which the most successful would be the artisans of Dionysos, set the terms under which their members would perform at a civic festival, and guaranteed that these members would actually appear (Lightfoot 2002).

The tale of the agonistic performer, that is to say the performer who was entitled to compete in a crowned festival, or agon - usually a citizen and thus a person of relatively high status - is easier to trace than that of the mass of others who provided pleasure (of many sorts) on the fringes of the great festivals (Robert 1982: 36). Flute girls were plainly regarded as an essential component of many expensive private parties, while what we might now classify as “circus” performers - e. g. tightrope walkers - operated wherever large groups of people gathered for entertainment. Additionally, it seems, the years after Alexander saw an increase in the importance of two forms of drama that were not included in the competitive festivals - mime (a stylized situation comedy involving a troupe of actors) and pantomime, or “rhythmic tragic dance,” in which a single dancer performed scenes from myth to musical accompaniment, originally, it seems, while also singing. By the end of the first century BC, however, while the dancer remained the star of the show, a soloist or chorus took over the singing (there was evidently no uniform practice at this point), while the music came (or continued) to be provided by a group with a heavy percussion base. With the passing of time, pantomimes and mimes, whose acts were more popular than those of agonistic thespians, began to be able to command very large fees for their appearance. The great transformation of Greek athletics from what appears to have been an “aristocrats only” system in the archaic period to one involving all male citizens did not evolve towards an even more open system of entertainment so long as the cultural politics of the Greek city-state, which equated status with the ability to perform, was supported by the tastes of Greek rulers. With the rise of Rome to dominance in the Greek world, the cultural politics of public entertainment would be altered to accommodate the eclectic tastes of the new rulers of the Mediterranean. The result was that there would be greater opportunities for people whose skills fell outside the traditional range of agonistic performance, and whose origins were often humble. This was not, however, a development that can simply be attributed to greater open-mindedness on the part of Roman aristocrats. Prior to the conquest of the eastern Mediterranean, they appear to have been well satisfied with traditions in which public performers were regarded as simple appendages to their own contests for dominance. It was the Greek sense that the skilled performer was entitled to profit that injected a significant new element into Roman practice.