The play’s first prompt occurs as the opening tableau takes shape. For this play the rear of the stage is decorated to represent a palatial façade in the center of which there is a door; to one side of the raised platform between the palace’s front wall and the orchestra stands a household altar. In the orchestra’s center a larger public altar may still be smoking from the sacrifice performed earlier in the morning of the performance as a ritual aspect of the Great Dionysia, the five-day religious festival for which an estimated 15,000 Athenians from both the city itself and the surrounding countryside will have congregated in the theater.
As there is no curtain to go up as a signal that the action is about to begin, the Athenian audience will have been alert to other cues, such as the entrance of performers. The audience will thus already have been in its places as roughly half a dozen males of various ages enter the orchestra from either the left or the right or both, either singly or in a group, each holding an olive branch festooned with tufts of raw wool signifying supplication of the god Apollo.
The wool-wrapped olive branches, symbolic of the region’s most important agricultural products, should possibly be associated with the Athenian Thergalia, a festival of purification through expulsion of a scapegoat or pharmakos (Vernant, 130). There is plague in Athens, and since its causes were not understood and there was no known cure (Thuc. 2.47-54), symbolic reference to the Thergalia would underscore the idea that, in its efforts to purge the city of plague, Athens might consider engaging in a ritual expulsion. This would raise the question in the minds of the audience: who or what is to be expelled? What is the source of the city’s pollution? If it is those Athenian policies that have led to the Peloponnesian War, does expulsion of a pharmakos imply willingness to expel their proponents and exchange their policies for others? For such questions a consultation at Delphi might be considered. The problem is that the procedure requires presenting the god with pairs of alternatives to choose between, and this means that Athens must be willing to allow the god to arbitrate its policy debate and decide the personal fate of some of its leading citizens. Assuming that Athens is loathe to yield this much decision-making power to Delphi, identification with the Thergalia and the implicit need to identify an appropriate scapegoat puts the audience in the position of confronting its own reluctance to yield direction of the city’s most essential policy decisions to the Oracle. If Athens has in fact decided to endure the plague rather than change its policy, the present action prompts it to revisit that decision.
Silently the suppliants seat themselves on the orchestra floor around the altar. They remain in this tableau for some moments as the audience falls silent in anticipation of further action or speech. The suppliants do not move. Clearly, they are endeavoring to summon their god. Their continued silent and motionless proferring of the wool-tufted withies speaks to their insistence upon a response, their faith that their effort cannot be ignored, and the seriousness with which they imbue their ritual. The most senior of the suppliants is a priest, as can be inferred from his attire. The altar at the focal point of the supplication is also the focal point for the audience, which is seated, now also motionless and silent, in the semicircular inverted cone of the amphitheater rising tier upon tier from the orchestra’s edge just behind the suppliants up into the hillside immediately beneath the splendid and freshly completed Parthenon. Looking toward the altar, smelling its smoke, watching the priest for some sign of what is to come, remaining motionless and silent, the audience is one with the supplication. Its posture and position join it to the ritual summoning of Apollo. And so, like the suppliants, it appears to be awaiting Apollo’s response. As it waits it senses the gravity of the situation, wonders what the latter might be, and weighs the likelihood of the god’s appearance. Apollo is the god of plague, and Athens is itself presently (430-428 B.C.E.) suffering a terrible outbreak for which no remedy is known. Might the suppliants find themselves in a similar circumstance? If Athens has itself supplicated Apollo, does it feel that the ritual currently being staged is likely or unlikely to bring the desired results? Can the god be expected to appear on stage in person? If not, might he send some sign of his interest? If Apollo neither materializes nor presents any acknowledgement, who will break this silence and how? [A] [Mw] [P]
With every moment that the on-stage participants remain unmoving and silent the sense of expectation and suspense grows. Prolonged delay prompts the audience to consider how it would prefer the stillness to be broken; is it fruitful to wait in immobility for a god who cannot really be expected to show himself? Should the suppliants—and Athens itself—not get on to other business where their efforts might more profitably be spent? But would it not be extremely thrilling if the god were to respond in person or to send a clear sign? The audience will find itself torn between competing alternatives, one of which gives value to pragmatic action and hard-bitten recognition of reality, while the other inclines towards faith, trust in divine powers, and the necessity for humility and patience in the process of calling for and awaiting much-needed divine assistance. The audience finds itself on the horns of a familiar and divisive dilemma; it must decide whether, in order to express to Apollo this city’s utter dependence upon his willingness to come to its aid, it prefers the priest to continue demonstrating patience and persistence, or whether it prefers for the priest to call off the supplication. [Mw] [Mi] Is the present display of piety the city’s most promising course of action, or is it a waste of time? [P]