The Athenian Women

by Alessandro Barbero

  Hearing their chief inciting them, the chorus members stood scratching their heads. They had just set down the logs and the fire, were they going to have to pick them up again? From the rearmost rows it was clear that they had no interest in doing so, they were old! The audience continued to laugh, but after a while the laughter died out, as they gradually understood. Hey, what do you think you’re laughing at? Those old men are us. You see what can happen: they occupy the Acropolis, and who is left in the city to take it back? A bunch of old men who can’t even stand on their own two feet.

  Kritias was the first member of his group to understand. It was no accident that he had been a pupil of Socrates, arguing with that man really forced you to sharpen your wits. Here’s how it works: the city wages war, dispatches fleets, sends soldiers across half the world, and believes it’s powerful, but instead those things are exactly what makes it vulnerable. And what if that young man was right? Why worry about swaying the assembly: let’s just occupy the Acropolis, and the whole house of cards will fall under its own weight . . . It cost him an effort to free himself of that temptation. If you occupy the Acropolis, then you have to hold it forever. It’s much better to do as we planned, if we want it to last. And anyway, there’s not much you can do about it, Aristophanes is a guy who understands everything, and isn’t afraid to say it. That the Acropolis is there for whoever wishes to take it . . . But the thing that remains to be figured out is whether he’s saying it to us or to the people!

  “We’re really going to have to move fast,” he whispered into Eubulus’s ear. The other man nodded, he’d understood too.

  “I’ve already started. I’ll tell you about it later,” he whispered; then he fell silent because the twelve had started singing again.

  The singsong of the chorus wasn’t as mournful as it had been before, the old men had recovered their spirits: the audience’s laughing had annoyed them. There’s nothing to laugh about with us, you can believe that! And they set about evoking a story from a hundred years earlier, even older than the Persian wars: the story of how the Spartans under King Cleomenes had helped the Athenians to rid themselves of the tyrants, and then they’d demanded to be put in charge of Athens, something absolutely unheard of! He too, Cleomenes, had had the brilliant idea of occupying the Acropolis, but he’d paid a brutal reckoning, when the time came to leave. With all his vaunted Spartan pride, he’d been forced to leave in his underclothes: he’d had to leave his weapons behind, the old men boasted. And when he left he was starving, filthy, his hair encrusted with dirt: he hadn’t washed in six years! That was an exaggeration, but the audience was laughing till it hurt. It might be an old story, but it’s one people never get tired of. Hearing the laughter, Aristophanes winked his eye at the actors, shut up with him in the house, but he still couldn’t manage to feel contented. He knew his fellow Athenians all too well, there was no real fun in it. What could he do? You have to give the audience the things they like, if you’re also hoping to cram something useful into their heads.

  On the stage, the Old Man who was the head of the chorus had wandered off into those sweet memories. He was talking as if he had been there, besieging Cleomenes in the Acropolis; and in a certain sense he really had been. The ones who had besieged him were the people, were they not? And the people is always the same, it never dies. The Old Man explained how hard it had been to besiege that man, to sleep armed outside the gates, in case the Spartans ever tried to sally forth: and now, they were faced with the laughable challenge of halting some women? Why, they ought to demolish the trophy of the victory at Marathon, for their shame!

  The whole audience was rooting for the old men and against the women. Shameless things that they were: not only do they leave home without permission, but they set up house in the Acropolis, and expect to issue orders to the men! Let’s see, let’s just wait and see how our heroes make them pay for it. The chorus members had once again begun marching around the stage, dragging behind them the logs and the cauldron; but they couldn’t seem to make up their minds to climb the three steps that would have taken them to the higher level, outside the gate of the Acropolis. Come on, it’s just one last effort, they encouraged one another; and then, nothing. The audience chuckled. The members of the chorus were bewildered: how on earth do you haul this thing up without a mule? This rough wood has rubbed our shoulders bare! And then what if the fire goes out? At that thought, the old men started puffing on the cauldron all together. One of them, unseen by the spectators, poured a special concoction onto the embers, and an enormous cloud of smoke billowed out of the recipient. All of the old men started coughing and cursing: damn this smoke! The audience was delighted.

  As soon as the smoke had dissipated, the old men went on complaining. Have you ever seen the like? Herakles help us! How my eyes are burning! They went on for a while, taking turns consoling each other, then they remembered what they were doing there in the first place: let’s get busy, we need to climb up to the Acropolis! As if they hadn’t learned a thing, they all bent over to blow once again, and vanished in the billowing smoke.

  “Oooff! Phew! Damn this smoke!”

  While the audience was howling, the chief restored order.

  There now, there’s our fire all bright and burning, thank the gods!

  Put down our load of firewood there, that’s right, set it down!

  Give me the torch, and now I’ll set it ablaze,

  Then everyone to the gate, with all our might, and we’ll knock it down!

  We’ll set it on fire if those women won’t pull back the bolts,

  I’d love to watch them when the smoke begins to choke them.

  All right then: first thing, set down your load.

