In August/September of 2001 I found myself reading Herodotus’ Histories. It was, I believe, the first time I’d picked up a Greek classic just for the hell of it, and, to my lasting shock, I enjoyed it tremendously. If you’ve never read the book, I highly recommend it – it’s a surprisingly fluid read, with all sorts of wonderful historical and mythological tidbits, in addition to a sweeping story well told. I could create shows based on stories from Herodotus for the rest of my career and not run out of material (though the Battle of Thermopylae has been dramatized too recently and blockbusterly for me to take a stab at it any time in the near future, damn Frank Miller to hell).
The specific impetus for the show that would eventually become BABYLON BABYLON arrived early in my reading – Book One, page 94, in my edition (Penguin Classics paperback, printed 1964; Aubrey de Selincourt, trans.). After the riveting section describing the ancient city of Babylon and how the wily Persians – whose empire-building comprises the main throughline of the book – managed to break into the biggest, most well-fortified metropolis of its time, there was a section on Babylonian social customs. It ends with a paragraph that knocked me down, and which planted a seed for a show that only now, six and a half year later, I’m ready to bring to the stage. I reproduce the paragraph for you after the jump, transcribed from the de Selincourt translation:
“There is one custom amongst these people which is wholly shameful: every woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit in the temple of Aphrodite and there give herself to a strange man. Many of the rich women, who are too proud to mix with the rest, drive to the temple in covered carriages with a host of servants following behind, and there wait; most, however, sit in the precinct of the temple with a band of plaited string around their heads – and a great crowd they are, what with some sitting there, others arriving, others going away – and through them all gangways are marked off running in every direction for the men to pass along and make their choice. Once a woman has taken her seat she is not allowed to go home until a man has thrown a silver coin into her lap and taken her outside to lie with her. As he throws the coin, the man has to say “In the name of the goddess Mylitta” – that being the Assyrian name for Aphrodite [though in reality we all know he really meant Ishtar -JL]. The value of the coin is of no consequence; once thrown, it becomes sacred, and the law forbids that it should ever be refused. The woman has no privilege of choice – she must go with the first man who throws her the money. When she has lain with him, her duty to the goddess is discharged and she may go home, after which it will be impossible to seduce her by any offer, however large. Tall, handsome women soon manage to get home again, but the ugly ones stay a long time before they can fulfill the condition which the law demands, some of them, indeed, as much as three or four years. There is a custom similar to this in parts of Cyprus.”
How could I refuse the call to turn this fascinating, titillating, disturbing scene into the setting for a piece of theatre? Answer: I couldn’t. That is why we are in the current predicament.
