In the month of Elaphebolion, in the year that Isarchus was eponymous archon [March-April, 423 BC], Socrates became a celebrity.
It didn’t happen in the way you might expect. The forty-six-year-old philosopher didn’t make a brilliant speech in the Assembly that changed public policy. He didn’t win a battle by his clever strategy, or save the day by his courageous defense of the battle line. He didn’t pay for the construction of a navy ship out of his own pocket. And he didn’t win a footrace at Olympia. In fact, the kind of attention he got no one would seek. He had already become a public figure with the endorsement, and the riddle, of the oracle. He had become an increasingly common sight in the streets of Athens, talking with individuals, often important individuals, pursuing his quest that was now a mission. People knew him. People talked about him. People wondered about him. Yet for all that, Athens was a large city of more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. Few people had actually encountered Socrates face to face.
Yet this was to be the day when all eyes would be on him. Crowds flowed up from the lower city, sweeping around the shoulders of the acropolis, filling the air with conversation and laughter. It was a propitious day, dedicated to Dionysus, god of play and strong drink. It was a day to pour a libation to the god, and then drain your cup, then fill it again. It was a good day to take your slave boy along, to keep you upright until you got home in the wee hours. It was a day to wear your best tunic, and over it your best cloak, to anoint your head with olive oil, and comb your hair and beard, so that you could look pretty much like everyone else. For this was a day to celebrate democracy, to glory in free speech, and to let the world know that everyone was equal. On this day anything could be said on the stage. Anyone could become an object of public mockery, from the haughtiest aristocrat to the lowliest peasant. It was a day to enjoy peace and to pretend you were not at war, and to show the world that you could live as if the war had never happened.
After the winter the city was thronged with foreigners, including emissaries from other cities. The festival “was an effective advertisement of the wealth and power and public spirit of Athens, no less than of the artistic and literary leadership of her sons.”[1]
Crowds circled around the base of the acropolis and gathered in friendly knots, then flowed to the southeast corner, toward the great theater. The crowd consisted mostly of men, a few boys, and fewer women.[2] The southern slopes of the acropolis formed the auditorium of the Theater of Dionysus. At the bottom of the slope was a level circular area for the orchestra, the dancing floor, that was the focal point of any Greek theater, the stage on which the action took place. Behind it, the long wooden scene building provided a backdrop, with single doors on either end and a double door in the middle. Above it towered a wooden crane that was now standard stage equipment. Before either wing of the building stood a wooden prism with painted figures on each of its three faces, so that it could be rotated to change the scenery. To the east of the scene building stood the Odeon, the music hall, of Pericles.
Behind the building a short man in his twenties, already balding noticeably, hurried back and forth among the actors, the masks and costumes, barking out orders, arranging properties, rehearsing the characters, checking the equipment. Aristophanes was already well-known for his scathing lyrics, his absurd conceits, his flamboyant characters. Today was to be his triumph. Slaves placed wigs and applied rouge and eye shadow to the boys of the chorus, who were made up to look like women, who were not allowed on stage. Bales of white wool were scattered everywhere, and balls of the fluff floated in the air along with loose chicken feathers. In the sacred procession that opened the festival a day or two earlier, Aristophanes had marched in lavish purple robes, impressing not only the men but even the women who saw him.[3] He knew how to make a splash, and he would make one today.
The sounds of the audience grew in intensity as the fifteen thousand or so spectators took their places in the cavea on the hillside. The thrones in the front were ceremoniously occupied by officers and dignitaries, while the unofficial spectators elbowed their way into the benches behind them. Once they had claimed their places, the citizens of Athens looked down with anticipation on the orchestra and scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Behind them they felt the might of the great limestone cliff that rose majestically above the valley, crowned with Doric grandeur. On the Acropolis, the Parthenon blazed with the golden hues of Pendelic marble. Perfect in proportion, elegant in decoration, its friezes depicted the procession of Athena in high relief, gaudily painted in scarlet, blue, and green. The house of Athena, patron and protector of the city, it stood as a symbol of grace and power, the emblem of the goddess of wisdom, and the glory of her eternal city.
Around the theater on three sides were huddled the square stone houses of Athens with doors opening onto narrow crooked streets, and beyond the houses the towering ramparts of a mighty ring wall. As the citizens gazed down towards the theater, their eyes were drawn to the three lines of almost parallel walls running from the city walls southwest along the contours of the terrain as it sloped gently downward toward the sea. The Long Walls were the pride and the salvation of Athens. Connecting the mother city with her ports, the Piraeus and Phaleron, they made the city impregnable. Beyond the harbors they saw the misty blue of the Saronic Gulf, with a few ships slowly moving in or out of port. Athens owned the Aegean Sea; with her system of walls, she was an island on land, serene and impenetrable. In and out of the ship sheds in the Piraeus moved the navy galleys with their triple banks of oars, conveying Athenian power to the farthest recesses of the Black Sea in the north, to the shores of Anatolia in the east, to the Balkans, Italy, and Sicily in the west. The citizens of Athens looked with the pride of rulers on the blue waters below. Seeing the city turned out in its finery for a day of entertainment, you would not know that she had been engaged in a desperate war for eight long years.
But today was not a day to think about such things.
[1].Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 58.
[2].See Pickard-Cambridge 1968: 263-265.
[3].Athenaeus 12.534c.