  As soon as the cauldron touched the ground, even the Old Man disappeared in a cloud of billowing smoke, and he himself began to curse, still in time to the music.

  Help, smoke, shit! Here I am, suffocating!

  The spectators were splitting their sides with laughter. This too is a fixed rule of the art, dirty words are always successful: let fly with one, and you have the audience in the aisles.

  Is there never a general will help me unload my burden,

  of firewood and this cauldron!

  the chief was declaiming furiously, coughing and spitting as he did so; then he regained his spirits.

  I’ve ruined my back, now I can stop.

  Now it’s up to you, come, brazier, do your duty, make the embers flare!

  Here is the torch, help me kindle a brand to light it.

  Aid me, heavenly Victory; let us punish for their insolent

  audacity the women who have seized our citadel!

  The fire in the giant pot blazed cheerfully, as the old men danced for joy. But in that instant the music changed and to the audience’s enthusiastic glee, the second semi-chorus marched in with a martial step: twelve chorus members disguised, this time, as old women, their enormous white wigs wrapped in hairnets, their chitons dragging on the floor. On their shoulders they were carrying amphoras full of water. At the head of the march, an Old Woman urged them on.

  Oh! my dears, methinks I see fire and smoke;

  can it be a conflagration? Let us hurry all we can!

  The old women, proving to be far more agile than the men, started dancing around the fire, pouring bucketsful of water as they did. Who knows how, the water wound up on the old men, while the smoke just kept billowing. All the old men were coughing. The old women incited them, singing: hurry up, girls, as fast as you can, before the damned old men can set fire to our sisters. Rising at dawn, I had the utmost trouble to fill this vessel at the fountain. Oh! what a crowd there was, and what a din! What a rattling of water-pots! Servants and slave-girls pushed and thronged me! However, here I have it full at last!

  In the face of that assault, the old men retreated, trying to carry the smoking cauldron to safety. The old women kept after them, beratin
g them all the while: you old fools, what are you dragging around on those logs? Were you planning to heat the baths by some chance, with three tons of firewood! But Aphrodite was born of the waters, she’ll help us cool down your scalding heat!

  The old men were about to be driven from the field when their chief, to prevent an utter rout, stopped and stood bravely in front of the cauldron. The Old Woman appeared before him, menacing, her amphora at the ready.

  “Let me through, then! What is this I see, ye wretched old men? Honest and pious folk ye cannot be who act so vilely.”

  “Ah, ha! here’s something new! a swarm of women stand posted outside to defend the gates!” the Old Man complained.

  “Afraid, eh? There are too many of us? But you only see one out of ten thousand!”

  Polemon started in his seat. The last line had suddenly helped him to formulate a bothersome thought that had been buzzing around in his head for a while, without his being able to pin it down. Right then and there, at the idea of the women taking the Acropolis, he too had been tempted to laugh: just like all the other men. The women, can you imagine? It would be like saying that potters make the revolution, or woodcutters: a tiny minority. And in fact in the city there are knights, and peasants, and potters, and wood burners and woodcutters and water sellers, and makers of saddles and swords and shields, and vendors of fava beans and schoolteachers, and of course immigrants, and slaves, and then there are also the women: a category just like a thousand others. But how many are there? If you stop to think about it, there ought to be as many women as there are men, but who would ever think it? You never see them!

  “Say,” he whispered to Thrasyllus, “in your opinion, how many women are there in Athens?”

  “How would I know?” replied Thrasyllus. Then, though, he too stopped to think it over. One out of ten thousand, she had said, and there are twelve up there: which is to say that there are a hundred twenty thousand women in the city? Come on, that’s not possible. Certainly, you never see them because they’re always at home. If they ever came out all at once . . .

  “Crazy, eh?” he whispered into Polemon’s ear.

  At the foot of the stage the squabbling continued. The chief tried to restore the morale of his defeated troops, clearly on the verge of dissolution. The Old Woman kept prodding them, as unrepentant as a fishmonger at the market. The audience was rolling in the aisles with laughter at the oldest comic spectacle in the world: two out-of-control commoners just itching for a fight.

  “What are you doing with that water, you miserable wretch?”

  “And what are you doing with that fire, you old mummy? Building your funeral pyre?”

  “Suppose I were to break a stick across your back?”

  “Suppose I were to rip off your testicles!”

  “And I’ll burn your girlfriends!”

  “And I’ll put out your fire!”

  “You say that you’ll put out my fire?”

  “I’ll show you straightaway!”

  “Look out, or I’ll fry you to a turn!”

  “And I’ll wet you through and through!”

  “You think you can give me a bath, filthy wench?”

  “Look out, you know, I’m a freewoman.”

  “I’ll make you pipe down once and for all!”

  “What are you going on about? You’re no longer in court!”

  This last dig finally brought the Old Man to his wit’s end. The proverb has it that old men get hard-ons only when they’re seated as jurors in a courtroom, and they’re allowed to condemn anyone they want: outside, they’re just bowls of warm oatmeal, no one cares about them. Now furious, the Old Man waved his torch at his female adversary.

  “Look out or I’ll set fire to your hair!”

