THE PAGEANT OF LETTERS (c 402 B.C.) – Here is another examination of an ancient Greek comedy. This one deals with a subject that still affects a very large part of the world to this very day – our alphabet.
The Pageant of Letters (AKA The Tragedy of Letters and The Spectacle of Letters) was a comedy dealing with the Athenians officially adding four new letters to the Greek alphabet, making a grand total of twenty-four. Since twenty-four also happened to be the number of members in the all-important chorus of Attic Old Comedy, it presented an obvious subject for the Athenian stage.
The addition of the four new letters (eta, xi, psi and omega) was causing a certain amount of confusion, as could be expected. Imagine if we suddenly added four new letters to the alphabet now, say, possibly single characters to express sounds formerly covered by two letters together, like “th” or “ph”.
Naturally everyday usage and ESPECIALLY official documents would be subject to all manner of confusion for quite some time. The Pageant of Letters dealt with the confusion the Athenians were experiencing because of the change. There is disputed authorship of this comedy and I’ll address that below.
THE PLAY
Each member of the chorus was costumed as a letter of the newly-expanded alphabet. Individual costumes for each member represented an extravagance but always made a big impression on the audience and the judges. Since the comedies (like the tragedies) competed against each other at festivals to Dionysus that was a crucial consideration. Continue reading
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