>> Hello I'm Dr. Rosie Wyles and I'm lecturer in Classical History and Literature at the University of Kent.

>> Today I want to talk a little bit about my research which is on Ancient Greek theatre and by that I mean 5th century Athens and their dramatic productions so
we're thinking about drama that was performed about 2,500 years ago.

>> And in particular I'll be focusing on my current research question which is on props in ancient theatre.

>> So here we have the research question: What can props tell us about theatre's role in shaping civic identity in fifth-century BC Athens?

>> Now to understand where that question is coming from it's really important to appreciate certain features of Ancient Greek theatre. Features which mean that that drama was really closely implicated in civic life in that city.

>> So let's look at some of those features. 

>> The first is that it was performed at annual festivals and it was these festivals were civic and religious. We're dealing with a theatre which had a mass audience so as a minimum 4,000 people in the audience, perhaps as many as 10,000.

>> For the types of drama there were comedies and these had contemporary settings, so this might feature as characters, people who were well known in  the society and we also had tragedies that were set in a mythological past. 

>> Now both of those types of drama, both of those genres, resonated with the audience and their everyday lives and they're implicated in shaping civic identity and even tragedy set in the mythological past actually had very important links with everyday life as we'll be exploring later in this lecture.

>> The other really important concept for this question is the idea of props and their existence both in society as objects and then their life within the theatre, their life on stage.

>> So for looking at that we're thinking about the idea of props as go-betweens, props that are objects in society, they have what Harris and Korda in their work on Staged Properties in Early Modern English Drama refer to as a social life, that is their existence as objects offstage in society but at the same time of course we can map their treatment, their handling, their significance across different dramas i.e. the ways in which they're being treated in theatre and what's so interesting is the intersection between those two types of symbolism. What an object means in society and then what it comes to me as a prop on stage and how that interrelates theatre and society. 

>> So that's what makes props such an important way of thinking about that relationship. They have this special status because of this double life. In the particular props that I want to look at as an example today are voting urns and pebbles so here is an image of what that looked like in Athens. 

>> Voting urns were water jars but actually within the law courts they gained a different significance because two of those would be set up next to one another and the jurors would approach with a pebble or a seashell as their ballot and they decide to put it in either the jar that signifies that they think the defendant is guilty or the one where it suggests that the defendant is innocent and then at the end you count and see which which jar has more votes in it. 

>> So it has a real really important significance in Athens and Athenian society voting especially in the law courts, that process of bringing justice is one of the things that the city prides itself in. 

>> It is a city where there are law courts where you can appeal, where you can have justice brought. The other important thing here before we move on is the image that we see because it is the only surviving image in vase painting of that fifth century process. 

>> That is extraordinary when you think of how important voting was and the course of justice was to Athenian identity but while you don't get voting shown on vases or certainly we only have this one example surviving, what you do have is these urns and pebbles featuring prominently on stage in the dramas both comedy and tragedy and I want to look at one example with you today and that is from Aeschylus's Oresteia. 

>> So Aeschylus's Oresteia was performed in 458 BC. It's a three-part tragic drama and it was performed as a trilogy so each play performed after the other and it focuses on one royal family.

>> So there it is, Agamemnon and Clytemnestra are the mother and the father in this family. 

>> You have three children Iphigenia, Electra and Orestes, and we're going to see that this is a very problematic family and there is a cycle of violence that takes place within that family and that is really what gives the drama its force and also just jumping ahead a bit and we're going to see that voting urns and pebbles become very very important in a trilogy.

>> So let's have a look first of all of the cycle of killing. Here's that family tree transformed. 

>> There it is Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, we have Agamemnon killing or sacrificing his daughter Iphigenia and in response to that the second act of violence is Clytemnestra kills her husband and then their son Orestes these feels that it is the correct thing to kill his mother as a way of avenging his father's murder.

>> So the question that the audience is left with is, how will it end?

>> It's actually Athenian justice that comes to the rescue there so you have that cycle of violence ending with Orestes after he's killed his mother, is pursued by her Furies. 

>> It seems that there will be no resolution but actually Athens and Athenian justice is able to bring resolution, so Athena who is a goddess and also a character in this play is in the Eumenides which is the final part of the trilogy.

>> She's sets up a law court to be able to try the case of Orestes to see whether it was the right thing that he killed his mother and the conclusion to that trial is, as she says here in line 752-3 this man is acquitted of the charge of murder for the number of votes is equal, and as she's explained if the votes are equal then her vote will determine the outcome and she chooses to acquit him but what you've had taking place on stage is a jury going up and dropping their pebbles into the voting urns in front of your Athenian audience at the festival and so when we get to this point of resolution and this acquittal and the end of the cycle of violence actually there's been a big build-up to it and a focus on those props on stage.

>> So here is all these moments where, I mean in ancient theatre you can't have a spotlight so outdoor theatre you can't have a spotlight on props but what you can do is use the words of the play to invite your audience to pay attention to particular props so draw attention to them and here you can see this incredible clustering, I've given those line numbers so you can see how they cluster together all of these references to those props where the audience is asked to pay real attention to them.

>> Athena asks if she should tell the jurors to vote. As she says that the audience are invited to think about the process of voting and to think about the urns and to think about those pebbles dropping into the urns. 

>> Apollo awaits to hear how the trial will be decided, the chorus advise the jurors on the vote, Athena instructs the jurors to arise and vote etc etc.

>> You can see the whole list there of moments in this play leading up to that final one where Athena announces the result. After those jars have been tipped out, that pebbles have been tipped out of the jars, the pebbles have been counted and the result is announced.

>> Now that is very powerful I would suggest because while the play is set in the mythological past in fact what the audience is seeing is a process that is familiar from their everyday society and it's glorified by being set in the mythological past and by having Athena preside over this first-ever law court trial. 

>> They take their knowledge of those objects from society, the Athenian audience know the symbolism of those objects for their civic identity and that feeds into the dramatic effects of that scene but vice-versa the way in which those props are being used in that scene and their symbolism in that scene and their power in resolving that cycle of violence of course feeds back into the ways in which the audience might think about those objects when they're back outside the theatre sitting in a law court being one of the jurors. 

>> So there's a two-way process at work here and what's even more important about this particular play and it's use of the props is that we know from other evidence that in 458 BC when it was performed there had been reforms to the law courts and they had been really controversial to this specific court, the Areopagus court, the court that is set up by Athena in this play, it had resulted in civil strife. 

>> So Athens at the time has its very own cycle of violence in play and you can see how this scene and its use of these objects and the suggestion of continuity these objects that are part of the way in which Athens brings justice actually the suggestion is of course by putting them in the mythological past Athens has always relied on these objects to bring justice, and the suggestion of course, or implication might be, the inference might be, that they'll continue to do so in the future and that they'll be a mend perhaps to the violence that the Athenian audience is experiencing. 

>> So these props exemplify exactly what my research question is interested in and that is the ways in which the world of Athens outside the theatre collides with, intersects with, theatre. 

>> So what can we learn from this research and from looking at other examples as well?

>> Well I think the examination of stage props as intermediaries between civic life and stage can shed fresh light on three dialectic relationships in 5th century Athens. Between theatre and society, between tragedy and comedy, and between theatre and art.

>> Thank you.