  “Oh really? Look out, here comes the river!”

  The Old Woman raised her amphora and emptied it once and for all over her rival’s head. The Old Man, shrieking, sought safety at a prudent distance.

  “What, was it too hot?”

  “Hot? What are you talking about? Cut it out! What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I’m watering you: that way maybe something will finally sprout,” the Old Woman suggested sweetly, making an obscene gesture.

  “But I’m already withered! Just look: I’m shaking!” the Old Man pathetically complained; but the damned Old Woman insisted on having the last word.

  “Seeing that you have the fire, why don’t you warm yourself up!”

  The audience was perplexed. Everybody expected the old men to attack the Acropolis, and to see the shameless women sent packing for home, which is where women ought to be, their shoulders bruised from the beatings they would endure. It’s true, our heroes are old men, they came in huffing and puffing and farting, but no one can defeat the people! Most important of all—but this came to mind only among the greediest and most grasping—there in the Acropolis is the treasury, and that’s where the money for the stipend comes from! Who’s seriously going to believe that we’d let those harpies get their hands on it? Still, from what they’d seen so far, it’s not as if the old men were doing especially well for themselves. Someone will have to come help them. It’s not such a challenge: all sorts of things happen in comedies, a god might even show up to put things right.

  “I’ll bet the women won’t succeed, and they’ll receive a cartload of bruises,” whispered Thrasyllus.

  “And I’ll bet you they don’t,” replied Polemon.

  “An obol?”

  “You’re on! An obol.”

  At the foot of the stage, old women and old men fell silent all of a sudden . . .

  10

  Charis coughed and retched, on the verge of throwing up; she broke loose and spat out Cimon’s péos. She tried to stand up, but Cimon held her firmly by the shoulders, on her knees where she was.

  “I can’t take it!” stammered Charis, half suffocated.

  “Try again, or it will be even worse,” hissed Cimon; but then, at the sight of her terrified face, a surge of rage rose within him. She doesn’t know how, he thought to himself in his rage. And for that matter, it just had to be the young woman’s fault that nothing was happening to him.

  “To the crows with you!” he exclaimed, shoving her. For an instant there appeared before his eyes the ancestral image that had birthed that figure of speech; he saw her reduced to a grayish corpse, abandoned to the birds of prey in a barren wilderness: with the crows pecking its eyes out, the most delectable part. Charis had gotten back to her feet and was looking at him with fright in her eyes, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “You aren’t even capable of satisfying a man,” Cimon went on, pacing back and forth. “How do you think you’re ever going to earn a living?”

  Charis didn’t understand; she went on looking at him with her eyes wide open, and her teeth had started chattering again. After berating her for a while, Cimon recovered his spirits.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll train you. We have all the time we want. Get back inside!” he ordered. And since Charis, in her fright, wasn’t moving, he grabbed her by the wrist and dragged her toward the storage room.

  “Don’t hurt me!” the young woman sobbed.

  Cimon was moving quickly in the partial darkness. Dragged roughly, Charis hit a sharp corner and yelped in pain. Cimon jerked her even harder: he was in a hurry to get rid of her. The other one! The only thing was to see if it worked with the other one.

  When he reached the storage room door, he called out: “Hey, you in there! Get ready to come out!”

  He pulled open the door, pushed Charis inside, glimpsed the silhouette of the other young woman curled up on the floor, and grabbed her by the hair.

  “Get out, I said!”

  After he dragged her out into the open, he shut the door again. When he turned around, Glycera had already run to the front door and
was feverishly trying to slide open the bolts.

  “So you must just be stupid! I told you that it’s locked!”

  Glycera pounded her fists on the heavy door in vain, then she turned around. Her feet and her garment were black with dust, her face streaked with black tears: the storage room also served as a charcoal cellar.

  “Strip,” Cimon ordered her.

  Glycera shook her head, glaring at him with a look of defiance, and Cimon hauled off and hit her with his open hand. Glycera’s mouth opened wide, in disbelief.

  “Have you lost your mind?” she asked. And she meant to add, once again—let us go!—but she didn’t have the time, because Cimon, beside himself with rage, hit her again, this time with his fist. Glycera screamed, took a step back, raised her hand to her mouth, and saw blood on her fingers. Now she was really starting to get scared. This guy is going to kill me, she thought for the first time, in sheer disbelief. From inside the storage room Charis was calling her, her voice high and piercing with terror.

  “What’s going on?”

  Feverishly trying to figure out what the best thing to do might be, Glycera undressed. Under her festival best, she was wearing two old chitons, one of them more tattered and patched than the other. She realized that Cimon was snickering, and she felt a wave of shame.

  Once she was naked, Cimon dragged her over to the hearth.

  “Let me see you!”

  This was something he liked: it was just like buying a horse, when you take your time examining it, looking at it from all sides, and you savor in advance the pleasure of mounting it. Glycera closed her eyes and allowed herself to be felt and pinched. Cimon forced her to open her mouth, he touched her teeth with his hand. She thought about biting him, but restrained herself.