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Travelling actors in the fifth century?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

N. G. Wilson
N. G. Wilson
Affiliation:
Lincoln College, Oxford
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Extract

The object of this note is to draw attention to a piece of evidence about the history of the Greek theatre which appears to have gone unnoticed, yet may be of some importance. Aelian in his Historia animalium 11.19 reports the fate of Pantacles the Lacedaemonian, who refused to allow some actors on their way to Cythera to pass through Sparta. Later, when performing official duties as ephor, he was torn to pieces by dogs.

Type
Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , December 1999 , pp. 625
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1999

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References

1 See e.g. Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dramatic Festivals of Athens (2nd edn, rev. by Gould, J. P. A. and Lewis, D. M., Oxford, 1968), 279Google Scholar (the revised reprint of 1988 with a supplement has further notes on these actors at 365, but my point is not affected); Ghiron-Bistagne, P., Recherches sur les acteurs dans la Gréce antique (Paris, 1976), 163ff.Google Scholar On strolling players see also Taplin, O., Comic Angels (Oxford, 1993), 90–1.Google Scholar

2 See the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names IIIA (Oxford, 1997), 350.

3 Taplin (n. 1), 3.

4 See Huxley, G. L. and Coldstream, J. N., Kythera (London, 1972)Google Scholar and Müller, D., Topographischer Bildkommentar zu den Historien Herodots: Griechenland (Tübingen, 1987), 790–4.Google Scholar I owe the latter reference to the kindness of Prof. R. R. R. Smith.

5 Taplin (n. 1), 5, suggests that Aristophanes’ Clouds 518fT. makes sense if Athenians accepted that not every first performance of a comedy took place in their own theatre. Given the rather parochial nature of Old Comedy, this is difficult to accept for a date as early as 423 B.C. Or could the Clouds passage imply the possibility of production outside Athens but within Attica, e.g. at Thorikos? The theatre there has recently been discussed by Van Looy, H. in Miscellanea graeca 9, Studies in South Attica II, ed. H., Mussche (Gent, 1994), 9–29Google Scholar, to which Prof. C. Collard drew my attention.